Shadowbreaker

by Warhammer 40K

  Atop the tank, Karras raised his bolter to his shoulder and put two silenced rounds in them, one in each skull.

  ‘Report!’ he voxed to the others.

  ‘Talon Two, targets eliminated,’ replied Rauth.

  The others called in their kills.

  Karras turned towards the main entrance and saw an access panel on the wall just right of it. Unbidden, his mind threw up a memory – Morant hacking the vator back at Alel a Tarag while he, Rauth and Carland held off the retaliating t’au.

  Sorrow hit him like a chill gust of wind.

  Copley’s people had been irradiated in the aftermath of Coldwave’s nuclear blast. They’d had to go outside the Stormravens to restore systems. Soon, they’d be dropping with Scimitar Squad for the main assault, but each of the Arcturus troopers was already beginning to suffer the first signs.

  This would be their last mission.

  Let it bring them some honour, at least.

  He shook himself clear of such thoughts. It was not the time.

  ‘Ghost. One of those bodies is a Fireblade. He’ll have an access card on him. Get it!’

  Zeed found the t’au officer quickly, easy to distinguish by his white cloak, black braid and the honour markings on his armour. The access card was around his neck, a disc of flexible polymer with t’au glyphs on it. Zeed ripped it free and tossed it to Karras, who was already over by the access panel.

  ‘Watcher, Prophet, Omni, back up on the walkway, ready to breach those emergency exits. Novas. Flash and clear when I give the go.’

  Confirmation came back from all three, then the word that each was in position, charges placed, ready to breach.

  Karras gestured over to Zeed, who got into place. They’d crack the front door and go in together.

  ‘Same for us,’ said Karras. ‘One nova each. Flash and clear. Pistol first, understood?’

  Zeed mag-locked his claws to his cuisses and drew his bolt pistol.

  Karras swiped the card. T’au glyphs flashed on the access panel’s screen.

  The door began to crack open. Halfway open now.

  He gave the order.

  From the walkway above, the crump of breaching charges could be heard.

  He and Zeed tossed their nova grenades.

  Inside the building, twin flashes of blinding light exploded, each with a concussive bang. As soon as the flashes were over, Karras and Zeed were in, weapons coughing, ending the lives of every t’au they laid eyes on. Squat, stocky bodies in earth caste uniforms went down, skulls and ribcages punched apart.

  From the upper level, voices sounded over the vox.

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘All clear, Scholar.’

  Karras gestured to Zeed and together they moved further into the building.

  ‘Good work, Talon,’ voxed the Death Spectre. ‘Let’s shut this place down so the real work can start. Keep it tight and check your corners. There may be more of them. None gets out alive. Omni, you’re on demolitions. Get it done.’

  ‘With pleasure, Alpha,’ the Imperial Fist voxed back.

  Six minutes later, primary power for the whole of Kurdiza went down. The missile and railgun towers encircling the spaceport went dead, targeting AIs offline, holo-displays suddenly blank.

  Karras ascended to the walkway outside and switched the vox over to the operational command channel. ‘Talon Alpha to Scimitar Alpha. All dark as ordered. Bring the light.’

  ‘Don’t get cocky, Talon,’ snapped Broden through a crackle of static. ‘Just get your kill-team to the next objective on time.’

  ‘Confirmed, Scimitar. Try not to get killed before we arrive. Talon, out.’

  Karras smiled to himself, imagining Broden’s expression. The Black Templar was probably cursing him to the deepest pits of the warp right about now.

  Good.

  The Death Spectre swung his plated legs over the railing of the walkway and dropped to the ground, fracturing rockcrete when he hit. He walked around to the front to reunite with the rest of the squad.

  ‘They’ll be coming,’ said Solarion. ‘TX4s, first. Piranhas.’

  Voss nodded. ‘Fastest response on the ground. If we go by the rooftops, we’ll be spotted from the air as the sun comes up. Any fighters on site will be taking to the air as we speak.’

