by Andy Hoare
More hoots and whistles sounded from the woods, and Lucian knew the small force had no chance if it did not fall back straight away.
‘Fall back!’ Lucian yelled. ‘Move and cover, you know the drill!’
But the Rakarshans did not understand. ‘Damn you,’ Lucian growled, looking about for his signalman, who he knew to speak near flawless Gothic. The man was on the ground, bleeding profusely from a wound across his chest, a dead alien warrior sprawled out next to him.
‘How do I tell them to fall back?’ Lucian said as he crouched next to the signalman. ‘What’s the word of command?’
‘Fall back, my lord?’ the signalman said through gritted teeth. ‘There is no word for fall back in our tongue…’
Lucian bit back a curse and sheathed his power sword. Hooking his free arm around the signalman’s waist, he raised his plasma pistol at the onrushing aliens and let off another blast. The shot struck an alien square in its roaring, beaked head, decapitating it and setting its still-standing body alight.
The aliens nearest to the conflagration leaped back from the fire, hissing and whistling in obvious fear. Lucian took a step back, dragging the wounded signalman with him. ‘Tell them to follow me,’ he growled. ‘You must have a word for that!’
‘Mu’sta,’ the signalman grunted as Lucian dragged him back. ‘Tell them that…’
‘Mu’sta!’ Lucian yelled. ‘Mu’sta, ya bastards, mu’sta!’
Within seconds, the surviving Rakarshans were gathering about Lucian, two of their number taking the wounded signalman from him and propping the man up between their shoulders. Lucian fired another plasma bolt at the aliens, who were even now recovering from the shock of seeing one of their number decapitated and immolated at the same time.
The Rakarshans followed Lucian’s example, firing into the aliens even as more emerged from the treeline. Lucian backed away, though he kept firing as he went, and soon the Rakarshans had the idea. The corporal appeared to have recovered his wits too, for he set about ordering the sections to deploy or cover one another alternately. Soon the Rakarshans were halfway back up the rise and out of immediate danger.
Lucian lowered his prey-sense goggles over his eyes again, in order to judge the numbers of aliens the Rakarshans had fought. Zooming in on the scene, he saw something that filled him with utter revulsion. Three of the aliens were crouched over the body of a fallen rifleman. One was scooping up a great, looping handful of the man’s guts and sucking on the end. Another was biting down hard on a forearm, while the third was doing something behind the corpse’s head that Lucian was glad not to be able to see clearly.
‘You sick, sick bastards…’ he muttered, unaware that the section leader had come up beside him.
‘Sir?’ the man said.
Lucian turned from the horrific scene and lifted his goggles. ‘Nothing son, nothing. Come on, we need to get the battlegroup organised, and I need to talk to someone from Tacticae intelligence…’
Brielle stood in the centre of the domed viewing blister high on the spine of the tau vessel Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray. It was like standing on the outer hull of the ship itself, for the blister was made not of solid material, but an invisible force field. Brielle felt a combination of trepidation and thrill as she looked out past the gleaming white hull to space beyond. A swarm of spacecraft traversed to and fro across the void, every possible class and configuration represented, from pinnace to mass transport.
Brielle turned slowly on the spot, taking in the full panorama of the scene until she came to face Naal.
‘What?’ Brielle said, her dark eyes glinting with mischief.
‘You lied to them, Brielle,’ Naal said, and gestured to the vista beyond the invisible field. ‘And this is the result.’
Brielle turned from him again, her mood growing dark. Of course she had lied, it was the only way she could see to avert disaster and dissuade the tau from using her as an emissary to demand the crusade’s surrender. The vessels crossing the void beyond the energy dome were preparing to evacuate huge numbers of tau civilians from Dal’yth Prime, while a warfleet was mustering further out to retake the planet with overwhelming force. If the tau knew what Brielle did, they would chase the humans all the way back to Terra. The crusade had been launched in haste with no idea of the tau’s capabilities, was riven with internecine rivalries and massively overextended following the months-long crossing of the Damocles Gulf into tau space.
