Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  Until now.

  With a curled fist and a jabbing finger, Scout Sergeant Thridius ordered his brothers to move hand over hand to the shadowed wedge where the transmotive sweep met the ground. He moved out, dropping the last five metres to land on the wreckage of a dropship with a muffled crunch.

  There, slumped against the curving cliff of a xenos building, were the remains of Captain Atheus. He had been slain by a weapon of such galling power it had bored right through his chest, down through his guts, and out the base of his spine to chew a deep hole into the wall beyond. Thridius nodded as his suspicions were confirmed; whatever had killed the captain of the Eighth had been taller by far, and armed with cutting edge xenos weaponry.

  Atheus’ face was waxen and pale under the light of the gas cloud. Twin trails of dried blood lined his chin, its deep red appearing black. The captain’s face bore a look of consternation and pride, his jaw set and his brow furrowed even in death.

  And there was the axe of the Lord Executioner, lying discarded as if it were no more than a common blade.

  Checking the skies for tau patrols, the lead scout pulled his chameleoline cloak from his waist and tucked it around his shoulders. He scooped a handful of rock dust from the lee of a shattered slab, padded it onto his face, and rubbed it into his hair. Behind him, his squad followed suit. As Space Marines, it was always galling to cover their heraldic colours, but the tau patrols would no doubt have calibrated their sensors to spot them. There were times when the Tenth Company was called upon to fulfil missions the rest of the Chapter would struggle to achieve.

  Thridius motioned for his men to stay and cover him, beckoning Overius to accompany him with a point and a curled finger. The two Scouts padded forward in a crouch, moving from the toppled wall of a building to the burnt-out hulk of a tau transport. A quick shuffling run, and they were over to Atheus’ body. Thridius picked up the cadaver by the arm, crouched, and – and with a great heave – turned it over his back so the immense dead weight was borne upon his spine. Overius retrieved the greataxe, and together they padded back the way they came. Along the way Thridius saw that the disembodied hand of Captain Atheus still grasped the ancient weapon’s haft, locked tight by death’s own grip. Stubborn, even in death.

  Just as the two Scouts were halfway across open ground they heard the sound of a tau drone, soft but getting louder. Thridius darted a glare at Overius, eyes wide, and they both froze. The drone came closer. The hum of its engines was not that of the usual blasphemous gun-machine, but the bass thrum of a far larger reconnaissance type. Thridius saw it round the corner, a heavy disc with a wide column of scanners, ammunition slots and gun workings hanging from its midsection. The device would scry them in seconds, and before a minute had passed they would be taking heavy fire.

  There was a dull pop as Brother Leovitus took his shot, the tiny flicker of his sniper rifle’s muzzle just visible in Thridius’ peripheral vision. The shot struck home where the underside of the drone’s disc met its midsection, and the machine was suddenly swathed with purple electricity. It emitted a strange screech, veering to one side before its scryer-lights and beams shorted out and turned black. Its anti-grav engines went next. The drone crashed into the rubble, thin streams of smoke hissing from its fuselage.

  Thridius turned to Leovitus and nodded curtly before hauling Atheus’ body back into the shelter of the transmotive sweep. Crouching, his brothers helped take the weight.

  ‘Nice shot, Leovitus,’ whispered the sergeant, ‘my thanks. But they will soon notice it’s gone. We must make haste. Donturos, inform Lord Calgar that the captain’s body has been retrieved, and the axe with it. Then observe silence protocols until we are safely back.’

  A nod of confirmation, a rustle of chameleoline, and the Scouts of the Tenth Company melted away into the shadows once more.

  Chapter Nine

  EXTRAPOLATION/THE MAILED FIST STRIKES

  Sergeant Kinosten swore blue murder as another volley of pulse rifle fire streaked overhead. For a split second the neat white beams of energy illuminated the filthy, half-starved platoon of Astra Militarum under Kinosten’s command.

