Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  ‘Go!’ Sarik called to the Space Marines pouring out of the access hatch. Then he was up and running towards the next group of tau backing across the landing pad towards the open rear hatch of the lander. At least thirty tau warriors were at the top of the ramp, keeping up a constant rain of fire intended to suppress the Space Marines and keep them at bay as the last few squads dashed for safety.

  Sarik and his squads were halfway across the pad when the four huge, downturned thrusters mounted at each corner of the lander cycled deafeningly to full power. The air rippled as the thrusters powered up and anti-grav projectors thrummed into life with a rolling, sub-acoustic drone.

  The Space Marines fired from the hip as they pounded across the hardpan, gunning down the last group of tau left on the pad. The shuttle bounced as the anti-grav cradle took hold, and the thrusters reached full power with a deafening wail.

  ‘Rapid fire!’ Sarik bellowed over the howling of the quad thrusters, raising his boltgun to his shoulder and squeezing off a staccato burst right into the gaping rear hatch. Two of the tau warriors were slammed backwards, and the fire of the rest of the Space Marines took down three more and peppered the bulkhead with explosions.

  With a tortuous wail, the shuttle wallowed, then began to lift. The last surviving tau flyer banked protectively overhead, its chin-mounted cannon pulsing blue as it opened fire.

  The surface of the landing pad was chewed up as burst cannon fire swept in towards Sarik and his warriors.

  But Sarik stood his ground. ‘No mercy,’ he growled, and reached for the melta bomb at his belt. Twisting the plunger, Sarik set the fuse to three seconds, and hurled the charge in an overhead throw that sent it sailing upwards straight towards the lander’s open rear hatch. The flyer’s fire scythed in towards Sarik, but only when the melta bomb was clear did he dive to one side.

  Sarik hit the surface hard, rolling over to look directly upwards as the melta bomb arced through the air and disappeared into the shuttle’s hatch.

  Time slowed to an impossible crawl as Sarik awaited the melta bomb’s detonation. The shuttle laboured upwards, its thrusters at full power as the anti-grav cradle kicked in. The shuttle was twenty metres up and climbing when it suddenly trembled, its progress abruptly arrested. The underbelly swelled grotesquely as nucleonic energies distended the airframe, like a dead thing bloated by corpse gas. Fierce energies raged inside the distended hull, visible through the taut fabric of the distorted armour. The illumination grew, spreading outwards until the entire swollen underside was aglow, the air distorted in a baleful shimmer.

  The doomed shuttle shook again, and a mass of flame coughed outwards from the open hatch, followed by a rain of debris and the flailing, flaming bodies of several dozen tau warriors.

  Even as blackened body parts slammed down all around, the shuttle exploded. Sarik turned his head away as the sky was turned orange. He screwed his eyes shut, feeling the nuclear wind tearing at his armour and exposed skin. The landing pad shook violently as fragments of the lander hammered downwards and a million red-hot pieces of shrapnel scoured its surface.

  Then there was quiet. Sarik rolled over and opened his eyes, the dawn sky lightening overhead. Painfully, he came up onto one knee and scanned the landing pad. Not a single square metre of the surface had been left untouched by the explosion, the pristine white turned to scorched black. Flames licked the hardpan and fragments of debris were scattered all about. Some were just about recognisable as parts of the tau lander, while others, Sarik guessed, belonged to the smaller escort flyer, which must have been caught in the devastation. Most of the debris was so distorted it could have been anything.

  A curse sounded from nearby, and what Sarik had at first taken as a mass of debris rose up, revealing itself to be a battle-brother of the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter. The warrior’s formerly black and yellow armour was now simply black, its every surface caked in dust and debris. The Scythe reached up and unlocked the catches at his neck, removing his helmet. His face looked startlingly white compared to the condition of his armour.

  ‘Your orders, brother-sergeant?’ the brother said dryly.

  A burst of laughter rose unbidden to Sarik’s throat, and he grinned widely despite himself as he looked around. The rest of the battle-brothers that had charged at his side across the hardpan were slowly regaining their feet, bolters raised as they tracked back and forth across the scene of utter devastation.

  ‘My orders?’ said Sarik, wiping a gauntlet across his blackened face. ‘Inform crusade command,’ he said.

