Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  ‘That warsuit used flame near Cobliaze,’ she continued. ‘It’s dead already. Melted.’

  ‘You are Darrapor?’ said Sicarius. She nodded. ‘And this is your contribution to the war effort, this… whatever this is?’ He waved to the yolky mess that still pinned the tau to the wall.

  She nodded again, her half-smile showing broken teeth. ‘I just think of them tau all lined up in their tubes, and it makes me so sick I have to let it out.’

  Sicarius gave an approving frown. ‘Commendable hatred.’

  There was a distant series of booms, the light of the explosions visible even under the strange dome of fire.

  ‘That’s the air caste,’ she said sadly. ‘Their castes all work together. Like disgusting insects.’

  ‘It won’t save them,’ said Sicarius, his features grim as death.

  ‘It will,’ said Darrapor. ‘I see them in my dreams. The main ones tell the rest what to do, and the others all have to do what they say.’

  ‘The main ones?’ Sicarius was only half listening, prowling around the circumference of the fire dome like a caged lion.

  ‘The fifth caste. No one knows about them.’

  Sicarius stopped, and turned to the young psyker.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘There’s another caste. No one listens to me, but I seen them, in their hover-chairs. The Golden Giant showed them to me in a dream.’

  ‘And this fifth caste, they are the leaders of this race?’

  She nodded earnestly, picking a string of ectoplasm from between her teeth. Around them the dome of fire was dimming, flame coiling away to leave thinning smoke behind.

  ‘My thanks,’ said Sicarius, turning to go. ‘For the shelter, and for the knowledge.’

  ‘It was Cobliaze,’ said Darrapor. Her tone was awkward, but she stood a little taller, a little straighter. ‘You have to say it Cob-lee-ay-zee.’

  ‘Fight well, little one,’ said Sicarius, blasting into the sky to rejoin the fray.

  Numitor sprinted down the corpse-scattered track of the sweeprail before launching diagonally from its wall. The running jump saw him sail through the air, a half-second burst from his pack pushing him onto the oval roof of the wide tower below. Magros was close behind as he changed direction and bounded again, this time setting his jump pack to full blast. They left Duolor, Golotan and Aordus behind to set krak grenades at the weakest points of the drone-repaired bridge, their orders to bring it down. For another translocator to bring in more reinforcements at this point would be disastrous.

  Numitor leaped over the burning hull of a Leman Russ Demolisher, the tank still hammering a tau vehicle echelon with wide-bore shells even as it trailed fire. The Baleghast Castellans were outnumbered, both in terms of infantry and machines – and with the anti-aircraft gunners cut down in the opening salvo of the battle, the tau’s air superiority would likely see the xenos turn the tide once more.

  Another jump, thought Numitor, and he would redress the balance in person.

  There was a shrill whistle, descending in the manner of incoming ordnance. A heavy shell plummeted down to blast into the tau vehicle echelon, hurling two of the ochre-hulled skimmers into the buildings on either side. Numitor heard an exultant shout, and spotted the Castellans’ master of ordnance, Nordgha, slamming his fist into his palm.

  ‘Keep them coming!’ shouted Numitor as he backed away from the roof’s edge and took another running jump. Across from him was what looked to be a largely intact anti-aircraft emplacement, abandoned atop a bastion half caked in soot.

  Numitor was perhaps ten feet from the bastion’s roof when a missile veered around a building to smack into his chest-plate. It detonated with such force that it flung him backwards and sent Magros off-course to slam into the building’s flank. They both went down hard into the street, Numitor struggling to stay conscious as the double impact turned his sight into an indistinct blur.

  A deep boom nearby brought Numitor to his senses. Magros was out, lying motionless in the street. There was no time to attend him. There was another detonation from the roofs to the south. The Terminators, without Elixus to move them, were stranded up there, and the circling tau bombers knew it. The sergeant triggered his jump pack, intending to vault upwards to the bastion roof above. The left engine caught, but the right stuttered and coughed, failing to engage. It was all he could do to keep from being flipped over. Mortis signals flared upon his helm’s readout, a sure sign the pack would not respond without the proper ritual maintenance.

