by Andy Hoare
‘Aura,’ Brielle replied, bowing as the envoy came to stand beside her at the railing. ‘I trust all is well?’
Aura nodded back, his features set in the now familiar sadness they always showed. If it were not for the fact that the alien’s voice sounded equally as melancholic Brielle might have concluded that he had some sort of condition, or had perhaps been dropped on his head when he had been hatched.
‘All is very well, Mistress Brielle,’ Aura replied. ‘We are closing to within tactical communications range and a link with the troops on Dal’yth Prime is now possible. Such a link has been established, and is about to be displayed in the unit below.’
Brielle was instantly suspicious. Was Aura planning on showing her the tau gloriously defeating human troops? If so, why?
Aura’s black, almond-shaped eyes held hers for a moment, and then he turned to the scene below. The representation of local space faded away, a mass of tau symbols scrolling through the air, before the projection flickered and was replaced by a monochromatic image that could only have been captured from a lens mounted on a warrior’s armour.
‘What am I seeing?’ Brielle said, as much to herself as to the tau envoy.
‘This is a real-time uplink from one of our glorious warriors, who even now is deploying against the invaders. His name is Cali’cha, which you might translate as “quick purpose”, though the term has no exact analogue in your tongue. He is the leader of a crisis team, and he is closing on a group of the warriors you call Space Marines.’
‘He’ll be slaughtered,’ Brielle muttered, causing Naal to cast a warning glance her way.
‘Have no fear, Mistress Brielle,’ Aura replied having overheard, but misconstrued her remark. ‘Cali’cha is a warrior of great experience and skill. He has served the Greater Good with peerless dedication and knows well the ways of human warriors.’
‘Has he ever fought Space Marines?’ Brielle said.
‘His battle suit is well equipped to counter their armour, Mistress Brielle, of that you may be certain.’
‘Space Marines are more than armour…’ Brielle started, but Aura had turned his attentions to the holo projection.
It was night, and the tau were moving out from the outskirts of Gel’bryn city, moving in graceful, bounding leaps powered by the thrusters mounted on the suits’ backs. Cali’cha set down at the western shore of a river, and his two companions appeared in his field of view. Each wore one of these ‘crisis’ battle suits, boxy missile launchers mounted at their backs and stubby energy weapons on their arms. The team exchanged what Brielle took to be ritualised, pre-battle words, each touching the tips of their weapons to a representation of a ceremonial blade painted onto their armoured torsos. In the background, the night sky flickered with distant explosions and tracer fire rose with seeming laziness high into the air.
‘The Imperium have moved their anti-air assets forwards, Mistress Brielle,’ Aura said, having seen her following the tracers as they arced high overhead. She merely nodded, and Aura turned back to the projection.
Their ritual complete, the three warriors moved out, gathering speed as they approached the river. At the very shore, they leaped high into the air, soaring through the night sky with a grace Brielle had only seen amongst the alien eldar. As they reached the height of their bound, the land ahead was revealed. Distant artillery boomed and flashed, and insect-like gunships swept in low over the shadowed terrain. A huge flash lit the entire horizon, and for a second, Brielle saw the towering silhouette of what could only have been a war Titan of the Adeptus Titanicus.
‘They have commenced a bombardment of the city’s outer limits, Mistress Brielle,’ Aura said. That was not good, Brielle thought, knowing that her father would have objected to such a course of action had he the power to affect it. Clearly, the more hawkish elements of the crusade council were gaining the ascendancy.
The crisis team set down on the opposite edge of the river, splashing down in the shallows before making its way past a cluster of dome-shaped buildings at its edge. Evidence of war was all around, from the scorched surfaces of the nearby structures to the wounded tau warriors being evacuated by teams of earth caste medics. It struck Brielle how well the tau treated their combat wounded, each individual casualty being tended by an entire team of medical staff as they were rushed away on anti-grav stretchers towards waiting medical vehicles. In the Imperium, especially in the Imperial Guard, the wounded were often treated at best as an inconvenience and at worst as malingerers. They would be treated, most certainly, but not through compassion or sympathy, but more to get them back in the fight as soon as possible so that their duty to the Emperor might be done.