  ‘Operation Hydra primary objective secure.’

  When the top of the raised landing platform had been engulfed in flame, Lucian had thought that everything and everyone up there must surely have been slain. Battlegroup Arcadius had been closing on the wrecked bunker line when the dawn sky had been consumed by the destruction of the tau shuttle, and the hot shrapnel had rained down on bodies nowhere near as well protected as a Space Marine’s. Three riflemen had been injured by the shrapnel, one severely, and the tanks of the 2nd Armoured, engaging bunkers the Space Marines had bypassed, had been peppered with potentially lethal fragments.

  It was only as Lucian was climbing over the ruined fortifications that his vox-bead burst to life, the news not only of Sarik’s victory, but of his survival filling every channel. The 2nd Armoured had secured the minefield between the bunkers and the shield projectors, and Lucian had made his way to the landing pad.

  ‘A great victory, my friend,’ Lucian said to Sarik as the two stood upon the platform looking out at the aftermath of the destruction. ‘A truly great victory.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sarik replied, his gaze sweeping outwards past the still-burning hardpan to the city beyond. The sun was rising and the eastern skies were a blaze of luminescent turquoise, their tranquillity marred only by the scores of black, smoking columns rising kilometres into the air. ‘I only pray it achieves the desired outcome.’

  Lucian glanced upwards into the sky, thinking of the Exterminatus which might rain down upon Dal’yth Prime at any moment. Then he thought of his son, Korvane, who was up there now, on the same vessel as the murderously insane Inquisitor Grand.

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ said Lucian. ‘Gauge wants a conference, right away.’

  ‘Where?’ Sarik said.

  ‘Armak’s command vehicle,’ said Lucian. ‘Coming?’

  ‘Aye, I’m coming,’ said Sarik, turning his back on the wreckage-strewn landing pad and the burning city beyond.

  Sarik stood aside as Colonel Armak’s adjutants and subalterns tramped down the ramp of the Brimlock command Chimera, then ducked inside. The interior was cramped, especially for a Space Marine in full battle plate, and lit solely by the illumination of two-dozen flickering readouts.

  Sarik seated himself as best he could, and Lucian and Armak followed him in. The colonel of the Brimlock 2nd Armoured and Gauge’s chief officer on the surface hauled a lever on the bulkhead over the rear hatch, and the ramp rose up with a hiss of pneumatics. Only when the hatch had slammed shut and the vehicle’s overpressure systems sealed it entirely from the outside did the colonel speak.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Armak, then he paused as he looked towards Sarik. ‘Brother-sergeant, can I get you some water?’

  Sarik snorted in amusement, though he appreciated the sentiment. He nodded, and Armak tossed him a half-full canteen. Instead of drinking from the vessel, he sluiced it over his face, ridding himself of just a small portion of the grime and dried blood caking his features.

  Sarik set the canteen down on a nearby tacticae-station, and Armak reached across to a command terminal and entered a code into its keyboard. ‘I’m opening the most secure link I can, one normally reserved for Codes and Ciphers.’ The terminal lit up as reams of data script scrolled across its surface.

  Sarik and Lucian exchanged dark glances, the rogue trader raising his eyebrows to indicate
he had no idea what Armak was about.

  ‘How secure a link do you need?’ asked Sarik. ‘And why?’

  ‘You’ll see, brother-sergeant,’ said Armak. ‘One moment, please.’

  The terminal droned and chirped for another ten seconds, then it chimed to announce its system had achieved machine communion with another. All of the tacticae-stations in the Chimera’s passenger bay burst into life as one. Half of them showed General Gauge seated in a chamber equally as dark as the Chimera’s interior, while the other half showed Captain Rumann, standing at the command pulpit of the Fist of Light.

  The Iron Hands captain was entirely immobile, his augmetic features unreadable. General Gauge appeared gaunt and washed out, though his eyes still shone with the cold, steely light that was so familiar to Sarik and Lucian.

  ‘Veteran Sergeant Sarik,’ Gauge said. ‘Please accept my congratulations on your victory, and my commiserations on your losses.’

  ‘Both are welcomed,’ said Sarik. ‘Though neither is necessary.’

