by Andy Hoare
‘Stand by, major,’ Lucian replied, locating the riflemen of the foremost platoon. He crossed to the unit’s position, and nodded to its lieutenant before replying to Subad. ‘You may begin, major.’
There was a brief pause, before the sound of a missile launcher being fired from Sergeant-Major Havil’s fire support element filled the air. The missile streaked from its launcher upon a billowing black contrail, its firer hidden amongst the fruit trees of another plantation south of Lucian’s position, and detonated upon striking one of the dome-shaped buildings. The resulting explosion was the signal to the entire battlegroup that battle was joined.
The air was suddenly filled with the deafening roar of dozens of heavy weapons opening fire at once, thousands of rounds of explosive ammunition hammering into the settlement.
Taking his cue, Lucian drew his power sword from its scabbard and turned to the platoon commander beside him. Though the man was much younger, his eyes were filled with the desire to advance. Lucian nodded, and the man yelled an order in the Rakarshan tongue.
An instant later, the riflemen were charging from cover and so too was Lucian. The sunlight was harsh after the shade of the fruit plantation, and it took Lucian a moment to get his bearings. Ahead of him was a cluster of low, white buildings, towards which the Rakarshans were advancing. The riflemen moved quickly, darting from one piece of cover to the next, each platoon covering another with weapons sweeping the buildings ahead. Despite the disciplined manner of the advance, Lucian knew that the final seconds would be a wild, ferocious charge as ceremonial blades were drawn.
Then came the whip-crack of a hyper-velocity projectile splitting the air nearby. The tau had seen their advance, and were firing on the flanking group.
The leading riflemen opened fire on the cluster of buildings, from where it appeared the shot had been fired. Lucian pressed forwards, making use of what cover he could, knowing that to fall to an alien sniper at this stage would be an ignominious way to start, and end, his military adventures. Lasgun rounds sang through the air, hammering into the white buildings and stitching dirty black scorch marks across their flanks. A second hyper-velocity shot scythed past, and Lucian imagined he saw a thin line etched through the air in its passing. A grunt sounded from somewhere behind, followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground. First blood to the tau, Lucian thought grimly, knowing that his flanking group could not afford to become stalled so soon in its advance.
‘You men!’ Lucian shouted to a platoon opposite from his position behind the trunk of a tall fruit tree. ‘With me!’
The riflemen looked back at Lucian, their faces blank. He might as well be offering to make them a cup of recaf. Raising his power sword high, Lucian decided to lead by example.
Lucian stepped out into the open and swept his power sword towards the tau position. The Rakarshans got the idea immediately, and those nearest to him limbered their weapons and drew their ceremonial blades, springing forwards to join him.
A shot whined past Lucian, way too close for comfort, and sent a shower of grit into the air scant metres behind him.
‘Forward Rakarshan!’ Lucian bellowed, to be answered a moment later by the ululating war cry of the riflemen.
The charge towards the cluster of buildings was a mad dash, Lucian only absently aware that a relentless rain of blue energy bolts was being unleashed from somewhere up ahead. He heard several screams of pain from the accompanying riflemen, but he knew that to falter now would be fatal.
Closing on the nearest building, Lucian was confronted by a tau warrior emerging from cover to bring a long-barrelled weapon to bear. The warrior wore a blank-faced helmet, its single lens locking on to him as the alien swung his weapon upwards to draw a bead.
As he closed the final metres, Lucian brought his power sword up and back, and then finally his charge hit home.
Lucian’s blow struck the alien warrior’s weapon, scything it in two in a shower of blue sparks. The tau uttered an unintelligible curse and stepped backwards, even as a second warrior emerged behind him. Lucian let his momentum power him forwards, and shouldered his full weight into his enemy’s chest, pinning him with a bone-crunching impact to the wall of the building.
The alien slumped to the ground, his body pulverised. Lucian drew his plasma pistol with his free left hand and swung it upwards towards the second tau.