  His had been a field promotion, of a sort. Commander Anatol and Sergeant Dvorjedt had both been kind enough to get their spines shot out during the last sally up Gun Ridge, and the men didn’t trust the wizened astropath Malagrea enough to turn their back on her. Kinosten was the only remaining member of Ontova Platoon’s command echelon who was anything like a leader. So now he was holed up in the cratered mess of a buried xenos hab with forty-eight of the 122nd Baleghast Castellans looking to him for a way out.

  The promotion he had always hankered after now seemed the worst of all possible curses. Despite the drill sergeant persona he put forward and the torrents of foul invective that frequently spilled from his stubble-framed lips, part of him still felt scared enough to fill a bucket.

  ‘Acting Sergeant Kinosten,’ said the regiment’s master of ordnance, Deletei Nordgha. Kinosten just ignored him, staring back toward the Imperial lines with the haunted look of a shellshock victim. Inside he was fighting the urge to curl a fist.

  ‘Kinosten! I am speaking to you!’

  How he hated Nordgha. Always criticising, always more than eager to call down a bombardment on the front line – never mind the poor bloody infantry that might be fighting there – and half the time more interested in his hairstyle and the sheen of his heirloom breastplate than the lives at stake around him.

  ‘Acting Sergeant Kinosten,’ said Nordgha again, his tone insistent, ‘I must speak with you.’

  ‘What?’ roared Kinosten, his fear boiled away by the heat of his rage.

  ‘We are still pinned down. What is your plan? Advance in the Emperor’s name, I presume?’

  ‘Advance?’ said Kinosten, his voice practically a screech. ‘If I give the order to advance, fifty men die in the space of a few seconds! Have you not been paying attention, you oil-haired fool? Have you seen what those xenos freaks are using? Their line infantry, their line infantry, are carrying plasma weapons that make this,’ Kinosten grabbed the flak armour over his chest and shook it with a vigour close to frenzy, ‘look like one of your wife’s moth-eaten camisoles!’

  Nordgha bristled, his jowls wobbling as he tried to recoil from Kinosten’s wrath and puff himself up at the same time.

  ‘We have plenty of ammunition, surely,’ said Nordgha lamely, ‘I’ve seen it back there.’

  Kinosten felt his vision flare white. He smacked the heels of his hands into his face over and over as the intensity of his rage overwhelmed him.

  ‘It’s the wrong bloody kind! The devil-sucking Munitorum sent us Triplex Phall pattern. We might as well shove ration packs in our sockets for all the good it will do! We’ve recharged every damn cell we have ten times over! There’s nothing left!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Private Feindhast, ‘perhaps if we…’

  ‘Perhaps if we what, Feindhast?’ shouted Kinosten, his eyes bulging as he thrust his face within an inch of his weak-chinned subordinate. ‘Perhaps if we retreated to Theta Tert, so Duggan can put a bolt pistol shell in the back of my head for cowardice? Perhaps if we threw ourselves into the teeth of the enemy fire, so we can die together in each other’s arms?’ Thin strings of spittle flew from the sergeant’s mouth, lacing the private’s cheek. ‘Perhaps if you had more brains than a flophouse runt you’d realise we’re already dead!’

  ‘Sir,’ whispered Feindhast, his eyes screwed up and his face the colour of a corpse. ‘Please don’t shoot me. Please.’

  ‘For the love of spite, Feindhast, I’m not going to shoot you,’ said Kinosten, some of his incandescent anger ebbing away as he saw genuine fear in the private’s features. ‘Just say your damned piece.’

  ‘It’s just… if we haven’t got ammo, and we haven’t got a chance in a firefight… maybe we could try these?’ He held up a long piece of steel, a fain
t glint on its edge.

  It took Kinosten a moment to realise it was a bayonet.

  ‘Right,’ said Kinosten. ‘Bayonet charge. Against the most technologically advanced foe we’ve ever seen.’

  Another hissing storm of pulse rifle fire crackled overhead. They heard the loud crump of an engine going up in the middle distance.

  ‘We might as well go out strong, sarge,’ said Doriev, Feindhast’s bunkmate, coming up to place a meaty hand on Nordgha’s well-polished epaulettes. ‘Maybe get Buttons here to call down a barrage as we go.’

