“I really must—”
“I know, son,” Lucian interrupted, as hidden gears engaged and the portal ground slowly upwards. “I know. But this is something I have to do.”
“Something you want to do,” said Korvane, as the pair stepped through the open portal and into the darkness beyond. As they passed over the threshold, hidden mechanisms detected their presence, confirmed their identity, and activated the lumens. The darkness fled as row upon row of arms and armour were illuminated.
“And what if I do?” Lucian countered, crossing to a row of armoured suits as he spoke. “You were raised in the court, son, and I’m glad of it, for the skills you amassed there have served us well. Many of our battles of late have been fought with words, and others with lance battery and broadside. But sometimes, our battles must be fought in the traditional manner. Up close, and personal.”
“And General Gauge,” said Korvane. “He agrees to this?”
“That he does, Korvane,” said Lucian. “Gauge is a veteran of more battles even than Sergeant Sarik. He understands the value of one of our faction getting involved, of being seen to get involved, at the front line. I think he may be a little jealous, actually…”
“But what will it actually achieve?” Korvane replied. “What good will this do our cause on the council?”
“Much,” said Lucian, selecting a suit of ancient power armour. Its scarred and pitted surface was polished to a sheen that reflected the overhead lights. “Grand and his lap dog cardinal would have us exterminate the tau out of hand. They even state they have the means to do so, though I have yet to see evidence that any of the crusade’s vessels is carrying anything like a virus bomb. If the landings go well, that position will become less tenable, and we can steer events to our own ends.”
“Which are?” Korvane pressed.
“You know as well as I, son,” said Lucian. “Whatever happens, however the crusade is concluded, we must come out of it in the ascendant. The concessions we could win, the charters we could earn… Emperor, if we play this right, Korvane, we could end up as viceroys of this entire region!”
When Korvane did not respond, Lucian turned from his examination of the suit of power armour to face his son. “What?” he said.
“Has it not occurred to you, father,” Korvane said darkly, “that you might not return from this grand adventure?”
Lucian sighed, placing a hand upon his son’s shoulder. It certainly had occurred to him.
“Son,” said Lucian. “Before I depart for the surface, I have something for you. Just in case.”
Korvane turned his back on his father, but Lucian pressed on regardless. He raised his hand, palm upwards, to reveal a simple ring in its centre.
“You must take this,” said Lucian.
Korvane looked at the glinting ring held out before him. “What is it?”
“It is the most valuable thing on this ship.”
When Korvane appeared not to understand, Lucian continued. “It’s a gene-keyed cipher bearer. The crystal contains the access codes for the Clan Arcadius stasis vaults.”
“On Terra?” Korvane said, the full import of Lucian’s words slowly dawning on him. “The warrant?”
“Indeed, son,” said Lucian. “Should I fall upon Dal’yth Prime, it’s yours, all of it. But not,” he raised his hand to Korvane, “without this.”
For a long moment, Lucian thought his son would refuse the ring. After a pause, Korvane reached out and with obvious trepidation, gently took it.
“It was to be Brielle’s,” said Lucian. “But when I married your mother you become my son.” He nodded towards the ring in Korvane’s hand. “And that became your birthright.”
Korvane’s expression darkened at the mention of his stepsister’s name. Korvane’s entering the clan had displaced Brielle, who was Lucian’s child from his first marriage, from her position as heir, and she had hated him ever since. Korvane still bore painful scars from a nigh catastrophic accident that had befallen his vessel, an accident which he, if not Lucian, believed to have been her last deed before she disappeared at the outset of the Damocles Gulf Crusade. As Lucian regarded his son’s face, a new resolve appeared in his eyes, and he placed the ring upon a finger.
“While I’m gone, you will watch my seat on the council,” said Lucian. “Do you understand?”
Korvane nodded, and Lucian continued. “There are three empty seats that must be filled. They must be filled with men sympathetic to our cause, not to Grand and Gurney’s. This is your battle, which you must fight here, while I fight below. Are we agreed?”