The crisis team passed quickly through what must have been a forward assembly area, and came to rest in the lee of a dense fruit tree formation. A group of gangly aliens rushed by, squawking and whistling as they disappeared into the trees and were gone. The view panned left and then right, and Brielle saw that the team had joined a larger force, consisting of at least five more groups of battle suit warriors.
‘Flawless,’ Aura said to himself. ‘Mission commences in four…’
Now every tau in the chamber focussed their attentions on the huge projection, an expectant silence settling across the scene. The crisis teams turned towards the east, the sound of a heavy weapon pounding away nearby filling the chamber. Then they were leaping forwards and the fruit trees were rushing past below, the shadowy forms of the rangy aliens weaving through the plantation.
Tracer rounds scythed upwards towards the battle suits as they powered through the air, at first appearing to move as if in slow motion, but speeding up as they closed. Brielle knew that only one in four or five of the heavy bolter rounds would be filled with the chemicals that made them burn bright red, and that the air must have been filled with a storm of shots far greater than the eye could see.
As the crisis team came in to land, the source of the firing came into view. In the ruins of an outlying agricultural building the heavy bolter sprayed death in a wide arc. The stream of tracers followed the tau as they bounded forwards, several rounds clipping the battle suits. The command centre resounded to the harsh metallic thuds and clangs, but the tau pressed on, unharmed.
The next sound was that of Cali’cha issuing last-second orders to his teammates. Brielle could not understand his words, although their meaning was universal.
The view from the battle suit as it closed towards the enemy position jolted and swung crazily as the tau evaded incoming fire. Then the crisis team was in range, and a targeting reticule appeared in the centre of the projection, hovering just above and behind the spluttering muzzle flare of the heavy bolter.
A missile streaked out from behind the crisis team leader’s field of vision, and rose rapidly into the air. Within a second it was streaking downwards, its predicted trajectory etched in the glowing line through the air of the command centre. Then it struck, and the gun position disappeared in a blinding flash. Seconds later the heavy bolter’s ammunition started to cook off, filling the ruins of the building with whip-crack flashes.
The crisis team pressed onwards, swooping in amongst the ruins as the last of the heavy bolter’s rounds crackled and fizzed across the ground. The view point tipped downwards as Cali’cha looked down at the dead gunner, evidently keen to afford the command staff a view.
The breath caught in Brielle’s throat as the gunner’s ruined body resolved in the air in front of her. He wore power armour, painted white with red detailing in what could only have been the livery of the White Scars Chapter. His face was almost entirely gone, just blood-smeared bone and hair visible as dead eyes stared upwards at the Space Marine’s executioner.
‘You see, Mistress Brielle?’ Aura said sadly. ‘The Space Marines are far from undefeatable…’
The envoy’s words were cut off as the air was filled with the unmistakable sound of massed boltguns being fi
red from nearby. Rounds clattered loudly from Cali’cha’s battle suit and sparks danced across the field of vision. The view point swung across to the left towards a second ruin, where a line of white-armoured figures was advancing on the tau, weapons blazing.
The battle suit pilot issued a calm order, and the team leaped backwards, the energy weapons mounted on their rigs’ arms spitting incandescent beams of blinding blue fire towards the enemy. One went down, and several others appeared to have been wounded, but still the line came on, the night air filled with rapid-fire death.
Then the command centre was filled with a savage war cry, several dozen of the tau manning the control stations visibly flinching before the terrifying sound. Cali’cha panned further left, in time to see a chainsword-wielding, white-armoured figure emerging from the darkness. The warrior’s screaming blade lashed outwards and severed the arm from the battle suit of one of Cali’cha’s team mates, before leaping forwards to drive the weapon straight into the square sensor block atop the armoured torso.
