Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  The sergeant aligned the improvised xenotech shield over his pauldron, swearing under his breath as he gunned his pack to maximum.

  ‘Guilliman’s oath, I hope this works.’

  The plasma bolts splashed across the drone’s stuttering forcefield, blinding in their intensity but unable to penetrate the protective disc. A second later, Numitor slammed into the red battlesuit as it was pivoting away. A storm of warring energies swathed them both as the force-field drone and the shield technology of the tau warsuit crackled in a feedback loop, filling the air with the acrid stink of burning electronics.

  Numitor shoved hard, trying to earn space enough to land a solid blow. The xenos warrior rolled with the push, batting him sideways with the barrel of its plasma rifle. Then Sicarius dived down to slam feet first into the warsuit’s shoulder. It reeled, and the sergeant lashed out with his tempest blade in a diagonal sweep. The tip took half the thing’s head in a shower of blue sparks.

  There was a blaze of light so harsh that Numitor’s autosenses blanked out. His vision returned fast, but not fast enough. Sicarius was casting about for his foe, jump pack blazing intermittently to keep him aloft as he scanned the area for his prey.

  Numitor looked up on instinct. There it was – the red warsuit, soaring vertically, drops of water reflecting light like tiny prisms in its wake. High above, a blocky tau aircraft was carving through the skies to intercept the warsuit’s course, its four squat engines leaving curved trails across the sky as it slid into position.

  The sergeant checked his gauges, but his thruster fuel reserves were so low there was no way he could intercept. He had to land somewhere safe immediately, even if it was only at the base of one of the viaduct pillars. Given that Sicarius was not already in pursuit, his fellow sergeant evidently had the same problem. The shattered remnants of their Assault squads held their position inside the transmotive.

  As the crimson warsuit slipped from their grasp it shook in mid-flight, sparks still trailing from the remains of its bisected head. Rising upwards, it made for the bay doors yawning open at the rear of the turning craft. The xenos warrior matched velocity with impressive skill, water still dripping from its legs in sprays of glittering droplets.

  Numitor watched the warsuit as it turned smoothly at the apogee of its high leap, folding into a backwards crouch and leaning into the hold. It was soon swallowed by the gloom of the vehicle’s interior. The aircraft made for the horizon as oblong pistons pulled the bay door closed once more, the scattered Ultramarines powerless to stop it.

  Numitor caught one last glimpse of the blood-red warsuit before it vanished from sight completely.

  It had its plasma rifle raised in a gesture that looked strangely like a salute.

  Fluids sluiced from the XV8’s purger valves, flooding the Aftermath’s hold and causing the water level in the control cocoon to drop sharply. Inside, Farsight took great whooping breaths. His lungs were on fire and his whole body burned with intense cold. The battlesuit was shuddering in response, stamping and rattling. The commander managed to eye-flick its disengagement lock and pistons hissed as the suit sagged into standby mode.

  Within the control cocoon, Farsight was still in great pain. He saw his pores flaring, tiny pink bubbles frothing in swathes across his exposed skin as the pressure differential between reservoir and aircraft took its due.

  He was not out of the inferno yet. Without decompression, the trauma of his near-drowning would prove fatal in a matter of hours.

  ‘We’re flying as low as possible,’ said Kor’ui Y’eldi. ‘I’ll cling to the ground, make a heading back to the Shas’ar’tol command site.’

  ‘De… decomp…’ stammered Farsight. ‘Major cas… facility… Atha’dra…’

  ‘Atha’dra? Affirmed. Altering course now.’

  As the last of the water drizzled from Farsight’s battlesuit, he completed his data-compile, submitted it to O’Vesa, and allowed himself to black out.

  Chapter Three

  CONSOLIDATION/PUNISHMENT

  ‘What in the Throne’s name were you two idiots thinking?’

  Captain Atheus of the Eighth Company stood at the heart of the Ultramarines command hub, a bombed-out dome that had likely once housed a xenos dignitary. The captain’s embroidered cloak billowed and snapped in the downdraft of the Thunderhawk transporters bringing tanks to the dropsite, and the red horsehair of his crest rippled as the air swirled hot around him.