  ‘We’ll stay low,’ said Karras, leading them out through the station’s main gate. ‘Stick to the streets where our stealth systems still give us some edge. They’ll be bringing out armour and infantry in force, setting up at least one defensive perimeter around the spaceport landing fields. We need to move fast, but I want us undetected for as long as possible. Keep to the shadows and follow me.’

  Forty-five

  In the spaceport’s air control centre, located at the top of the tower overlooking all three of the broad circular landing fields, members of the fire and earth castes alike were in a frenzy. The soldiers were relaying information to Commander Coldwave and taking orders. The techs were desperately trying to switch facility systems over to secondary power sources as quickly as possible. Local backup generators couldn’t power the defences. They were too low-yield.

  The most immediate solution was to draw from the cold fusion station at Ki’tekh, three hundred kilometres to the west-south-west. It would take around eleven minutes. Fast, but not nearly fast enough.

  Damage reports were flooding in. A massive fire was spreading out of control near the north-east wall. The geothermal power station just west of there was a ruin, no chance of repair. Dozens lay dead inside and around it.

  At the seven-minute mark, word of air strikes came in.

  By the time the spaceport’s main systems did come back online, Black Eagle and the three Stormravens of Reaper flight had laid waste to ninety per cent of the perimeter anti-air systems.

  The last minutes of darkness before dawn were bright with flame.

  In the hangar where he waited impatiently to depart, Coldwave took a calming breath, centred himself and studied the view on the holo-monitor.

  Earth caste and fire warriors bustled around him like agitated bees, racing to finish take-off preparations or ready their gear for combat.

  The visual feed showed him a horizon ablaze.

  He opened a comm-channel to the Fireblades on site and his senior support staff and said, ‘Initiate Bastion protocols. Ready yourselves for battle. By the glory of the Greater Good and the will of the Aun, we will show them what it means to put one’s hand in the daggerhead’s jaws.’

  The inquisitor was overseeing the loading of her personal cargo while her two bodyguards loaded and primed their ugly, brutish weapons. The Space Marines glanced up when he stopped in front of them. The inquisitor did not look his way. She continued her work, but he knew she had registered him in her peripheral vision.

  ‘Soon, I will go to meet your Deathwatch in battle,’ he told the Space Marines. ‘They will not survive it.’

  He was defiant.

  The one called Lucianos grinned.

  Kabannen kept loading rounds into a bolt pistol magazine as he said, ‘Better for all were you to stay on the ship with m’lady, shas’o. Who will speak your words to the Ethereal Council if you lie dead on these landing fields?’

  ‘But I will not die,’ said Coldwave. ‘Instead, I will show you why the t’au need fear no one. Our destiny cannot be denied.’

  Kabannen shrugged. ‘Grand words, blue-skin. But should the killing of Talon Squad prove beyond you, let me put your mind at ease. They may get through you, but they will not get through us. M’lady will get off-world and deliver the data and proposals to your Ethereal High Council. Again I say, better you stay back from the fight and live to accompany her.’

  ‘My survival is not in doubt,’ snapped Coldwave. He whirled to face Epsilon, his joy at the thought of the coming bat
tle robbed somewhat by his anger at the insolence and arrogance of her murderous guards.

  ‘Inquisitor,’ he barked. ‘Caution your Space Marines. All three of you yet draw breath only through my good graces and the good graces of the Aun. Know that even our patience and tolerance have their limits. Your protectors tread perilously close to them.’

  Epsilon threw Kabannen a mildly chastising glance, then turned her attention to Coldwave. ‘I will watch the battle with great interest, honoured hunter. I have no doubt you will be victorious this day. We shall soon be bound for T’au, and the salvation of both your people and mine will be assured. Fight well, and may the winds favour you.’

  This last struck him, for it was an ancient thing said among plains hunters before the t’au had yet become a unified race. Staying downwind of prey was critical. Winds that changed suddenly could ruin a hunt.

  She knows far more about us than I thought. Truly, we must kill her as soon as is prudent. Until then, ever more caution. We have climbed into our cots with a serpent most poisonous.

