by Various
Its hand spasmed and Jebe tumbled to the ground. Thursk raced towards him, palming a krak grenade from his belt. ‘Catch,’ he said, tossing it to the champion. Jebe caught it, as he ducked beneath the whirring burst cannon. Thursk circled the battlesuit, firing at the other sensor nodes that stuck out from the hulking battlesuit. The operator was likely already trying to reroute the sensor feed and regain his view of the battlefield. If that happened, he didn’t put great odds on their survival. As he got behind it, he pulled a second grenade from his belt, activated it and rolled it beneath the battlesuit’s damaged foot.
The battlesuit twitched as it stepped on the frag grenade, barely registering the explosion as the ground disintegrated beneath its foot. It reeled forward, sinking to one knee. The bolter clicked, empty, and Thursk dropped it and drew his knife as he leapt for its back. He caught hold of a shattered sensor node and swung up. ‘Draw its fire,’ he shouted, trying to hold on as the battlesuit began to struggle to its feet. The remaining shield drone buzzed towards him, and he caught it with his fist, knocking it aside.
Jebe didn’t argue. He’d reclaimed his sword, and with a slash, he opened a hole in the side of the burst cannon mount. As the battlesuit spun, firing, Jebe tossed the krak grenade into the hole, and brought his sword down on the spinning barrels of the cannon, hacking through them. The grenade exploded a moment later, and subsequent internal explosions ripped up the battlesuit’s arm. It reared back with a groan of abused metal.
Thursk had climbed to the top, and with his knife, pried open several of the hull plates. He stuffed grenades into each of the openings, activating them. Then he grabbed hold of his axe and dropped from the battlesuit. ‘Move,’ he roared, scrambling away. Jebe followed suit as the battlesuit was consumed in fire.
They watched as it crumbled, shuddering in its death throes. They turned together as they heard the crunch of boots on snow. Fire warriors moved towards them, rifles extended. If they were disconcerted by the destruction of the battlesuit, they didn’t show it. ‘Brave,’ Thursk said, spinning his axe.
‘Good. Cowards make poor prey,’ Jebe said.
‘You’re welcome, by the way,’ Thursk said.
‘I still have not thanked you. I did not require your aid,’ Jebe said.
‘No, I’m sure you didn’t,’ Thursk said. He gestured with his axe. ‘After you, Chogorian,’ he said. Jebe grunted and raised his sword.
‘Stay close, Phobian. I’ll keep you safe.’
Then, with a roar, Jebe sprang towards the advancing tau. Thursk followed.
Kor’sarro brought the bike to a halt in a cloud of smoke and superheated snow. His bolt pistol was in his hand, and he swivelled in his saddle, firing once, twice, three times, each shot dropping one of the advancing fire warriors. The rest of the group retreated with all due haste, falling back to regroup. Cemakar looked up at him. ‘Tanks broke down,’ he grunted.
‘So I see,’ Kor’sarro said. He holstered his pistol. ‘You seem to have things under control.’ Cemakar made a face. Kor’sarro’s eyes were drawn to the blood still seeping from the wound in Cemakar’s side and he shared a glance with one of the White Scars nearby – Tolui, he thought. It should have sealed over by now. Doubtless, if the old man simply sat down, it would have, but that wasn’t Old Shatterhand’s way. He wouldn’t rest until he was dead. And perhaps not even then, he mused. He was pleased to see that the old man had survived. He had feared that they would arrive in time only to avenge Cemakar and the others. Cemakar might still die, come to that. He pushed the thought aside. ‘It’s been almost twelve hours – the Khwarezmian should be nearby. Ambaghai’s lightning will have interfered with their jamming frequencies,’ Kor’sarro said, looking at Cemakar. ‘Hook him, old man. We’ve got the jaws pried open, but we still need someone to pull us out. We need Gharchai and his men, and we need them now.’
Cemakar hefted the vox and shoved it towards Tolui. ‘You heard him. Summon the Khwarezmian.’ He looked at Kor’sarro and said, ‘Thought you’d decided to sit this one out, boy.’