“We are agreed,” Korvane replied solemnly. “I shall not let you down, father.”
“Good,” said Lucian, relieved that he had done what he must. “Now, you can help me into this power armour.”
Chapter Three
Sarik’s command Rhino ground forwards as he led the Space Marine assault column across the inland plain west of the landing zone. Having boarded transports landed from orbit, the crusade’s Space Marines had divided themselves into several groups, each approximately the size of a conventional company. Each group had then linked up with a pair of Warhounds. The spearheads would each advance along a separate axis, pushing hard and fast into enemy territory, and engaging and destroying any tau forces they encountered. In the unlikely event that the spearheads encountered resistance they could not simply smash aside, they would bypass it, leaving it for the heavier units behind them to deal with.
Throwing back the hatch of the Rhino armoured carrier, Sarik’s ears were assaulted by the deafening tread of the nearby Warhound Titan. The huge bulk of the mighty war machine blocked out much of the dawn sky above. Sarik reminded himself that the Warhounds were but the lightest of Titans, and that their compatriots were at least twice as large again.
Shaking the tail of his long topknot out of his eyes, Sarik scanned the vista ahead. The land was still arid, but the column had left the majority of the towering rock mesas behind them. The column was following the tau road network, which led west directly towards their target, the city of Gel’bryn. The air was fresh, and Sarik’s genetically enhanced senses could taste in it the underlying taint of pollutants unleashed into the atmosphere by the huge landing operation.
“Driver!” Sarik bellowed over the noise of the nearby Titan and the rush of wind. “Loosen formation. That beast won’t even notice if he treads on us.”
If the driver gave any response, Sarik did not hear it, but the Rhino soon veered off to the war machine’s right. The going here was good due to the wide, smooth roads. Sarik’s spearhead was advancing quickly as the roads allowed them to avoid the rougher terrain.
“Sergeant Sarik,” a voice said over the command channel. “This is Princeps Auclid of the Animus Ferrox, do you receive?” Sarik glanced upwards at the Titan his transport had just passed, knowing it was the commander of that mighty iron beast that spoke.
“Go ahead, Animus Ferrox,” Sarik replied.
“Sergeant,” the princeps began. “Augurs are reading a concentration of enemy armour a kilometre ahead. Be advised, we are adopting battle stance. I suggest you give us some room. Out.”
Fully aware of the dangers posed by remaining too close to a Titan engaged in battle, Sarik relayed the order to his squads. Titan weapons were capable of unleashing fearsome energies, which could prove lethal to nearby units. They tended to attract a lot of return fire too, which the Titans might be able to withstand, but that its friends almost certainly would not.
Sarik scanned the arid landscape, his warrior’s eye ever alert for signs of trouble. The advance continued, the units of the spearhead adopting a loose formation in order to allow the huge Warhounds space to fight when the time came. The land rose as the spearhead came upon a range of low hills, and soon the Warhounds were cresting a shallow rise, each around a hundred metres ahead of the Rhino-borne Space Marine squads.
“Alert!” Princeps Auclid’s voice came over the vox-net. “Enemy missiles launched,
source unknown.”
A dart-like missile streaked directly downwards from the sky and impacted on the invisible void shield projected around the Warhound.
The missile exploded ten metres above the Titan, erupting in a flash of white light, a roiling cloud of black smoke billowing outwards. The Warhound ploughed through the bank of smoke, its head, fashioned after the war machine’s namesake, scanning left and right as it crested the rise.
Cursing the alien trickery, Sarik sent the dozen Rhinos of his force forwards with a curt order, whilst allowing the Scout Titans to continue at the front. The missile that had struck Princeps Auclid’s war machine would have torn a Rhino wide open.
“Second missile inbound,” said Princeps Auclid. “Still no source…”
The second missile struck the Animus Ferrox in the right flank, from a high angle, yet once again the void shield held firm and the iron beast strode on.
