“Meditation helps,” growled Boone as he strode past the two marines to make his way towards the formation of infantry that was taking shape near the massive battle tanks.
“Tank crews mount up!” echoed a resonant voice through the deck channel, filling the earpieces of everyone with the certainty that battle was soon to be joined.
Ajax opened his eyes and watched as one hundred and twenty Einherjar crewmen filed out of the briefing chamber and flooded the deck. They were dressed in simple body gloves like those worn by infantry, though each was marked with the symbols of the tanks to which each crew belonged.
The heavy battle tanks were all named after various heroes and villains from old Norse mythology, in keeping with the Einherjar military tradition, and housed a crew of ten men each.
It had been some time since Ajax had been so close to the mechanized war machines, having spent most of his last several lives fighting in the desperate and bloody trench warfare for which Hydra Company had been created. Usually, the tanks were racing across the battlefield to support breaches in the perimeter, or using their heavy guns to pound the enemy with artillery fire. They had mounted weapons based on the same technology as the pulse rifles of the marines, only much larger, and far more devastating upon impact. A single round from the massive pulse cannon could slag an area several meters in diameter.
Jarl Mahora exited the briefing chamber behind the last armor crew and began striding towards the infantry unit that was gradually forming among the chaos.
Hydra Company had already been briefed, and so strong was their motivation to get some payback for the bloody street-fighting in Heorot, that most of them had arrived several minutes before their call-time. It would take Armor One nearly half an hour to run their full pre-battle diagnostics, weapons tests, and get the green light to proceed. When the jarl saw Ajax, he turned his attention to the pair of marines and walked over to them.
“Well, the tankers aren’t excited about running escort for a bunch of construction trucks, but they’ll take whatever piece of the Garm that command is willing to grant them once that part is done,” snarled Mahora as he joined the marines. He swept his gaze across the deck to take in the sight of the tanks, trucks, and gathering infantry company. “After the horror show of days’ past, I think they’re eager for some payback.”
“That’s only because they have several tons of armor between them and the rippers,” scoffed Yao as he rubbed his throat again. “I know when a tank goes down it goes hard, but come on, the average marine has resurrected more times than a whole tank crew put together.”
“That might be true, but as we run out of parts to keep these things running there are fewer machines for the tankers to crew,” added Sharif as he joined the other marines on the deck. “So only the best of the best still has a place on the rigs. There’s a reason Armor One is so badass.”
“Well, they’re certainly going to get what they asked for,” nodded Jarl Mahora before he slid his helmet over his head and buckled it into place. “You marines only saw the maps of the build site in the Hydra briefing, these boys just got shown the bigger picture, and it’s a target rich environment.”
Ajax was relieved that he had not been required to perform any of the briefing, only to consult before official word was given and troops began to file in. It was the memory of his resurrection dreams that had directly controlled the mapping of the mission. At last he was back to being just a grunt, as Skald Wallace and Jarl Mahora focused their attention upon the complexities of the mission, allowing Ajax to focus on rifle and trench spike.
Jarl Mahora gestured for the marines around him to follow, and they fell in step behind him as Mahora moved to join the rest of the infantry ranks massing on the deck. All of Hydra Company, as well as the marines of Manticore and Gorgon, had been briefed on the peculiar tactics and complex stratagems displayed by the Garm swarm they had fought in the trenches outside the walls and on the streets of Heorot itself. Plenty of marines had not lived to witness each new tactic with their own eyes, and it was important for the full body of soldiers to have a keen awareness of everything.
The Einherjar had found themselves facing down multiple instances of Garm swarms displaying complex tactics on the battlefield. It was chilling, and the sense of dread had been palpable in the briefing room. That sense of pending doom had carried over to the deck, and though the tankers of Armor One seemed eager enough, the marines of Hydra, Manticore, and Gorgon Company stood in formation with a grim fatigue. Despite their desire to take the fight to the enemy, the long years of war were apparent in each man’s posture.
