Shadowbreaker

by Warhammer 40K

  Karras pressed his left hand to the wall and muttered the Litany of Sight Beyond Sight, pushing his astral awareness through plasteel-reinforced rockcrete and into the echoing space beyond.

  Under a plasteel-beamed ceiling some eighty metres high, a great black form lay sleek and silent and still. No Epsilon. No sign of the two Space Marines who had betrayed Androcles and his brothers.

  All around it, however, were fire warriors in hard cover, guns at the ready. Soulless things, they barely registered in the warp at all. Karras could not read their mood, for they had no aura, but he could see how anxious they looked, how tense, primed for a fight.

  He read the name on the side of the ship, knowing already what it would say.

  Song of Scaldara.

  In every detail, she matched the picts Sigma had provided.

  In her hold, he detected the spirit signatures of human crew, but no tyranid or hybrid specimens. No active Geller field. He would have felt it pushing him back into his physical body.

  Satisfied, he pulled his hand from the hangar wall.

  ‘Epsilon’s ship,’ he told the others. ‘She’s not with it. There are crew inside, but no Navigator. No astropath.’

  ‘So we ignore it,’ said Solarion sharply. ‘We have four minutes till these skies are buzzing with Razorsharks. None of us will be flying out of here once that happens.’ He turned his head to the side and muttered, ‘I knew Shadowbreaker would be a bloody debacle.’

  Zeed was priming some remark when there was a sudden, ear-splitting ripple of charges detonating.

  The kill-team operators all reacted at once, whipping their heads around towards the landing field that was the source of the noise. There they saw black smoke rising in a ring some six hundred metres across. A series of small charges had blown, creating a long circular channel in the surface.

  As they watched, the rockcrete within this ring sank a full metre and split straight down the middle. Each half began to pull apart, creating a growing gulf between the two, turning the circle into a vast, gaping hole.

  The ground began to shake.

  ‘Copley,’ voxed Karras. ‘Eyes on Landing Field One. Are you seeing this?’

  Copley didn’t need the monitors. From the north-facing window of the control tower, she could see it happening with her own eyes.

  No wonder we couldn’t find them in the hangars. They were underground all along.

  The great, broad back of a t’au ship had started to emerge now. The platform on which it sat rose slowly to ground level. Even from here, she could see that its engines were already well into their warming-up procedure.

  T’au infantry surrounded it, along with clusters of crates, loaders and everything else the t’au needed to prep a ship for travel. She couldn’t see the far side of the field, blocked from view by the bulk of the ship, but it was a safe bet to assume there were just as many fire warriors there, too.

  ‘Triskel,’ she muttered. ‘Those fighters…’

  ‘Three and a half minutes out,’ replied the corporal.

  We’re screwed.

  Talon Six and Reaper One were still fighting armour and infantry on the western landing field. Heavily outnumbered, with Chyron more or less pinned down now, pressed into cover by missile and railgun fire behind the remains of the ruined hangar’s south wall.

  Sabre Squad and Spear Team Three were fighting a tide of foes spilling out of the last two unsearched hangars on the eastern field. They were facing heavy pressure there. With the emergence of the t’au ship, all the xenos that had previously been lying in wait must have been ordered to engage aggressively. Coldwave had decided this was the moment. A storm of bright fire blazed in all directions, las against plasma, bolter against pulse rounds.

  And north, right where the ship had appeared, were Talon Squad and Black Eagle.

  Already, the XV8s had turned their attention to the Thunderhawk. So, too, had several t’au infantry wielding man-portable launchers. Copley saw t’au missiles leap into the sky. Black Eagle launched countermeasures. Explosions blossomed in the air above the t’au spacecraft. Black Eagle roared out of range, then began to swing around, her turbo-laser glowing as it charged up.

  ‘Reapers One and Two, move to the north field immediately and target the engines of that ship. It must not get into the air, is that clear? This is where we stop them. For Emperor and honour. This is where it ends.’