  Numitor ran across the street, planted a foot atop an aegis line and sprang as high as he could, catching the jutting muzzle of a heavy bolter protruding from the sponsons halfway up the bastion’s flank with one hand. He reached a foot out and braced himself on the rivet-studded bottom lip of the gun emplacement. He pushed up far enough to get both hands on the top edge of the sponson just as a volley of xenos weapon fire stitched vertically up the sagging banner to his left.

  Ignoring it, Numitor hauled himself upward, getting a knee then a foot atop the emplaced weapon. He spring-jumped upward to catch the lip running around the bastion’s crenulated roof, one foot on the highest outer ridge. From there it was a simple matter to push upwards over the lowest point of the battlements, rolling over onto the floor beyond it with a thumping clatter of ceramite.

  Another missile detonated, flattening him against the blood-slicked steel. Had Numitor been a heartbeat slower it would have pitched him right off the roof and back into the street.

  Numitor stole a glance though the battlement’s vision slit. The missiles had come from a wheeling tau fighter. Time to strike, before it came back around for another run.

  The sergeant made for the battered Icarus quad-gun that jutted from the circular plate in the middle of the roof. Though one of the barrels was a fused mess, three were still intact. The cybernetic skull attached to the gun’s automation reliquary buzzed angrily at him, but its status lantern was green. It was still ready to fight.

  ‘Time for your revenge, machine,’ whispered Numitor. He swung the anti-aircraft gun all the way around until the tau fighter was square in his sights, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil shook his arms as the quad-gun roared its fury. Its autoloaders clanked and spat sparks as shell after shell thumped into the breech, and twelve spurts of fire blazed from the ends of the three barrels still intact. Numitor’s photolenses kicked in, dampening the flashes of the weapon muzzles to show the xenos craft weaving through the flak.

  Numitor’s aim was sound, and the volume of shells he fired impressive. One took the xenos craft in the wing, all but tearing it off. Trailing smoke, it veered over the circular roofs and disappeared from sight. A distant explosion put a broad smile on Numitor’s face as he swung the quad-gun around to find another target.

  On the other side of the Munitorum base, a squadron of tau aircraft were dropping one pulse bomb after another. The Terminators of the First Company were taking heavy fire, not only contending with the white fires of plasma bombs, but also the marksman drones on the roof behind them. Outfitted for close assault and too heavy to make the leap, there was nothing they could do short of hunker down and weather the storm.

  ‘Time’s up, xenos,’ muttered Numitor, aligning the quad-gun’s sights upon the circling squadron of tau bombers. ‘Your doom is at hand.’

  The sergeant squeezed the trigger and held it, playing the long-barrelled autocannons back and forth across the skies. The tau pilots, thinking the Imperial air cover neutralised, had been flying in close formation. The punishment the gun meted out was ruinous. Shells the thickness of a man’s wrist blasted through wings, fuselages and cockpits. In a matter of seconds, all three of the aircraft were sent blazing out of the skies.

  A second xenocraft squadron peeled around, guns returning fire. This time its target behind the Icarus emplacement was no mere Imperial Guardsman, but a Space Marine clad
in indomitable power armour. Impacts punched into both the quad-gun and Numitor, one smacking right into the sergeant’s throat and stealing his breath, but the thick layers of his battleplate stopped it from tearing his windpipe out. Numitor held the flak-gun steady, thumping out rounds with a deep staccato rhythm. His fusillade saw the lead aircraft torn down in flames, followed moments later by the one behind it.

  There was a hissing series of clicks as the autocannons ran dry, barrels plinking as they cooled. The third xenos aircraft came on, the quad-linked ion weapon that formed the sting under its tail blasting hissing beams that struck the Icarus gun true. The energies were blinding in their intensity, and Numitor was forced to turn away. With a groan of defeated metal the entire anti-aircraft array slumped to the right, hopelessly ruined.

  The aircraft was closer now as it came in low, guns retrained on Numitor himself. He cycled up his jump pack on instinct, but nothing happened.

