Dawn Of War II

by Chris Roberson

  'Don't get too excited about it,' Cyrus went on, 'because, as I say, this isn't an ideal universe. Our munitions were already strained after our action against the tyranid on Typhon Primaris, and we've got barely enough hellfire rounds to outfit the Blood Ravens on the ground. But even if we did have the rounds to spare, we wouldn't be able to adapt them for use in your autoguns as thrown slugs.'

  The expressions on the soldiers' faces showed that the momentary optimism they'd shared was quickly fading.

  'Most of you are armed with lasguns. Standard M-G short pattern models, looks like. Now, a single blast from a lasgun isn't likely to do much damage to a tyranid's shell, but pour enough massed fire on and eventually it'll punch through. Any heavy weaponry you've got will just make matters that much simpler. Of course, you've got to know where to direct your fire.'

  Cyrus paused, casting his glance over the assembled soldiers.

  'The Adeptus Astartes have developed whole libraries full of tactics and strategies for dealing with tyranids, but in the end it all boils down to one simple rule: shoot the big ones. Most of the rank and file of a tyranid army are mindless drones, controlled by the bigger brains of the larger creatures. If you can survive long enough to put down one of the big brains, you'll stand a much better chance of staying alive to keep shooting. Once the brain beasts are down, the rest of them will be striking out blindly, without reason or instinct, and are as likely to turn on each other as on you. Pick them off as you can, but always try to keep your distance. Tyranids of all kinds are deadly in close combat, so you're best advised to employ ranged attacks from a safe distance whenever possible.'

  The sergeant looked from one side of the room to the other, to see if his words had sunk in.

  'Now, are there any questions or requests for clarification?' A dozen hands shot up.

  Cyrus sighed. After decade upon decade of training neophytes of the Blood Ravens Chapter, who took years to grasp the essentials of Codex combat doctrine, he should have expected no better of planet-based infantry. They'd had little experience with anything more threatening than gangers and the occasional riot. How could they be expected to take on board all that a xenos threat like the tyranid entailed? He resisted the urge to find their requests for information a nuisance. After all, every bit of information they absorbed only improved the chances of any of them surviving the first few minutes of their initial encounter with a tyranid.

  'Very well,' Cyrus said, as patiently as he could manage, 'let's take it again from the beginning…'

  THE SUN HAD disappeared behind the trees to the west, and Sergeant Aramus and the rest of Third Squad moved through the garden zone in the deepening twilight. It had been early morning when they'd unloaded from the Thunderhawk, and in the time since the gunship had lifted off once more they'd covered more than two-thirds of the sprawling greenery, a miniature and well-manicured forest large enough to hide a hundred armoured tanks. So far they'd encountered only foliage and the innumerable gardening servitors which kept the greens meticulously maintained, with no sign yet of the tyranid zoanthropes they'd come in search of. But there was ample evidence of the tyranid presence, for all of that.

  'There's another one,' Brother Cirrac said, raising his bolter.

  'Shoot it down,' Aramus ordered, and kept moving through the gloom as Cirrac's bolter spat death at the tiny furred creature.

  Any animal life native to Meridian had long gone extinct, centuries or millennia before when the Imperium of Man first colonized the planet. But the high-hab nobles who occasionally visited the garden zones liked the illusion of nature that the trees and hedges provided, which was improved by the introduction of various birds, mammals, lizards, amphibians, and fish, that could have been found in a more pristine and less despoiled world. These had been imported from other worlds at considerable cost, and stocked in the garden zones as ornaments to the greenery.

  As they'd progressed through the zone, Aramus's squad had found increasing numbers of birds and small mammals who exhibited all the symptoms of advanced mycetic poisoning, either clinging with their last tenacious strength to the branches overhead or already lying sprawled on the garden paths underfoot. And many of the trees and hedges themselves, too, were in advanced stages of mycetic infestation, and here and there the native greenery had already been supplanted by xenos interlopers - loathsome red creepers, clinging mosses, grasping alien fronds. As they moved ever deeper into the garden, the greens had given way to alien hues - sickly yellows and raw-wound reds.