Before the pistol was fully raised, the other fired his weapon, a shorter, carbine type firearm well suited to the close quarters battle. The carbine’s discharge was almost blinding at such a short range, the energy bolt slamming into Lucian’s shoulder armour. The impact blew Lucian backwards, his body striking the ground with a gut-wrenching thud. An instant later, he was looking directly up into the barrel of his enemy’s weapon.
‘Gue’slo!’ the tau said, the words sounding metallic as they came from his helmet speaker.
‘I’ve had guns pointed at me by far more scary people than you, tau,’ Lucian sneered.
On hearing Lucian speak the name of his race, the alien cocked his head slightly. ‘S’nae’ta…’
‘S’nae’ta indeed…’ Lucian replied, playing for time as the Rakarshans pressed forwards.
The word must have been an insult, for the tau shouldered his weapon, his finger closing on the trigger.
Then the tau’s head snapped back violently as a las-bolt slammed into it from the side. The alien warrior dropped heavily to the ground at Lucian’s side, the blue-grey of its face visible through the smoking crack in the helmet. A hand appeared in front of Lucian’s face.
‘Rha ji?’ the Rakarshan trooper said.
‘Great,’ Lucian grunted as he took the rifleman’s hand and got to his feet. ‘Does no one speak the Emperor’s holy tongue around here?’
Before the Rakarshan could answer, the air was filled by a storm of las-bolts as the rifleman’s platoon charged forwards and passed the building. As they closed on the tau positions, the riflemen drew their ceremonial blades and unleashed an ululating war cry that stirred cold dread in Lucian’s heart. He could scarcely imagine what it would do to the tau.
The tau defending the cluster of buildings fired a last, desperate fusillade and half a dozen Rakarshans went down. The high-velocity weapons tore straight through their bodies, but unlike many weapons used by the Imperium, they did not kill outright. Instead, they left the victim to bleed out on the ground, out of the fight but a drain on resources as medics would have to deal with them and stop their cries demoralising their unwounded fellows.
Then the Rakarshans were upon their foe, and their blades were drinking deep of the purple blood of the tau.
‘Leave some for fleet intelligence!’ Lucian yelled as he rejoined the riflemen. ‘Leave some… Emperor’s balls, will you just…’
With the Rakarshans unable to understand Lucian’s words, he had no choice but to wade in amongst them, locating a rifleman whose blade was raised to deliver the killing blow to a tau warrior at his feet. Lucian stepped in and grasped the man’s wrist, staying his blow.
‘No!’ Lucian said firmly. ‘Intelligence. We need to get at least…’
‘Band’im?’ the Rakarshan said, the savage light of battle fading from his eyes.
Lucian relinquished his grip on the other’s wrist, and the rifleman lowered his blade. ‘Aye lad, band’im. Band’im right now.’
The Rakarshan nodded his understanding, and then drew his ceremonial blade across his palm, drawing blood, before sheathing the weapon in the jewelled scabbard at his belt. A crowd of riflemen was gathering about the scene as Lucian turned on the tau.
The warrior’s helmet had been torn off in the melee, and he had a blackened wound at his shoulder where a las-bolt had struck home. There was no blood; the heat of the blast had cauterised the wound, but would have flash-boiled the surrounding tissue making the entire arm useless and collapsing the adjacent lung. If they even had lu
ngs. ‘Looks like the war’s over for you, tau,’ Lucian said. Then, remembering the mess Inquisitor Grand had made of the first tau the crusade had taken prisoner, he added ‘Better get you to Gauge’s staff…’
An explosion sounded from somewhere amongst the settlement, followed by a last burst of heavy bolter fire before the sounds of battle finally ended. The sound of whining turbines came from the far side of the cluster of buildings, rising in pitch before fading as the vehicles fled.
‘Vokset, sir,’ the vox-operator said as he handed Lucian his headset.
‘That I understood,’ Lucian said. Like most Low Gothic dialects Lucian had encountered, the Rakarshan tongue contained elements common across the Imperium. It was just a matter of deciphering the underlying terms. ‘Gerrit here. Go ahead.’
‘The enemy are retreating, my lord,’ said Major Subad over the vox-net. ‘They put up an honourable fight, but they are now fleeing west by anti-grav carrier.’