‘The result is that the tau have pulled back from Dal’yth,’ Brielle said. ‘I’ve saved thousands of lives.’
‘For now,’ Naal said. ‘But that wasn’t why you told them the Imperium has twenty more battleships inbound. You wanted to create chaos and confusion. Why, Brielle?’
The observation blister was plunged in shadow as a huge refugee transport passed the Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray, a shoal of tenders and launches buzzing around. It was just the first of several hundred such transports the tau had rushed to the Dal’yth system with the intention of evacuating as many civilians as possible. Brielle’s warning of how humanity treated aliens was no lie, and the tau had taken it to heart.
‘Because this has got to end, Naal,’ Brielle sighed. She felt a great weight lifted as she finally said what she had been feeling for weeks.
‘Then you have to go before the crusade council as Aura requests, and settle this.’
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘Then what, Brielle? What do you–?’
‘I want out!’ she said, stalking away from Naal towards the invisible shield that held the void at bay and kept her alive. ‘I exaggerated the crusade’s strengths so the tau would pull back. We both know that the crusade council is split. Gurney and Grand, if he’s still alive, want total war, my father wants profit and the others want honour. If my father can turn the council around before the tau can muster a big enough force to repel the crusade, this can all be settled. And I can go home.’
Naal’s face showed his utter shock at Brielle’s revelation. The Imperial eagle tattoo on his forehead, a relic of past military service, seemed to fold its wings as he frowned at Brielle, then cast his glance to the floor.
‘Why did you not tell me earlier?’
‘You may share my bed, Naal,’ Brielle said as she rounded on the man. ‘But we both know where your loyalties lie.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You’re for the tau. You always have been. I don’t know what led you to them, and I know you can’t go back. But I can.’
‘Brielle,’ Naal sighed. ‘I was just a Guard captain before I joined the tau, before I heeded the Greater Good. I was just a captain and yet I’m marked for death across an entire segmentum. You’re the daughter of nobility, Brielle. There’s nowhere you can hide. You have no choice.’
‘My father can protect me from the likes of Grand.’
‘Your father thinks you’re dead.’
‘Then he’ll be happy to see me again then, won’t he?’
‘Please, Brielle,’ Naal said with an edge of sadness to his voice. ‘Look around you. There are no inquisitors here. There is no judgement and no repression.’
‘So long as you do exactly what they say, Naal, come on…’
‘That’s the point of the Greater Good, Brielle,’ Naal pressed. ‘They don’t have to tell you. You just do it, for the good of all.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘You do.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘You will, Brielle. In time…’
‘You can’t really think this is right, Naal, not deep down.’ Brielle reached up and tenderly caressed the eagle tattoo on his temple. ‘Does this mean nothing to you?’
Naal took Brielle’s wrist in his hand. ‘Of course it does. I love the Emperor. I just hate the Imperium. The aquila represents the former, not the latter.’
‘What made you this way, Naal?’ Brielle whispered, her eyes narrowing as she tried to find something, anything, inside his.
‘You wouldn’t understand, Brielle.’
‘Then why not come back with me. Put it right. Together.’
‘Brielle, if I did that, he’d–’
Naal’s words were cut off as the circular iris-hatch set into the deck hissed and a column of white light shone upwards as the opening widened. Brielle and Naal stepped apart like guilty lovers, both turning to face the tau envoy, Aura, as he rose upwards on a platform through the hatch.
Aura looked around, casting his sad gaze out into space for a moment before turning it upon the two humans and affording them a shallow bow. ‘Lady Brielle,’ the envoy addressed her in his usual formal, yet strangely maudlin tone. ‘As you can see, the transport fleet gathers to deliver our people from destruction.’ Did he count Brielle in that ‘our people’? ‘And the fleet musters even as we speak.’
