by Andy Hoare
As the column penetrated the city, pressing ever onwards towards the star port, the enemy’s defence became more organised. Where before there was little coordination between defending units, soon the defence took on an altogether different character. Isolated groups of defenders were quickly and efficiently brought into a coherent command and control structure. Some defenders fell back towards more defensible positions, while others provided them with deadly accurate fire support.
But still the Space Marines had the upper hand, for they were able to bypass enemy strongpoints and render them entirely ineffectual. The column was within ten kilometres of its objective when General Gauge’s chief of staff came on the vox-net to issue Sarik a warning.
‘Be advised, sergeant,’ the officer said, the channel interlaced by pops and crackles. ‘Fleet augurs have detected a pattern of destroyers moving to and from the star port. Tacticae believes the enemy is ferrying rapid deployment units to defend the objective.’
‘My thanks,’ Sarik replied. ‘What type of units?’
‘Unknown at this time, sergeant. But tactical analysis would suggest battle suits.’
‘Understood,’ Sarik said. ‘Interceptors?’
‘All but expended neutralising enemy airfields,’ the officer replied, sadness evident in his voice. ‘The tau air force is now so hard pressed they are forced to use their remaining destroyers to ferry reinforcements to the star port.’
‘Well, at least that keeps them off the Titans,’ Sarik said. He looked to the column’s rear, before asking, ‘What word of the Guard?’
There was a pause while the officer consulted his tactical readout, then he came back on the channel. ‘Brimlock 2nd Armoured is now across River 992,’ the officer said. ‘As are the Rakarshan Light Infantry.’
Sarik’s brow furrowed at that – how had a tank and a light-role infantry unit crossed at the same time? ‘Explain last?’ he said.
‘The Rakarshans are riding the tanks, sergeant.’
‘Lucian?’ Sarik said, smiling.
‘Indeed, sergeant,’ the officer replied. ‘By all accounts, Lucian had a few choice words for the rank and file, and he got them moving again. The Dragoon regiments are close behind the 2nd Armoured, and the rest not far behind them.’
Sarik performed a quick calculation, then saw movement amongst the buildings up ahead. ‘So we can expect to link up by what, plus eight hours?’
‘Give or take thirty minutes, yes, sergeant,’ the officer replied. ‘Your intention?’
‘Enemy inbound,’ he said. ‘We’ll attempt a breakout, and I want it coordinated with the Guard. We’ll hold the enemy off until the 2nd and the Rakarshans reach us, then we break out for the star port, regardless.’
‘Understood, sergeant,’ the officer said. ‘Good luck. Out.’
Sarik closed the channel and turned his attentions back to the road up ahead. Two huge structures towered overhead, interconnected by a dozen precarious walkways up and down their length. He tracked along the walkways, left and right, to the points where they joined the towers. There, lurking in the shadows of portals at the end of each walkway, were the now familiar shape of tau battle suits.
‘All commands,’ he said into the vox. ‘Enemy heavy infantry concentration, twelve high. Assume static defensive posture and hold them here.’
Acknowledgements flooded back as the armoured vehicles ground to a halt on the roadway, forming up into a ring with Predators covering every angle and Whirlwinds in the centre. The last voice on the channel was that of Brother Qaja, who was in the troop bay of Sarik’s own transport. ‘We’re holding, brother-sergeant?’
‘Aye, brother,’ Sarik said as he lowered himself through the hatch, grabbed his bolter and located the heavy weapons specialist in the cramped bay. ‘The Guard are delayed, but inbound, and we have a large tau concentration closing from the front. We link up here, and then break out together.’ Sarik braced himself against a bulkhead as the Rhino came to a halt, the entire vehicle swinging forwards on its suspension before settling. Qaja nodded his understanding, then bellowed, ‘Hatch open! As the hunter in the dawn mist!’
Sarik smiled at Qaja’s use of the White Scars battle-cant, for he had barely heard it amongst the mixed Space Marine force. The battle-brother was a highly capable second in command, and the members of Sarik’s squad were out and deployed around their transport in double quick time.
Sarik was the last to exit the Rhino, his armoured boots clanging on the ramp as he strode down and stepped on to the white road surface.
