Damocles

by Various

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I can stand,’ he said, conversationally. His words carried easily through the cold air. ‘No weapons to speak of, and I can taste death, at the back of my throat, but I still stand. I still live.’ He flexed his hands. Beneath his gauntlets, his knuckles popped. He looked up at the battlesuit. ‘There’s a saying, on Chogoris… keep a dying tiger at lance’s length.’ He grinned. ‘You got too close.’ Cemakar leapt, hands outstretched. The battlesuit reacted predictably. It swept out one massive arm, and swatted him from the air, as he’d expected. He was sent tumbling down the slope. Things ground together within him. He caught hold of the ground, digging his fingers in deep, and halted his slide. Everything hurt. But better a quick pain than the long agony of captivity.

  He shoved himself up. ‘Once… or twice more… I think,’ he coughed, blood speckling his beard and moustaches. ‘No more than that. I’m an old man, after all.’ He staggered towards the tau, balling his hands into fists. He chuckled, as targeting lights squirmed across his torso. ‘Call the tune, fishbellies. I haven’t got all day.’ Snow swirled around him, momentarily obscuring the enemy. His wounds had opened again, and he could feel blood filling the crannies and crevices of his armour. This is a good death, he thought. He had always suspected he would die amongst the burning ruins of his beloved battle tanks.

  He had always hoped to die thus.

  The snow cleared.

  The enemy had not moved. But a new element had been added to the tableau. Jebe crouched on the wreckage, a bandolier of grenades dangling from one hand, and his sword in the other. The champion leapt onto the battlesuit, and swung the bandolier about its head, activating the grenades as he sprang to the ground. He was in amongst the tau a moment later, his first blow shearing through the large drone, and his next dispatching a tau. Jebe moved with the wind, and the edge of his blade was the curve of a crimson whirlwind.

  The grenades exploded and the battlesuit teetered, smoke boiling from its orifices. Jebe ignored it, concentrating on the tau. His sword swept out. There was a brutal poetry to Jebe’s war-dance, a sinuous music that was made known in the rasp of steel on flesh, in the crackle of the sword’s powercell, in the dull thunder of explosions, and the screams of the dying. In the moment between sword-strokes, Jebe was the truest heir to the legacy of the Great Khan, and the Star-Hunt personified. No movement was wasted, no wrong step taken. Every gesture was lethal. The air was filled with the foul blood of the xenos, and they died one by one, barely able to register the strikes which punctured their chests or removed limbs.

  Jebe ceased his dance abruptly. Tau fell all around him, dead or dying. He moved towards Cemakar, as the latter sank to his knees, one hand on his side. ‘Easy, old man,’ Jebe said. ‘You will not die this day.’

  ‘Oh, will I not?’ Cemakar croaked, ‘What a shame. I was looking forward to the rest.’ He gestured. ‘The big one is still on its feet.’

  A missile snarled out of the snow and struck the reeling battlesuit. It toppled backwards with all the grace of a felled tree. The slope shook beneath the impact. Jebe sniffed. ‘No it’s not.’ He hooked Cemakar’s arm and guided him to his feet.

  Behind him, Cemakar saw Tolui and two others loping forward, cradling weapons scavenged from the wreckage. One of the newcomers had an obviously wounded battle-brother slung over his shoulder. Tolui cradled a missile launcher that had seen better centuries. ‘Found them,’ he said. He held up the missile launcher. ‘And this,’ he added.

  ‘So I see,’ Cemakar grunted. He looked at Tolui. ‘Hasik,’ he said.

  ‘No sign of him or his riders,’ Tolui said. ‘They must have got through.’

  ‘Or they’re dead,’ Jebe said.

  An ear-splitting whine pierced the air, interrupting any reply Cemakar might have made. A second battlesuit crashed to the ground, near the wreck of the first, and unleashed a burst of fire from its cannon. Cemakar shoved Jebe aside and the barrage struck the section of wreckage behind them, sending it pin-wheeling. The White Scars scrambled for cover, firing their weapons. Bolters roared, and the battlesuit advanced towards them through the storm of explosive shells, as if they were no more substantial than the falling snow. The shield on its left arm sparked and shimmered as it absorbed the incoming fire.

