Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  ‘…not falling for it…’ the squadron leader’s voice cut into the command channel. ‘Half loop, execute!’

  The group heading back towards the target rose suddenly into the air, the pilots executing one half of a loop. As one completed its manoeuvre and streaked back east, the other was engulfed by fire as its starboard wing was torn apart by a storm of gunfire.

  ‘Silver Eagle leader is down,’ a new voice filled the command channel. ‘Eagle four, complete the run, I’ll try to draw them off…’

  As the squadron leader’s Thunderbolt exploded across the sky shedding multiple smoking contrails behind it, his wingman dived towards the ground, the air rippling two kilometres behind. The other two Thunderbolts executed a rolling turn and came back on the attack vector, arrowing towards Hill 3003 at supersonic speed.

  ‘All squads!’ Sarik yelled into the vox-net. ‘Brace for air strike, then follow me!’

  The sound of the approaching jets increased to a deafening roar, doppler-shifting as they screamed overhead so low the backwash sent up plumes of dust from the ground.

  ‘Payload deployed!’ one of the pilots called, and Sarik went down on one knee beside the boulder as four 1,000 kilogram bombs dropped from the rapidly receding Thunderbolts, directly towards the crest of Hill 3003.

  The hilltop erupted in such a devastating explosion that the entire rise was consumed in a plume of black smoke that blossomed rapidly into the air. An instant later the sound and pressure wave struck Sarik, showering his armour with grit and small stones pushed before it by the blast. Had he not been wearing his helmet the breath would have been torn from his lungs. Just a few hundred metres closer to the hill and his lungs might have been torn from his chest.

  Then debris began to rain from the sky, large chunks of rock thrown up in all directions by the massive explosion. Sarik forced himself to his feet, still fighting the blast wave which continued to rage as the air pressure sought to right itself. He opened the vox-channel again, and bellowed, ‘With me! If there’s anything left on that hill I want it dead!’

  Sarik burst out from the cover of the boulder, his squad close at his heels. The ground churned in front of him as debris rained down from the skies. The hilltop was now capped by a plume of black smoke rising ever higher into the air and blossoming outwards as it rose. Sarik pounded the ground, determined that any tau still alive on or near the hill would soon be struck down by his blade. Sarik’s heart pounded and his blood rushed in his ears. He tore his helmet off and cast it to the ground without thinking, and unleashed a fearsome Chogoran war cry in the tongue of his people.

  As he closed on the foot of the hill, the black cloud rearing high overhead, the ground became jagged and uneven with huge chunks of rock torn up by the explosion. Soon Sarik was climbing up the base of the hill, clambering over the uneven ground and shoving boulders aside as he powered upwards.

  The cloud began to clear and the hill in front of Sarik became visible. Pausing in his climb, Sarik craned his neck to look upwards, to locate the foe he would soon be rending limb from limb.

  Then it struck him. There were no enemies. They had been disintegrated. The entire crest of the hill had been disintegrated.

  ‘They’re gone, brother-sergeant,’ Brother Qaja said as he came up beside Sarik, his voice ragged as he regained his breath. Qaja had kept pace with his sergeant as he had closed on the hill, despite the fact that he was bearing a weapon that weighed nearly as much as he did.

  ‘No,’ Sarik growled. ‘There’ll be more nearby. We take the hill.’

  Qaja held Sarik’s gaze for a moment, before nodding. ‘By your command, brother-sergeant,’ he said, bowing slightly as he spoke. As Sarik turned back to gaze up the rubble strewn slope, he heard Qaja bellowing commands as he strode off to muster the squads closing on the hill.

  Leaving Qaja to organise the battle-brothers, Sarik unlimbered his boltgun and set off up the broken slope. His blood was still up, but he was thinking clearer now, and he scanned the skies for any sign of the surviving Thunderbolts or the stealthed tau fighter that had engaged and destroyed Silver Eagle leader. There was none; the jade skies were clear of all but the plume of smoke towering overhead.

  It did not take Sarik long to reach the top of Hill 3003, for so much of its crest had been destroyed that it had lost half its height. As Sarik dragged himself up over the last chunk of debris, he found himself looking down, straight into a huge, smoking crater more resembling a semi-dormant volcano than a hill.