  Numitor and Sicarius could not see their superior officer’s expression, but his stance left them in no doubt as to his mood. He looked as if he was about to lash out, and given the rumours of Atheus’ volatile temper, that might well be the case.

  ‘Lord Executioner,’ said Sicarius, ‘we dispersed as per your orders, and made use of an opportunity to strike at the heart of the xenos military.’

  ‘You left half your squad behind, Sergeant Sicarius!’ shouted Atheus. ‘And don’t pretend you two had any idea of where that transmotive was headed. Four battle-brothers died as a direct result of your actions. I had to divert a Thunderhawk gunship to unite your squad! The Sword of Calth, no less!’

  ‘It was an unforgivable lapse of judgement,’ said Numitor, his eyes cast down, ‘on both our parts. Although…’

  Numitor left the word hanging for a moment.

  ‘Sergeant Numitor,’ growled Atheus, ‘Do not try my patience further. If you have something to say, say it.’

  ‘Although we acted rashly,’ continued Numitor, ‘we had a chance to assassinate a key member of their war council. In that, we may have succeeded.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Atheus.

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Sicarius before Numitor could answer. ‘This one.’ He drew his combat knife and threw it end over end across the ruined plaza. It struck one of the xenos propaganda hololiths, tip embedded in the wall behind – an image of a tall tau warrior standing proud before a giant red battlesuit. ‘A commander hero of their warrior caste,’ continued Sicarius. ‘We hounded him to the point of death.’

  ‘I know of that one all too well,’ said Atheus. ‘Pict-capture footage of his triumphs is projected on the clouds every night. These xenos are fond of telling themselves they are strong.’

  Whilst Atheus’ attention was on the hololith, Numitor scowled at Sicarius, but did not contradict his claim.

  ‘But you do not have his corpse as proof,’ said Atheus, his tone as thin and sharp as razorwire as he turned back to the sergeants. ‘Nor do you have any data to verify your words.’

  Neither Numitor or Sicarius was foolish enough to reply.

  ‘You are over-fond of dramatic gestures, Sergeant Sicarius, and one day they will get you killed. Right this moment, I would consider that a fitting justice.’

  The sergeants kept their peace.

  ‘Retrieve your combat knife, sergeant. Then you will reunite with your squads, both of you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Numitor. ‘We will make all haste.’

  ‘Bring me the corpse of this xenos war hero, and I shall consider your chosen course exonerated. Otherwise, you will act as honour and penitence dictate at all times. Is that clear?’

  Both sergeants made the sign of the aquila. ‘Aye, Lord Atheus.’

  A Space Marine with weathered brown skin and six service studs in his forehead crunched through the rubble towards the Lord Executioner.

  ‘Enitor, well met,’ said Atheus, turning away from the sergeants. ‘Report.’

  ‘My lord, we have had word from the Iron Hands. Tau heavy elements are inbound on this position.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Atheus. ‘Disperse and engage. And sergeants,’ said the captain, looking back to Numitor and Sicarius, ‘do not lead your men astray from the Codex’s teachings in your next engagement, or I shall ensure it is the last time you do so.’

  Commander Farsight was curled in a foetal ball within an e
arth caste healsphere no bigger than a control cocoon. Monitor nodes blinked around him, and gently hissing medivac drones pumped gels and analgesics into the sphere’s amniotic fluids. Assuage tubes jutted from between the commander’s eyes.

  Eyes completely filled with blood.

  Farsight could see the reflection of those paired red slits, distorted in the dim reflection of the healsphere’s curve. The symbolism was not lost on him.

  To give into anger entirely is to embrace failure. Use it, channel it, but do not become its thrall.

  As ever, the words of Master Puretide were anchored fast in his memory, a rock in the raging sea of his emotions. Over the long hours of the night he had forced his temper to a flat, simmering line, aware that to lose his cool would be to delay the healing process.