The buildings of the tau city reared all around and stretched upwards to dizzying heights far above. The squads were deploying exactly according to his orders. Sarik strode to the centre of the circle as the spearhead’s missile tanks raised their boxy launchers ready to engage the enemy. It was relatively unusual, though not unheard of, for such a mixed force to operate together. Sarik had served alongside other Chapters before, most recently the Harbingers Chapter at the Battle of Sour Ridge. But in that action, the white of Sarik’s battle-brothers had remained distinct from the deep purple of the Harbingers livery, and their chain of command uninterrupted. Yet here, the White Scars livery co-mingled with the blue of the Ultramarines, the black of the Iron Hands and the Black Templars, the black and yellow of the Scythes of the Emperor, the jade green of the Subjugators, and a handful of other colours. Sarik realised that he found the sight quite inspiring.
Silhouettes appeared on the walkways above and to the fore. Sarik judged he had less than a minute before combat was joined.
‘Battle-brothers!’ he bellowed.
The warriors, who had taken up defensive positions on and around the laagered vehicles, kept their weapons trained to their front, but turned their heads to heed his words.
‘We stand this day, together, united!’ Two-dozen bulky silhouettes dropped from the nearest walkway, bright white jets flaring as they descended.
‘Our primarchs watch our every deed!’ The air was split by a searing blue fusillade of energy bolts as the silhouettes found their range and opened fire on the nearest of the Space Marines. Shots whined in to slam against the armoured glacis plates of Rhinos and Predators. The battle-brothers simply waited, listening for Sarik’s order.
‘For the primarchs!’ Sarik bellowed, raising his boltgun one-handed and tracking the nearest of the dropping battle suits as it neared the ground, its jets flaring to slow its final descent.
‘Honoured be their names!’ Brother Qaja bellowed.
‘Honoured be their names!’ three hundred voices repeated as Sarik opened fire. A moment later, the entire force followed suit as more battle suits appeared at the walkways all around and began their descent. A Dreadnought bearing the blue and white of the Novamarines Chapter, mere metres from Sarik, engaged its rotary assault cannon, the multiple barrels spinning faster and faster as it prepared to fire. The cannon raised as the venerated pilot of the ancient suit expertly selected his first target. The weapon locked onto a rapidly-dropping battle suit, and opened fire.
The burst of fire lasted only three seconds, but in that brief period, several hundred rounds were cycled through the six barrels from the huge hopper at its rear. The sound of those rounds leaving the barrel was a continuous, deafening scream. The battle suit was caught in the torso at a range of eighty metres and a height of thirty, and it simply disintegrated before the Space Marines’ eyes. One moment the armoured opponent had been descending of jets of white flame, its weapons spitting seething blue balls of energy, and the next it was a rapidly expanding ball of flame and vapour. Tiny chunks of debris rained down on the Space Marines, not one of them larger than a man’s thumb so thoroughly was the target destroyed.
From every walkway, scores of battle suits now dropped down on the Space Marines’ position. The jade sky was filled with the yellow-tan forms, each spitting round after round of livid blue energy down upon Sarik�
�s warriors. The tau were dropping down all around the laager, unleashing devastating bursts of fire and then taking to the air once more with bursts of their jets. The tactic was designed so that the Space Marines could not concentrate fire on one target before the battle suit was gone, leaping through the air to repeat the process elsewhere. There was no point moving squads around, for to do so would be to fall for the enemy’s ploy. Sarik ordered the sergeants to direct the fire of their squads as best they could, concentrating their fire on the targets in their fire arcs with ruthless efficiency.
Meanwhile, Sarik concentrated on the larger picture, reading the ebb and flow of battle and predicting every probing attack the tau made. When a large horde of the olive-green-skinned alien carnivores appeared in one quarter, he ordered the Whirlwinds to open fire. Two-dozen missiles streaked from the launchers atop the tanks on boiling black contrails, sweeping high into the air before plummeting down on the aliens. The resulting explosion engulfed the entire horde, slaying a hundred or more as missile after missile detonated in their midst. When the smoke cleared, the surface of the road the enemy had advanced along was a mass of black craters, several hundred aliens blown to charred meat scattered across the whole area.