  It pursued them up the slope, driving them before it. Its burst cannon became a blur of death, filling the air with lethal hornets of explosive energy. Jebe’s sword sparked and rang as he blocked several of the shots, and was knocked back several steps for his pains. Cemakar coughed and clawed his way up the slope.

  Things were no better on higher ground. Tolui and the others had taken cover amongst the burning wreckage on the ridge. The gutted hulk of the Yesugei’s Teeth and the Rhino that had been the object of its demise formed a makeshift bulwark. Jebe was the last up the slope. The battlesuit followed them slowly, apparently content to herd them back. Another battlesuit appeared at the other side of the ridge.

  ‘Form up, brothers,’ Jebe said. ‘Stockade formation, prepare to repel assault,’ he added. He took a bolt pistol from one of the others and shoved it into Cemakar’s hands. ‘You as well, old man,’ he said.

  Cemakar checked the clip and looked around. The broad shapes of more hunters, armour shimmering and fading out of sight, trudged forward through the snow. The two battlesuits waited, watching the White Scars with the patience of well-fed predators. They’d beaten the other by catching it off guard. These two were ready, and surrounded by more shield drones. And advancing up the slope were more pathfinders, more drones, and more vehicles. The swiftest forces the xenos had at their disposal, pitted against the riders of Chogoris.

  ‘Keep the army together, I said,’ he said. ‘Don’t go haring off after ghosts, I said. But do they listen? Ha! Do they? Of course they don’t. Who listens to the old man? Nobody, that’s who,’ he growled.

  ‘What are you gnashing your teeth about, old man?’ Jebe muttered, not taking his eyes off the enemy.

  ‘The lack of wisdom amongst my peers,’ Cemakar grunted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, I wonder what they’re waiting for,’ he said. ‘We’re outnumbered, exposed, and bloodied. Why haven’t they killed us?’

  Jebe glanced at him. The champion made to reply, when the sudden roar of a jet pack washed over them, and a white-armoured form, slimmer and smaller than the other battlesuits, landed on the ridge with a thump. Two shield drones swept around it, and it bore two fusion blasters, one in each hand. Cemakar grunted. He recognised the battlesuit easily enough from the briefings they’d been given before making planet-fall. It was Shadowsun herself, come to watch her enemies die in person.

  ‘Offhand, old man, I’d say that’s why,’ Jebe said grimly.

  The bastion shook, down to its foundations. The ridge trembled with the thunder of alien weaponry. Superheated plasma seared through the cold air, and tore great, smoking craters in the crumbling outer wall. Snow and shale from the upper reaches of the ridge crashed down, filling the courtyard with an icy mist. Ambaghai’s snow had proven effective for a few minutes, giving the White Scars a moment’s respite, but the tau gunners had compensated more quickly than the White Scars had anticipated.

  The White Scars hunkered behind their improvised barricades as the pounding went on and on. One or two of the Space Marines had been hurt, but the barrage wasn’t meant to kill them, so much as it was meant to keep them from attacking the tau as they readied themselves for their next assault. Thursk crouched, ready to rise as soon as the thunder ceased. Through the ceramite of his gauntlet, he could feel the ground shiver beneath a heavy tread. ‘Here they come,’ he said. He looked over at Ambaghai, where the Stormseer sat, head bowed. Manipulating the winds and snows had taken more out of him than he’d admitted.

  ‘Are you ready, Stormseer?’ Thursk said, softly.

  ‘Is anyone ever ready? To wait for readiness is to never move. One can on
ly prepare and seize the moment, when it presents itself,’ Ambaghai said, with a tired smile.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Thursk said.

  ‘It’s as close as you’re getting, cousin,’ Ambaghai said.

  ‘Good enough,’ Thursk murmured. A moment later, the outer wall shattered like dropped porcelain. Through the smoke and dust of the explosion, heavy shapes plunged into the courtyard, weapons screaming.

  A White Scar near Thursk was erased from sight by a blast that eradicated the section of rubble he crouched behind. ‘Take them,’ he roared, rising to his feet. He grabbed the top of the strongpoint and threw himself over, axe in hand. Fully half of the remaining White Scars followed him, blades in hand. Some wielded power glaives, or swords, but all were armed with hand weapons, rather than bolters. They had ammunition to spare, but the shield drones that accompanied the newcomers would simply soak it up.

