Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  Brielle’s eyes tracked the pipework emerging from the suppression vent, across the ceiling, down the bulkhead, along, to a junction box three metres away. She crossed to it quickly, intently aware that she might only have seconds before the lethal gases erupted from directly overhead. The box was stencilled with a line of unfamiliar characters… she ripped the front off, and stared into a mess of cables and blinking control studs, three blue, one red.

  ‘Never press the red one…’ she said, her fingers hovering over the blue control studs.

  The fires were taking hold, and the hissing overhead was increasing as the fire suppression system prepared to pump oxygen-starving gases into the communications bay. She pressed the red one.

  The hissing immediately died. She turned, and saw that the fires were now engulfing the recess, and spreading towards her. A small explosion crumped from somewhere nearby, followed an instant later by the sound of glass shattering across the floor of the main bay. The damage was spreading faster than even Brielle could have expected.

  Time to be somewhere else.

  The Space Marine armoured column was once more advancing through the thoroughfares of Gel’bryn City, smashing the tau defence aside as it speared towards its ultimate objective, the star port. As the spearhead advanced deeper into the city, the structures became ever more imposing until the Space Marines and their vehicles were dwarfed by the towering buildings. The tau had disengaged soon after Sarik’s slaying of the battle suits, though the sergeant suspected the two events were not connected. More likely, the tau had detected the Brimlock 2nd Armoured moving to link up with the Space Marines and quite sensibly determined they were outnumbered and outmatched.

  The instant the tau assaults lessened, Sarik ordered the laagered Space Marine vehicles to assume an attacking formation once more. Within minutes, several hundred Space Marines of a dozen different Chapters were aboard their transports again, which moved out in a long column punctuated by Predator battle tanks, Whirlwind missile tanks and stomping Dreadnoughts. Space Marine assault squads moved forwards in great bounding leaps, guarding the column’s flanks against enemy counter-attack. The Assault Marines engaged dozens of the laser-designator-armed spotters, slaughtering the aliens before they could bring indirect missile fire onto the armoured vehicles. The assault squads were by now well-practised in locating the spotters’ hiding places, and what mere days ago had been a lethal threat was now expertly countered.

  Land speeder squadrons soared overhead on screaming jets, providing Sarik with a continuous reconnaissance of the tau defences further ahead. Several times, the land speeders were intercepted by heavy gun drones. Two speeders were lost in the first engagement, one belonging to the White Scars and one to the Iron Hands, though two of their crew survived, to be rescued by an Ultra­marines assault squad and join the ground forces. Later engagements saw the land speeders avoid dogfighting with the heavy gun drones, and call in ground-to-air Hunter missile fire from the Whirlwinds stationed along the length of the column.

  The advance was a stop-start affair, for the tau forces were highly mobile and well able to mount localised defences at key points in the city. Sarik soon realised that the tau were either falling back to the star port, or they had guessed that it was the Imperium’s objective. As the column pressed on, it encountered hastily mounted defence positions from which the tau would attempt to ambush the Space Marines before falling back in their on-station anti-grav carriers. Sarik’s orders were clear – such defences were to be bypassed, and engaged where necessary by the trailing forces of the Imperial Guard. In most cases, the positions were abandoned long before the Imperial Guard reached them, the tau re-deploying to the next ambush point ahead.

  As the sky darkened with the approach of evening, the combined advance of the Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Adeptus Titanicus developed into a series of running battles against a seemingly piecemeal defence. While the Space Marines spearheaded a focussed assault, the Imperial Guard spread out onto multiple axes as they pressed on, the better to take advantage of their numbers. Entire regiments of tanks rolled aside any opposition they encountered, though only the heavy battle suits even dared make a concerted stand against such forces. Dragoon regiments moved forward rapidly, armoured fist squads using their Chimera transports as mobile bunkers and fire support bases as they dismounted and cleared enemy-held positions with bayonets fixed. While the Rakarshans rode forwards on the backs of the 2nd Armoured’s tanks, other light infantry units followed on foot, using their skills in fieldcraft to move rapidly through the urban terrain.