“We’re deep in the weeds, boys, without a Watchman and hunting a new kind of monster on its own ground,” growled the jarl through the company channel as he commanded the attention of the formation. They all snapped to attention, returning from their fugue in an instant, as if the jarl’s voice was a source of strength. “Best we proceed as if we don’t know a damn thing about the swarm, makes it less likely they’ll catch us being predictable. They say the Garm adapt, well, I say marines overcome, so let’s show ‘em they picked the wrong ones to mess with. Mount up, marines!”
Skald Wallace and Jarl Mahora had both given parts of the briefing to the infantry units, so the assembled marines knew the particulars of their mission. While all three units had suffered tremendous casualties during the defense of Heorot, most of them fatalities, all but Manticore was back up to strength for the coming mission.
The men of Manticore had lost their jarl, a victim of Grendel’s hideous harvesting. The jarl’s absence was conspicuous, as was the skald commander’s silence when asked of the man’s fate. Secrets were still being kept, and the bulk of the marines still did not know that the Einherjar’s ability to resurrect was being directly threatened.
Resurrection is our greatest power in this fight, thought Ajax as he watched Boone, Sharif, Yao, and Rama board one of the armored personnel carriers that were stationed next to the construction trucks and equipment haulers, and the enemy seeks to rob it from us.
We live, we die, we live again, he intoned to himself.
While it took eighteen years to raise a human being from infant into warrior, the resurrection of a torc-bearing Einherjar took only a matter of days. Like the Garm, the forces of humanity could hurl fully-grown soldiers into battle with little regard for their survival. It had given humanity the edge it needed to halt the advance of the swarm.
Ajax wondered how many of them would be once again riding the carousel of death and rebirth before this mission was complete. The memory of the Watchman and the grisly death of Thatcher gave him pause, sending a chill up his spine. The Garm had found a way to functionally negate the Einherjar’s resurrection.
That was the skald’s big secret, it was now possible an Einherjar could potentially die for good and he hated keeping it from his comrades. The men had willingly accepted the skald’s lie about the Watchman, that his unique perspective and intel about the events of the fight for Heorot and the larger battlefield were needed upon the Bright Lance. The marines had seemed taken in by the skald’s presence, as Ajax was certain he too had been, and the prospect of taking an offensive action alongside Armor One and the skald commandos was a sufficient distraction for most of the grunts. None of them had actually witnessed Thatcher die, and it had been the same for the jarl of Manticore Company. The marine did not like the deception, it went against the code he and his brothers lived and died by, though he kept it as he was ordered.
Ajax took Rama’s offered hand and stepped into the APC, taking notice that Hart, in his new skald armor, had also ended up in this rig. The scout sniper wasn’t really friends with anyone, what little time he did spend in the company of the other marines was with Ajax and his comrades.
Hydra Company only had the one sniper, as was customary in the Einherjar military structure, so Hart had little in the way of other men who understood his unique experiences in the field. There was something of a mysterious quality about the
sniper.
Ajax imagined that some of it was carefully cultivated, much like the skalds who had once followed Thatcher and now followed Wallace, though much of it was truly just how the man was. To fight the Garm alone, out there in the dark and away from fellow marines, was a strange thing indeed.
Ajax took his seat and strapped in. His own precious few minutes out in no man’s land, hunting a beast he could not see and wasn’t sure even existed, was enough to convince him that he did not envy Hart’s promotion in the slightest.
As everyone was taking their seat, another skald mounted the vehicle, and being the last man in line, turned and closed the armored hatch before taking his seat before the door.
According to the old Norse culture from which they borrowed so much military nomenclature, the skalds were storytellers and keepers of knowledge. It made sense that the warriors who doubled as military intelligence operatives and deadly commandoes would act in that capacity for this dreadful future war.
The man’s chest bore the name Omar, stenciled in black above a raven decal upon his chest, each barely perceivable against the matte paint scheme of his armor. The raven indicated that this man, Omar, was a psych officer within the ranks of the skalds, masters in the craft of psychological warfare, though in truth Ajax did not see how such skills would apply to battle against the inhuman swarms.
