by Doug Goodman
“I hate that saying,” spat Boone, “Kinda gives them power, ya know.”
“Respect your enemy, that’s all it means,” responded Rama as he watched the last of the shriekers plummet to its death. “They’ll keep attacking until the whole swarm is dead, but just like us they learn from those deaths, and they come at us in a new way. Honestly, we should have expected something like that. Target our battery, smash the trench from the sky before moving on to flank our brothers. There would be hardly any of us left here to fight when the rippers and the gorehounds come.”
“A forward observer, who knows our weapons? Seriously, Rama, I don’t want to think about that. I just wanna kill things,” argued Boone, his worsening demeanor reminding Ajax that the grenadier had been displaying a growing number of warning signs since their arrival on Heorot.
“Second wave!” said the resonating voice of the Watchman, snapping all the marines to attention again. “Flares up!”
“Hold that thought, Boone, I think someone is knocking on the door,” said Rama as he ignited another flare and fired it into the darkness above.
This time the dozens of flares fired from the trench rose without incident and reached their apex high above the defense perimeter. Once they hit max height they began to burn, illuminating the area as they sailed in a slow arc over the battlefield in the direction of where it was supposed that the enemy lines were positioned.
As soon as the light shone down, the oncoming nightmare wave of flesh and claws was revealed. They were legion, many thousands of darkly colored chitonous bodies, slavering jaws, and primed projectile weapons of all kinds.
And they were close.
“Hydra Company, swarm advancing!” sounded the deep voice of the Watchman in the earpiece of every marine in Trench 16 who still drew breath. “Stand and deliver!”
On the trench line, there were two chain-fire gun emplacements, each of them a rotating multi-barreled weapon that fired the same plasma bolts that the rifles did, only with an incredible rate of fire. As with the tanks, it had been a long war, and resources were stretched thin, so that Trench 16 even had two such support weapons was a boon.
From his position, Ajax, could see the hundreds of bolts ripping into the wall of alien flesh that roared towards them. Like most ground swarms, the enemy creatures leading the charge were ripper drones, seemingly mindless monsters with multiple limbs tipped by scything chitin blades. More than any other Garm brood they most resembled the cockroach of Earth, armored and voracious, each one was two meters in length and bipedal. They always charged directly at their enemies and carried no projectile weapons, so they usually died in droves as they pressed towards defended positions.
As expected, the chain-fires were tearing a bloody swathe through the legions of ripper drones illuminated by the flares. As brutal as the massacre was, every marine on the line knew that if any of those creatures reached the trench there would be a grisly price to pay, not to mention the fact that behind the rippers would be other swarms, equally deadly and eager for the slaughter.
Ajax leveled his sights at the oncoming enemy and waited for them to hit the first range marker. Each marine trained endlessly to be able to judge distances with the naked eye, an especially useful skill when fighting on various worlds with such varied atmospheric conditions. The war with the Garm had been a brutal thing indeed, with catastrophic losses on both sides, and yet humanity had all but halted the advance of the extinction fleet in the Vorhold system.
As a common soldier, Ajax was not privy to the full complexities of the vast galactic conflict, though he had gathered over time that humanity’s back was against the wall and if the Vorhold system fell there would be precious little to keep the swarms away from Earth.
Vorhold was a long way from here, thought Ajax, as he watched the ripper drones being gunned down, but to the people huddling together in the city behind him this was the only front that mattered.
The bulk of the ripper swarm was willingly slain to exhaust the ammunition of the chain-fires and advance the other Garm formations under the cover of their sacrifice. That was the way of the swarm, each part of it fulfilling a specific role without fear or regard for individual survival.
In the pale light of the flares Ajax saw the next swarm come into range, and his heart pounded in his chest.
They were gorehounds, monstrous creatures roughly the size of a human being, only they were stooped creatures that ran on four hoofed feet. With two other limbs that sickeningly resembled clawed arms they carried projectile weapons. Like the shriekers and all the other Garm they had both reptilian and insectoid qualities, but to Ajax they looked like sub-machine guns on four legs.