‘What, and leave all the fun to you? Perish the thought, old man,’ Kor’sarro said. He laughed and gunned his bike’s engine, scattering snow and sliding past the wreckage and on into battle. The enemy was disorganised, reeling in shock from the sudden appearance of a mobile force of eager warriors. He had seen it again and again since arriving on Agrellan – if the White Scars weakness was that they reacted too swiftly, then the tau were guilty of the opposite. They built strategies like spider-webs, intricate and surprisingly strong, but infinitely vulnerable to a gust of wind or a careless motion.
There were many ways to wage war from the saddle. Wheel-and-spoke was one, the way of the rabbit another. But the best way, the way that his chosen excelled at, was the way of old, the way of the storm. Every warrior was the eye of their own storm, requiring neither aid nor the command of a khan to isolate and destroy the enemy. That was the method they used now, each rider using what skills they possessed and what weapons they had to hand, to distract, harass and butcher the enemy.
Ambaghai had made himself over into a boiling storm of furious lightning. Where he rode, the storm followed, disrupting electronics and burning flesh and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The Dark Hunter and Jebe fought back-to-back, both afoot, but neither at a disadvantage because of it. Both warriors slashed and spun, tearing through the enemy like dervishes. Kor’sarro whipped past them without slowing. They did not require his aid, and he had his own prey to chase.
Shadowsun was here somewhere. He could smell her scent, and see her hand at work. She was a hunter, like him, and she would not miss the kill. Not for anything. He just had to find her. As he tore through the battle, he saw a rider, whirling a bandolier of krak grenades over his head like a lariat, swept past a hovering battle tank and hurled the grenades, hooking the main cannon. As he thundered on, the grenades exploded and the tank dipped as if in shock, its anti-gravity engines whining in protest as the force of the explosion caused its hull to scrape the ground. Out of control, it skidded through the battle, sending fire warriors scrambling to get out of its path as it crashed into the slope and was ripped apart by internal explosions.
Other riders wielded powerlances or fired bolters as they zipped through the lines of the fire warriors, piercing the alien phalanxes as they tried to form and make a stand. Kor’sarro saw a rider burst through a group of tau and ride his back up into the rear bay of a Hammerhead, the bolters mounted on the front of his bike blazing away. The rider slewed the bike around and rode back the way he’d come before the fire warriors could even register what he’d done. The explosions that followed his departure attested to the grenades he’d left behind.
But the White Scars didn’t have it all their own way. There weren’t enough of them to do more than cause confusion. Speed was no substitute for raw numbers, and here and there, Space Marines had become bogged down in the sheer number of troops that Shadowsun had brought. Alien rifles fired and a bike flipped end over end, and its rider crashed down. He rolled to his feet, bolt pistol in hand, only to catch a burst from a fusion blaster directly in the chest. The White Scar was plucked from his feet and sent sailing backwards as his armour cracked and split open like the shell of a boiled crustacean. Smoke wreathed his falling shape as he crashed down. Kor’sarro arrowed towards the fallen Space Marine; he’d seen where the blast that had killed him had come from. Shadowsun was nearby. He caught sight of her distinctive armour, wreathed in the excess of Ambaghai’s lightning, its cloaking field crackling and bleeding away as the supreme commander of the enemy forces now besieging Agrellan and the Damocles Gulf as a whole, stood exposed before him.
She stood before the wreckage of Cemakar’s Razorback, firing at the riders who sped past her. Kor’sarro had given orders that she was not to be engaged, save on his command, and his men were attempting to stay out of her way. Even from a distance, he could tell that she was gro
wing frustrated. He smiled and leaned low in his saddle to whisper encouragement to his steed as the bike shot towards his prey.
Chapter Six
Kor’sarro took the moment with a hunter’s daring. Engines growled in pleasure as he rode the bike up the burning hull of the wrecked Razorback, passed through the flames, and caught the wind. Wheels spinning, the bike shot towards the hovering form of Shadowsun. Kor’sarro tore Moonfang from its sheath as his proximity registered with the tau commander. Like a rabbit caught in the shadow of an eagle, Shadowsun turned and brought up one of her fusion blasters, but too slowly.
The bike’s front wheel smashed into her chest and head and they fell in a tangle, slamming down onto Rime Crag in an explosion of snow and with a snarl of metal on metal. The impact dislodged Kor’sarro from his saddle, but he was on his feet in a moment. Moonfang licked out, chopping through a shield drone and cutting it into two sparking halves. Shadowsun was up a moment later, batting the bike aside with a whirr of unseen pistons even as the fusion blaster on her other arm came up and fired.