  Then the bastion itself opened fire. With its war spirit roused, the same heavy bolter that had provided him a handhold less than a minute ago added its deep bass to the chorus of destruction echoing through the city. Large-calibre bolts stitched an arc in the sky as they tracked the oncoming xenocraft. One smacked into the tau fighter’s nose, detonating in a sudden blossom of fire and smoke. The xenocraft roared on, swathed in flame and out of control, hurtling towards Numitor on a collision course.

  The sergeant ducked as the tau aircraft careened headlong over him and buried itself in the building behind, its impact so tremendous that only its tail could be seen.

  With its architectural stability shattered, the top of the xenos structure collapsed in an avalanche of rubble that crushed the aircraft flat. The entire roof section slid away and the landslide crashed into the street, throwing up another bow wave of rock dust.

  With their air cover gone and their ambush in tatters, the tau on the rooftops around the munitorum zone were making a full retreat. Even the drones floated out of sight, the cursed discs disappearing into the dust-choked streets. The Terminators stranded on the rooftops across from Numitor broke formation, moving to areas of building that were still broadly intact. Their sergeant caught his gaze, his eye-pieces glinting as he raised his plasma blade in a Macraggian salute.

  Numitor smiled broadly at the sight, tapping his foot on his bastion’s access hatch in a gesture of thanks to its machine-spirits. There was no finer feeling than victory hard-won. His thoughts strayed to the Codex Astartes once more. Do not hasten to attack the enemy in his stronghold, it taught. There he is strongest, and you may dash your strength to nothing against his walls.

  The sergeant’s elation faded as he applied the maxim to the wider situation – not to the tau that had attacked their ersatz fortress zone, but to the Imperial invasion – a headlong attack upon the heart of an alien empire, a civilisation with limitless technical resource.

  The battle for the munitorum zone was over, but the war was a long way from won.

  Chapter Fifteen

  REFLECTION/BEFORE THE TEMPEST

  In the wake of the aborted tau attack, munitorum zone Theta Tert was cleared, rebuilt and reinforced. Dozer-bladed demolitions tanks ground through the rubble-strewn streets. Columns of enginseer-led tankers and Munitorum vehicles, swathed in the purifying incense of censer-armed servitors, followed them to resurrect the vehicle bays destroyed in the battle. Valkyrie sorties flew in low supply runs, taking advantage of the lack of enemy air presence. Before long Theta Tert teemed with twice the manpower it had before the attack, every soldier on high alert. Aside from a few distant sightings of drones, the tau did not come back to trouble them.

  It was not only the Astra Militarum that used the fortress zone as a staging post. Scout squads from the Ultramarines Tenth Company operated out of the munitorum zone to ensure it was not ambushed again, combing the streets and taking those high vantage points recommended by Aordus as stable ground. The rest of the Assault squads took the chance to rearm and refuel. Duolor retrieved his lost chainsword and pistol. Denturis’ bolt pistol was mangled beyond repair, so he opted to retain both chainswords, claiming he would return to Codex-approved wargear patterns at the first opportunity.

  The Hammers of Dorn briefly used the area as a staging post, grumbling about the Eighth Company’s recent abuses of the Codex Astartes until Veletan out-quoted them for a full hour and sent them away in frustrated silence. Even the proud riders of the White Scars had refuelled there, Stormseer Sudabeh conferring with Numitor and the injured Elixus on how best to exploit the enemy’s blind spot for arcane warfare.

  In the last few hours, the command squad of Captain Atheus had arrived by Stormraven. With them came Techmarine Omnid and a trio of plump and unblinking cyber cherubs, each with bionic additions more off-putting than the last. They hovered around Omnid as he went about setting up a temporary forge station in the midsection of one of the bastion towers. There he repaired and resanctified the battered wargear of Squads Numitor and Sicarius.

  Whilst Veteran Sergeant Enitor debriefed every officer involved in the battle, Apothecary Drekos tended to the wounds of those too badly injured to recover on their own. Colnid had his missing leg properly cauterised. Drekos and Omnid worked together to provide their brother with a workable bionic taken from a White Scars casualty, donated with the blessings of the khan by one Veteran Sergeant Sarik.

  Ionsian, who had suffered so badly in the tau ambush that his armour had been melted away to expose his blackened multi-lungs and burned hearts, died of his wounds.