  ‘Archangel,’ voxed Reaper One. ‘If I leave the Dreadnought now–’

  ‘Epsilon is priority one, Ventius. We have to stop that ship taking off. You have your orders.’

  Chyron’s voice broke in over the link. ‘The woman is right,’ he rumbled. ‘This fight is mine, flyboy. Stop the rogue inquisitor. She must not escape.’

  There was a pause. ‘Reaper One confirms. Breaking off to engage t’au ship.’

  ‘Reaper Two confirms.’

  ‘Black Eagle,’ voxed Copley. ‘Cripple that ship! Hit the engines!’

  From the tower, she saw Black Eagle swoop in, ignoring the hail of rounds that surged up to meet her. Her bolters were blazing, ripping into any exposed t’au they could get an angle on, but, just as she was ready to fire on the t’au ship’s port engine, something leapt into the sky.

  Something imposingly large, but so fast it was a blur.

  It landed on the back of the t’au ship, levelled a large, long-barrelled weapon at Black Eagle, and fired.

  Searing light scored the air, biting into the Thunderhawk’s armoured belly. She shook hard. Half a second later, her turbo-laser fired.

  A second beam of light slashed down at the t’au ship, thick and powerful and utterly deadly, but it smashed harmlessly into an invisible wall of force. Colours rippled outwards from the point of impact, revealing the overlapping twin hemispheres of the energy shields that had stopped the shot.

  Shield drones!

  Black Eagle pulled up and away, a long scar on her underside glowing angry red.

  The giant figure on the back of the t’au ship turned, tracking her. A dozen missiles burst from two shoulder-mounted pods and screamed after the Imperial craft.

  Chaff and flares burst into the air in Black Eagle’s wake. Eleven of the nimble little missiles burst into fire, but the twelfth, furthest behind, speared through the countermeasure cloud and tagged the Thunderhawk’s port-side turbine.

  Black Eagle staggered and leaned hard to the right, bleeding a trail of thick black smoke into the sky.

  ‘Blood of saints!’ cursed Copley. ‘To think they kept that in reserve until now…’

  Over the vox, she called out, ‘All task force units, be advised. The ship is being defended by an XV104. Do you understand? There’s a Riptide out there. Bet your souls that Coldwave is the pilot.’

  A Riptide! And just three minutes until the air was buzzing with t’au interceptors.

  All eyes in the control room were on her. She could feel them. Not the eyes of men giving up. Arcturus had crawled through the fire of impossible odds before. She could feel her men willing her to fight on, to stay on top of this despite how sick, how tired, they all felt.

  While we’re still breathing, we can still win. It’s not over.

  ‘Talon,’ she voxed. ‘You have to take out that Riptide. Fast! Black Eagle can kill those engines, but not while that damned battlesuit is in play.’

  Karras’ voice betrayed neither confidence nor doubt. ‘Moving to engage Riptide, Archangel. Reaper flight, buy us some room to move. Keep the rest off our backs if you can.’

  ‘Reaper One copies, Talon,’ voxed Ventius. ‘Moving to assist.’

  ‘Reaper Two likewise, Talon,’ said Graka.

  ‘Black Eagle coming around again,’ voxed Tarval. ‘Get me a clear shot and I’ll deliver, Talon.’

  ‘Major,’ said Triskel. ‘The first of the Razorshark reinforcements just passed the
twenty-kilometre line.’

  Damn it.

  Now that time was against them, now that they were down to minutes only, Coldwave had finally put his cards on the table, and they were all aces. All the pieces were in play. In a few minutes, the t’au would have total air superiority and that ship would be hauling its odious cargo skyward, leaving the Imperial assault force either dead or cut off with no hope of achieving the primary mission objective.

  We’ll die on a fail, thought Copley, and the thought burned in her, scorched her uncompromising, unrelenting warrior soul like a splash of acid.

  ‘Listen up, all of you,’ she snapped. ‘Leave your stations. Come here.’

