by Phil Kelly
‘We need a sacrifice,’ said Sicarius, his voice clear over Numitor’s earpiece. ‘They’re taking us apart down there.’
‘Sergeant Kinosten,’ voxed Numitor. ‘Do you receive this?’
‘Go ahead, captain,’ came the reply. An explosion sounded nearby.
‘We need to distract the warsuits atop the lowest tower. Find cover, disembark your men, and get a few Chimeras in there on autodrive to force their hand. We will do the rest.’
‘No time to disembark, sir,’ said Kinosten. ‘We’re going in now. And captain?’
‘Disembark, sergeant!’ shouted Numitor, ‘that’s a direct order!’
‘Tell Duggan to shove his fancy sword up his backside.’
Pennants streaming, the Baleghasts’ armoured column drove straight towards the lowest of the hex-towers, the heavy bolters and multilasers of their machines stitching fire across the giant warsuit’s indomitable hide. There was a blue glow at the end of the behemoth’s shoulder-cannon, a flash, and two Baleghast Chimeras were simply erased from existence. The vehicles behind veered crazily to avoid the glowing, perfectly oval crater that was left in their wake. In doing so they allowed the squadron of Leman Russes behind to approach the lip of the crater and open fire, pounding the giant warsuit on the roof with one battle cannon shell after another.
When the smoke dissipated, the monstrosity was scorched, dented, but still standing. The Leman Russes began to reverse, slowly but steadily, further confusing the ranks of the armoured column.
Missiles streaked from the artillery warsuits atop the roof, a score of warheads, then another – enough to kill a platoon of infantry three times over. Numitor grimaced as they careened towards the Baleghast column. Suddenly the top hatch of a languishing Chimera was thrown open, a tiny figure in a greatcoat crawling out from it. A wall of flame burst into being in front of the hurtling missiles, and they cooked off as they passed through, the pyrotechnics of their detonation doing nothing more than light the battlefield.
The rush of freefall was fading for Numitor, replaced by a powerful feeling of anticipation. The hex complex and the ground were growing nearer with every second. The third tallest of the hexagonal towers, each of its corners host to a massive cannon structure, would have them in its arc of fire any moment. Worse still, with its primary target rendered non-viable, the xenos war goliath below was revolving its massive missile arrays skyward.
‘Throne,’ said Numitor. ‘It’s seen us! Omnid, the Diving Eagle!’
The Thunderhawk, locked in a deadly aerial duel with the golden superiority fighter that had fired upon them, disengaged and took two punishing hits from its tau opponent in the process.
‘There had better be a good reason, captain,’ said Omnid.
‘Can the Sword withstand a direct missile hit?’ said Numitor.
‘Depends on the missile,’ said Omnid, the stress in his voice obvious as he put the machine into a near-vertical dive towards Numitor. ‘But almost certainly.’
‘How about a dozen?’
‘No. It’s those railgun towers I am worried about.’
Numitor changed his vox-channel and turned in midair to see the second spearhead bully its way past a thin cordon of tau fighters.
‘Stormraven squadrons, take out the roof-mounted cannons on the tower’s southern side, optimum dispersal!’
His command was answered almost immediately by a profusion of strike missiles, their yellow-tipped warheads briefly visible as they streaked from the Stormravens to detonate upon the high-necked railcannon emplacements punching hypervelocity shot into the sky. Two of the tau gun towers were struck in the centre line, and toppled like felled trees. Smoke trailed as they tumbled down to smash into the xenos infantry fanning out of the building’s gate-portals.
Numitor turned back into the Codex freefall position, explosions of tau flak bursting nearby to buffet him with tremendous forces. As the Assault Marines plummeted, the boxy missile arrays of the war goliath came into focus, the machine stomping around ponderously to get a better bearing on the Thunderhawk before letting fly. A profusion of missiles soared straight upwards towards the gunship, some no bigger than a tank shell, some as long as Numitor’s arm.
‘Stay directly above it, Omnid,’ voxed Numitor. ‘The cannon on its shoulder is its most powerful weapon, but it has a limited range of movement. It also takes a moment to recharge after firing. We know this from experience.’
‘Understood.’
The goliath’s missile salvo, as orderly in their flight as a flock of migrating birds, hurtled upwards towards the Thunderhawk. They detonated upon the thick ceramite in a serial burst of explosions. The heavily-armoured gunship continued its headlong dive – scorched, swathed in flame, but unhurt.
Thin beams of blue light flickered vertical from drones in the sphere-nodes ridging the rooftops, glancing across the Thunderhawk’s prow. A moment later the artillery warsuit released two more missiles; they shot out at a sharp angle before veering upwards on an intercept course. These projectiles were of truly daunting size. Four fins ringed their thick bodies, extending and adjusting mid-flight as they roared towards the Thunderhawk coming at them in a vertical dive.