Kor’sarro stepped aside. Heat from the blast washed over him, crisping the tips of his moustaches. He recovered quickly, snatching his bolt pistol from its holster. He snapped off a shot from the hip, and was rewarded by Shadowsun staggering. He fired again, but the second shield drone interfered. Shadowsun recovered. She cocked her head. ‘Khan Kor’sarro, I presume,’ she said in Gothic, her voice amplified by her armour’s vox-casters.
Kor’sarro restrained a growl of disgust. The language of Terra was not, by any stretch, his favourite tongue, but the Emperor had decreed that it was Imperator Lingua – the voice of humanity. To hear an alien debasing it so revolted him. ‘I am Kor’sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt and Sword of the Khan. And you are Shadowsun,’ he said.
‘My fame precedes me,’ she said. Though it was difficult to tell, given her accent and the distortion of the vox-caster, he thought that that had been a joke. He shook his head.
‘A hunter knows his prey,’ he said. He extended Moonfang and circled her with a duellist’s grace. Her armour was heavier than his, but not as battle-tested. She was hesitant, where a more confident warrior would be aggressive, as if she were as yet uncertain of her battlesuit’s limits. Or perhaps she was holding back for fear of killing him. The thought grated, but he shoved the insult aside. That was his advantage, not hers.
‘And a huntress knows hers,’ Shadowsun said.
‘I almost had you at Blackshale Ridge,’ Kor’sarro said.
‘Indeed. We were surprised. We are not used to being on the back-foot.’ She had begun to circle him, even as he circled her, matching his movements, if not his grace. Her armour was scorched and scored, but it didn’t appear damaged. Nonetheless, his keen eyes picked out a number of possible weak points, where a thrust from Moonfang might pierce the armour and possibly reach the meat within the shell. ‘Do you understand my meaning?’
‘I take it well enough,’ he said. He lowered Moonfang slightly. She would not take it as an invitation to attack, he knew. Her armour was kitted out for distance, and power, not personal duels. She was trying to keep him occupied while her warriors picked off his. That had been her plan all along. A slow whittling, a gradual blooding, to weaken, but not kill him, like a hunter prodding a wild auroch until the beast collapsed at last, its fury spent. They were still fighting, but with words now, rather than blades. They were feeling each other out, so that the final blow could be delivered as effectively as possible. ‘It is our way,’ he said. ‘But you know that now, no?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You have been studying us. We have fought before, but only in isolated engagements. This was your chance to see how we waged war and you took it. You lead us in, and took us apart to see how we functioned. You gave us too much room, and then too little, stretched us and squeezed us and baited us into ever more narrow burrows. You were clever.’
‘Not clever enough, clearly,’ she said. ‘You are here.’
He smiled, despite himself. ‘But that is what you expected, eh? That is why you are here, rather than back there. You thought I would lead the charge. So you came to capture me personally. Was that what your hunting eagles were for, to wear me out?’ She said nothing and he continued, ‘The kroot. They were fighting to disable, not kill. I’d wager there was more than one pack of them, just in case.’
A sound slithered from her. It took him a moment to realise that it was laughter. ‘I have fought your kind before. Few have proven themselves so quick,’ she said. ‘You fight and think fast. That is why you had to be chained. If you fight so differently, you must think differently. If you think differently, then you can be reasoned with.’ The bolt pistol in his hand twitched, and the shield drone reacted with predictable speed, responding to the micro-gesture. He wondered if her battlesuit was analysing him, gauging his heart rate and breathing, recording, cataloguing everything about him, for her masters to pore over once this campaign was done.
They wish to tame the storm, he thought. They wanted to chain and compel that which should not be chained, and force a false order over the natural. It was their way. As it was the way of the White Scars to defy such. You are the centre, he thought, eyeing her. You are the spoke, and your warriors the wheel. Where you go, the true war is fought. ‘Reasoned with,’ he said. He must know more. Every word, every gesture was its own tale. What war was he fighting? Was this for Agrellan or something greater?
‘You do not think like the others,’ Shadowsun said. ‘Your thoughts are more fluid. More like ours,’ she continued, switching to a crude dialect of Khorchin. ‘My folk grew strong on the plains, like yours. We broke cities then and we have broken worlds since, just as you have done.’ His lips peeled back from his teeth, but not in a smile. Not now. ‘Set your sword aside, and we will speak at length, over glasses of chinyua wine and a game of Go, Khan Kor’sarro. We will speak of Chogoris, and the ways of plains folk, and warriors. We will speak of the Greater Good.’