  Her words stayed with him as he stormed away, but they passed from his mind entirely as he started climbing the metal stairs that led to his battlesuit’s cockpit.

  I am ready, hunter, his battlesuit seemed to sing to him as he climbed inside. I have waited for this.

  His techs plugged in his neural connectors and pilot-support systems, then sealed him in. Holo-displays and neuro-optical projections flickered to life all around him. He gave himself over to fusing his mind with the advanced AI support systems and felt an overwhelming sense of power, almost indescribable, flood his mind and body.

  He felt uplifted, transformed.

  Many battlesuit pilots became hopelessly addicted to that feeling. For some, disconnecting, living outside them, caused an acute form of depression. Coldwave had known it once in his first days of piloting an XV8. He had hated the feeling of inadequacy, of weakness, whenever separated from the machine.

  Had he not soon overcome it, he would never have risen to shas’o.

  It had not affected him since, but still, there was no feeling quite like engaging a foe in a battlesuit. Nothing even close. It had been so long. He almost felt grateful to the intruders.

  Today would be a great day. Within the next hour, he would feel more alive than in all the years since he and his people had defeated the Tall Ones and rescued this pitiful world.

  He tested the link’s neural response times. Glyph readouts told of speeds even better than expected.

  The earth caste had been working hard. His kills today would honour their efforts.

  ‘Kabannen,’ said the inquisitor.

  The Iron Hands veteran looked over at her. ‘M’lady?’

  ‘I have told you before. I will not repeat myself again – cease your antagonising of the shas’o. Our accord is tenuous enough. Press him like that again and he will likely try to kill you. Both of you.’

  ‘He will find that beyond him, I assure you,’ grunted Kabannen.

  ‘You underestimate him, Space Marine,’ replied Epsilon angrily. ‘Perhaps today he will show you the error of that. In any case, his patronage is critical. You know what we fight for. You know what we seek and what it could mean.’

  Kabannen stopped what he was doing and turned his head to face her. ‘I am Adeptus Astartes, lady. A sworn xenos killer. I have allied myself to your cause, turned brother Space Marines over to a xenos race I detest, and do not murder them though my honour and oaths demand it. All of this I have done because I understand the possibilities, the promise. You confided in us because you knew, you knew, that only Lucianos and I would understand, that we alone had the vision to go to the necessary extremes.’

  She held his gaze, accustomed to feeling dominant, in control.

  But not this time. This time, she faltered. She had seen something unexpected in the Iron Hand’s usually unreadable face.

  Commitment. Absolute and fierce.

  She realised then that he was every bit as invested as she. He had already paid a high personal price to come this far. Lucianos, too.

  ‘I am a Space Marine, m’lady,’ Khor Kabannen rumbled as he resumed loading and oiling his weapons. ‘And I must find Al Rashaq for the sake of all Space Marines.’

  Especially those I have betrayed for it.

  Forty-six

  Black Eagle cut across the sky above Kurdiza, upper and lower holds filled with hardened warriors, every last one eager to get groundside and into the fight.

  Broden, in the front hold, cast an eye over his kill-team, all in full plate, armed to the teeth, Deathwatch iconography gleaming in the light of the red lumes that signalled an imminent drop.

  The Thunderhawk’s dorsal-mounted turbo-laser destructor had already made rubble and slag of the spaceport’s deadly perimeter defence towers. Not alone, of course. The time taken for that would have seen power restored too soon. Black Eagle would have been cut from the sky. The Stormravens had done their part, sharing the work.

  Though the t’au had power again, it was too late to matter. The spaceport’s static defences were out of the equation, a critical element of the operation achieved.

  Not quite freedom of the skies, though.

  The moment the xenos recognised that they were under attack, air caste fighter pilots had been ordered out onto runways. Several AX3 Razorsharks were now in the air, racing to engage. But engage what? The Deathwatch gunships were far from standard. Stealth fields, radar absorbing plate, heat signature dampers, electronic countermeasures – all blessings of the Machine Cult of Mars. There was nothing on t’au scanners to lock onto. The air caste would need a visual in order to engage.