Their weapons were extensions of their bodies despite how similar they might look to the weapons carried by the warriors of humanity. It was as if the creature’s entire body was designed to allow it to rush an enemy position and then empty the magazine, which happened to be the internal contents of their bodies, into the defenders.
“Gorehounds,” sneered Boone as he toggled back the fuse mod of his grenade launcher. “This is what they get for keeping their ammo on the inside.”
Boone started squeezing the trigger of his launcher, which made a coughing sound every time an explosive round left the barrel.
Ajax held his fire, not wanting to waste bolts, and watched as the rounds punched into the line of enemy creatures.
While some of the rounds hit into the hoofed feet of the gorehounds, the creature’s heavily armored heads and shoulders deflected most of them.
Boone had anticipated as much, however, and as the fuses sparked, the grenades ripped holes in the Garm formations. The explosions and shrapnel of the grenades that had landed just behind the oncoming gorehounds were most effective, since the creatures had little armor on the rest of their bodies. As the explosions tore through them, the living ammunition inside each of the gorehounds was exposed to open air.
As had been discovered the hard way by marines in past engagements, the larval ammunition of the gorehounds were inert until they were exposed to breathable air. Once they were awakened, the larvae were voracious and would chew their way through as much living tissue as they could until they literally burst from overeating.
In the blink of an eye Boone’s incendiary assault was made even more devastating as many gorehounds who had only been wounded by the blasts were eaten alive from the inside by their own ammunition.
Other grenadiers had made similar choices with their fuse mods and in an instant the swarm had been dealt a mighty blow.
Ajax lost no more time in selecting a target, and fired a bolt through the chest of a gorehound that died as it exploded into several grisly pieces.
The other marines up and down the line began to fire their own plasma rifles. Everyone knew that while the swarm had suffered heavy casualties, behind those gorehounds were yet more horrific creatures, and once the enemies reached the trench the fight would be on the Garm’s terms.
Ajax and Rama maintained a steady stream of fire, each marine working the action of their rifle to vent chamber heat after every tenth shot. As rifles they trained hard to make the operation of the weapon as seamless as possible. Against the swarm there was a risk of overheating the weapon, and after every tenth shot the marines vented the heat to keep the rifle operational.
Ajax knew that every time he vented that was one less bolt he fired downrange, one less enemy slain on the field, but it had to be done to be effective for the length of the engagement. Like the prohibition on full-auto spray that was a natural urge in moments of raw fear, the vent on the tenth shot was a rifle discipline drilled into each marine until it was as natural as breathing.
He did his best not think of the innumerable waves of creatures that awaited behind the ripper drones and gorehounds and forced from his mind the sickening realization that a swarm of this size and complexity was not what Hydra Company had prepared to fight.
The Garm had modified their strategy and the rifles of H
ydra Company would not be enough to stem the tide.
Ajax drew in a breath and let it out slowly, re-gaining his composure, his only thought was on shoot, vent, and shoot again. It was only through strict rifle discipline that Trench 16 would hold, and hold it they must.
“Hydra Company tactical retreat to the second parallel! First unit, time now!” shouted the voice of Jarl Mahora, the leader of Hydra Company, second only to the Watchman, through everyone’s earpiece, “Second unit hold the line!”
Ajax and Boone both stopped firing as soon as commanded and looked at Rama, who briefly nodded to them before returning to aiming his rifle at the enemy.
Ajax and Boone were part of first unit, while Rama was second unit. Everyone knew after much experience fighting the Garm, that a significant portion of second unit would not survive the retreat. They were more of a rearguard who would buy first unit time to escape and re-position.
Ajax leapt down into the mud of the trench bottom and moved as quickly as he could through the thick soup towards the connecting trench. The second parallel was just as fortified as the first, but even though it occupied a smaller swathe of ground, the marines still had to sprint down roughly eighty meters of trench to reach it.
