Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  Lucian seethed inwardly as he moved along the street. The elite patrols platoon of the Rakarshan Rifles were ranging ahead of him, while two rifle platoons was close behind. What the hell was Grand playing at? The inquisitor’s initial threat to enact Exterminatus within twenty-four hours had been extreme enough, but the remnants of the crusader council had thought themselves able to call Grand’s bluff and make the devastation of the entire world unnecessary. Lucian was coming to suspect that Inquisitor Grand had intended to bring the Exterminatus forward all along, and Lucian and his allies had played right into his hands in pushing towards the star port, well beyond their capability to return to Sector Zero and evacuate.

  ‘Warp take him…’ Lucian cursed, for the tenth time in as many minutes. The madman was prepared to slaughter thousands upon thousands of Imperial Guard and several hundred Space Marines just to prove a point…

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ Lucian’s signalman said from close behind as a barrage fired by a troop of Manticore missile tanks streaked through the night sky overhead.

  ‘Nothing, son,’ Lucian growled, bitterness rising inside as he recalled his actual son, and the risks he had taken to discover and communicate the fact that Grand had brought forward the Exterminatus order. The Manticore barrage walloped into a tau position a kilometre distant, setting off a staccato burst of secondary explosions that lit the edge of the star port with a hellish orange glow.

  Lucian was torn, his duty to the crusade conflicting violently with his duty to his dynasty. He could leave within the hour, he knew, by calling a lander from the Oceanid to return him to the fleet. He could confront Grand and ensure his son’s safety, though he suspected doing so might cost him his life. But to abandon his duty now, as his battle group closed on the objective it had fought and bled so hard to capture, would be the act of a self-serving coward.

  No, Lucian knew that the only course of action open to him was to lead Battlegroup Arcadius forward in glory, and take that cursed star port as soon as possible. Korvane would have to do what he could, as would General Gauge and his staff, though that was precious little. As dire as his own predicament seemed, Lucian did not envy Gauge. The general was faced with an apparently insane inquisitor, an individual who wielded authority to all intents and purposes equal to that of the High Lords of Terra themselves, as well as the pressing need to win a major victory and evacuate tens of thousands of troops.

  ‘Sir?’ the signalman said again.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucian repeated, distracted by his train of thought and not really paying attention to his surroundings.

  ‘Sir!’ the man said, the urgency of his tone snapping Lucian back to the here and now. The signalman was pointing up ahead, and Lucian slowed as he followed the gesture. Patrols platoon had disappeared, and the street was empty.

  No, it was far from empty. The elite scouts and trackers of patrols platoon had simply melted into the shadows on either side of the wide street, and that could only mean trouble.

  ‘Tell the column to stand by,’ Lucian said, and the signalman passed the order along.

  Cautiously, Lucian advanced along the street, lowering his prey-sense goggles to pierce the smoke and darkness beyond patrols platoon. Whatever the scouts had spotted, he could not yet see it, but his goggles would detect what even the elite trackers could not see.

  Lowering the brass headset over his eyes, Lucian tuned the viewfinder. The smoke appeared to lift like a morning mist dispelled by the rising sun, revealing a group of boxy vehicles at the far end of the street. After a moment, Lucian realised that the vehicles were Space Marine Whirlwind missile tanks, and that his battlegroup had almost caught up with Sarik’s spearhead. Lucian knew that the Rakarshans would have to slow their advance so that the two groups did not become mixed up, frustrating given the haste to reach the star port, but that could not have been why patrols platoon had gone firm.

  ‘Signals,’ Lucian hissed, waving the adjutant to his side while keeping his gaze fixed upon the vehicles up ahead. He heard the signalman speaking low into his vox-horn, and the hushed, distorted chatter of return traffic. Then he saw…

  ‘Carnivores, sir,’ the signalman reported, passing on the report from the Rakarshan captain leading patrols platoon. ‘They’re just about to–’

  ‘I see them,’ Lucian hissed, not taking his eye off the dark shadow moving towards the rearmost of the Space Marine vehicles.