  Aramus remembered visiting a garden zone like this one when he had still been a boy, at his parents' side. With his hazy memory of those childhood days, he couldn't recall whether this was the same garden zone, or whether it was another that was as much like this as to be identical. But even so, he recalled the sight of the deep, lush greenery, could remember the scent of the myriad living things all around them. It had been the first time that Aramus had seen more than a handful of living plants in a single place, much less surrounding him on all sides, and it had felt at that young age as though he'd stepped from the real world he knew into some otherworldly existence.

  Though he'd known that the garden extended only so far in any direction, bounded by high, impassable walls of adamantium and ferrocrete, in the shaded seclusion of a small clearing ringed by mighty oaks he could easily imagine himself in some forest primeval from the dawn of time. Might primitive warriors, from an age before mankind ever ventured past the confines of Holy Terra's gravity well, lurk somewhere just beyond the next line of trees, ready to fight any monsters that lurked in the shadows? If he just closed his eyes, the young Aramus had imagined, he might well be able to will himself back to such a wild and reckless time, there to see adventure, excitement, and glory.

  Now, with the benefit of age and experience, to say nothing of two decades' service to Chapter and Emperor, Aramus found cause to regret those childhood fantasies. There were not primitive warriors from ancient Terra beyond the trees ahead, perhaps, but there were inhuman creatures who eclipsed the tepid monsters of his childish imaginings.

  Inhuman creatures bent on the destruction of all life on the world, and with only Aramus and the other Blood Ravens to stand in their way.

  The sergeant's reveries were interrupted by a ping from his hand-held auspex.

  There was movement ahead. And if its mass was any indication, it was no gardening servitor or poisoned squirrel.

  'Tighten up,' Aramus voxed to the squad, crouching low. As the others clustered around him, the sergeant pointed to the stand of trees beyond which his auspex had detected motion. 'Zach, scout ahead, but try to keep out of sight.'

  The battle-brother flashed his acknowledgement and then crept forward, keeping low to the ground. He stopped a few metres from the stand of trees.

  'I've got visual,' he voxed back.

  Aramus nodded, and tucked his auspex away. 'What can you see?'

  'It's difficult to tell through the trees,' Zach answered, 'but one thing's for sure. They're tyranid.'

  'Acknowledged,' Aramus answered. He rose up from his crouch, still bent low to the ground. 'You heard him, squad. Either these are the zoanthropes we're after, or they're the tyranids we've got to tear through before we get to them. Either way, here's what we're going to do. Voire and Siddig, flank left. Cirrac and Isek, flank right. Zach, you're with me right up the middle. On my mark break through the trees and open fire on anything that moves. Copy?'

  Five runes flashed green in agreement. 'Then let's move out.'

  As one, the six Blood Ravens crashed through the trees, bolters raised and ready to fire.

  There, in the midst of a small clearing, just like the one in which the young Aramus had dreamt of adventure and glory all those years before, hovered a trio of monsters. Their heads were oversized, monstrously large, their bodies diminutive and withered underneath, and rather than standing upon leg or limb, they levitated in midair, testament to their psychic prowess. The three tyranids faced one another, their ey
eless gaze directed within, and they seemed to take no notice of the interloping Space Marines.

  Even an individual with a low psychic quotient like Aramus could not fail to detect the buzz of psyker activity crackling all around them. Perhaps it was this background din, beyond the edge of awareness, that blunted his normally keen strategic mind. For in the instant it took for the squad to crash through the trees, it didn't once occur to him to wonder - if this is the synapse vanguard of the invasion force, then where are their guards?

  It was only as his feet struck the mutated, otherworldly grass that lined the clearing like a scarlet rug and he raised his bolter to fire upon the zoanthropes that the question occurred to him, and by then it was too late.

  'Gaunts!' shouted Battle-Brother Isek as a brood of hormagaunts swarmed from out of the shadows towards them, all scything talons and ripping claws.