  Behind them, the rest of the White Scars opened up with everything they had, distracting the drones, as he’d hoped they would. The enemy constructs were annoying, but dumb. They moved to block the incoming fire, and their shield snapped and sparked, lighting up the gloom of the early morning hours. That left only the trio of battlesuits. They were forming the spear-point of a second assault. The xenos were counting on the suits to tear through the Space Marines with the same ease they’d displayed in ripping apart the wall. And, under different circumstances, they might have done so.

  But Thursk had fought orks and their war machines, and he knew that the power of such a spear was easily blunted and diverted, if you kept your head and didn’t let the size, speed or likelihood of your impending messy demise distract you from it. Admittedly, this was harder than it sounded, but if there was one area where the Dark Hunters excelled, it was in killing things that were bigger, louder, and stronger than them.

  On Phobian, the Sahrmatae people who roamed the moonlit plains of the night-world fought in silence, for to cry out, even in pain, was to attract the attention of the great bats which hunted the skies on silent wings. Normally, the Nokyros preyed on the herds of pale, cannibal horses which roamed the basin plains, but they’d eat a man just as happily, so hunting parties were often formed, to clean out those roosts that were too close to human habitation. The Dark Hunters took their name from the beasts, and their tactics, swift, silent, and merciless, from the people who hunted them.

  Thursk had only ever seen the bats up close once, and that was when he’d been an aspirant, and sent into the black caverns below Phobian’s surface with his squad to baptise their axes in the blood of one of the great, savage beasts. That bat, monstrous as it had been, had not worried him as much as the alien battlesuit now loping smoothly towards him. The ground shuddered beneath his feet as it drew close. He set himself, and waited. Breathe, wait, strike, he thought. The words had been drilled into his head as an aspirant. Haste is the enemy of the axe-man. Strike sure, strike hard, strike again, he thought. The battlesuit closed in, blade snapping out. The air sizzled as it drove towards him. He lunged beneath the blow, augmented muscle propelling him forward smoothly and swiftly. His axe flashed, chopping through piston and cabling.

  The battlesuit lumbered past, wheezing and hissing. Smoke boiled out from the point he’d caught with his blow. The battlesuit swung about, eyepiece oscillating and whirring. Its gun swung up, humming. Thursk sprinted towards the wall. Blasts pursued him, ripping up the ground beneath his feet. He leapt. The soles of his boots struck the wall, and he pushed himself off. He flew over the top of the battlesuit as it tried to track him, still firing. His hand snapped out, caught hold of one of the armoured plates that protected the top of the construct. He twisted himself around, driving his boots into the back of the battlesuit. Then, rearing up over the top of it, he let his axe fall, shearing off the square head of the suit.

  The head fell to the ground in a flurry of sparks, and he looked down into the pilot-pod, where a blue face, twisted in an alien approximation of surprise, stared up at him. Flipping his axe around, he smashed the haft down on the upraised face, pulping it like rotten fruit. He leapt to the ground as a second suit exploded. The force of the explosion nearly knocked him from his feet, and it was only that half-second without balance that saved him from the energy burst that would have taken his head off. The third suit fought on, with a relentlessness that Thursk could have admired, had it not been trying to kill him.

  The battlesuit shrugged off the White Scars who sought to bring it down, trampling one. Its three-toed foot came down with a crunch on the unfortunate warrior’s head, bursting it like a dropped melon, helmet and all. A power glaive sizzled as it left a scar on the battlesuit’s hull. The battlesuit spun, backhanding the White Scar hard enough to flip him head over heels into the air. The tau swung around, the fusion blaster boiling the air as it fired. Thursk threw himself out of the path of the deadly weapon. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet. Axe in both hands, he launched himself at the xenos, charging towards it.

  The pilot of the battlesuit was quicker to react than his comrades. He stepped aside as he swatted Thursk in the back. The blow drove the latter headfirst into a strongpoint. Head pounding, the Dark Hunter tried to stand. His vision blurred. The air hummed as more battlesuits dropped down into the courtyard. The first three had been the tip. The rest were there to make sure it struck home. Thursk groped for his axe.