As Sarik’s Rhinos reached the crest of the rise, the pair of Scout Titans were already stalking down the opposite slope. The land ahead was different to the terrain the spearhead had passed through. The arid desert gave way to a belt of scrubland, which ten kilometres ahead became arable land scattered with cultivated fields and stands of regular, planted trees. There was still no sign of the enemy that had fired the missiles.
“All squads,” Sarik voxed to his Space Marines. “Increase visual scanning. Inform me the instant you see any sign of movement.”
The upper hull of each of Sarik’s carriers featured a double-door hatch. These swung outwards as Space Marines emerged to scan the surrounding landscape for any sign of the enemy heavy weapons teams firing the missiles.
“Brother-sergeant,” a voice came over the net. It belonged to Sergeant Arcan of the Ultramarines Chapter, his Rhino following directly behind Sarik’s own. The sergeant was riding high in the roof hatch and scanning the surroundings through a set of magnoculars. “I have a contact. Twelve nine, high.”
Sarik followed the squad leader’s warning, in time to see a salvo of rockets arcing straight up into the air from behind a stand of trees a kilometre distant. In the span of seconds, the missiles had streaked upwards through the sky, closed the distance, and slammed into the Animus Ferrox.
A blinding white light flashed, and the Scout Titan was engulfed in a billowing cloud of black smoke. At least some of the missiles had been stopped by the war machine’s void shields, but in the process had overloaded the projector. The invisible shield had collapsed in upon itself.
The Warhound’s torso swivelled left and right on its reverse-joined legs, its huge weapons eager to engage its tormentor. Sarik keyed his command terminal and sent Princeps Auclid the coordinates of the stand of trees the missiles had been launched from.
“My thanks, White Scar,” the princeps transmitted in reply. There was frustration in the man’s voice, no different to how Sarik himself would have felt under sniper fire. The Warhound turned to bring both its weapons to bear at once on the coordinates indicated. The ammunition feeds of its Vulcan mega-bolter whirred as thousands of rounds were chambered ready to fire, and the coils of its plasma blastgun pulsated with the staggering energies it was ready to unleash.
Another salvo lanced upwards into the air, the launch point somewhere behind a stand of purple-leaved trees. This time, Princeps Auclid saw it too, and opened fire.
The Warhound’s Vulcan mega-bolter was, in effect, a cluster of oversized heavy bolters, each one far larger than even a Space Marine could carry. The sound of the weapon firing was like a bolt of silk being ripped violently in two. Sarik gritted his teeth against the horrendous report, and fought the urge to cover his ears. Up ahead, the stand of trees the missiles had been fired from simply exploded into constituent particles. Trunks were ground to pulp, and the pulp to a fine mist, by the merciless fusillade.
Surely, nothing could live through that.
But something had. As the breeze carried the mist away, a curved and sleek form was revealed. It took Sarik a moment to register just what the form represented. It was a vehicle, but its construction was more akin to the gracefully wrought forms of eldar tanks than those of the Imperium, which were solid, brutal and supremely functional in their design. Then Sarik realised that the vehicle was not driven by a track unit like the majority of Imperial war machines, but by some manner of anti-grav generator. Once more, the similarity to the fiendish works of the eldar came to his mind. For such technology to be so widely employed was a sure sign of the depths of the technological heresy to which the tau had descended, and reason in itself, in the mind of the Imperium, to prosecute a campaign of extermination against their empire. Sarik’s heart beat faster at the prospect of combat against such a foe, but the vehicle was already rising on its invisible anti-grav cushion. With a whine of turbo jets, it swung around and was gone.
As the mist of the pulped trees drifted across the road in front of the Warhound, Sarik caught sight of a thin, red beam of light scything through it, which disappeared the instant the mist was caught on the air and dispersed. He followed the beam to where it had originated, and saw another stand of purple-leaved vegetation.
“Princeps Auclid!” Sarik called into the vox-net. “The fire is indirect, there are observers in the treeline, they’re using some form of—”
Sarik’s words were cut off as the Warhound opened fire on the nearest treeline. Sarik saw the red beam lance outwards a second time. The alien warrior holding the source of the beam did so with countless thousands of mass-reactive bolts thundering overhead in what must have been a deafening barrage. Despite his loathing of such alien technology, Sarik acknowledged the skill at arms such a feat represented.