Brielle inclined her head, acknowledging Aura’s statement without saying anything herself.
‘When the fleet arrives, there will be much bloodshed, on both sides. Even now, with our enemy attacking us in such great force, we would avert disaster and bring peace.’
Brielle and Naal shared a furtive glance before the envoy continued.
‘You will go before the enemy’s leaders and demand their surrender…’
‘Their surrender…?’
‘Yes, Lady Brielle,’ Aura continued. ‘You must inform the humans that if they do not submit and take their place in the tau empire according to the dictates of the Greater Good, they will be destroyed. Utterly.’
‘You will be briefed and prepared for your duty, Lady Brielle. You will go before their leaders adorned as I, as an envoy of the tau empire. This will be your finest hour, Lady Brielle, and it will be remembered across the entire empire.’
‘Of course,’ Brielle said, though her mind was in turmoil. She had been so sure the tau would have seen sense when she had so grossly overstated the crusade’s strength, yet they wanted not just a ceasefire or even a surrender, but to coerce the crusade’s forces to join them…
‘Of course,’ Brielle repeated. ‘For the Greater Good…’
Chapter Four
Sergeant Sarik’s force was pushing forwards now, driving the tau stealth-troopers back towards a low rise as the light of dawn filled the skies. The Space Marines had taken casualties when the tau had attacked the rear of the column, including both Whirlwind missile tanks being taken out of action as stealthed tau infantry used their equivalent of the Imperium’s tank-busting melta weapons from close range. Sarik’s warriors had rallied, and over the course of a three-hour firefight learned how to detect the presence of the infiltrating tau.
As Sarik advanced at the head of his tactical squad, he saw another such sign. The air would ripple just before the tau opened fire, as if their weapons were bleeding power from whatever generator powered the stealth field. Sometimes, if an observer was looking in their exact direction, a change of light would cause the enemy to become visible for a fraction of a second, and if they were not moving and the light remained unchanged, they might solidify and become plain to see.
Most importantly, the Space Marines were learning how to predict the enemy’s movements and where to look for them. The details had already been voxed to the other Space Marine commands, and the stealthers were being driven back all along the front.
‘Contact front!’ Sarik called out as he opened fire at the half-visible foe. ‘Strike them down!’ A line of small explosions stitched the ghostly figure and its stealth generator failed with an eruption of blue sparks. The enemy resolved into a black-armoured warrior, its helmet blank-faced and with blocky, segmented armour plates across its chest, shoulders and thighs. Mounted on one arm was a tubular heavy weapon, which it was raising to point directly at Sarik.
The sergeant shouted a warning to his squad and weaved sideways as he advanced. The tau fired and a hail of blue energy bolts scythed the air where the Space Marines had been advancing a fraction of a second earlier. The alien stepped backwards as it fired, tracking its weapon left and right. The ground at Sarik’s feet was churning with dozens of impacts as he powered on, and several shots glanced from his shoulder plates and greaves, biting neat-edged scars across the ceramite.
A grunt of pain sounded from behind Sarik as a Space Marine of the Scythes of the Emperor went down, an energy bolt having clipped his cheek and torn off half his face. The warrior went into a roll as he fell, and having barely lost momentum was up again. His enhanced physiology caused his blood to clot the instant it met air, his features a mass of scabby tissue with the inside of his jaw visible through the ruined cheek.
Sarik’s warriors returned fire as they ran, the combined boltguns of his own squad and the nearby Scythes of the Emperor hammering into the alien stealther. The enemy lowered his heavy weapon and assumed a wide-legged stance. A second later he leaped straight backwards, having activated a short-distance jump generator on his back. This was the first the Space Marines knew of the capability, and although it took them by surprise, the alien did not get far.
At the height of the alien’s powered leap, a missile streaked in over the Space Marines heads, fired from one of the Devastator squads at the column’s rear. The missile slammed into the alien with unerring accuracy, its war spirit predicting its target’s trajectory and altering its course at the last possible second. Both missile and alien exploded three metres up, showering chunks of ruined armour and flesh across a wide area.