  A long moment of silence stretched out, the expressions of the assembled Guardsmen grey and serious. Nordgha gave an almost imperceptible nod, his face pale in the gloom.

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ muttered Kinosten for the first time in weeks. ‘I just hope the old bastard’s got a soft spot for lunatics.’

  Commander Farsight surveyed the data-compiles of the previous night’s fighting with a growing sense of unease. The Imperial war machine, portrayed by the water caste as lumbering and predictable, had proved to be anything but.

  The Imperial invasion force was throwing tidal waves of military force into Damocles with every new day. Gue’ron’sha spearheads had been launched against several major cities across the northern hemisphere of Dal’yth, their attacks so sudden that the fire caste had struggled to reply in time. Every one of the assaults had made significant gains.

  In the areas outside the cities, Shadowsun was working hard to keep the Imperials from establishing supply lines by striking at the hundreds-strong columns of tanks that prowled through the indigo wilderness. Keeping to the dark side of the planet, her stealth cadres were rarely seen, but Farsight could extrapolate their positions easily enough from the destruction they left in their wake. He had watched the drone captures six times already. Watching O’Shaserra work – even at one step removed – never lost its lustre.

  Confusion reigned in a dozen hex-sectors as the gue’la tried to fight back, their armoured columns brought to a choking standstill. The wreckage of their vanguard blasted a new path through nearby magnorail tunnels so they could give pursuit. Farsight smiled wryly. They had about as much chance of catching Shadowsun’s stealth cadres as he had of getting an apology for her behaviour in the audience chamber.

  Over the last few nights Farsight had done everything in his power to help her. He had even personally led mont’ka battlesuit spearheads to deliver the killing blow when the gue’ron’sha had taken the bait by attempting to relieve the beleaguered tanker columns. The complementary strategies of kauyon and mont’ka had been extremely effective, but the two commanders had yet to communicate face to face. They knew each other so well that in practice they did not need to.

  Farsight spooled through the latest footage from Via’mesh’la. The tau’s stranglehold on the war zone had been broken by an infantry charge. Not by Space Marines, but by simple gue’la infantry. Some of them had made it to close quarters, despite the overlapping fire lanes of the cadre defending the ridge.

  Stony-faced, Farsight watched drone footage of human troopers charging through a killing field of pulse rifle fire and orbital bombardments. Their rough, barking orders were becoming familiar sounds to him, the simple war cries those of a backwards tribe grown impossibly numerous. Perhaps one in six of the human attackers survived to gain the ridge. Those who made it through set about themselves with their primitive spear-like rifles as if gripped by a rabid frenzy, stabbing and slashing to wreak absolute ruin on the fire warriors behind the tidewall.

  What a waste, thought Farsight. After the harrowing ten-year crusade against the orks of Arkunasha, his personal cadre trained in close-quarters doctrine every dawn, but the rest of the tau military still considered it a distraction from the true art of war. At Via’mesh’la they had paid the price.

  It was far from the only disaster emerging from the shadows as the days crept by. Disturbing reports of unarmed Imperials making uncategorisable kills were flooding the datanets, as confusing as they were illogical. Farsight was beginning to feel his grip on the Dal’yth operation weakening, and he knew from bitter experience the ethereals would be quick to reach the same conclusion.

  As the thought of censure crossed O’Shovah’s mind, a screen on his datasuite glowed. The personal icon-script of the Stone Dragon was overlaid on the symbol denoting the earth caste – a disc cresting a halved oblong that signified order, unity and strength. He eye-flicked the assent code and turned to face the screen’s microcamera.

  ‘Commander Farsight, greetings!’ said O’Vesa, broad teeth bared in an approximation of a smile. ‘I have news for you.’

  Farsight’s eyes narrowed. Something about the scientist’s body language was strange: he was leaning forward rather than back, and his smile seemed fixed. The earth caste were never much good at concealing their emotions; O’Shovah had long held the theory it was because they were so very unused to them. They famously had very little in the way of empathy. On Arkunasha, O’Vesa had proved so thoughtless he had antagonised Farsight to the point of violence.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Farsight. ‘This is the kind of news better imparted in person.’