They sat in silence for a time, then the vehicle shook as the engines thrummed to life and began to carry them onwards. There were thirteen men in the troop rack, including the sniper and the skald, and everyone was silent as the vehicle rumbled into the convoy. Though none of them could see outside the armored womb of the APC, each of them knew that the convoy of troop transports and construction trucks would sweep in behind a vanguard of six heavy battle tanks. They would be escorted by the remaining tanks as the mechanized group moved towards the objective.
The convoy was moving swiftly, that much Ajax could tell from the amount of turbulence and kick in the ride, but even with speed it was likely to take nearly three hours to reach the rally point. Each man sat with his own thoughts, and Ajax found himself unable to shake a looming sense of dread that had taken root in his mind. He had always been a staunch warrior, as Mahora pointed out, and yet, ever since first being slain by Grendel in no man’s land Ajax had not felt fully recovered or completely battle-ready.
It was almost as if the horrible creature had taken a part of him as it had Thatcher and the Watchman, or more accurately, had cast something of a shadow over a part of him, a pervading and self-propagating sense of futility in the face of the might of the swarm. The thought of the alien cells inside him sickened the marine. He wondered if there might be some basis in Skald Wallace’s suspicion that the Garm hive mind had some sort of psychic effect upon the warriors of humanity. A force that crashed against the minds of their prey before the swarm reached them. Robbing them of even a small part of their strength was a gain for the swarm.
“Do any of you marines know the tale of Heorot?” asked Omar suddenly, after nearly an hour of silence as the convoy lumbered onwards.
“Some myth from ancient Earth,” answered Sharif thoughtfully, “It’s where command got the idea to call the new organism a Grendel.”
“One could argue this whole business was based on that story,” stated Hart flatly.
“The scout sniper has the measure of it,” nodded Omar as he shifted his rifle from one hand to the other so that he could lean slightly forward, holding the attention of every soldier present. “Heorot was a mead hall, like a sort of fortress, where men would gather to feast and tell stories. One evening, a beast by the name of Grendel stormed the hall and slaughtered many of the men there. Every few nights he would return and take victims, and no matter what the warriors did, this beast could not be beaten.
In time news of this ongoing tragedy reached the ears of a great warrior called Beowulf, who came to Heorot with a band of his finest comrades. They stayed in the hall and that night, when Grendel came, he was met with a bloody battle and eventual defeat. They laid a trap for Grendel, see? They drew the beast into a fight he thought he could win in the usual way.”
“Many thanes died in that fight,” said Hart, surprising the rest of the grunts by being familiar with the tale, as most grunts just took the old Norse terminology of their military on face value without digging deeper, “And Beowulf himself is doomed before the tale is done.”
“The Garm already have the measure of how we conduct symmetrical warfare, so we have to mix it up somehow, find a way to fool the hive intellect in a way that only human beings can,” responded Omar, giving Ajax the distinct impression that perhaps the psychological operative was not meant to be a weapon used against the enemy, but that his skills were in manipulating his own comrades. “Unless the swarm has found a way to decrypt narrative structure, it seems a fine way to fight with some level of unpredictability.”
“There was no Grendel in the swarm until we named it such,” insisted Hart as he tapped a finger against the stock of his rifle. “And there was no Heorot until settlers were sent into the wilderness to build it. This world was claimed after the war with the Garm had already begun.”
“I thought that myself for a time, that it was all a matter of convenient jargon and cultural appropriation from our planet’s ancient Nordic people, and then your man, Ajax, here, severed the creature’s limb, not unlike Beowulf and the taking of Grendel’s arm. That is a more powerful event than simply naming a thing, as if now that we have determined we are living a version of the Heorot story, a Beowulf rises from the ranks to face the monster.