  Then the boxy twin-launchers atop that vehicle angled upwards on whining servos, and a flaring jet of flame belched from the rear vents. A missile spat outwards from one of the launchers, and the scene at the end of the street was fully illuminated in the sudden flare.

  Something big was moving towards the Whirlwind, something so large the carnivores around it seemed little more than scuttling vermin. It was some type of beast, its long body supported on massive hind legs. Its front legs were little more than vestigial claws, while its head was dominated by a jagged-edged beak and quills sprouting from the crown. As the light cast by the missile guttered away, Lucian saw that the beast carried some form of oversized howdah or saddle, and that two or three more carnivores were mounted on its back, manning some kind of primitive, crossbow-like heavy weapon.

  ‘Get some tubes forward,’ Lucian ordered, then activated his own vox-link, cycling through the channels until he found the one reserved for the Space Marine commanders. Ordinarily, the channel would be locked out to anyone other than the Adeptus Astartes, but Lucian had friends in high places. The channel burst to life, curt orders cutting back and forth as squad sergeants called targets and coordinated fire and movement between their units. He waited for an opportunity to cut in, but the beast was closing on the Whirlwind too fast to stand on ceremony.

  ‘Rearmost Astartes Whirlwind,’ Lucian said. ‘This is an urgent transmission, over.’

  The voices went silent, the tinny sound of gunfire bleeding in. ‘Last sender, identify yourself,’ a gruff voice said.

  ‘Stand down, Sergeant Rheq,’ the familiar voice of Sergeant Sarik came over the channel. ‘Make it quick, Lucian.’

  ‘Carnivores closing on your rearmost launcher. And they have something big,’ he said. ‘I’m moving up anti-tank, so I suggest you get your vehicles clear.’

  ‘Understood, Lucian,’ Sarik replied. ‘My thanks. Out.’

  As Lucian closed the link, three two-man missile launcher teams came level with him, one man in each carrying the shoulder-fired tube while the other bore a case of three reloads. Sergeant-Major Havil followed in their wake, his long-hafted power axe slung over his shoulder. Havil immediately set about bullying the missile launcher teams into setting up their tubes in double time, and soon they were ready to fire.

  Meanwhile, the Whirlwinds’ engines were gunning to life, thick smoke belching from their side-mounted exhausts. Lucian saw the carnivores react, halting as they crept forwards, their primitive, spiked rifles raised. The beast was reined in, its vile face glowering at the source of the sound.

  Yet, while Lucian could see the scene clearly thanks to the arcane systems of his prey-sense goggles, the smoke was obscuring it entirely from the missile launcher teams.

  The carnivores were gesturing towards the nearest Whirlwind as it juddered forwards. The heavy weapon on the back of the huge beast was turning around to engage the missile tank from almost point-blank range. Even such a primitive weapon could cause damage at close enough range, especially against the tank’s rear armour.

  Realising the beast-mounted weapon was about to open fire, Lucian made up his mind. He rushed towards the nearest of Sergeant-Major Havil’s missile-launcher teams, and grabbed the tube from the grip of the stunned Rakarshan. The man was about to voice a protest, when Havil thumped the non-lethal end of his power axe into the back of his head. The Rakarshan hefted the weapon from his shoulder and passed it to Lucian.

  Raising the tube to his shoulder, Lucian realised that he would
not be able to sight using the weapon’s onboard system, for it could not penetrate the smoke. Steadying the tube with his right hand, he used his left to pull a cord from his goggles, which he jacked into a port on the side of the launcher’s sighting unit. Lucian prayed that the war spirits within the two devices would achieve communion, and not reject one another as often happened. A moment later the vision through his goggles was overlaid with the launcher’s targeting reticule, the two devices operating as one.

  His thumb closing on the firing stud, Lucian took a moment to still himself, breathing out as the reticule settled on the beast. He played the aim across its body, rejecting the sure kill, but possible miss of a headshot for a sure hit, but less likely kill, body shot.

  ‘Clear!’ Lucian called, issuing one last warning to anyone behind him that he was about to fire.

  ‘Clear!’ he heard Sergeant-Major Havil confirm.

