Even as the Space Marine spearheads were pressing westwards in their breakout from the landing zone, the crusade’s Imperial Guard units were mustering to launch the second wave of the advance. While the Space Marines represented small but highly elite formations, the diamond-hard tip of the spear, the Imperial Guard would form the inexorable main bulk of the attack, an unstoppable mass that would roll over and flatten anything it encountered.
Lucian stood in front of the assembled ranks of the force that he himself would soon be leading into battle, his heart swelling with pride. No Arcadius had gone to war at the head of such a formation for several centuries, a fact that Lucian hoped would seal his place in the annals of the clan forever.
The Dal’yth Prime landings were still taking place, but the majority of the combat units had been ferried to the surface and local air superiority largely consolidated. The plain was filled with thousands of marching troops and hundreds of growling armoured vehicles, and overhead dozens of impossibly large heavy landers plied to and from the vessels in orbit. Lucian had made planetfall in his personal shuttle and made his way immediately to meet his new command.
The force was drawn from the veteran light infantry companies of the Rakarshan Rifles, an ad-hoc battlegroup of around a thousand men and women who were acknowledged as the finest infiltrators and mountain troops in the entire crusade. In addition to their reputation for highly professional soldiering, the Rakarshans were the subject of folklore amongst the peoples of the Eastern Fringe, their ferocity in combat making them greatly feared by their enemies. The tau had never heard of Rakarsha, but Lucian had promised his troops that together, they would give the aliens cause to dread their coming.
As the last troops took their places, the formation was called to attention by bellowing sergeant-majors. They were an impressive sight indeed. They wore uniforms designed to blend in with the predominant subtropical environment of their home world, and these had been retained, for the pale green and dusty brown patterning was well suited to the arable lands around the tau cities. While the camouflage was eminently practical, the Rakarshans carried plenty of reminders of the culture that had spawned them. Each carried a short, curved blade at his belt, which by tradition was not to be drawn from its jewel-encrusted scabbard except to taste blood. Some said that should a drawn blade not spill the blood of a foeman, it should do so from its bearer. In addition, the Rakarshans each wore an intricately knotted headdress made of rich, purple cloth wrapped about their heads. Mounted above the forehead was a single black feather taken from a mountain vulture, a creature held as nigh sacred by the superstitious peoples of Rakarsha.
A pair of officers stood at the centre of the formation. Major Subad would serve as Lucian’s executive officer, enacting his orders and supervising the more mundane aspects of the battlegroup’s operations. Sergeant-Major Havil would be the battlegroup’s senior non-commissioned officer, in whose hands the discipline and moral well-being of the warriors would rest.
When the troops were finally all in place, formed up in perfect lines by platoons and companies, all fell quiet, apart from the ever-present background noise of the more distant tanks and the landers flying overhead. Lucian stood perfectly still, impatient for the ceremonial handover of command to begin so that he could be about the business of conquest.
The two officers walked smartly forwards. Major Subad was a tall, lean man who to Lucian’s eye had something of the ascetic about him. One of his eyes had been replaced by an augmetic lens, which twinkled like a rare gem from his dark, sharp-nosed face. The major wore a headdress similar to those worn by his troops, not one, but three tall feathers mounted at its front. Though the major looked to Lucian more a man of intellect than of action, he bore an impressive, curved power sword at his belt. Lucian judged that by the man’s bearing he was fully capable of using the blade to masterful effect.
At the officer’s side came Sergeant-Major Havil, a giant of a man with a coarse beard and dark eyes that surely saw all that occurred in the ranks. He too wore the traditional headdress of his home world, surmounted by a single black feather. In his hand the sergeant-major carried a polearm as tall as he was. Its head was a huge, double-bladed power axe. Though the weapon was encrusted in gorgeous gems and was undoubtedly a regimental heirloom, Lucian suspected that it was also wielded in battle, and would reap a fearsome toll amongst the enemy.
Both officers halted in front of Lucian. Sergeant-Major Havil stamped his feet with parade-ground precision, and bellowed an order in the tongue of his home world so loud it made Lucian’s ears ring. The rogue trader decided instantly that he liked the sergeant-major. The man reminded him of a cthellian cudbear.