When the arcane sensors of the Novamarines Dreadnought detected the presence of tau stealthers working their way around to what they assumed was a weak point, Sarik ordered the column’s land speeder squadron forwards from the holding pattern the flyers had been engaged in overhead. The five two-man craft descended on the invisible enemy like predatory razorwings swooping on a defenceless prey, unleashing a solid wall of fire from their assault cannons and heavy bolters. As the smoke cleared and the land speeders climbed back on screaming jets, the now visible remains of at least twenty enemy stealth suits could be seen, scattered across a wide area. The flank of the structure the stealthers had been sneaking around was splattered by great arcs of purple blood.
But the Space Marines were surrounded until the Imperial Guard caught up with them, and casualties were inevitable. The hated tau battle suits carried a fearsome range of weaponry, from rapid-firing burst weapons similar to the Dreadnought’s assault cannon, to short-ranged but devastating fusion blasters designed to cut through vehicle armour as if it were not even there. Some carried flame projectors, but these were short-ranged and of limited use against the Space Marines’ ceramite power armour, while others used longer-ranged missile systems to fire warheads fully capable of slaying a Space Marine or cracking open a tank with every shot.
The Dreadnought attracted a heavy weight of enemy fire, leading Sarik to the conclusion that the tau had never seen its like and were concentrating upon it out of fear and awe. The mighty war machine shrugged off missile after missile and its intricately engraved sarcophagus was reduced to a mass of smoking scars by round after round of energy weapon fire. Every time a missile exploded against its armour, the iron beast would stride through the smoke to return fire, earning cheers of adoration from Space Marines of every Chapter, not just its own.
Then the Dreadnought shuddered, swaying back and forth for a moment. With a crash like a granite column toppling, it struck the ground, sending up a plume of pulverised resin roadway. The Dreadnought was down, but Sarik mouthed a prayer of thanks that it appeared still intact.
‘Overhead!’ Brother Qaja yelled, and Sarik looked up to see a line of the heavy battle suits arrayed on the highest walkway. They were the same type the Space Marines had encountered at Hill 3003, their three-metre-long, shoulder-mounted main weapons angled almost straight down towards the Space Marines.
This time, Sarik knew there were no Imperial Navy Thunderbolts on station, and no 1,000 kilogram bombs to be dropped on the heavy battle suits.
‘Land speeders,’ Sarik ordered. ‘Work your way around the heavy suits, but do not get too close.’
As the pilots acknowledged Sarik’s order, he opened the channel to the commanders of the Whirlwinds positioned in the centre of the laager. ‘How many Hunter missiles do you have?’
There was a pause as the commanders shared load-out manifests, then the answer came back, ‘Twenty-eight Hunter missiles, brother-sergeant. But if you mean to use them against–’
‘Duly noted,’ Sarik interjected. Each of the Whirlwind missile tanks carried a load of anti-air missiles called Hunters, in addition to their regular, anti-personnel ordnance. The Hunters were effective against air targets, but whether or not they would be any use against the heavy battle suits was unknown. There was only one way to find out, and no alternative.
Another of the hyper-velocity projectiles hammered down from above, striking an Iron Hands Predator battle tank square in the commander’s hatch. The tank was buttoned up, its commander ensconced within, but the shot penetrated easily. The projectile turned to superheated plasma as it impacted on the armoured hatch, and the jet went straight through the commander, the tank’s innards and out through its belly armour. The entire tank seemed to be pushed down as if by an invisible fist, as far as its suspension would allow. Then it sprang back up as its systems reversed the impact, but not before something deep inside detonated. There was a sharp explosion and a fountain of crackling flames erupted from the top hatch. Another three seconds later, the entire tank exploded, shunting sideways the Rhinos on either side, killing three Space Marines outright, and slamming a dozen more to the hard ground as the blast wave overtook them.
A chunk of blazing armour scythed through the air, forcing Sarik to throw himself aside as it passed less than a metre overhead. The projectile was as dangerous as any weapon. It carried on, striking a Black Templars Space Marine from behind and severing both of his legs at the knees. The warrior collapsed to the ground, but even as Sarik watched, retrieved his bolter and continued firing into the mass of enemy battle suits his squad was defending against.