  Eight of them left. They stood facing her, upright and ready despite the biological breakdown that was silently advancing inside each of them.

  Warriors all. But for the sporadic fits of coughing, no one would ever have known they were dying.

  My lads, she thought. My lions.

  Hard to express how proud she felt.

  This one had been a mess from the start. The Ultramarine had said it often enough, though the other Adeptus Astartes had paid him no mind. How could Sigma have underestimated Epsilon and Coldwave so badly?

  That didn’t matter now.

  She held the gaze of each of her men. They knew her only too well. They knew what was coming. She already saw the assent in their eyes.

  She grinned at them, knowing they needed no explanation. Drawing her bolt pistol from its holster, she said, ‘Let’s go then. Gear up, all of you.’

  They grinned back at her, eyes bright at the thought of taking the fight back out there and maybe dying like fighters should. Maybe even making some kind of difference, however small.

  Copley raised her pistol and shot out the control room windows.

  Fifteen seconds later, all nine were ziplining down to the rockcrete below. The moment they hit it, they were off at a run.

  Copley coughed a little as her feet pounded the rockcrete. She ignored the blood on the back of her hand where she’d raised it to her mouth.

  She’d have time. She didn’t need much.

  Up ahead, the noise of the t’au ship’s engines was gaining volume. All around it, an intense firefight flashed and blazed. She saw fire warriors being punched from their feet by powerful rounds, their wounds exploding a second later, blue gore spuming into the air.

  She saw others screaming, clutching wet blue stumps where a second before there had been an arm or leg. A black shadow slipped and spun among them, taking limbs and lives in a deadly dance.

  She saw walls of bright yellow fire gush forth from another black shape, pouring out in great sweeping arcs, reminding her of a child’s tale she’d heard, a story of a monster that breathed such flame.

  Where the fire touched, charred black figures flailed and toppled.

  Welcome, woman, the battle called out to her as the distance halved. This is right where you belong.

  Fifty-three

  Coldwave watched the beam from his ion accelerator cut into the Imperial gunship’s belly as it roared down at him.

  He marvelled that the craft had no energy shield, just dense armour plating. Idiot gue’la. Everything they built was so clumsy, so inelegant.

  He had been hoping to punch through to the gunship’s reactor, but he wasn’t familiar with this craft. His targeting was best guess. Apparently, the guess was off.

  The gunship’s dorsal laser unloaded its own deadly beam, targeting the port-side engine of the ship on which his Riptide stood. It was what he would have done, why he had placed his shield drones there.

  Everything hung on getting offworld. If he failed, all his sacrifices, all the stains he could never wash off, all the deaths, the horrors, the doubts, the guilt, the shame… all if it would mean nothing.

  But he wouldn’t lose.

  Couldn’t.

  Soon, he and the precious specimens would be far away from here. He just had to protect the ship until the engines were fully powered up and his air support arrived. He couldn’t risk leaving any foes to strike it out of the sky while it tried to climb. The ship was heavy and slow in atmosphere.

  The Razorsharks were almost on site.

  The gue’la were too late. They had scoured the hangars as expected, wasting their time while the trap continued to close around them. He had known they would, had planned it so.

  Still, their resilience surprised him. They ought to be dead already. He’d arrayed more than enough armour and infantry against them. Their survival made no sense. The inquisitor’s foul-smelling bodyguards had not been making idle boasts after all. They had warned him not to underestimate this Deathwatch to which they belonged. How he hated them, hated that they had been right.

  If not for the hidden underground hangar…

  Silently, he gave thanks to the earth caste engineers who had conceived of it, had built it on the chance that war with the Y’he would one day come to Tychonis. It had been planned as a way to get the ruling Aun safely offworld in the event of a ground war. The need for it had come sooner than expected, and under different circumstances.

  The human gunship’s powerful dorsal laser struck and was nullified. Waves of coruscating light pulsed across a bubble of protective force. Coldwave turned and, with a thought, locked his smart missile system onto the gunship’s fiery tail. So inefficient, the damned gue’la. The craft’s three turbines were putting out prodigious heat.