In response to the order, every rifleman in the formation came smartly to attention, stamping down in flawless precision as they shouldered their lasguns. A gentle breeze stirred the feathers of their headdresses, but otherwise, the ranks stood perfectly motionless. It was a sight to stir the heart, making Lucian pleased that his political manoeuvrings had resulted in him taking command of such a splendid force of warriors.
Then, Major Subad bowed at the waist, straightened, and addressed Lucian. “Battlegroup Arcadius is hereby commissioned, and its command is vested in Lucian Gerrit, bearer of the Warrant of Trade of the Clan Arcadius. Let it be recorded in the regimental rolls, and let the foes of the God-Emperor tremble!”
Lucian bowed in return, then took a step towards the major, holding out his right hand. The two clasped forearms, and the deed was done. Battlegroup Arcadius, Lucian smiled inwardly at the name, was his to command.
“My thanks, Major Subad,” Lucian replied, looking from the hawk-faced officer to the ranks of veteran warriors arrayed behind him. “Is the battlegroup ready to receive orders?”
“That it is, my lord,” the major replied. “All companies have been assigned orders of march and merely await your command to advance to glory.”
Lucian chuckled slightly at the officer’s turn of phrase, filled as it was with beaming martial pride. The Rakarshans spoke an archaic dialect of Low Gothic and he would have trouble communicating directly with the ranks himself. The major, however, spoke High Gothic fluently, and would translate Lucian’s commands as he passed them down the line. Nonetheless, Lucian thought it might be worth learning some of the Rakarshan dialect, as he might be fighting beside these fierce warriors for some time to come.
“Well enough, major,” Lucian said, grinning widely. “The command is given. Let the advance to glory begin!”
Sarik vaulted the trunk of a large tree that had been felled by the Scout Titan’s supporting fire, raising his boltgun one-handed and unleashing a rapid-fire burst at the tau warrior who sheltered in the foliage up ahead. Bolts stitched the alien’s torso, his blocky, sand-coloured armour penetrated in half a dozen places. An instant later, the mass-reactive shells exploded within the warrior’s body, and he fell to the ground a ragged mass of ruined flesh.
Sarik tracked his weapon back and forth across his surroundings, his squad moving up behind him.
“Clear.”
The chest armour of Sarik’s victim was ripped wide open, as was the flesh beneath it. A pool of blood swelled outwards, seeping into the dusty ground. The alien’s blood was not red, but a deep blue-purple. The xeno-genitors attached to the Departmento Tacticae postulated this was because their circulatory system relied not on iron, as in human biology, but on cobalt. The only thing that mattered to Sarik was that they bled, and that they died with honour.
Stooping, Sarik retrieved the weapon the dead warrior had carried. As with all the tau firearms Sarik had encountered, it was rectangular and hard-edged, lacking the ornamentation many weapons of human manufacture displayed. The grip was too small for his gauntleted hands. It was designed to accommodate the tau’s hands, which featured an opposable thumb and three fingers. Mounted atop the weapon was a device Sarik had not seen before, though he guessed straight away what it was. Lifting the weapon, he squinted into the device. As he suspect
ed, it was a sighting mechanism. Tracking the weapon back and forth across the clearing, Sarik depressed a stud at its side and a needle-thin beam of red light lanced out from the front.
Sarik guessed that a second stud at the weapon’s side would establish a machine communion with a remote, vehicle-mounted weapons system. The link would be maintained as the missiles homed in on the target indicated by the red beam.
Feeling suddenly tainted by his contact with the alien technology, Sarik threw the weapon to the bloodstained ground beside its former owner.
The alien that lay slaughtered at Sarik’s feet was the third his squad had killed, and reports from the other elements of the spearhead indicated that a further dozen had been engaged. The Space Marines ranged ahead of the lone Warhound Scout Titan, clearing each stand of trees of the observers. The weight of missile fire had rapidly dropped off as the tau had discerned the Space Marines’ tactics, allowing the advance to proceed again.