The channel howled with the sound of the chainsword’s teeth grinding through the battle suit’s systems, and an instant later the death scream of the pilot joined it. Then the channel went abruptly silent. Brielle could not tell whether the pickups had been destroyed or the tau below had severed the connection in order to spare the viewers from the terrible sound.
‘Savages…’ Aura said, glancing sideways towards Brielle. ‘So callous, and brutal.’
Brielle made no reply, her eyes fixed on the projection. The crisis team had been caught in an anarchic melee, and were desperately seeking to back away from their enemy. The field of view swung back to the right, showing the first line of white-armoured Space Marines charging in to join the fray. A second member of Cali’cha’s crisis team was pulled down as he attempted to engage his suit’s thrusters, one Space Marine gripping a mechanical leg while another used a bolt pistol to hammer shot after shot into the jet’s innards.
The battle suit’s propulsion system erupted in seething energies as a bolt-round bored through to its generator. The Space Marine pulling the suit downwards towards the ground was thrown clear by the explosion, though his armour was visibly damaged by the energies, his left shoulder plate torn off as he came upright again. The second Space Marine backed away, but continued to pump rounds into the writhing battle suit until finally its torso split wide open under the relentless barrage and the pilot inside was pulped to a bloody mess.
‘Mon’at…’ Aura said sadly, as Cali’cha finally broke clear and the scene of devastation receded below him.
‘He is alone,’ Naal said. ‘His team is reduced to one. It is a sad fate indeed for a servant of the Greater Good.’
Brielle nodded, though in truth she had no sympathy for the surviving warrior. His commanders had drastically underestimated the Space Marines if they thought them so easily defeated. She had even tried to warn them…
‘Reinforcements,’ Aura said, and the projection was filled by the scene of a dozen more battle suits swooping in to join Cali’cha. The air filled with the Space Marines’ war cries and the deafening report of boltguns, and battle was joined again.
Sergeant Sarik loosed a feral grunt as he yanked his screaming chainsword from the torso of the ruined battle suit, bracing an armoured boot against its groin as he pulled the weapon clear. The blade was coated in purple fluid and its teeth almost clogged with small chunks of the pilot’s flesh. Raising the chainsword to a guard position, Sarik looked around for another foe.
A sharp explosion sounded from nearby as Sarik’s battle-brothers finished off the second of the battle suit team, and a third was lifting high overhead on hissing blue jets.
‘Regroup!’ Sarik bellowed. ‘On me!’
Within moments, Sarik’s warriors had gathered at his side and Sergeant Tsuka’s squad was inbound, loosing a hail of fire at the retreating battle suit as they came. The scene was one of utter devastation, the Imperial Guard’s bombardment of the settlement on the nearside of River 992 having ruined every structure and cast flaming debris over a wide area.
‘We’ll need more squads moved up fast, brother-sergeant,’ Tsuka said when he reached Sarik’s side. ‘It appears the enemy are attempting to probe the Guard lines.’
It was only by repeated Space Marine combat patrols throughout the area bordering the northern loop of River 992 that the tau had been held at bay. General Gauge knew that the Imperial Guard’s possession of the area beyond the river was by no means secured, and it would take only a determined enemy thrust to disrupt the entire area of operations. Captain Rumann had approved the patrols, which had been in action throughout the night. Significant progress had been made, the patrols keeping the enemy away from the Guard as they moved their heavier units forward.
‘Sergeant Rheq,’ Sarik said into the vox-net as he opened a channel to the Scythes of the Emperor contingent leader. ‘Sarik. What is your status?’
Sergeant Rheq’s reply was half drowned out by the sound of gunfire in the background, the Space Marines’ bolt-rounds competing with the tau’s energy rifles. Then the hissing streak of a missile cut across the channel, a muffled explosion sounded, and the tau weapons fell silent. ‘Grid three-alpha-nine secure, Sarik,’ the Scythes of the Emperor squad leader replied. ‘Enemy probe neutralised.’