  As Qaja led the Space Marines up behind him, Sarik started out around the crater rim, the view beyond it towards the river still obscured by thick smoke and drifting clouds of dust. Sarik pressed on, eager to gain the opposite side of the crater and the commanding view it would afford of the river and the city of Gel’bryn beyond. It took him another five minutes to work his way around the rim, and by the time he had reached the other side Qaja had directed the tactical squads to split into two groups and press around the rim.

  Finally, Sarik stood on the opposite edge of the smoking crater, looking down at the opposite slope. Though it was as broken and jagged as the slope he had climbed, it was also wreathed in smoke and dust, and the view of the terrain leading down to the river was all but obscured.

  ‘Your orders, brother-sergeant?’ Brother Qaja said as he appeared at Sarik’s side. ‘Devastators are working their way around the base, they’ll be in position to cover an advance towards the river within five. And, brother-sergeant?’ he added.

  ‘Yes, Brother Qaja?’ Sarik said.

  ‘You may have need of this,’ Qaja said as he proffered Sarik the helmet he had discarded as he had charged across the open ground in the wake of the air strike. There was a note of reproach in the other’s voice, and not without justification. Sarik nodded his thanks, knowing that he had committed a failing that a neophyte would have been punished severely for. Brother Qaja was an old friend, and only fate had placed Sarik as his senior; it could so easily have been the other way around. Qaja’s unvoiced reproach was punishment enough for Sarik, but he would mount a vigil of prayer after the battle was over, and ask the primarch, honoured be his name, for guidance.

  ‘Thank you, brother,’ Sarik said as he took the helmet and clipped it to his belt. ‘I’m not sure I would have…’ Sarik stopped, turning his head sharply towards the smoke-wreathed downward slope. Qaja followed his glance, instantly alert.

  ‘You hear it?’ Sarik whispered low.

  Brother Qaja nodded slowly, his eyes scanning the drifting smoke below. ‘Sounds like…’

  A dark shape appeared in the smoke. Qaja hefted his plasma cannon and engaged its charge cycle. The rapidly rising whine of the plasma coils energising was shockingly loud.

  ‘Get the squads forward, quickly!’ Sarik said, now uncaring whether his voice was heard or not. He limbered his boltgun and drew his chainsword, thumbing it to life so that the monomolecular-edged teeth growled with sudden violence.

  The shape in the smoke solidified as Brother Qaja beckoned the tactical squads forwards, and two more appeared at its side. It was tall, at least half as tall again as a Space Marine, and broad across the blocky, armoured shoulders. The first parts of the shape to become fully visible were the tips of the two long, rectangular hyper-velocity cannons mounted on its shoulders.

  As the battle suit trod ponderously out of the drifting smoke, the cannons levelled out to point directly towards the crater rim where the White Scars, Scythes of the Emperor and Ultramarines tactical squads were taking position.

  ‘No time,’ Sarik growled. ‘Cut them down!’

  Brandishing his chainsword high, Sarik leaped from the crater rim onto the rubble-strewn slope below. The cannons tracked him, but he was moving too fast for the battle suit’s targeting systems to get a solid lock.

  As Sarik powered down the slope, small boulders cascading all around him, the sound of armoured boots s
triking the ground behind filled the air. Another three battle suits emerged from the smoke, and a detached part of Sarik’s mind understood that the force that had held the crest of Hill 3003 must have been just a vanguard of a far larger group.

  As Sarik closed to within thirty metres of the first of the battle suits, the air was turned livid violet as Brother Qaja unleashed a blast from his plasma cannon. The roiling ball of pure energy spat downwards, its backwash burning a channel clear through the smoke before it engulfed its target.

  The solid matter of the battle suit was consumed in an instant, its very stuff feeding the plasma ball. The energies expanded briefly, the heat so intense that the armour from the nearest battle suit was reduced to wax-like liquid. The entire roiling mass exploded outwards, burning the dusty ground and turning loose rocks into a liquid lava rain.

  The heat and blast wave of the explosion struck Sarik as he closed on his target, and it felt for an instant as if he was running into the open hatch of a starship’s plasma furnace. Then the energies disappeared and Sarik was upon his foe.