‘Numitor,’ said Omnid warily, ‘I am not so sure about these ones.’
The Sword’s heavy bolter sponsons thundered out their self-propelled bolts, but at such velocity and with such relatively small targets, they flew wide.
‘Sicarius, Vosarian, can you intercept those two missiles?’ asked Numitor.
‘We can try,’ said Sergeant Vosarian. Numitor saw Vosarian’s squad alter their flight path at full dive, jump packs flaring bright.
‘We can succeed,’ said Sicarius, blasting from Numitor’s blind spot towards the nearest missile. He put a plasma shot right atop the first missile’s squared-off warhead, and the sky was lit by a violent white burst. A split second later there was a thunderous boom that caused Numitor’s photolenses to dim before his vision blurred back into place.
Squad Vosarian took their shots, bolt pistols barking as they flew in. Incredibly, the square-bodied missile veered away as if sensing the threat, compensating immediately afterwards to hurtle on towards the Sword of Calth.
Inbuilt drone intelligence. A warhead most likely designed to fell Titans.
And the gunship was in full dive towards it.
‘I have the unhallowed thing cold, Numitor,’ said Omnid. ‘I’m taking the shot.’
The Thunderhawk fired its dorsal turbo-laser destructor, and a thick column of ruby energy burned vertically through the skies to bullseye the goliath warsuit straight and true. The killing force of the strike punched through the machine’s head, down through its chest, and out from between its splayed legs, gutting it completely in a blinding burst of scarlet light.
Then the warsuit’s macro-missile struck the Thunderhawk’s nosecone. The detonation was so violent it ripped the ancient gunship’s cockpit wide open and annihilated both Omnid and his co-pilot in a single terrible moment. A titanic explosion threw stark shadows across the battlefield below.
The Thunderhawk’s ravaged remains hurtled downward with a rising roar. Tau scattered below, warsuits disengaging from firing positions to stomp away, but they were too slow. The gunship ploughed so hard into the lowest hexagonal tower that the craft’s reactor core gave out in a cataclysmic explosion that consumed every tau, drone and battlesuit atop the roof.
Numitor braced himself a moment before the freefalling Eighth were scattered, all coherence lost as their drop vector was hit by the pressure wave. Flung high with his helm readouts haywire, Numitor fought to claw back some kind of cohesion. His greataxe was throwing his balance off, but he held it tight. It took him a moment to find his equilibrium and rejoin his squad as they pulled back into formation.
The crimson warsuit, attended by a cluster of its fellows, was bounding towards them from th
e darkness of the south. The elite team blasted from one roof, then another, touching down on the third in a cloud of dust.
‘Sicarius!’ shouted Numitor. ‘Behind the gun towers! The xenos warlord!’
‘I see him,’ said Sicarius grimly. ‘Intercepting now.’
‘With me,’ voxed Numitor to his squad. Flinging out his legs, he engaged his jump pack and hurtled towards the hex structure with the circular crest of the tau military. The sheer power of the pack’s turbines was incredible – the fuel Omnid had provided was a revelation.
Numitor’s attention was drawn for a moment to the chain of transmotives sliding soundlessly around the perimeter of the tower. Indistinct figures massed inside. Something about their rangy silhouettes was strangely familiar.
Then Numitor’s mortis signals blipped, and a pair of missiles shot past him, exploding upon Enitor’s pauldron and hip.
The veteran cried out as he spiralled out of control. ‘I’m down!’
‘We will make them pay,’ said Numitor grimly. Three of the tau warsuits were boosting towards them, the quad-cannons on their shoulders spitting thin lozenges of plasma. Numitor twisted away, but their aim was sound, and the volleys were unavoidable.
‘Brace!’ he shouted.
A flaring sphere of energy, and he rocketed through, unscathed.
‘Iron halo, captain,’ said Apothecary Drekos. ‘Get used to it.’
Numitor released a deep breath inside his helm, silently thanking Atheus for the gift from beyond the grave.
Another pair of missiles streaked up towards them from the warsuit group below. This time Numitor was ready, batting them both away with a wide sweep of his greataxe and bursting through the resultant cloud of flame. The axe’s swing was absurdly heavy, and the momentum threatened to unbalance him. This time he went with it, twisting around as he shot like a bolt of blue lightning towards the three xenos warsuits.
He brought the artefact weapon around in a wide loop, trusting to his instincts.