  Gauge nodded, expecting the response, then addressed Lucian. ‘Lord Gerrit. Your rallying of the ground forces in the aftermath of Cardinal Gurney’s… withdrawal, contributed greatly to the capture of Gel’bryn, and averted a rout of catastrophic proportions. Your deeds shall be remembered.’

  Lucian made a dismissive gesture with his hand, but Sarik knew better. The rogue trader was rightly proud of his actions.

  ‘Colonel Armak?’ said Gauge.

  ‘Sir?’ Armak replied, as if he had not expected to be addressed by his commanding officer.

  ‘You have been serving as brevet general. That rank is confirmed. Congratulations, General Armak.’

  The officer’s expression told of his genuine surprise, but Gauge continued before the officer could reply. ‘Now, to the real reason I have called this gathering.

  ‘The Damocles Gulf Crusade has reached a critical juncture. We are faced not with one enemy, but two. Though the tau have fallen back from Gel’bryn, a massive war fleet is in orbit already, and Grand might unleash his Exterminatus at any moment.’

  Gauge allowed his summary of the strategic situation to sink in, then continued. ‘I propose we muster all forces at Gel’bryn star port, and evacuate.’

  Sarik took a deep breath, the blood and sacrifice of the last few days flooding his mind. Then, Captain Rumann spoke for the first time, his machine-wrought voice sounding all the more metallic across the clipped and distorted channel.

  ‘No,’ Rumann stated coldly.

  General Gauge nodded sadly, evidently expecting the captain’s reaction. Then Lucian cut in. ‘Wait,’ the rogue trader said. ‘All of you, just wait. Wendall,’ Lucian used the general’s first name, ‘tell us the truth. How bad is it?’

  Gauge nodded his thanks towards Lucian. ‘When the tau were first encountered, by Lucian and other rogue traders, they were deemed a low-level threat. They were found only in small groups, coreward of the gulf, and usually acting as mercenaries or advisors to planetary governors who had… strayed, to a greater or lesser extent, from the rule of the Imperium. But that was uncovered as a ruse. They were acting as fifth columnists, infiltrating system after system in an effort to expand their sphere of influence. The crusade was raised to put that threat down. Every shred of intelligence and analysis available to us indicated they could hold no more than a handful of worlds. When they were first catalogued, millennia ago, they were no more than over-evolved dromedaries with no technology more advanced than sharp sticks.’

  Gauge let that hang for a moment, then continued grimly. ‘Yet here they are, in control of an entire star cluster, possessed of a substantial fleet capable of interstellar travel, unheard-of tech, and weaponry that, frankly, outguns most of our own.’

  ‘Sedition,’ Captain Rumann said flatly. ‘No inferior xenos can stand before us…’

  ‘But that’s it!’ interjected Lucian. ‘Quite clearly, the tau are not inferior, and they are standing against us.’

  ‘We’ve given them a bloody nose,’ said General Gauge, smiling wryly at his unintentionally ironic turn of phrase. ‘But their reinforce­ments are here already, and despite previous promises, ours are not. We pull out now, or we spend the rest of our lives as their prisoners.’

  ‘No Astartes will allow that to happen, general,’ said Sarik. ‘As well you know.’

  ‘We all know you’ll never surrender,’ said Lucian. ‘But is it not true that all your doctrines teach that futile expenditure of life is as great a sin as surrender?’

  ‘Do not presume to preach the Codex Astartes to us, rogue trader,’ Captain Rumann growled. The captain’s anger was expressed as much by distortion and feedback as by any change in his mechanical voice patterns.

  Sarik could no longer contain his annoyance. ‘Let him speak.’

  ‘What?’ said Captain Rumann.

  ‘Lucian is correct,’ said Sarik. ‘Our doctrine states that a tactical redeployment to muster for further action is preferable to a hollow last stand, if at all possible.’

  ‘You intend, Sergeant Sarik, to stand by them in-’

  ‘I do,’ growled Sarik, aware that the others appeared uncomfortable to be witnessing the confrontation. He was also aware, painfully aware, how divergent the views of his Chapter and the captain’s were. The White Scars’ methods of war were born of the noble savages who had made war across the steppes of Chogoris for millennia, masters of the lightning strike that was reflected in the Chapter’s very symbol, which he wore proudly on his shoulder. When facing a larger foe, the Chogorans would strike, then pull back, then strike again, until the enemy was bled to death one drop of blood at a time.