  But the fire was still there, and the Imperial invaders would feel it soon enough.

  Footage of the invasion thus far flickered on the curved interior of the healsphere. Autotrans relays spooled, strips of intercepted transmission rendered in tau. Drab olive bulk-ships of tremendous size were descending behind the Imperial beachheads on Gel’bryn City’s borders, their foul gaseous emissions tainting the sky. Artillery columns were fanning out into mobile gun lines, trundling behind bipedal war engines so large their tread shook rubble from the hexodomes ruined in their wake.

  Here and there Farsight caught glimpses of gue’ron’sha commanders on the front line. They were easy to spot in their impractically bright war-colours, each an embodiment of over-confidence, barking out orders as they plunged into battle.

  The Imperials had a grating, atavistic war-tongue. Farsight had paid close attention to it, watching the footage of Vespertine over and over again. There were patterns there, correlations in their war doctrine that spoke of a shared vocabulary. He did not have the water caste’s innate facility for languages, but there were few who understood military cant better than the pupils of Puretide. Slowly, the pieces of the Imperials’ crude and grunting language were falling into place.

  Farsight blink-pushed the recall function. Even that tiniest of actions stung his eyes as if powdered glass had been rubbed into them. Tears of blood mingled with the healsphere’s fluids, but he kept his eyes open nonetheless. There were the warriors he had fought, shimmering amongst the holographs: two red-helmed gue’ron’sha officers, one with the field gauntlet, the other with the energised sword.

  Farsight eye-stabbed an override command into the healsphere’s databank and made his mind ready for war. He had rested enough.

  These gue’ron’sha would pay for what had happened. Pay it many times over.

  Thin rain fell through the broken dome of the observation tower, pattering from Sergeant Numitor’s battleplate as he stared through a wide crack in its wall. The hex-city of Gel’bryn sprawled out before him, thick columns of smoke rising from the sites of a dozen Imperial beachheads. Water pooled around his feet, already discoloured with particles of soot.

  Humanity was taking this world for its own, making its mark upon it, even down to the molecular level. The war they had brought was just the most obvious sign of its claim upon Dal’yth.

  And yet, thought Numitor, the planet was far from uncontested.

  In the curving city streets below them, the smoking wreckage left in the wake of each drop had already been scoured of Imperial presence. The tau counter-attack had been aggressive and sudden, the xenos military far nimbler and more potent than anyone had anticipated. The Space Marines had found worthy adversaries here. Across the Chapters assigned to the invasion, over a hundred battle-brothers had lost their lives in the first few hours of fighting.

  The remnants of Squads Numitor and Sicarius had come under heavy fire even as they attempted to rendezvous with the rest of Eighth Company, and had been forced to seek shelter in the shattered dome they now occupied. It was as good a place as any to regroup, despite being miles behind enemy lines. Plexiglass-analogue panels had been crazed opaque by the explosion that had gutted the dome, and the soot that stained its interior had turned its panes black, giving the Ultramarines a measure of obfuscation from the aircraft scouring the city. Better yet, the cracks in its superstructure gave them an unparalleled view over the transmotive network and the reservoir where they had fought the crimson-suited xenos leader.

  Their plan had been to follow that same vector north as swiftly as possible. Aerial transport was out of the question since Atheus had been forced to divert the Sword of Calth to retrieve them – Numitor was still smarting a little from the debriefing – but he had posited following a parallel path by hijacking a different transmotive, then cutting across. It was a plan that worked well in theory. Even Sicarius had embraced it without comment.

  In practice, it had been useless. Numitor had looked eagerly from the dome’s vantage point to find that every one of the spars that headed in that direction had been bombed flat for at least half a mile, and had toppled into the vast reservoir below. Even now several squadrons of T-winged bombers patrolled the skies above it, the tiny dots of interceptor drones forming geometric search patterns in their wake. The tau evidently considered their own infrastructure disposable if it furthered their wider cause.