  The battle suit Sarik had fought on Sy’l’kell came to mind again. That opponent had been similar in form, but equipped with lighter weaponry and short-burn jump jets similar to those used by the lighter stealthers. The enemy Sarik now faced was heavy and ponderous, made slow by the weight of additional armour and its heavy weaponry.

  Knowing that the battle suit could not make use of its weapons at such short range, Sarik circled around it, chainsword raised in a two-handed guard position, looking for a weak spot in the tau’s formidable armour.

  The battle suit began to back away, its heavy tread crushing boulders to dust. Space Marines appeared all around Sarik, each following his example as they closed in on an opponent.

  ‘Not so deadly now, are you…’ Sarik growled as he pressed forwards. Locating what he judged to be a weak joint between leg and torso, Sarik feinted left, then swept his chainsword in low as the battle suit sought to avoid him.

  The teeth of Sarik’s blade howled as they struck the impossibly hard metal, grinding across the ball joint. The tau raised an arm terminating in a large multiple missile pod in an attempt to fend off another strike, and as it did so took a heavy step backwards. The damaged ball joint locked and the battle suit staggered as it fought for balance. Sarik pressed his advantage.

  Sarik’s blade lashed out and tore a ragged scar across the battle suit’s torso, but the armour there was too heavy and solid to penetrate. Sarik bared his teeth in a feral snarl and brought the blade in a horizontal sweep that smashed the lens in the centre of the sensor block mounted atop the torso. Evidently blinded, the pilot of the battle suit tried to back away again, and toppled backwards as the ball joint failed entirely.

  As the battle suit slammed into the ground, Sarik leaped forwards, his feet pinning his opponent’s arms. He reversed his grip on his chainsword and raised it high.

  The battlefield resounded with war cries and angry shouts, and the screaming of chainswords and the reports of bolt pistols fired at point-blank range. The Space Marines were laying into the battle suits, which were desperately outmatched and seeking to break away. But their enemies’ armour was holding firm and the fight was far from won.

  Sarik plunged his chainsword directly down into the centre of the battle suit’s torso. The teeth ground against the hard armour, shrieking like some spirit from Chogoran legend. The blade slipped, gouging a wound across the face of the armour, and lodged in a recess between the plates. Redoubling his efforts, Sarik took advantage of the purchase he had found and put his whole weight into forcing the howling blade downwards. Smoke poured from the wound, the chainblade’s teeth began to glow red, but the blade finally began to sink into the battle suit’s torso.

  Then the blade was through the outer armour, and it suddenly sank halfway up its length. Sarik growled and hacked the blade downwards, tearing off an entire panel of armour. He withdrew the blackened, smoking blade and cast it aside.

  Consumed by battle rage, Sarik took a two-handed grip on the red hot edge of the wound he had torn, and forced it wide with his armoured gauntlets. A part of him was astonished at the armour’s resilience, for rarely had he seen such strength on anything less than an armoured vehicle. Then the armoured plate gave and Sarik stumbled backwards as it came free in his hands.

  Breathing heavily, Sarik looked down on the ruined battle suit. With the entire front torso armour torn away the pilot was visible within. The tau was compressed into an impossibly small, padded cockpit in an almost foetal position facing forwards. He wore a jump suit that resembled a glossy second skin, and numerous sensory pickups snaked from points on his body to terminals inside the suit. The pilot’s face, spattered with his own purple blood, stared back at Sarik with unmistakable hatred.

  ‘You fought with honour, foeman,’ Sarik said, stepping forwards again to deliver the killing blow.

  ‘Ko’vash,’ the pilot coughed as he raised his fist out of the hole in the suit’s torso. The pilot was holding some form of control device, and its thumb was raised above a flashing red stud. ‘Tau’va. Y’he…’

  Even as Sarik brought his chainsword down, the dying pilot depressed his thumb on the control stud. Sarik’s blade ground through the pilot’s body as if it were not even there, a geyser of purple blood gushing upwards to stain Sarik’s arms up to his shoulder plates.

  ‘Brother-sergeant!’ Qaja’s voice penetrated Sarik’s battle fury. ‘The enemy are breaking off!’

  But Sarik did not reply, for his gaze was fixed firmly on the blinking red control stud held in the pilot’s death grip. The blinks were getting faster, and a sharp, electronic tone was sounding from within the gore-spattered cockpit.