  Captain Rumann on the other hand was a product of the Iron Hands Chapter. Their determination and resilience was born of their own beliefs about the frailty of the flesh, which they replaced with iron by augmenting their bodies with bionic components. Within each burned a heart as fierce as molten iron. But now, the Iron Hands’ legendary determination was, to his mind, in danger of turning into blind stubbornness.

  ‘What sense is there, what honour is there, in the crusade overstretching itself and being cut off?’ said Sarik. ‘I propose that we do as the general says: evacuate, consolidate, and return with a war fleet capable of fulfilling the bold promises made at the outset of the crusade.

  ‘That way,’ Sarik concluded, ‘will we find honour.’

  A tense silence descended, disturbed only by background static churning from the vox-horns. Then Rumann answered. ‘I will not order my forces to retreat.’

  ‘Then order them to re-deploy, brother-captain,’ said Sarik. ‘A great victory may be won here. But not now, not like this.’

  Captain Rumann simply nodded.

  ‘Then we are in agreement on this?’ said General Gauge.

  ‘We still have the issue of the Exterminatus,’ said Lucian. ‘If that goes ahead, even after we’ve evacuated, all of this will have been for nothing.’

  ‘That, gentlemen,’ said Gauge, ‘is another matter, which forms the basis of the reason for Admiral Jellaqua’s absence from this conference.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Rumann.

  ‘Right now, I cannot,’ said Gauge. ‘Not even on this channel.’

  ‘Why can you not…?’ said Sarik, but his words trailed off as every pict screen at every station in the Chimera’s passenger bay flickered with static, went blank and then returned. The faces of General Gauge and Captain Rumann had been replaced by that of another.

  ‘Because,’ said Inquisitor Grand, ‘he is a traitor... As are you all.’

  In the hours after its capture, Gel’bryn star port came rapidly to resemble a makeshift Imperial Guard muster point. The 2nd Brimlock Armoured quickly established a cordon around the entire complex, their tanks and support vehicles acting as bunkers with their weapons trained on any approach a counter-attack might develop fro
m. The Rakarshan Rifles of Battlegroup Arcadius were the next regiment to move in. Major Subad dispatched the light infantry companies to secure the complex’s many buildings, towers and storage facilities, in case the tau had left their carnivore allies as stay-behinds.

  The Brimlock regiments poured into the complex after the Rakarshans had spread out, the flat expanse of ground beneath the raised landing platforms soon filling with grumbling armoured vehicles. Hydra flak tanks tracked their quad-barrelled autocannons back and forth across the skies, anticipating a tau air strike at any moment. Thankfully, the sacrifice made by the aircrews of the Imperial Navy at the very outset of Operation Hydra had severely punished the tau flyers, and none appeared.

  As the regimental provosts set about marshalling the huge numbers of men and machines flooding into the star port, attached tech-priests invaded the control towers. Ostensibly, the adepts of the Machine-God were tasked with fathoming the operation of the star port’s anti-grav cradles, which would speed up the landing and liftoff of the hundreds of troop transports that would soon be in operation immeasurably. It took the tech-priests less than an hour to master the anti-grav generators, and another for them to begin disassembling at least one of the devices for later study.

  The mighty god-machines of the Legio Thanataris dispersed to form a wide ring around the star port, their crews vigilant for signs of tau activity. Wherever they trod, the Titans caused as much damage as an Imperial Guard artillery bombardment, and they had soon cleared a rubble-strewn killing ground around the complex, over which they stood silent sentinel with weapon limbs scanning the horizon.

  The Space Marines spread out into the surrounding areas too, coordinating their actions with the princeps commanders of the Battle Titans. Sarik ordered his force to ensure that no enemy infantry were lurking in the ruins around the star port, and the squads soon drove off several groups of carnivores that attempted to ambush them amongst the shattered habs. These skirmishes were tiny in comparison to the scale of Operation Hydra, but Sarik ordered the savage aliens hunted down and slaughtered, so vile was their habit of eating the flesh of the fallen.