‘Understood, major,’ Lucian replied. ‘Congratulate the men on a battle well fought and meet me here. Have Havil deploy a screen to the west in case they counter-attack. Out.’
As the rifle platoon’s lieutenant arrived and set about ordering his men to secure the area, Lucian took stock of the tau settlement the Rakarshans had captured. The dozen or so buildings were constructed of the off-white, resin-like compound he had encountered in previous battles, and were low and domed. They were so unlike anything humanity built or dwelt within, all clean lines devoid of ornamentation. Despite their functional appearance, there was something elegant about the design of the buildings, for there was obviously some alien aesthetic at work.
Lucian located the door of the nearest building, comparing its design to that of the defence station that had been captured at the outset of the war and used for a brief time as its base of operations for the planetary assault on the tau-held world of Sy’l’kell. A shallow recess to one side of the door concealed a simple command rune, which Lucian pressed, causing the door to hiss as pneumatic systems engaged and opened the portal.
Lucian stepped inside, his eyes adjusting to the relative gloom. He kept his plasma pistol drawn, just in case any defenders lurked inside. As his eyes adjusted, Lucian saw that the room he had passed into was some sort of workshop, with dozens of tools arrayed in orderly rows across the walls. A moment’s study told Lucian that the tools were little more than agricultural implements, but they appeared not to be designed for use by the tau, whose four-fingered hands would surely be unsuitable to wield them. The tools looked more like they were designed for use by some sort of…
A shadow swung across the periphery of Lucian’s vision, and his plasma pistol was up and pointing right at it in an instant. Floating two metres off the ground directly in front of Lucian was a small, dome-shaped machine, a single lens blinking red as if it were studying him. Beneath the curved dome hung a cluster of multi-jointed limbs, each terminating in an empty socket that Lucian guessed was designed to use the tools arrayed across the walls.
Lucian kept the plasma pistol levelled at the drone as it bobbed in the air in front of him. ‘So you’re the hired help,’ he said, marvelling that the tau should use such a wondrous machine for the simple task of tending crops and fixing broken fences. The red-lit lens blinked, and the machine emitted an electronic chatter, less harsh, but not unlike the sounds Lucian was accustomed to hearing around the cogitation terminals aboard his starship.
‘Intelligence,’ he said, lowering his plasma pistol a fraction. ‘Of a sort at least. You’d be popular with the tech-priests. They’d take you to bits, not be able to put you back together again, then declare you a heretic…’ he added wryly.
As if in reaction to Lucian’s comment, the drone backed into the shadows with a sharp movement.
‘You understood that, didn’t you,’ Lucian said, part of him feeling faintly ridiculous, another estimating how much the machine might fetch amongst those who collected such items of ‘cold trade’ curiosity. ‘Of course,’ Lucian muttered. ‘Your masters have been in contact with isolated colonies for decades.’
‘My lord!’ Major Subad said as he burst into the room. ‘I have it covered, back away slowly…’
Lucian could not help but smile as the Rakarshan commander entered the room in full combat stance, a gold-chased laspistol fixed on the bobbing drone. ‘It’s just a glorified shovel, Subad,’ Lucian said, but the major’s expression told him the man was on the verge of blowing the harmless drone to pieces. The drone seemed to see this too, and backed even further into the corner of the room.
‘My lord,’ Subad said, not taking his eyes from the drone. ‘This is heresy. Crusade intelligence warned us of them. You must have read the briefing slates.’
‘Those were gun drones, major,’ Lucian said. ‘This is no war machine.’
The major looked far from convinced. ‘But it thinks, my lord, look at it!’
‘Aye,’ Lucian said. ‘That’s curious, isn’t it?’
Major Subad’s eyes widened and he turned his glance to Lucian. ‘Curious, my lord?’
‘Well enough,’ Lucian sighed. He could hardly expect the man to share a rogue trader’s attitude to the unknown. ‘Why don’t you post a guard at the door and we’ll keep it safe in here?’
The major nodded fervently at Lucian’s suggestion, and began backing away towards the door. When Lucian had stepped out into the light, Subad sprang out, his laspistol still trained on the shadows inside.