‘Good,’ Sarik replied. ‘Sergeant Rheq, can you spare two or perhaps three squads?’ Although technically Sergeant Rheq’s superior under the terms of the Space Marines’ contribution to the Damocles Gulf Crusade, Sarik knew diplomacy would get him a lot further than rank in multi-Chapter operations.
‘I can spare two tactical and two Devastator combat squads,’ Sergeant Rheq replied. ‘That’s including three heavy bolters and two tubes. Is that sufficient, brother-sergeant?’
Sarik’s eyes scanned the dark skies above the river, where he caught sight of another group of battle suits zeroing in on his position. ‘I am sure it will be, Rheq,’ Sarik said. ‘My thanks.’
Closing the channel to the Scythes of the Emperor leader, Sarik opened a transmission to all Space Marine squad leaders in the area. ‘All commands,’ he said. ‘Enemy heavy infantry multiple inbound on grid seven-theta-nine.’
A ream of acknowledgements came instantly back from the Ultramarines and Iron Hands squad leaders operating in adjacent grids, each promising immediate reinforcement of Sarik’s section of the front.
There was time for one last batch of brief orders to Sarik’s squads before the enemy battle suits touched down in the lee of a ruined building one hundred metres to the south-east. Bitterly won experience had taught Sarik that the tau battle suits preferred to keep their distance, bounding into weapons range, unleashing a torrent of fire and then retreating to cover before a counter-attack could be staged. But they could be beaten, as Sarik had discovered. The tau were highly accomplished technically, but they displayed an almost paralysing fear of close assault that could be used to blunt their advances and counter their technological trickeries.
Leaving a Devastator squad to cover the dead ground, Sarik led his warriors into a wooded area that ran down to the river, passing the ruin the battle suits had touched down behind.
‘The third moon at the false dawn,’ Sarik said. Both of the squads accompanying him were of the White Scars Chapter, meaning he could use the battle-cant to impart information far more efficiently, and secretly, than he could with the larger, composite force.
Following Sarik’s battle-cant order, the White Scars spread out into two long columns. Such a formation afforded rapid movement through the dark, dense terrain within the plantation, and allowed for superior arcs of fire. Though the White Scars were born of the nomad tribes of the plains of Chogoris, they were superior warriors even in the dense, wooded plantation. Their white-armoured forms took on the aspect of ghosts moving implacably through the dark woods, backlit by the occasional explosion or streak of tracer fire from beyond
.
The sounds of artillery and gunfire receded as the White Scars pressed into the plantation, though the vegetation caused the sounds to echo unpredictably. Something caused Sarik to slow down, some inkling that something was not quite right. He halted, and gestured for the silent order to be passed down the line. Within seconds, the two squads had stopped moving, each Space Marine stood motionless against the night.
Then Sarik realised what it was that was niggling at his subconscious mind. To his enhanced senses, the complex but entirely natural aromas of the fruit trees tasted somehow… tainted, as if some other substance had been mixed in with them. Or, he realised, as if the juices of the fruit were being used to mask something else…
Sarik made a hand-gesture warning to alert the battle-brothers of a potential ambush. He took another deep breath, and this time he was sure. The fruit scents were being deliberately employed to mask something entirely different, something oily and alien.
Sarik raised his bolter and scanned the ground up ahead. The plantation was well tended, so there was very little in the way of ground cover in which an ambusher could conceal himself. Sarik tracked first left, then right, seeing no sign of an enemy using what little cover the tall tree trunks would offer. Then a gentle gust of wind sighed through the plantation, carrying with it a cocktail of smoke, cordite, blood and…
Sarik froze, forcing every muscle in his body to remain still. Though he kept his eyes locked on the path ahead, he knew that his enemy was directly above, suspended in the canopy.
Sarik breathed again, and this time there was no mistaking the oily scent of alien skin. It could only have been the alien savages his friend Lucian had reported. His gorge rising, he recalled the promise he had made himself when he had first read of these aliens’ repulsive practices. Not a single one of his warriors would suffer such a fate.