  ‘Indeed it is!’ said O’Vesa, his face lighting up for a moment before becoming deadly serious once more. ‘A matter of some delicacy.’

  ‘Very well. I need your advice on something anyway. I shall make haste to your location. I can be there in a matter of decs if you stay put.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said O’Vesa. ‘I think we are approaching a crux point in the history of Dal’yth.’

  ‘I concur,’ said Farsight. ‘The Imperials are more resourceful than we thought. We will need to reply in kind.’

  ‘Resources, commander,’ said O’Vesa, ‘are something I am well placed to help with.’

  Having turned down the offer of a saz’nami escort for the hundredth time, Farsight marched down the corridors of the Gel’bryn Prototype Complex. His heels clacked with a precise metronomic tempo on the steel-hard thermoplastic. To walk alone, to stride with purpose at a precise pace, always helped him think – and to steady his heartbeat. Just as well, he thought. Dealing with O’Vesa was usually to invite a nasty surprise, even if the genius scientist had a lot to offer the Tau’va.

  The corridors of the complex were scrupulously clean, and the crisp scents of antiseptic and ozone hung in the air. Every route and information point was ordered and clear. It was the same across Dal’yth; every other facility given over to the scientists and workers of the earth caste was a haven of logic and order.

  Farsight nearly choked in shock when he passed through the iris doors to the weapons testing environments to be greeted by fizzing sparks and a veil of thin smoke.

  ‘Commander Farsight,’ said an earth caste worker, his broad, wrinkled features creasing in an expression somewhere between awe and terror. ‘My sincere apologies for the status of this interstitial passageway. I… I shall fetch O’Vesa to honour you immediately.’

  ‘No need, Por’el Mayatan,’ said a voice from the far end of the chamber. ‘I have fetched myself.’

  Outwardly serious, Farsight smiled with his eyes at the gawping worker before approaching his old colleague.

  As he moved in to the complex, he could not help but look through the lozenge-shaped windows at its smoke-shrouded testing chambers. Beyond was a jungle analogue, wisps of cordite floating through its shattered observation pane. A few hundred metres away the lunar deathscape, which Farsight knew to be a favourite testing environment of O’Vesa’s for its stark simplicity, had its airlock open. Two worker-scientists escorted a hover-slab bearing a ruined facsimile of a gue’ron’sha through its doors.

  ‘The Stone Dragon breathes fire, I see,’ said Farsight.

  ‘No,’ said O’Vesa awkwardly, ‘this is not my doing, Commander. Technically speaking. We had some uninvited guests. I admit I may have… capitalised upon the o
pportunity. Follow me. I will ensure that I provide optimum summation of the relevant incidents.’

  ‘The raw information itself would be more useful,’ said Farsight.

  ‘Of course, of course. You shall have it all in due time. For the Greater Good.’

  O’Vesa turned, waving his data wand across an iris portal’s scanner oval and passing through to the area beyond. Farsight followed him through a wide vestibule that led to a far larger chamber. Everything from stealth-tech chameleosuites to XV88 weapon cradles lined the vestibule’s walls. Banks of experimental software connected to factory-grey battlesuits through thick fibre-optic cables and flickering antennae dumps. It was quite a sight, but it was the chamber beyond that set a fire in the commander’s heart.

  The main section of the subterranean hangar was truly cavernous, easily the largest Farsight had ever seen. The central workspace was nine floors deep, wide enough to accommodate an entire coalition with room to spare. A series of slope-walled mezzanines stretched around its perimeter, each with observation windows leading to smaller experimentation facilities.

  Several battlesuits of immense size were being constructed in the depths of the hangar, so large their piston-lined skeletons and motive units could have lifted a Hammerhead tank as easily as Farsight would shoulder a rifle. One was a true giant, squat-bodied and broad. Its arms, such as they were, housed massive missile banks that could have cleared a city’s skies of enemy air power in a matter of minutes.