  The Titans of Legio Thanataris split into smaller formations, each moving out to support the advance on its far flanks. The Titans unleashed holy hell on every tau defence point they encountered, flattening structures hundreds of metres tall and striding through the high walkways, causing hundreds of defenders to plummet to their deaths in the streets far below.

  With their remaining destroyers committed to ferrying troops to the star port, the tau were unable to oppose the Titans, though they made repeated and numerous attempts to do so. Tau stealth suits launched desperate and often suicidal attacks against the Titans, leaping from high structures in an effort to board the mighty war machines.

  Using fusion blasters, the stealthers attempted to cut through the Titans’ ceramite armoured shells and disable the systems within. One group swarmed over a Reaver Battle Titan in an attempt to overwhelm its armour and inflict death by a thousand cuts. At first, the Reaver’s princeps was dismissive of the threat, determined to ignore the attackers as beneath his notice and deserving of no more than contempt. Only when his Titans’ Apocalypse launcher was disabled did he take the threat seriously. His answer to the boarding attempt was to smash his Titan through a nearby building that was taller than his war machine. The entire structure burst apart as the Reaver strode through it, the collapsing debris scouring the stealthers from its body and leaving the Titan coated in a layer of bone-white dust that lent it the aspect of a gargantuan apparition.

  Soon after, the Warlord Battle Titan was assaulted by at least sixty tau stealth suits deployed from the bowels of an armoured transport that soared high overhead. The battle suits descended on their target like drop troops onto a bastion, and immediately turned their fusion blasters on the turbo-laser destructors. The Warlord’s princeps was not so fast to dismiss the threat, yet his war machine was too tall to repeat the Reaver’s act of smashing through a building. Instead, the princeps ordered three nearby Warhound Scout Titans to turn their Vulcan mega-bolters on him.

  The Warhounds’ princeps were loath to fire on their commander’s sacred engine, but were ordered to do so on threat of disciplinary action. The three Warhounds opened fire, and the Warlord’s entire upper body was stitched with thousands upon thousands of rapid-firing, mass-reactive explosive shells. Though the Warlord suffered multiple minor systems damage, the enemy attackers were utterly wiped out. Their purple blood was smeared across the Titan’s upper hull in garish patterns that would stain its livery for years to come despite the best efforts of legions of artificers.

  The battles did not go entirely in the Imperium’s favour. Inevitably, some units became separated as the advance penetrated deeper into the city and became encircled and destroyed entirely by rapidly counter-attacking enemy units. One of the 4th Brimlock Dragoons heavy weapons companies was engaged by a wing of extremely agile tau skimmers, their Chimeras outflanked and torn to shreds as the squads attempted to deploy their heavy weapons against a foe they could not get a fix on. The 4th Storm Trooper company turned back from its advance to attempt a link-up with the dragoons, but was outflanked and pinned down by the skimmers. A Warhound Titan was in turn ordered to aid the stormtroopers, but by the time the skimmers were driven off by the war machine’s sustained Vulcan mega-bolter fire, the dragoons were all but wiped out.

  As nightfall approached, it became evident to the Departmento Tacticae advisors, on the groun
d as well as in orbit, that something was awry with the tau’s command and control systems. While many individual tau units mounted a competent and disciplined retreat in the face of their enemy, a feat considered amongst the hardest of manoeuvres to accomplish, coordination between the tau units became notably degraded. It was Sarik who noted this phenomenon first, as he witnessed two tau battle suit groups falling back as one. In previous engagements the two groups would have coordinated their retreat, one covering the other as it redeployed so that a constant fire-and-movement was kept up. Before Sarik’s very eyes, both groups fled, neither offering the other any fire support. As a consequence, both battle suit groups were cut down as the Space Marines forced their advantage, punishing the tau for their tactical error.