As the spearhead progressed, the stands of trees became increasingly regular as it pressed in to cultivated farmland. In the distance, small, white domed-shaped structures were nestled in amongst the vegetation, the first signs of the conurbations that the spy-drones had indicated lay all around the tau city.
Moving to the edge of the plantation, Sarik prepared to call his transport forwards towards the next area of cover an alien spotter might be concealed in. At the edge of his hearing, which was far superior to that of any normal man, Sarik detected a rising drone, like turbines slowly powering up. The sound was emanating from behind a low rise, and could represent only one thing.
“Squad,” Sarik called into the vox-net. “Enemy armour located. I want the missile launcher forward, and all other brethren on overwatch.”
A battle-brother appeared behind Sarik and knelt down beside him. He shouldered the very same weapon that Sarik had used the previous day against the tau flyer that had slain its previous bearer. The sound increased in volume, and Sarik saw a curved prow edge its way out from behind the rise, followed by the low, almost piscine form of the rest of the tau vehicle. Last to be revealed was the splayed, wing-like structure of the multiple launcher mounted high upon its back, its paired vanes underslung with three missiles each.
The launcher was slowly rotating. An undetected observer must have managed to bring his laser designator to bear on the Gladius Pious. Sarik turned to the battle-brother at his side, about to issue the order to engage, when he saw a red reflection glinting from the Space Marine’s helmet.
Sarik dived forwards, shunting his fellow Space Marine aside at the very moment a missile fired to life and streaked through the air towards the pair. Both hit the ground hard, rolling apart as the missile burst through the foliage. With a supersonic scream, the missile passed by a mere metre over Sarik’s head and struck the bough of a tree on the other side of the clearing. The entire plantation erupted as the missile detonated, shards of wood transformed into potentially lethal shrapnel by the power of the explosion.
Rising, Sarik scanned the clearing, which had been reduced from an orderly plantation to a scene of devastation. None of his warriors was injured, but that would not last if the observer drew a bead on any of them a second time.
Opening a vox-channel to the Gladius Pious, Sarik said, “Princeps Atild. The enemy have changed their tactics. They are targeting us, but the spotter remains concealed. I suggest you engage possible locations while we deal with the launcher, over.”
“Understood, Sarik,” the princeps replied. “Activate transponders and stand by.”
Relaying the order to the squad leaders under his command, Sarik activated his transponder unit. The device would transmit the location of each Space Marine and Rhino in the spearhead to the Warhound’s strategium, so that the Scout Titan’s weapons would not be turned upon its allies. Ordinarily, the transponders might be left to continually transmit, but the Departmento Tacticae had warned that the tech-heresies of the tau were so dire they might be able to detect the transmissions. The Space Marines were not prepared to take that risk.
“All units, stand by,” Sarik said over the command net, the blood rising within him.
Then the skies erupted as the Warhound turned its Vulcan mega-bolter on the nearby treelines, sweeping the weapon left and right as thousands of explosive bolts hammered into any and every possible location a tau spotter might be concealed in.
“Squad forward!” Sarik bellowed, praying his voice would be carried over the vox-net, for it was not audible over the deafening torrent of fire. “Take it down!”
Sarik burst from the cover of the plantation and emerged into the open. A second later the warriors of his squad were at his side, and the black-armoured Scythes of the Emperor were not far away. Before them, the tau grav-tank had engaged the huge thrusters mounted on its flanks and was rising up as its retractable landing treads folded into its underbelly. The thrusters swivelled downwards to give it additional lift, and as the power built they emitted a high-pitched whine so loud it was soon competing with the thunderous report of the Warhound’s mega-bolters.
Stowing his boltgun, Sarik drew his chainsword and brandished it high so that his warriors would follow his example. Then he brought the snarling blade downwards, pointing it directly at the tau grav-tank. A missile lanced from the treeline the Space Marines had just left and slammed into the side of the slowly rising grav-tank.
The missile struck a thruster unit on the grav-tank’s side, and although the vehicle’s thick armour deflected the worst of the blast, the engine was crippled. The vehicle slewed around, its remaining thruster screaming as it fought to maintain lift.