  ‘Ambaghai, I need you ready,’ he croaked, pushing himself to his feet. The battlesuit that had struck him loomed over him, weapon glowing. It fired as he dove between its legs. Smoke and heat washed over him. His power armour felt as if it were responding sluggishly. Something in it might have been damaged. Or maybe it was him. He scrambled to his feet. The battlesuit grabbed his head in a grip that would have crushed his skull, had he not been wearing his helmet. It hefted him, and he pounded at its arm helplessly. The metal of his helm began to buckle, and metal cut into his scalp. His eye-lenses burst, peppering his face with photosensitive plastics. The world went red at the edges, and then dark.

  Metal shrieked and he fell to the ground. He tore the limp fingers of the severed claw from his head and saw Kor’sarro Khan spring past him. The Master of the Hunt looked as if he had swum through an ocean of alien blood, but he was laughing as he cut the battlesuit’s leg out from under it with one swipe of his powersword, and spun with the blow so that he was facing Thursk. ‘Well done, cousin,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘But the time for the Dark Hunters way has passed, I think. Now, now it is time for the Star-Hunt to ride.’

  Behind Kor’sarro, the battlesuit toppled over. His White Scars lunged forward, like hounds at the kill. The Dark Hunter tore off his damaged helmet, revealing the pale features and dark scalplock of his people. Scars marked his cheeks. Not the ritualistic slashes of the White Scars, but the crude marks of close-fighting. ‘I think the tau would argue that point, my khan,’ Thursk said.

  Kor’sarro turned. The newly arrived battlesuits moved forward, weapons flaring and roaring, sending White Scars scrambling for cover. He moved, still smiling, to face them. They had held their position long enough. He knew his enemy’s mind now, and that alone was worth the inconvenience and indignity of the trap he’d been led into. ‘Stormseer,’ he said, not loudly. His words carried regardless, and he knew Ambaghai had heard him.

  ‘My khan,’ Ambaghai said. He stepped out from behind the strongpoint, his staff hugged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and the air was suddenly charged with electricity. ‘Command me, my khan.’ Kor’sarro could hear the faint hint of exhaustion playing about the edge of the Stormseer’s words.

  ‘Shake the heavens and scour the earth,’ Kor’sarro said. He swept Moonfang through the air. ‘Show them the power of our storm.’

  ‘Gladly,’ Ambaghai growled. He raised his staff, and the air contracted about the ancient relic. It was said that the staves gifted to those brothers who showed an affinity for the ghost-road were first set into the high plateaus of Chogoris,
and kissed by the storms, which imparted to them some of their elemental strength. He could feel that strength now, surging around them, coalescing at Ambaghai’s silent call. Every White Scar left felt it as well. It quickened the pulse of their blood and awoke in them the ancient fury which had carried their ancestors from one side of Chogoris to the other, carrying fire and steel to every corner of that wide world. Theirs had always been the way of the storm, the sudden darkness, the crash of thunder, the slash of lightning, the crush of wild snows and heavy rains.

  Ambaghai’s necklace of teeth and bells and storm-stones rattled as the air grew wet and thick about him. Lightning crawled across the ruined bastion, and crept across what was left of the wall in crackling rivulets. It sparked and coiled about the battlesuits, which had ceased their advance. Kor’sarro knew that the pilots of the large constructs were likely beginning to panic as the storm interfered with their suits’ systems, and prevented them from attacking or retreating. The tau outside would be seeing the same interference. More than once, he had used Ambaghai’s affinity for the lightning to befuddle their enemy on Agrellan. It wouldn’t last long, but the White Scars would make good use of the time the Stormseer bought them.

  Ambaghai was wreathed in lightning. It caressed his power armour like a lover, and clutched at his staff. It was only by dint of their long comradeship that Kor’sarro could detect the faint tremble in the Stormseer’s arms. Calling the storm was no conjurer’s trick. It required an iron will, and a mind sheathed in steel. Ambaghai sucked in a deeper breath, and he seemed to swell for a moment. Then, with a roar like one of the ancient stone-barrelled cannons of Quan-Jo, he slammed the butt of his staff down, and released the gathered lightning.