  ‘Time until sunrise?’ Broden voxed his pilot, Tarval.

  ‘Sixteen minutes, m’lord. The sky is lightening already.’

  We’ll be on the ground in three, thought the Black Templar. We just needed darkness to get us in.

  ‘Any sign of those fighters?’

  ‘Auspex returns show three running defensive sweep patterns over the airfields, m’lord. Correction, one of them just broke away, heading east.’

  East.

  Reaper Three was flying in to the LZ on that vector, the Dreadnought, Chyron, in its grapples and Spear Team Three in its hold, a third of Major Copley’s special forces operators. Broden needed the Lamenter on the ground, wreaking havoc. He couldn’t afford for Reaper Three to be knocked out of the sky.

  Reaper Three’s pilot, Dargen, would have noted the Razorshark breaking off towards him. Mostly likely, the t’au were tracking him visually from the ground, following the passage of his glowing jets across the sky. The Razorshark wouldn’t get a lock. It would need to get close and target the Stormraven manually.

  Still, its speed and the power of its weaponry presented a problem.

  Broden opened a link to Reaper flight. ‘Scimitar Alpha to all Stormravens. Reapers One and Two are to support Reaper Three. Take down that shark and escort to the drop zone. Once the Dreadnought and Spear Team Three are on the ground, provide close support. Confirm orders.’

  The Reaper pilots confirmed.

  Broden addressed Tarval again. ‘Time to drop site?’

  ‘One minute forty seconds, m’lord,’ reported the Thunderhawk pilot.

  ‘Be ready. We’re about to take a lot of heat from the ground. I want all weapons systems brought to bear.’

  ‘Always ready, m’lord. They made me that way.’

  Broden grunted. At first, he’d been offended that a Thunderhawk, especially the one assigned to carry him, was to be piloted by a non-Adeptus Astartes. Outside the Deathwatch, it was unheard of. To the Ordo Xenos, however, Space Marine assets were too important to leave in a cockpit when they were most needed on the ground. The ordo instead recruited decorated veterans from the Imperial Navy, luring them in with the promise of unparalleled aircraft, technological reso
urces, honour and glory. With a price, of course. Those that accepted were modified. They became… What? Man-machines, Broden supposed. Like servitors in some ways, but not quite. They became the living brains of their aircraft, fused with them permanently, the airframe becoming their body, responding to their thoughts the way his power armour responded to his.

  He still wasn’t sure he approved, but he had seen the results. He could not doubt their effectiveness.

  ‘Scimitar,’ he barked at the battle-brothers in front of him. ‘Final weapon checks and litanies. Make your obeisance. Bless your weapons. And bring honour to our name this day!’

  ‘For honour and the Emperor,’ bellowed the kill-team in unison.

  Valo, as always, bowed his head and added a brief oath to the Omnissiah. Not something Broden liked, but the rest of Scimitar didn’t see the God-Emperor quite as he did. They did not consider him truly divine in the religious sense. Blind, they were, and the teachings of their Chapter woefully incomplete, but forgiving their ignorance was the only way to make things work. He had come to terms with that on his first deployment as Alpha.

  As they were offering obeisance to their wargear, he opened a channel to the upper hold.

  ‘Spear Teams One and Two,’ he voxed, addressing Copley’s own squad and the squad assigned to her second, Captain Vyggs. ‘Ninety seconds till drop. Have your people ready, Archangel. I will personally punish any slips. The Deathwatch demands excellence of those who deploy in support of it. Your people may be sickened, weakened, but they have a duty to fulfil. Be glad of this chance. Today will be your last shot at glory in the God-Emperor’s name. A last chance to elevate your souls for all eternity to come. Do not squander it.’

  In the upper hold, Copley could barely contain her anger at his words. Yes, her people were dying, but they knew it well enough. They did not need it spelled out for them by one who was immune to the very thing that was killing them.

  Back at Chatha na Hadik, her stormtroopers had taken powerful meds to counteract the worst of the symptoms during this final operation, but if any of them lived through this, it would not be for very long. Days at most.