There were only three connecting trenches, spaced evenly across the first parallel, so the two marines had a treacherous distance to cover to reach the connection.
Ajax tried to maintain a good speed while struggling against the sucking mud and the carnage the covered the bottom of the trench. What ground wasn’t covered in treacherous mud was littered with the broken bodies of shriekers and more than a few marines. As the two marines picked their way down the trench, the men of second unit kept firing into the oncoming waves of Garm.
Ajax was passing near one of the chain-fire emplacement when the gun overheated and suddenly went silent as the action of the weapon slammed into place, a security feature that kept it from exploding.
It was an odd feature, but a useful one. When the chain-fires were first introduced to the battlefield they had a nasty habit of exploding when they overheated. They had been created like the pulse rifles of the infantry, and relied upon individual gunners to manually vent the excess heat caused by firing the weapon.
However, the limits of human control over the instincts of fight or flight was limited, and it had been discovered that in the thick of battle most gunners were incapable of choosing to stop firing if they were in a desperate situation. When facing the scuttling horrors of the Garm, all they could do was keep shooting, so the automatic safety action had to be placed on each weapon. If the gunner did not pause to vent the heat, after a while the gun would just shut down, preserving the weapon.
Ajax could hear the gunners cursing in frustration as they raised their rifles, each knowing that the gun would have to cool for several minutes and by that time this trench would be lost. That was the element about the shut off that Ajax found most strange, yet cruelly effective. If the gun was pushed to such limits that it shut down, one could safely assume that whatever position being defended would be overrun. With the gun shut down it was unlikely to be damaged by the swarm, for it was not organic or operational. If the Einherjar could turn the tide of battle and retake the position, the gun would be waiting for them, cooled off and ready to fire in an instant. One of the many bizarre tactics learned by the Einherjar during this seemingly endless war against the swarm.
Ajax reached the connecting tunnel, with Boone right behind him and they picked up the pace on more solid ground.
The connecting trench had been cut into the loamy soil and then reinforced with flak-boards just like the first parallel, though it had not suffered from the battle with the shrieker swarm. Only a handful of rifles stood guard in the trench, and so there was little to attract the attention of the creatures. The marines raced down the trench and were about halfway to the second parallel when they heard Mahora’s voice over the company channel once more.
“Second unit, yield the parallel!” ordered Mahora in the earpiece of each marine, and then followed that with, “Prepare the Blackouts for deployment!”
Ajax and Boone, with a score of other first unit marines, reached the second parallel and immediately began working to prepare its defense.
Only a handful of marines were already in position on the second parallel and as the marines from first unit poured in, the trench line began to bristle with rifles.
Boone slung his empty launcher and drew his sidearm, a pistol equivalent of the pulse rifles carried by the other marines, smaller in bolt caliber but it still packed quite a punch.
Ajax took a few seconds to swap out his carbon mag for a fresh one. While he still had plenty of ammunition left in the first, the next wave of enemies might not give him the chance to switch later.
“Ajax!” said a friendly voice to his right, and as the marine turned he saw his comrade, Sharif, standing on a firestep near the connecting trench, another rifle and a member of the casual circle of friends that all soldiers formed naturally over the course of any war. “Where’s Yao?”
“He didn’t make it this time,” answered Boone over his shoulder as he planted his feet at the edge of the connecting trench, seemingly having made his choice to defend that position, considering that his pistol would not do as well as a rifle on the open ground above. “You seen Hart anywhere?”
“I haven’t, but that’s kind of the point, right?” answered Sharif before gesturing back towards the anti-air gun battery up the hill, “Some trouble at Watch Tower I think, so the jarl sent him to check it out.”
“It did look like Tower got hit pretty hard with the spore barrage,” said Ajax as marines from second wave started to make their way down the connecting tunnel.
Space Marine Ajax is available from Amazon here.