  Sarik’s berserker rage lifted entirely and realisation dawned. ‘Fall back!’ he bellowed. ‘Everyone back up the slope, now!’

  Sarik’s tone brooked no argument, and even if any of the Space Marines had sought to pursue the remaining battle suits as they backed into the smoke bank, their conditioning was such that it was all but impossible for them to ignore an order from a superior. Sarik turned, retrieving his chainsword, and pounded back up the slope, ensuring that his battle-brothers were all heading for cover.

  As he climbed the last few metres Sarik overtook Brother Qaja, who despite his nigh legendary strength and the load-bearing mechanisms of his armour was impeded by the bulk of his massive plasma cannon. As he came alongside his battle-brother, Sarik hefted the weapon’s snub barrel to share its weight and the two White Scars climbed the last few metres together and threw themselves over the crater rim.

  For a moment, Sarik and Qaja were face to face. Sarik’s battle-brother opened his mouth to ask the inevitable question, before it was answered for him.

  The sky beyond the crater rim was consumed by a blinding white light and a staggering blast wave slammed into the crater rim behind which the Space Marines sheltered. The rim edge disintegrated, showering Sarik and Qaja with hot stone. The air burned and Sarik’s multi-lung clamped its secondary trachea tightly shut so that he did not breathe in the searing atmosphere. Without his helmet’s auto-senses to protect his eyes, Sarik was forced to screw them shut lest he be blinded. Even with his eyes tightly closed Sarik’s vision boiled red as the light burned through.

  Then all fell silent, and Sarik opened his eyes. Brother Qaja was on all fours, spitting blood from his mouth from a wound caused by flying debris. Further away, other battle-brothers were struggling to their feet, stunned by the sheer devastation of the explosion. The sergeants were restoring order, ordering battle-brothers to the crater rim and to cover all approaches an enemy might take.

  As Sarik rose and looked down at the slope, he knew it was most unlikely that any more enemies would come that way. The entire slope had been scoured clean of everything but scorched black bedrock. Whatever device-of-last-resort the battle suit pilot had activated, it had afforded his compa
nions the time they needed to break away from the Space Marines. With the smoke of the air strike blown clear by the explosion, the remaining battle suits were visible, half a kilometre away as they retreated back towards the river and the tau army that was even now mustering on the opposite shore. As he watched, the heavy battle suits reached another rise, where more of their kind had assumed a firing line with a commanding view of the surrounding landscape.

  As Sarik surveyed his battle-scarred force, it occurred to him that the Damocles Gulf Crusade might have far more vicious a struggle ahead of it than even its most bullish of leaders had anticipated.

  ‘Qaja!’ Sarik called. ‘Gather the squads. We’re far from done here yet…’

  Twenty kilometres to the north-west of Hill 3003, Lucian Gerrit was scanning his data-slate and considering his next move. As the crusade ground onwards towards Gel’bryn, the force mustering on the other side of River 992 launched a series of daring hit and run attacks. So accomplished were the tau mechanised forces at this style of warfare that the more ponderous units of the Imperial Guard were barely able to react. As the battles progressed, cadres of tau anti-grav tanks swept in towards the crusade’s flank, disgorging up to a hundred warriors who unleashed a devastating volley of short-ranged fire before being carried away again by their transports. General Gauge fed more and more forces towards the river in an effort to overwhelm the tau defenders. Even as he did so ever-greater numbers of tau converged on Gel’bryn from the west, reinforcements sent from the other cities to stall the invasion.

  The main advance split into three spearheads. The engines of the Deathbringers Legion gathered together into a formidable battle group that sought to push its way into the city’s outer limits by brute strength alone. The Titans’ initial assaults saw them destroy dozens of enemy armoured vehicles and hundreds of infantry. The fast-moving and agile Warhound Scout Titans made rapid gains in the first few hours of their advance. It was only several hours later, when the Warhounds had pressed so far forwards they had outrun the anti-air cover provided by the Hydra flak-tank companies of the Imperial Guard, that they were engaged by heavy tau flyers. To the great surprise of the advisors of the Departmento Tacticae, these flyers proved to be the very same machines the tau utilised as gunships in space, revealing the hitherto unknown capability of operating in both deep space and planetary atmosphere.