Lucian pressed the command rune and the door hissed shut, locking the infernal thinking-machine inside the building.
‘Major,’ Lucian said as the officer finally lowered his weapon. ‘You and your men are going to have to learn the difference between a gun drone and the sort of machine in there. If the tau use such machines as warriors, they probably use even more as menials.’
‘They employ techno-heresy as servants?’ Subad said, his expression incredulous.
‘I would guess so, major. We know they espouse some extremist collectivism they call the Greater Good, so perhaps…’
‘My lord!’ Subad hissed. ‘Please, we have our orders. That obscene doctrine is not to be mentioned. It is unclean.’
‘Yes,’ Lucian sighed. ‘I’ve heard that Cardinal Gurney fears the troops might desert in droves if they got wind of the notion that all were equals…’
‘Indeed, my lord,’ Subad said, apparently not noticing what Lucian had hoped was a witheringly caustic tone. ‘The Commissariat are alert for signs of taint.’
‘Pfft!’ Lucian said. ‘Myopic fools who can’t see past the muzzles of their own bolt pistols. Please, if one of those jumped-up demagogues so much as looks at one of our boys, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’
Now Major Subad’s face was a mask of horror.
‘Come on, major,’ Lucian said, deciding it would be better to steer the conversation away from such dangerous topics as techno-heresy and xenosyndicalism. He slapped a hand on the officer’s back as the two walked away from the building towards the main body of the troops. ‘Update me, if you would be so kind.’
Subad nodded, visibly composing himself. ‘Yes, my lord, forgive me…’
‘Nothing to forgive,’ Lucian interrupted. ‘I’ve just seen much more of the galaxy than you. I should have taken that into account.’
Subad straightened up and tugged down the front of his battle dress. ‘The assault went as planned, my lord, with one exception, for which I offer my most humble and sincere apologies.’
‘Go on, major,’ Lucian said raising an eyebrow.
‘A number of the enemy escaped using carriers we had not previously detected. If you want patrols platoon flogged I can–’
‘Flogged?’ Now it was Lucian’s turn to be horrified. ‘Why would I want them flogged?’
‘You want them put to death, my lord?’
‘No!’ Lucian said, exasp
erated. ‘Neither. Not now, not ever. Is that clear?’
Major Subad managed to look both relieved and confused at the same time, but nodded his understanding before continuing. ‘The battlegroup inflicted at least one hundred and twenty kills.’
‘Captives?’ Lucian asked.
‘Captives, my lord?’
‘Yes, major. Captives. Band’im.’
‘Oh. Band’im, yes. Just the one.’
‘The one I took.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Have the Band’im passed back to Gauge’s staff cadre at sector zero,’ Lucian said. ‘Not to Grand’s goons. Understood?’
Major Subad nodded his understanding, though he looked distinctly uneasy at the mention of the inquisitor’s name. Lucian pressed on. ‘Casualties?’
‘Twelve dead, my lord. Twenty or so light wounds, twelve are being mustered for medicae evacuation to sector zero.’
At least the wounded wouldn’t be flogged for getting in the way of enemy bullets, Lucian thought, though he kept the idea to himself in case it gave the officer ideas. ‘What of the general advance? Any reports?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Subad said, producing a data-slate from a pouch at his belt. His face grew dark as he scanned the first few lines of text.
‘Initial advances pushed back what few enemy units opposed them,’ Subad said, paraphrasing the information presented on the slate’s screen. ‘But the main advance has been opposed by multiple hit and run attacks and ambushes. It has broken up into separate thrusts, and each is facing increasingly heavy resistance.’
Lucian scanned the settlement, which was crawling with riflemen dashing to and fro doing whatever it is soldiers do straight after a firefight. ‘Then we’d better push on then, hadn’t we, Major Subad? Remind me,’ Lucian added absently. ‘What’s the tau name for the city we’re taking, major?’
Subad consulted his data-slate. ‘Gel’bryn, my lord?’
‘Gel’bryn,’ Lucian said. ‘Something tells me the road to Gel’bryn isn’t going to be an easy one, major.’