As Sarik approached the crest of the rise he saw another ripple in the air, followed by a burst of blue flame. Three more tau stealthers resolved in the air, their jump burners drawing power from their stealth generators. Sarik opened fire and his squad followed his example, filling the air with fin-stabilised, deuterium-cored bolter rounds. But the aliens were fleeing the Space Marines and with their jump packs engaged were soon bounding down the opposite side of the rise and away from the Space Marines.
‘All squads,’ Sarik said into the vox-net. ‘Let the cowards flee. Consolidate on me.’
The squads of Sarik’s spearhead were soon in position near him, the sergeants ensuring each was correctly deployed. There were obvious gaps in the line, where squads had taken casualties. Most of the wounded were able to fight on thanks to their genetically enhanced physiques, but the worst, in particular the Ultramarines caught in the stealthers’ ambush, had been evacuated for treatment.
‘Rhinos,’ Sarik voxed the vehicle commanders further back. ‘Maintain position and overwatch. All squads, form up on me for probing advance forward.’ Sarik had to remind himself not to use the White Scars’ battle-cant, which used context- and culture-specific references that could not be deciphered should a transmission be intercepted. But with warriors from more than just his own Chapter under his command, Sarik was forced to use more standard battle-code.
‘Brothers,’ Sarik addressed the squads. ‘We advance around this rise. Devastators,’ he indicated the Ultramarine and Scythes of the Emperor heavy weapons squads, ‘overwatch just below the crest. White Scars tactical squads,’ he nodded to his own squad and the other two of his Chapter, ‘right flank. Remaining squads to the left.’
‘Brothers,’ he went on, conscious that the enemy stealthers were unlikely to have withdrawn far. ‘This could be a trap.’ Consulting his data-slate, which displayed a grainy, low-resolution aerial reconnaissance image marked up with numerals and symbols, he went on, ‘Limit of exploitation is Hill 3003, to the west. Move out in one minute.’
As the Space Marines checked ammunition levels and swapped out depleted magazines for fresh ones, Sarik consulted his data-slate for an update from crusade command. Almost a hundred reports had been disseminated since the last time he had checked, most of which he felt justified in ignoring as they related to matters outside of his immediate conc
ern. He skimmed reports on the enemy’s aerospace strength, noting that the crusade had managed to land a small number of its precious fighter-bomber wings. Understandably, these were being kept in strategic reserve to be used only when desperately needed. The Imperial Navy deployment officers and the Departmento Tacticae intelligence advisors considered launching them into anything but totally empty airspace practically suicidal.
Noting the fighter-bombers’ call sign, Sarik read on through the list of reports. Space Marine spearheads to amalgamate – Captain Rumann of the Iron Hands had ratified that order and the other Space Marine units were moving towards the rendezvous point even now, meaning Sarik’s would be the last unit there. The Titans were amalgamating too, preparing for a push further down the line. The tau were massing beyond River 992, and the Rakarshans had encountered resistance on its east bank.
At the mention of the Rakarshans, Sarik opened the report, knowing that the unit was led by his friend Lucian Gerrit. The report was vague, having been penned in a hurry, but warned that the tau were not the only xenos on Dal’yth Prime. Lucian’s battlegroup had encountered a group of tall, agile and highly aggressive alien savages. Tacticae had cross-linked them to troops encountered on Sy’l’kell at the outset of the crusade, and concluded they were the same group. Sarik’s gorge rose as he read the grisly account of the aliens consuming the bodies of the fallen. He promised there and then he would not allow such a fate to befall even one of the battle-brothers under his command.
Then a minute had passed and the squads were ready to move out. Sarik stowed the data-slate and unlimbered his boltgun. He took his place at the head of his squad, which would be the second to move through the low defile around the base of the rise.