  As the hormagaunts leapt towards them in prodigious bounds, dozens upon dozens of the beasts propelled by their powerful hind limbs, Aramus raised his bolter and fired upon the nearest of the zoanthrope trio. 'Ignore the swarm!' he shouted to the others. 'We can't take them all, but if we put down the zoanthropes the gaunts will fall on each other.'

  It was a sound tactical decision, and Aramus knew it was the only choice they had, but even as he issued the orders he knew that it would mean sacrifice on their part. As the squad opened fire on the zoanthropes, targeting their oversized craniums and pumping round after round of hellfire bolts into the creatures, the gaunts swarmed over Battle-Brother Zach, the nearest of the Blood Ravens to the brood.

  Zach's dying screams of agony resounded in Aramus's helmet, booming over the vox-comms, but he didn't allow himself a moment for regret or remorse. This was no time for distraction.

  'Krak grenades, at will!' Aramus shouted. Still firing his bolter with one hand, quickly working his way through the magazine, he undipped a krak grenade from his waist and lobbed it overhand at the nearest zoanthrope.

  The krak grenade struck home, and in the next instant the thwump of the implosive charge sounded.

  Now Voire began to scream as the gaunts ran him down, scything claws tearing at his ceramite power armour, slashing it to pieces. Voire's bolter spat death at the hormagaunts swarming over him, but for every one he hit there were three more behind, and their numbers simply overwhelmed him.

  Aramus continued to pour hellfire on the zoanthropes. To his left, Siddig concentrated fire on another of the synapse beasts, and on his right Cirrac and Isek concentrated their fire on the third.

  Another thwump followed, and a third, and a fourth, and then one of the trio began to list, like a sail in a heavy wind, tilting precariously to one side as it started drifting back down to earth. It was dying, but just wasn't dead yet.

  Isek howled in rage and pain as a talon broke clear through the ceramite of his power armour, through his body, and out the other side, impaling him on a spar of chitin.

  As the first zoanthrope began to fall to earth, its psychic contact with its siblings and with the fleet hive mind already severed, Aramus joined Siddig in assaulting the zoanthrope on the left. A final krak grenade lobbed by Cirrac imploded on the ventral side of the other zoanthrope's head, and it began to spin in midair in a final death spiral, ichor spraying in all directions as it pinwheeled around.

  The movements of the hormagaunts became more sluggish, more confused, and as they crawled over the still twitching bodies of the fallen Blood Ravens, advancing on the three Blood Ravens still standing, the monsters began to snap at one another with their powerful jaws, josding for position.

  The head of the third and final zoanthrope finally exploded like an erupting volcano, the cumulative effect of the krak grenades augmented by the countless hellfire rounds that Aramus and Siddig had poured into it.

  As the last of the synapse beasts fell to earth, the gaunts lost all sense of direction and purpose, and the vestigial instincts that remained to them - to fight, rend, and kill - took precedence. With their hive siblings the much closer targets than the remaining trio of Space Marines, the hormagaunts turned on one another, ripping and tearing each other to shreds.

  Aramus signalled the other two survivors to withdraw to beyond the treeline, making as little noise as possible. Best to let the mindless beasts dispose of one another, and then return for the fallen Blood Ravens.

  It had come at a heavy cost - the loss of half the surviving battle-brothers - but they had taken out the zoanthropes. Now, assuming these were the synapse creatures augmenting the shadow in the warp, and with them gone the Armageddon could established contact outside the Aurelia sub-sector, then the odds might soon change, and in the Blood Ravens' favour. If not…

  Aramus tried not to imagine the alternatives.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TECHMARINE MARTELLUS STOOD on the command deck, listening to the binary squeal of the servitors at their stations. He'd have preferred to be below decks in the enginarium, overseeing the maintenance and repair on the ship's mechanical systems, or better yet personally seeing to the holy Dreadnought assembly that waited below for the biological components that would make it whole, to the greater glory and honour of the Omnissiah. But with the strike cruiser Armageddon so short-handed, even more so now than when they had put out from Zalamis, Martellus had once more been dragged from his sacred duties and forced to the upper decks, there to take temporary command of the vessel while the rest of the Blood Ravens carried out their missions on the planet below.