  His Riptide trembled as a salvo of missiles leapt from its launchers.

  He watched them tear through the sky. High on the rush of battle – it had been so long – he felt almost as if they were an extension of his own body, that he was reaching out an impossibly long arm to strike the gunship down, to swat it like a fly.

  His lip curled in anger as he watched the gunship defy that strike, causing his missiles to detonate short of target with a cloud of chaff and bright, hot flares.

  One, just one, got through. He saw it bite.

  As the gunship roared off, lilting to one side, wounded, Coldwave’s armour rattled, its shield absorbing a torrent of fire from the ground. Surprised, he spun and saw his forces around the spaceship engaged by bulky black-armoured forms rezzing out of some kind of stealth field.

  Cries rang out. Bodies dropped. His infantry were being cut down mercilessly.

  Space Marines!

  He turned to bring his own armament to bear but was again struck but a fusillade of explosive shells.

  His shield prevented any damage, but the impact shook him and sent red warning glyphs scrolling across his retinas.

  With a savage scowl on his blue-grey face, he engaged his jump jets and leapt from the back of the ship, landing on the rockcrete below with the cushioned smoothness and grace of cutting-edge t’au technology.

  To his immediate left, he saw a Space Marine with long, shining claws eviscerate three fire warriors in a sweeping blur.

  As fast as thought, he dashed towards it and swept the barrel of his ion accelerator in a whistling lateral arc that would break the Space Marine in half.

  He hit nothing. The Space Marine wasn’t there.

  On jump jets of its own, it had leapt onto the back of the t’au ship.

  Coldwave had been baited. The gunfire had brought him down to join the fight, leaving his drones open to close-range attacks.

  His jets flared. He boosted back up into the air.

  In the second that it took, the clawed Space Marine had already shredded one drone. Sparking wreckage was strewn across the port-side wing of the craft.

  As Coldwave locked eyes on him, the Space Marine bridged the gap to the other drone and thrust the claws of his right hand straight through it.

  There was a snap and a burst of blue sparks. The drone fell. Its lights flickered out.

  Both of the shield drones were down. The ship’s
engines were open to attack.

  Coldwave yelled his anger and denial and sent a missile roaring from his racks.

  The Space Marine was incredibly fast. The missile should have killed him, but he turned from destroying the drone just in time, thrusting up the claws of his left arm like a shield.

  The missile struck and exploded, blowing him straight off the wing, hammering him heavily onto the rockcrete below.

  Racing to finish the job, Coldwave thundered forward across the back of the ship and looked down. No sign of the Space Marine. He had vanished.

  Warning glyphs flashed.

  Another stream of rounds struck his battlesuit’s energy barrier and detonated fiercely. This time, the fire had come from the air.

  The gue’la gunship roared overhead. No, not the same one. This was smaller and faster, less heavily armed and armoured.

  His Riptide was out of missiles.

  As the ship arced away from him, Coldwave locked on with his ion accelerator. The weapon kicked hard, shaking the whole suit.

  The lance of deadly light missed the nimble Imperial craft by a finger’s width, blistering the stealth-coated starboard wing. The craft banked hard to the right, racing out of lethal range. Cursing, Coldwave turned his attention to a small force of humans and partially armoured Space Marines running towards the battle from the south-east.

  He snarled, targeted them, and loosed another blinding blast from his ion accelerator, atomising one of the humans and scoring a long black gouge in the rockcrete. The others dived or dropped to a knee. Some returned fire, but they were still too far out. He had no time to erase more of them. His shield was struck again, hard, this time from below and to the side.

  He saw a short, bulky Space Marine with an oversized weapon unleashing a furious barrage of rounds up at him.

  Coldwave flared his jets and leapt from the back of the ship once again. On his HUD, he saw that his Razorsharks were now just two minutes out. It was almost time for him to get inside. He opened a link and ordered the ship’s rear ramp to be lowered.