  Numitor heard Sergeant Sicarius muttering something to his squad, but chose not to listen too closely. More talk about dwindling fuel reserves, no doubt; paying it heed would only aggravate their strained relationship all the more. At least in taking the measure of the city Numitor was accomplishing something.

  The soulless efficiency of the place gnawed at him. It galled him not to be taking his power fist to as many of the blasted xenos structures as he could. Each was a monument to a race that considered themselves the inheritors of the stars. One by one the fires in the distance were winking out, and not because of the drizzling rain. Those infernos started by the preliminary bombardment had been deliberately located, contained, and extinguished by the machines of their builder caste.

  Numitor had fought the tau before, and made his findings well known. They operated on a caste system, each assigned a particular role. The warrior caste they had come to know all too well on Vespertine, and all the more so upon Dal’yth. The builder caste, the engineers and makers of the society, were already thronged around each neutralised beachhead. He could see them teeming like insects as they began to rebuild areas purged of invaders. Curve-hulled construction machines were already lifting new superstructures into place.

  The tau’s pilot caste patrolled the skies, their sleek craft glinting in the darkening firmament as they spied on more honest combatants below. The hum of their engines put Numitor’s teeth on edge. No wonder the warrior caste’s response times were so swift. Wherever those aircraft detected the signs of conflict, they would patch through to their armies, and before long entire platoons would converge upon the site of conflict.

  Even the efforts of the diplomat caste were in evidence. Sky-holos lit the clouds, showing vid-captures of those clashes where the tau emerged as the clear victors. In an urban war, population control was almost as important as the conflict itself, a fact well known to the warriors of Ultramar. Even stark Imperial propaganda made Numitor feel vaguely uneasy. War was never clean, nor was it neat, but instead a boiling cauldron of anarchy, blood and dirt.

  The more the sergeant thought about it, the more the tau’s lack of humanity galled him. A planetary invasion was a terrifying event, but there was no panic in the city below, no sense of urgency and no screaming rush for self-preservation. The city was almost smug in its surety, the controlled and measured response an insult to the raw power of an Adeptus Astartes planetstrike. Did they think their false utopia so strong they could just shrug off an Imperial invasion?

  ‘Fret not, Jorus,’ said Sicarius, walking up to stand by his fellow sergeant’s side. ‘They shall learn to fear us soon enough.’

  Numitor raised an eyebrow, impressed that Sicarius had read his thoughts so well.

&n
bsp; ‘It’s unnatural,’ he replied. ‘The whole empire is deceit writ large. It should be wiped from the stars before it spreads any further.’

  ‘Just so. And our masters are beginning to recognise the need for its execution.’ Numitor heard the smile in Sicarius’ voice even over his vox. ‘Take heart, brother mine. The Eighth Company has been given the honour of wielding the axe.’

  ‘We would wield it a lot more capably if we weren’t scattered to the four winds,’ said Numitor, turning from the cityscape to the Assault Marines gathered under the dome.

  Eighth Company stood divided. Not even Sicarius could gainsay that. There were barely three dozen gathered in the dome where there should have been a hundred. Every one of them had already seen fierce fighting, their number reduced to an assortment of combat squads, under-strength units and even a couple of last men standing whose brothers had all been lost.

  Numitor heard a distant explosion, and quickly turned back to the crack in the dome’s wall. Less than three miles distant he saw the telltale flare of bolt detonations. Sharpening his visor’s display, he zoomed in to focus on an Iron Hands Razorback rocking crazily in a long, arcing street. It was carved apart as he watched, thick hull melted through by a trio of ochre warsuits leaping from the roof above.

  ‘These ones are a far cry from the warriors we fought on Vespertine,’ said Numitor.

  ‘Not so,’ replied Sicarius. ‘They are the same warsuit patterns, just outfitted with different weapons. Those we fought before had the tools to engage massed infantry, not elite strike forces such as ours. Their rapid-firing cannons had little in the way of power to punch through battleplate. These Dal’yth versions, on the other hand…’

  ‘Small-bore plasma weapons, or something like it.’

  ‘And melta analogues to boot,’ agreed Sicarius.