  When the Apothecary had asked to see the rest of their dead, Sicarius and Numitor had given him exact coordinates for where their brothers had fallen along the way. The progenoids of the fallen were of paramount importance to the Adeptus Astartes, for they contained the gene-seed of the primarchs themselves – the key ingredient in the transformation of a mortal to Space Marine. They were vital to securing the future of the Chapter. Drekos had ministered to the wounded as quickly as possible, then gone on his way, the Stormraven gunship Guilliman’s Grace bearing him skyward in search of the Eighth Company’s dead. His was a harrowing duty, but one that carried limitless respect.

  Though Numitor had led two more sorties to reclaim the fortification zones of Theta Prime and Theta Sec from the tau garrisons left there, he had been back at base for almost a full day. He had done his best to meditate and train without showing any signs of irritation, but it had been a challenge. The waiting was worse for Cato Sicarius, for of all of the Eighth, he was perhaps the most battle-hungry. Yet they were both sergeants, experienced enough to realise that even Space Marines had to make their peace with the ebb and flow of military life. With Captain Atheus gone, and with the face of the war for Dal’yth changing so quickly, they would not plunge into battle again without direct instruction from the Chapter’s command echelon.

  So they waited for new orders, and in time, they were rewarded.

  Cato Sicarius made his way over to the bastion that had been sequestered by Apothecary Drekos, reasoning that with the medicae gone, his prohibition upon entry was gone too. During the battle Ionsian, Kaetoros and Glavius had trapped the stealth team as ordered, killing half a dozen of the things, but had taken heavy fire in the process. Sicarius understood from Drekos that the wounds taken by the other two were almost as severe as those that had killed Ionsian.

  Still, he needed to talk to his squad, and the matter had waited long enough. There was the possibility of a fifth caste in tau society, and what bearing that might have on their situation Sicarius did not know. He had no especial desire to talk to Numitor about it; his fellow sergeant would ask where the information had come from, and the answer would not be easy to explain. He very much doubted the Ultramarines would change their war strategy on the word of a warp-touched young psyker. He could almost see Numitor’s stolid expression as Sicarius made himself look like a fool in front of his men. No. He would seek Glavius’ advice first, at le
ast.

  As he made his way over, Sicarius saw an Astra Militarum medic carrying a bundle of gore-soaked bandages exit the hospitaller building. The medic stopped and stared at him, but as soon as he stared back the human averted his gaze and scurried off. Sicarius nodded to himself and proceeded inside.

  The dingy room smelt of sweat, blood and damp rockcrete. Its dripping walls were lined with makeshift bunks, wounded and dying Guardsmen lying in such profusion that the place looked like a breeding ground for disease. Vortico Ionsian’s recumbent corpse lay in the corner, a tattered red standard displaying a threadbare Imperial aquila draped neatly across his chest.

  Two giants amongst men stood at the vigil slits on either side of the room. The upper portions of their power armour were arranged against the far wall, leaving their torsos mostly bare. In places the black carapaces fused to their chests were crusted with dried blood, and dressings and bandages bound their wounds.

  ‘Golotan, Glavius,’ said Sicarius. ‘Glad to see you on your feet. What in the primarch’s name…’

  Locon Kaetoros rose from a makeshift bunk, his bolt pistol’s adjoiner components spread across it. His heavily burned face, disfigured badly the last time Sicarius saw it, was now little but a mask of exposed teeth and mangled flesh. It was all the sergeant could do not to step back in shock as the flamer operative rose up like a shark lunging from the depths. A heartbeat later his hideous features were scant inches from Sicarius’ own.

  ‘Glad to see us, are you,’ he hissed. ‘You don’t care about us at all, you glory-seeking bastard!’

  Sicarius saw the curled fist of a punch mid-throw, and stepped back, letting it catch him on the gorget. Kaetoros lunged forward, headbutting Sicarius in the mouth so hard that he filled the sergeant’s mouth with blood. Dazed and angry, Sicarius very nearly let the muscle memory of a thousand sparring sessions take over, but did not raise his fists. Instead he let Kaetoros throw a right hook that hit him so hard he felt his brain bruise inside his skull. A follow-up punch nearly dislocated his jaw, knocking two of his molars free.