The grav-tank’s nose dipped towards the ground, and Sarik sprang forwards, putting all his strength and that granted him by his power armour into sprinting across the open ground before the vehicle could recover and escape. As Sarik closed with his target, the pilot finally regained control and the vehicle began to rise again.
Finally, Sarik was on his foe, his battle-brothers a mere step behind. As the grav-tank rose, the air beneath it rippling with the anti-grav field that kept it aloft, Sarik leaped upwards, and caught hold of one of the secondary control vanes at the grav-tank’s prow.
Pulling himself up onto the curved surface, Sarik looked for a handhold. Finding none on the alien machine, he located a crew hatch high on its spine and threw himself towards it even as the grav-tank gained altitude. The barking report of half a dozen boltguns sounded from below as Sarik’s warriors opened fire on the anti-grav generators keeping it aloft.
His grip on the curved surface threatening to desert him, Sarik finally got a hold on the small hatch, and dug his armoured fingers in around its collar. Hauling with all his might, Sarik bellowed a wordless war cry, which turned into a joyous outburst of savage victory as the hatch peeled back under his efforts.
The grav-tank dipped violently, whether from the effects of his battle-brothers’ fire or the pilot panicking Sarik could not discern. A red battle fury descended upon him. He plunged his arm inside the hatch right up to his shoulder plate, and pulled furiously on the first thing he grabbed hold of.
As Sarik retracted his arm, the grav-tank dipped crazily forwards. He dragged the pilot through the hatch and held him in the air victoriously. Then he brought the tau’s body downwards upon the spine of the vehicle. He broke his victim’s back across the hard armour, before flinging the ragged form to the ground below. It was only then that Sarik’s berserker rage lifted, as the grav-tank slewed wildly out of control towards the structure it had been hidden behind.
In the final seconds before the tau vehicle slammed into the dome-shaped building, Sarik threw himself from its back, propelled clear by a last, powerful thrust of his legs against its hull. Even as he fell backwards towards the ground Sarik saw the grav-tank strike the building, gouging a great wound through the structure. Sarik struck the ground, the breath hammered from his lungs by the force of the impact. Then the vehicle upended itself, its nose ploughing through the build
ing, before the entire structure collapsed upon it with a mighty release of dust, smoke and falling masonry.
“One down,” Sarik snarled, rising once more to his feet. An entire empire to go…
The landscape ahead of Lucian was dominated by low rises and dense vegetation, making it a perfect hunting ground for the veteran light infantry of the Rakarshan Rifles. To the south, a vast column of black smoke rose many kilometres into the sky, marking the death of one of the Legio Thanataris Scout Titans. Lucian had monitored the advance of Sarik’s spearhead over the command-net, and warned his own companies to be vigilant for the missile grav-tanks and the observers directing their fire. Perhaps because the Rakarshan Rifles used no vehicles, they had not attracted the attentions of these supremely deadly armour killers.
Now, Dal’yth’s sun was high overhead, and the battlegroup’s advance was proceeding well. The Rakarshans had been transported forwards on Officio Munitorum conveyances, each large enough to carry a whole platoon and its equipment, before pressing forwards on foot. The warriors were well suited to the terrain, and were able to make intelligent use of the folds in the land and the regular stands of cultivated trees, whilst maintaining a rapid and steady advance.
Enemy resistance had been relatively light at first, with the lead platoons pressing through what ambushes they had encountered. The Rakarshans had proved themselves fearsome attackers and many had blooded their ceremonial blades already. The ambushes were growing in frequency, however, as the tau adjusted to the Rakarshans’ tactics and redeployed their highly mobile forces to counter them.
“Communiqu� from command,” Major Subad said, his hand raised to the vox-set at his ear. “Spy-drones report a substantial concentration of enemy infantry amassing in the conurbation ahead.”
Lucian raised a gauntleted hand to shield his eyes from the white sun, and squinted in the direction indicated. The land rose and fell in a series of low hills, the eastern slopes of each covered in row upon row of the now familiar, purple-leaved fruit trees. Nestling in a shallow valley around five kilometres ahead, Lucian saw a cluster of white, domed structures, and in amongst them, evidence of enemy infantry moving to and fro.
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