  And that error was being repeated all over the front. Sarik communicated his observation to Colonel Armak of the Brimlock 2nd Armoured while the Tacticae ensured it was disseminated to all other commands. Fleet intelligence turned its efforts to uncovering the roots of the degradation, and the elite Codes and Ciphers division under Tacticae-Primaris Kilindini reported that command and control signals between the tau ground forces and off-world contacts had become garbled and weak. It was soon discerned that the tau defending Gel’bryn had been coordinated by a higher command echelon in space nearby. It appeared that the tau’s much vaunted and feared technology was turning against them, though none amongst the Tacticae could offer a plausible explanation as to the cause.

  As darkness engulfed the city, the battlefield was illuminated by strobing explosions, the glowing contrails of missiles streaking high overhead and a thousand lasguns and boltguns gunning down the tau wherever they were encountered. The only sound audible was that of the engines of the Space Marines’ armoured transports and the tanks and carriers of the Imperial Guard. The air was filled with the stink of exhaust fumes, ozone and fyceline. The sky was etched with tracer fire and the flaring jets of hundreds of battle suits and anti-grav transports as they fell back in a long stream towards the star port.

  Three hours after nightfall, the advance elements of Sarik’s column were within five kilometres of the star port, and the tau’s defences appeared to have collapsed entirely. The column paused while Sarik sent his land speeder squadrons forwards to undertake a reconnaissance of the objective. Minutes later, the land speeders reported that the traffic around the star port was now entirely in one direction: outwards. At some point during the closing hours of the day the tau had ceased ferrying reinforcements into the city and were now ferrying those same troops out as fast as the destroyers could carry them. The land speeder crews relayed images of masses of alien troops and machines flooding towards the star port’s multiple landing pads. The activity was disciplined, but the intent was clear: the tau were retreating.

  The Tacticae advisors passed word to the Commissariat, who approved the dissemination of a simple communication to the troops. Word that the tau were in full flight was welcomed with cheers and celebration, but the morale officers were sure to impress upon the men that there was much fighting yet to be done.

  Higher up the chain of command, a debate was set in motion. Some commanders pressed for the advance to continue without delay and the tau to be slaughtered even as they fled. Others counselled that there was scant honour to be earned in slaying a retreating enemy, even the xenos tau who, it was largely accepted, had fought thus far with honour and tenacity.

  A brief operational pause set in as high command considered the next phase of Operation Hydra. And all the while, unknown to most of those on the surface of Dal’yth Prime, the countdown to Exterminatus ticked inexorably down to zero…

  General Gauge stood calmly in the midst of the controlled chaos that had engulfed his command centre aboard the Blade of Woe, his arms folded across his chest. He was the calm at the centre of the storm, his razor-sharp mind the cold focus of the entire invasion of Dal’yth Prime. His expert eye took in the reams of information scrolling across a dozen pict screens. First-hand accounts and tactical updates streamed in from the surface, Tacticae officers rushing to and fro as they collated the data and entered it into cogitation banks. Maps and charts were updated on a minute-by-minute basis, the information becoming obsolete within moments of being entered. Staff officers yelled into vox-horns as they sought clarification from their opposite numbers on the ground, desperately trying to piece together a coherent picture of exactly what was happening as the crusade army advanced.

  Gauge glanced to his chron. It was almost an hour since his last vox conversation with Colonel Armak, and it would soon be time for another. He was just about to order his aide-de-camp to patch him through to the colonel when the officer appeared at his side and handed him a data-slate coded for his personal attention.

  His eyes narrowing, Gauge entered his personal cipher and scanned the message header. It was from Tacticae-Primaris Kilindini and penned by the man’s own hand.

  My lord general. My division has traced the enemy’s command and control net to a node in high orbit on the far side of Dal’yth Prime. My staff conclude that enemy ground forces are being coordi­nated via a tight-beam conduit from a high command element off world. Back-trace cogitation reveals that this node has been controlling enemy ground forces for at least twelve hours, but the signal has been steadily degrading. At zero-nine-nine, the signal cut out entirely. My conclusion: enemy operational command and control capacity has been severed and is at this time defunct. Recommend this intelligence be acted upon as best you see fit.