  Martellus had been a battle-brother of the Blood Ravens before he had ever been selected as an apprentice by the Master of the Forge, had fought and bled along with his brethren before being sent to complete his studies with the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars. And while he had devoted his life in the long years since returning to the Chapter to ministering to the spirits of the machines which served the Blood Ravens, keeping weapons, armour, and equipment in full function, he was still a Space Marine for all of that, and there were times when the call to battle was all but impossible to resist. But Martellus served two masters - Chapter and Machine-God - and to abandon his responsibilities only to indulge himself in the clash and clamour of combat would do disservice to both.

  But if he couldn't, at the moment, throw himself into battle along with his brethren, and was denied the liberty to attend his duties in the enginarium, then it meant that he was at complete loose end, required to fulfill a role on board the Armageddon which suited neither his strengths nor his temperament. His was not to command, his was to serve. But while he commanded, those spirits he served were left unattended. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the machine spirit within the Dreadnought assembly crying out for attention.

  Martellus turned from the servitors who monitored and controlled the ship's environmental controls, his augmetic eyes glancing at the command dais which rose above the deck, and the captain's chair which stood high atop it. The chair, and the dais, would remain empty, so long as he was in command. Bad enough that he should be forced to linger on the command deck, but he was not about to compound the indignity by keeping as far away from the ship's controls and processes as the dais would demand. Better to remain down on the deck, near the servitors who kept the systems running. He had only to ignore the Chapter serfs who scurried back and forth, and he could lose himself for a moment in the chorus of binary squeals sounding from all sides.

  The Techmarine's concentration was interrupted by the arrival of Librarian Niven and Lexicanium Konan.

  'Techmarine Martellus,' Librarian Niven said as he approached, Konan following in his wake at a respectful distance. 'Has there been any word from the surface?'

  Martellus shook his head. 'Not since Sergeant Aramus voxed that they had found and eliminated the clutch of vanguard zoanthropes.' He paused, and then asked, 'Does the interference of the warp shadow persist? Should we notify the sergeant to continue the search for other vanguard creatures?'

  The corners of Niven's mouth tugged up in a slight
smile. 'That won't be necessary, techmarine.' He glanced over his shoulder at Lexicanium Konan, who stood behind him and a pace to the left. 'The effects of Aramus's action appear to have been sufficient. Only moments ago - working in concert to boost our capacities - the Lexicanium and I were able successfully to make contact with a Blood Ravens battlegroup.'

  Techmarine Martellus's augmetic eyes flashed excitedly. 'An entire battlegroup?'

  Niven nodded. 'The flagship is the Litany of Fury, under the command of Captain Gabriel Angelos of the Third Company.'

  Martellus considered the implications. The battle-barge Litany of Fury was home to the Blood Ravens' Third Company, commanded by Captain Angelos, as well as the Ninth, a reserve company composed mostly of Devastator squads and under the command of Captain Ulantus. Neither company was at full strength, given the recent actions on Tartarus and elsewhere, but even so two partial-strength companies of the Blood Ravens Chapter would be a welcome addition to the mere four squads currently fighting on Meridian, to say nothing of the tactical advantage offered by the battle-barge itself and the strike cruisers and other craft that would be following in its wake.

  'Then Meridian is not lost, after all,' Martellus said.

  Here the smile on Librarian Niven's face began to fade, and he shook his head slightly. 'It is far too soon to celebrate our victory, I'm afraid,' he said. 'Captain Angelos replies that he will make best speed to the Meridian system, but that his battle-group is a considerable distance from the Aurelia sub-sector. Her Navigators estimate a journey of weeks, perhaps even longer.'

  'Weeks?' Techmarine Martellus repeated.

  Niven nodded. 'If Meridian is to survive, then our forces on the ground must hold the line in a delaying action until Captain Angelos and his forces can arrive.'