If he had been any other man, Kor’sarro knew that the temptation would have been overwhelming. There were too many layers of meaning in her words, implicit threats and promises that would take days to decode. The hunter in him longed to follow all of the tracks and trails she was laying before him. But he was not simply a hunter – he was the Master of the Hunt, and he had his duty.
He sighed and looked up at the stars, fading into the dull iron sky of an Agrellan dawn. This world was poisoned, and worth nothing but the lives that would be spent in its defence, including those of him and his men, if that was the way of it. ‘I would like some wine,’ he said and his lips quirked in a smile, as he looked at her. ‘But we have already been playing, huntress, and the time has come to draw our game to an end.’
Kor’sarro slid forward, barely stirring the snow. The shield drone hummed between them as he raised his bolt pistol. He fired rapidly, but not at either the drone or its mistress. Instead, he fired at the ground. His shots tore steam from the slushy ground as each of the explosive bolts super-heated the snow into a white fog which cascaded upwards, enveloping him and his enemy both. The shield drone hovered, blinded, and he took it first, catching it from below with Moonfang. Piercing the drone, he slung it towards Shadowsun, who fired instinctively, erasing her own drone from existence. He was on her a moment later, his sword chopping down through the barrel of one of her weapons, rendering it useless.
She flung the shattered weapon aside as she brought up its twin and fired. Her jetpack roared and she slid backwards, away from him, still firing. He pursued her, narrowly avoiding the blasts. The world narrowed to just him and her. He held Moonfang in both hands, arms cocked, ready for the killing thrust. If he could just reach her, even if she killed him, it would be over. She knew it as well as he did. It had been a calculated risk on her part, as it had been on his. Victory was never the sweeter than when it was balanced by death.
Cat-quick, Kor’sarro leapt. She fired, and he felt heat b
rush past him, scouring his shoulderplate of its white and red markings, and leaving only the grey of bare ceramite as he crashed down on her, driving his sword down with all of his weight behind it. She twisted, desperate now, and the blade caressed her side, tearing through the white armour like paper. He grabbed for her helm, digging talon-like fingers into it, trying to destroy her optic sensors, to blind her for the kill.
A blade, a primitive looking knife, flashed, suddenly appearing in her hand. It kissed his neck, drawing a thin weal of blood. They hit the ground in a tangle, and her feet caught him in the belly, propelling him away. He lost his grip on Moonfang and slid across the ground. She tossed aside her remaining blaster and tore her crushed and mangled helmet from her head. A topknot of hair as crimson as a Chogorian sunset unspooled and snapped out as a slate-blue face, with large, dark eyes glared at him. He recognised the look in those eyes, alien as they were. ‘Maybe we are alike,’ he said, drawing his combat knife. ‘Come then, huntress. Come and take my scalp.’
With a cry, she lunged for him, knife in hand. They reeled back and forth through the snow, blocking and slashing. Her blade bit into his vambraces, driven deep into the ceramite by the powered exoskeleton of her armour. His own knife gouged great scars in her armour, driven as much by his own muscle as his power armour. They whirled about one another in a deadly dance, and he laughed deep and loud and long for the pleasure of it.
They crashed together, blade to blade, and he leaned towards her, smiling widely. In her eyes he saw reflected the joy that he knew danced in his own. We are not so different, Shadowsun, and in other circumstances, I would dance with you again. You are a worthy challenge, he thought. ‘And you would tame us?’ he said, ‘for shame. There is no taming the storm and there is no chaining the hunters of the stars. There is only the hunt, and death. Duty, honour, empire, these are but shadows in this moment, in all moments,’ he said. They strained against one another, heads so close that he could smell her sweat, and see his face reflected in her eyes. ‘You know that, as well as I, huntress. You feel it as well, and that is why you are doomed to fail,’ he said, stabbing to the core of her with each word. There was something indefinable in her gaze – determination, perhaps, tinged with what might have been sadness. The joy had faded. She had lost herself, but only for a moment. He felt a surge of satisfaction that he had been able to give her that much, even if it had only been a single moment of freedom.