  He pressed the firing stud, and the missile streaked from the tube. The backblast blew hot, sharp-smelling gases into his face, before the main charge ignited ten metres out and propelled the missile along the length of the street and into the smoke.

  The missile struck the huge beast square in the howdah, exploding the heavy weapon which had been preparing to fire on the Whirlwind. The two carnivores manning the weapon were enveloped in a white flash, leaving only their legs, fused to the wreckage on the beast’s back.

  ‘Missed,’ Lucian spat. ‘Reload!’ he said to the Rakarshan beside him.

  ‘No need, my lord,’ Sergeant-Major Havil said, a broad grin splitting his black-bearded face.

  Lucian lifted his goggles to see that the missile’s explosion had blown away the smoke at the end of the street, exposing the carnivores to the Rakarshan’s view. Though Lucian’s missile had not struck the huge beast square as he had hoped, in winging it and killing its riders he had caused it to go berserk. The beast was enraged, lashing out with its beaked head and stomping the ground hard with its huge, taloned feet.

  The beast spun around as the carnivores scattered. Several were too slow. One was bitten in half at the waist by the beast’s snapping, razor-edged beak while another was pounded flat by a crushing foot. Some of the carnivores dashed into side streets, but the majority backed off along the main thoroughfare, towards Lucian’s force.

  Seeing his opportunity, Lucian stood, and bellowed, ‘Rakarshans, address!’

  Then he realised the Rakarshans probably had no idea what ‘address’ meant. He turned to the sergeant-major, who was still grinning. The whip-crack ripple of coordinated section fire sounded from patrols platoon’s position, and the street lit up with white, strobing light.

  Dozens of carnivores were cut down as the veteran riflemen of patrols platoon rose up from their concealment, unleashing rapid-fire death on the foe. The enemy were caught in the open and in the crossfire of the two halves of the platoon, one on either side of the street. Gangly bodies danced and spun as las-rounds lanced into them, and within seconds the ground was littered with smoking, twitching, alien bodies. The Rakarshans had a debt of honour to settle, and the carnivores had much more to pay.

  The enraged beast roared, its savage face whipping left and right so fast its head-quills rattled loudly. The Rakarshans held their fire, knowing that to shoot the beast would probably draw a charge. Then it roared again, and stomped off down a side street, the pounding of its heavy tread receding into the distance.

  ‘Get patrols platoon forward, sergeant-major,’ Lucian ordered, passing the missile launcher back to its original owner. ‘Secure the area, but let the Adeptus Astartes press forwards.’

  ‘Understood, my lord,’ Havil replied, before striding off down the street to pass Lucian’s orders to the captain in charge of patrols platoon.

  Lucian looked up into the night sky as Rakarshans dashed past. The eastern horizon was touched by the merest hint of green, the first visible sign of the coming dawn. Hardly believing that the night had almost passed, Lucian checked his chron, and cursed. Time was running out.

  A fiery light streaked overhead, another missile barrage, Lucian assumed. He glanced up, but saw that the light was travelling north-east to south-west, so could not have been a missile fired from the Imperial Guard’s lines.

  The light passed almost directly overhead, casting a flickering luminescence over the scene, and Lucian saw that it was not a missile, but a small craft making a controlled crashdown following planetfall. The air beneath the craft seethed with burning atmosphere, the heat absorbed and simultaneously shed by an energy shield projected below it.

  No Imperial lander that Lucian knew to be in orbit employed such a device.

  The object disappeared from view as it sped past one of the city’s hundred-metre-tall structures. The sky flashed white behind the tower, and the sound of the craft’s violent crashdown rolled down the street. Whatever it was, the battle group would be passing it soon.

  Seeing that the path ahead was secured and the rearmost vehicles of the Space Marine column had ground ahead and were out of sight, Lucian looked around for his executive officer.

  ‘Major Subad!’ he called.

  A moment later, Subad was running towards him from further down the street. ‘My lord?’ he said as he came to a halt and saluted.

  ‘Get the companies moving, major,’ Lucian said. ‘The objective is in sight.’