‘Whirlwinds!’ Sarik bellowed as he pulled himself to his feet. Those heavy suits needed to be shut down, right now. ‘Target the suits with Hunters, full spread, now!’
The twin launcher boxes atop each Whirlwind whined as they traversed, elevating almost to their maximum angle. The augur dishes between the boxes tracked their targets, pinpointing coordinates and calculating trajectories. The war spirits in each missile tank communed silently as the firing solutions were communicated and the shots plotted. Then the missiles fired, one after another, until all twenty-eight were streaking upwards on hissing contrails.
The missiles banked and climbed, the machine-spirit in each warhead homing in on its designated target. The heavy battle suits saw their peril as the missiles rose in a wide spread, climbing towards, and then past, the walkway. Sarik saw the battle suits tracking the missiles as they reached their maximum ceiling, some of the tau taking a step backwards on the narrow, rail-less walkway.
Then the missiles dived directly downwards, and slammed into the line of heavy battle suits. As each impacted against its target it unleashed a blinding white burst of light and the suits disappeared in a devastating line of explosions that sent fragments of burned armour shooting off in all directions. The staccato crump of the explosions came a second after impact, and rolled out across the artificial valleys of the alien city.
‘Land speeders,’ Sarik said into the vox-net. ‘Close and engage any survivors, now!’
As the grav-attack flyers banked high and dived down upon the smoking walkway, Sarik turned his attentions back to the tau attacking the laager, just in time to see a trio of battle suits closing from the east. A Devastator squad of the Scythes of the Emperor unleashed a fusillade of heavy bolter fire at the fast-moving suits, but the enemy came on regardless, seeking to close the range.
Then Sarik saw why the enemy were prepared to brave the storm of mass-reactive bolt-rounds. All three of them were carrying twinned weapons that Sarik had learned were the tau’s equivalent of meltaguns, fusion effect blasters capable of reducing an armoured vehicle to slag in a single shot.
I
f the battle suits got close enough, they could open a breach in the laager. Sarik would not let that happen.
‘Squad!’ Sarik called to his battle-brothers. ‘With me!’
Sarik limbered his boltgun and drew his chainsword, gunning it to screaming life as he charged towards the Devastators and the Razorback armoured fighting vehicle they were using as a makeshift fortification. The twin lascannon turret on the back of the vehicle spat a double lance of searing white light towards the enemy, striking the lead battle suits full in the torso. But amazingly, the blast, which was amongst the most powerful armour-piercing weapons in the column’s arsenal, did not penetrate. At the last possible moment, a bubble of blue energy sprang into being, and the lascannon blasts were absorbed.
As Sarik reached the Devastator squad, he bellowed ‘Weapons down! Chainswords and pistols!’
The Devastators obeyed without question, disengaging quick-release weapons couplings and discarding their bulky heavy bolters. Each Devastator carried a bolt pistol as a personal sidearm, for just such a necessity. As the Scythes raised their pistols, Sarik charged past, vaulting over the glacis of the Razorback and pounding towards the battle suits with a feral snarl on his lips.
The nearest of the battle suits raised its twinned fusion blasters towards Sarik as he charged in towards it. The pilot hesitated, the suit actually taking a step backwards. The tau might be inexperienced in the realities of a galaxy at war, but they were fast learners, that much was clear. They were quickly learning to keep the Space Marines at arm’s length, though doing so was easier said than done.
The berserk fury descended on Sarik again as he closed the last few metres. The fusion blasters powered up, nucleonic energies pulsating through their vents as they prepared to fire. The blasters zeroed in on Sarik, and he dived forwards as they fired. As he struck the ground, the twinned blasts turned the air above him into a roaring inferno. The heat caused the skin on the back of his head to blister and cook, and the hair of his topknot to melt and sizzle. So immense were the tightly contained energies that he could feel their effects even through his power armour, the war spirit within flooding his system with combat drugs to negate any pain that might otherwise have slowed him down.