And then another salvo of missiles came screaming in from a high angle. The faintest glint of red light reflected from the side of the Warhound’s canine head. A second later half a dozen missiles slammed into that exact point. The Warhound’s void shields had been stripped, and even though the ornate cockpit was heavily armoured, it exploded as the missiles struck. The mighty war machine staggered backwards, its machine systems suddenly bereft of control.
“Get clear!” Sarik bellowed, ducking back inside his carrier as the driver gunned its engines. “Animus Ferrox is wounded!” Folding down a periscopic sight, Sarik witnessed the last moments of the Animus Ferrox as his armoured carrier powered away from the Titan’s awesomely destructive death throes.
The Titan shook, as if its war spirit fought to keep its crippled form upright even without the guidance of the princeps, who had been killed the instant the missiles had destroyed the head. Then one of its mighty clawed feet slipped and the towering machine listed precariously to one side. The last thing Sarik saw before his Rhino bore him away was the entire machine toppling to the ground, thick black smoke boiling from the ragged wound where its cockpit-head had been.
Then Sarik’s Rhino was shaken violently as the Warhound hammered into the road and an instant later exploded. Secondary explosions ripped out, the Rhino’s driver fighting all the while to maintain control of the bucking armoured transport. Orange flames licked at the edge of Sarik’s scope, and the pristine white heraldry of his transport was turned to scorched black by the raging fires of the Warhound’s destruction.
When the explosions finally ceased, Sarik ordered his driver to halt. The white of the road surface had been scorched black, great banks of smoke lit from within by airborne cinders gusting past. The Animus Ferrox was reduced to little more than its armoured carapace shell at the centre of a huge crater strewn with blazing wreckage. Sarik bit back his grief that such a mighty, proud war machine could be struck down by alien weaponry with such seeming ease. It was one injustice amidst a galaxy of wrong, but the tau would pay for it nonetheless, he vowed, in blood.
From out of the smoke reared the form of the Warhound’s twin, the Gladius Pious. The second Titan paused a moment as it passed its slain companion, before stalking forwards to take its position at the head of the advance, its weapons tracking back and forth ac
ross the treelines either side of the road.
Sarik opened a channel to the Gladius Pious. “Princeps, this is Sarik. I honour your fallen kin, and I suggest a change of plan.”
“Go ahead, Sarik,” the princeps replied, his bitterness and grief at the loss of his fellow obvious in his voice. “But make it quick, I read multiple armour contacts.”
“Understood, Princeps…?”
“Atild, brother-sergeant,” the princeps replied.
“Listen to me, Princeps Atild,” Sarik continued. “The tau are marking their targets with some sort of laser designator, which the missiles are following. They’re being launched blind, and the launchers are redeploying as we press forwards.”
“I understand, Sarik. But what can we—”
“My force will press forwards,” Sarik said, aware that at any second another salvo of missiles could come streaking out of the skies. “We’ll clear the treelines of observers and flush out the launchers. If we force them to fire over open sights, you can engage them before they get a chance to do so. Agreed?”
“Sarik, you’ll be exposing yourself to—”
“I know, princeps,” Sarik interrupted, growing frustrated with the exchange. Titan crews, even those of the comparatively light Warhounds, were accustomed to dominating any battlefield. They were ill-disposed towards relying on infantry, even elite Space Marines, to clear the way for them. Nonetheless, Sarik knew that the princeps had just lost a valued fellow warrior of his order, and so he gave the man some leeway.
There was a pause before the princeps answered, during which Sarik scanned the sky impatiently, fighting back the urge to press the other man for a response.
“Agreed, Astartes,” the princeps finally replied. “I am in your debt.”
“You can thank me later, princeps,” Sarik replied, finally able to enact his plan. In moments, he was leading the column of armoured carriers forwards to clear the treelines of tau spotters.
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