  Chapter Ten

  Sarik pulled his shrieking, gore-streaked chainsword from the broken torso of the barbarous alien carnivore, and brought it up into a guard position as he sought another opponent. The only enemy left were the dead and the dying, the Space Marines pushing forwards with boltguns raised as they secured the area.

  A muffled thump-crack rang out as a battle-brother put a bolt pistol shell through a wounded alien’s head.

  ‘Clear!’ Brother Qaja shouted, and a dozen similar acknowledgments flooded over the command net.

  ‘Transports forward,’ Sarik ordered, the roar of several dozen engines revving to life sounding from behind as his order was enacted. The Space Marines had reached a junction, and the outer limits of the Gel’bryn star port lay around the next turn in the road. The ground was strewn with the spilled blood and severed limbs of the alien carnivores, which crunched and split under Sarik’s armoured tread as he walked forwards towards the corner.

  The aliens had fought like nightmarish creatures from Chogoran legend, though why, Sarik could not tell. The tau themselves had almost entirely evacuated the city, and none had been reported for an hour at least. It seemed that the tau had deployed the carnivores as a rearguard, but one that they must have regarded as expendable given the imminent fall of Gel’bryn and its star port. Perhaps the carnivores were bound to the tau by some unknown blood oath. Perhaps they had simply been paid so handsomely they considered the nigh suicidal defence worth attempting. All that really mattered was that they were xenos, and their mindset quite literally alien.

  Sarik cast such thoughts from his mind as he approached the turn. He skirted the wall of one of the massive tau buildings, and as he came to the corner, edged around to get his first look at the star port complex.

  A huge, flat expanse of ground formed the bulk of the star port, with numerous circular pads raised on fluted stilts providing the launch terminals. Control and sensor towers soared high overhead, and arc lights shone down from others, bathing the whole scene in a cold, white light. The nearest of the landing pads, a mere three hundred metres from Sarik, was the scene of bustling activity as tau ground crew rushed to and fro in preparation for a fat, vaguely ovoid lander with four huge thruster units swivelled downwards and spitting a backwash of flame. As the lander neared the pad, its engines cut out, and Sarik thought for a moment its systems had failed. But no, the vessel had been caught in the anti-grav sheath projected by the pad’s systems, and was being carried safely downwards towards its docking station.

  As the lander came in,
Sarik saw a stream of tau warriors emerge from a structure near the landing pad’s base, and make their way across the dry ground, towards the elevators inside the structure’s supports. These must be the very last of the tau, Sarik thought; the last shuttle out of Gel’bryn.

  A squadron of sleek tau flyers rose from a landing pad further away, and moved in towards the lander, assuming an overwatch formation, hovering as their multiple-barrelled heavy weapons scanned the star port’s edges. That changed things, Sarik thought. While he might have been prepared to let the lander go unharmed, the presence of the heavily armed escorts made it a matter of military necessity to engage it. The star port had to be captured without delay, and the enemy flyers were an obstacle to be overcome.

  ‘Your orders, brother-sergeant?’ Qaja said as he appeared at Sarik’s side.

  Sarik thought a moment, a plan forming in his mind. His gaze tracked downwards from the rearing landing pad, and across the flat expanse of the complex. The entire area was ringed with a line of low bunkers, and behind them a ring of shield projectors, exactly the same as the one his force had broken through at the very beginning of Operation Pluto.

  ‘No delay,’ Sarik told Brother Qaja. ‘Grand’s deadline may already have passed, so this finishes, now.’

  ‘Agreed, brother-sergeant,’ said Qaja. Sarik had no need of his agreement, but he valued Qaja’s opinion nonetheless.

  ‘Those bunkers appear to be configured for anti-personnel work.’ Qaja nodded his confirmation as he studied the bunkers’ low gunports, seeing the multiple-barrelled cannons pointing out threateningly. ‘We advance on foot behind the Predators and Rhinos, then use krak and melta on the shield projectors beyond,’ Sarik continued. ‘After that, we take the landing pad. The enemy surrender, or they die.’