It was humanity that named these creatures Garm, an ancient word for wolf, and from that old Norse beginning rose we Einherjar. We are the chosen warriors who are slain and rise again, just like the poems say, and one has to wonder if the learned engineers of humanity would have ever thought to pioneer such technology had we not had the story of the Valkyries and Valhalla to guide us,” argued Omar, pleasantly enough, as the vehicle rumbled onwards into the gloom of the brackenworld. “Stories may yet prove to have been our greatest ally in this battle against hive and swarm.”
Hart looked like he was going to say something else but was interrupted by the chiming of the proximity bell, which was accompanied by the ambient lighting inside the metal womb shutting off and being replaced by track lighting that illuminated the exit path to the hatch. Suddenly everyone’s company channel was flooded with chatter as Armor One made contact with the enemy, but something was wrong. There were no shots being fired.
According to Armor one, it appeared, unbelievably, that all of the Garm were dead.
“Thane Twelve, break off and investigate grid point 42257432, that looks to be the epicenter of whatever happened,” said Skald Wallace in everyone’s ear-piece.
As the driver moved out of the convoy, the APC lurched back and forth as it struck several obstacles and crushed them under the tread. Ajax was startled as he and the other marines rocked with the motion, then belatedly recalled that he’d seen the number twelve stenciled on the side of the vehicle they were riding in.
“Omar, I want visual and assessment in five minutes, back on the trail in ten,” snapped Wallace.
“As you say, sir,” said Omar through the company channel. He swept the other marines in the APC with his gaze. “You heard the man, we will disembark once Thane Twelve hits the way point. Rifles and grenadiers, pull security. Hart, you and I are on recon.”
Moments later, the vehicle came to a halt, and no sooner had it stopped, then Omar opened the hatch and leapt out of the vehicle. The marines poured out behind him, rapidly exiting with their weapons at the ready. In seconds, the twelve marines had formed up into a semi-circular firing line that moved a step behind Omar as the skald commando took point.
Ajax was immediately aware that the obstacles he’d felt being crushed under the tread were the broken bodies of Garm organisms. As the marine swept his rifle over the area he realized that the barren ground was litte
red with the corpses of ripper drones. Since the creatures were already dead, he could take the time to really look at them and he noticed with surprise that not all the drones had the exact same anatomy. Several appeared different from the others. It was subtle, an extra layer of armor here, longer scything blades here, a slightly darker shade of fleshy pallor, but it was noticeable.
“Omar,” said Ajax as he continued forward, taking note that nearly half of the corpses were different from the others. “Look at the bodies, there are two distinctly different sorts of ripper drones here.”
“Aye, and they seem to have killed each other from the look of the wounds,” stated Hart, kneeling on the rocky ground. He gently pulled back the bladed limb of one ripper drone to reveal that the appendage was buried nearly nine inches into the chest of another.
“Be sure to snap a few shots with your helmet-cam, Hart, they’ll want to see that,” ordered the skald as he continued onwards, flanked by Ajax and Yao.
Omar reached the waypoint and stopped where he stood, looking down a low dip in the somewhat featureless ground of the brackenworld.
Ajax moved to join him at the edge. The marine looked down and saw that a WarGarm had died very messily. From the looks of it, the WarGarm appeared to be of the usual breed, as odd as it was for Ajax to think of the Garm in terms of different groups. The WarGarm had been torn apart by ripper drones, as evidenced by the heaps of shattered bodies and shorn limbs that filled the ditch.
“They died in droves to bring this thing down,” breathed Ajax while he took several photos with his helmet-cam.
“Why would they kill their own?” asked Yao, visibly shaken by the sight of such visceral carnage, moving his rifle nervously up and down the ditch, as if he expected one of the corpses to leap up at them any moment.
Omar said nothing, only staring in silence at the sight below.
Hart and the rest of the marines joined them in looking down at the carnage-filled ditch, and they all stood quietly for a moment. It was as if each man knew he was looking upon a fresh new horror beyond anything they’d faced, and yet completely unable to fathom exactly what it was they were bearing witness to. The swarm never suffered from in-fighting or factions, it was a single organism, or at least it fought as though it was.
Extinction Fleet 1: Space Marine Ajax Page 10