  Gauge allowed himself a ghost of a smile as he closed the message and handed the data-slate back to his aide. He checked his chron again, his mind performing a hundred calculations and filtering a thousand possibilities all at once. Inquisitor Grand’s deadline would expire before the sun rose over Gel’bryn, and the ground forces were within five kilometres of their objective. They could take it, he knew. If they pushed on, driving the tau ahead of them, they could take it. The enemy would be forced to abandon the star port, and trapped en masse against the sea to the south of Gel’bryn.

  ‘Get me Sarik, Armak and Gerrit,’ Gauge said to his aide. ‘I want the advance moving again and that star port taken.’

  ‘All commands,’ Sarik said into the vox-net as he rode in the cupola of his Rhino. ‘Objective in sight. Repeat, star port in sight, five kilometres. Form up on me and advance like your primarchs are watching! Out.’

  Sarik’s driver gunned the Rhino’s engine and the transport gained speed. Sarik’s blood was up, but he had finally mastered the raging berserker fury that had consumed him earlier. In fact, he now felt as if that fury had been lurking within him for years, and he had only just acknowledged its toxic presence. He felt as if he had passed through some form of trial, one that he had come perilously close to failing. He had walked the precarious line between control and unfettered rage, and he had seen, with his battle-brother’s assistance, how close he had come to stepping over an invisible threshold. The previously hidden delineation was now entirely clear to him, and he knew himself, his limits and his capabilities, as he had never done before. He would harness this newfound realisation, nurture the wisdom he had uncovered, and turn it to the execution of his duty and the pursuance of honour above all things.

  Sarik swept his pintle-mounted storm bolter left to right, tracking the buildings on either side of the road that led as straight as an arrow towards the star port. The buildings were growing closer together, and every portal and window harboured deep shadows within which an enemy might be lurking. The Assault Marines bounded alongside the column, ensuring that no tau spotters waited to call in the lethal, indirect-firing missiles that had accounted for so many armoured vehicles, and even a mighty Titan, since the opening of Operation Pluto. No spotters had been encountered for several hours, yet the Assault Marines still carried out their task, for even a single spotter left undiscovered could wreak havoc amongst Sarik’s force.

  Sarik reviewed his force’s disp
osition as the Rhinos, Razorback, Predators and Whirlwinds advanced. Though many squads of the crusade’s Space Marine contingent were engaged in detached duties elsewhere, the bulk of the battle-brothers were under his command. His heart swelled with fierce, martial pride as he watched the column on its final advance towards the objective. The white and red livery of his own Chapter was but a small proportion of the colours displayed by the vehicles of the dozen Chapters, and it was the greatest honour of his service to act as their force commander. Though many had fallen in the advance, untold acts of individual heroism had earned every Chapter represented untold honour. The histories of a dozen Chapters would record the name of Operation Hydra and the Battle of Gel’bryn as a prized battle honour, and the chronicles of the White Scars would recall his own squads’ actions for all time.

  The lights of the star port were now coming into view. Sarik recalled the surveillance images captured by the fleet’s orbital spy-drones, mentally comparing them to what little he could see in the darkness up ahead. He knew that the star port was a sprawling complex of raised landing platforms, each served by a grav-dampener that both cushioned an incoming craft’s final approach and aided the launching of outgoing ones. The crusade’s Adeptus Mechanicus greatly coveted those generators, for while their construction was known to them, they were eager to learn how the tau had come about knowledge of a technology considered arcane by their order. The star port was lit by intense arc lights that cast their stark illumination upwards into the night sky, creating six square kilometres of bright day in the midst of Dal’yth Prime’s night. Control towers speared the sky, warning lights chasing up and down their flanks, and the entire complex was ringed by what the Departmento Tacticae advisors warned were probably automated gun turrets.