The axe’s edge struck the first warsuit so hard it ripped the chest unit in two, the fleshy ruin of the hewn pilot inside flying out of the control seat in an explosion of blood and sparks. A split second later Numitor collided shoulder-first with the machine’s remains. It flew backwards into the warsuit behind it, knocking it off-balance as it tried to dodge past. Numitor saw an opening and thrust the axe out one-handed right into its path. The edge of the blade clipped the second battlesuit’s head unit from its neck, sending it spinning end over end to smash into the tower below in an explosion of rock dust.
‘Blessed aquila,’ said Numitor in surprise.
‘A fitting start for our new Lord Executioner!’ laughed Vellu as he knocked a veering missile aside with his combat shield, thrusting his power sword down through the neck of the warsuit that had fired it.
‘Time for back-slapping later, Vellu,’ said Drekos. ‘At them!’
Numitor, overshooting the tower after his deadly strike, planted his feet on a jutting antennae array instead. He sprung upwards to bound over the remains of a shattered gun tower, his command squad following suit.
As soon as they crested the lip, Numitor’s world exploded into light. A horizontal storm of plasma greeted his squad, blasting Drekos, Vellu and Zaetus back over the rounded wall of the tower in a shower of vaporised blood. Numitor was struck too, but the energies of his iron halo dissipated the first volley, then the second. The third hit with a series of stabbing, agonising impacts. Numitor crashed awkwardly to the rubble-strewn ground, his momentum sending him tumbling head over heels to land in a smoking pile of limbs as Atheus’ greataxe skittered away.
The crimson warsuit loomed over him, its bodyguards close behind and the barrel of its cylindrical plasma gun levelled at his head.
‘Disappointing,’ it said in accented Low Gothic.
There was a clattering thud as Squad Sicarius slammed into the enemy from above, closely followed by a string of explosions from their bolt pistol fire. The crimson warsuit was only distracted for the briefest moment, but Numitor was already rolling away. Then Sicarius was in the thick of them, spinning and whirling, his Talassarian blade a blur as it cut through legs, wrists and weapons. A burst of plasma from his pistol knocked back the first warsuit long enough for him to ram his blade up under its waist gimbal and into the cockpit. A sharp kick took the leg from the second even as its rotary cannon spat fire. Sicarius was already under it, a shoulder-lunge boosted by his jump pack’s engines slamming the thing into the wall. Before it could right itself Sicarius fired his plasma pistol through the thing’s vision slit, a sidelong blast of blue light marking the pilot’s demise.
A team of three warsuits hovered in close, weapons levelled at Sicarius’ back. Denturis hit them like a charging bull, twin chainswords shrieking as they gnawed through metal to take the barrels from their guns one after another. Veletan and Colnid fired bolt pistols at joints and sensors as they strode in, the explosions tearing the hesitating tau suits into pieces. Another team hove into view, only for Kaetoros to slam down in front of them, his flamer blasting a geyser of promethium flame so intense it knocked the warsuits backwards. Their blazing hulks staggered away, two falling back over the edge of the tower as crackling fireballs. The third hovered upward, a burning devil in the sky, before a plasma shot from Sicarius blasted it limb from limb. Omnid’s alchemy with the fuel had paid off a dozen times over, the pyre of dead tau below a fitting tribute to his martyrdom.
Suddenly the crimson warsuit shot upwards, the flight vanes on its jet pack angling as it soared up to the ring of blue lights circling the highest of the hex-towers.
‘After it!’ shouted Sicarius. ‘Surround it!
A backblast of flame, a cloud of promethium stink, and Squad Sicarius hurtled after the xenos commander into the darkening skies.
Numitor recovered his axe, cracking his neck as his battleplate ran diagnostics. He was hurt, but not out of the fight, more than could be said for Zaetus and Vellu. Their status sigils all showed the red of critical damage. Drekos sent the helix rune; he was down there attending to their wounds, but they would not be back in the fray before it was over.
‘Thank you, Cato,’ said Numitor to the blue flames disappearing into the night above. ‘I will repay the favour someday.’
‘We are brothers, are we not?’ came the reply over the vox. ‘Now get back up and put that oversized meat cleaver to use!’
Smiling to himself, Numitor leaped up into the night on a pillar of flame.
The lights of the tallest tower flashed by, gold in the darkness, as Jorus Numitor shot upward.
‘Permission to join you, captain?’
Magros roared up alongside him, the red helm of the sergeant clamped at his waist and Trondoris’ six-foot eviscerator held across his shoulder.
‘Very much so,’ said Numitor. ‘Decided against the helm this time?’
‘Twenty-eight years of doing things sensibly,’ came the reply. ‘It is time to feel the wind in my face.’
The rest of the Macraggians roared upwards, coming alongside Numitor as one. Golotan, his cracked ceramite welded whole in a spider-web tracery across his chest, sketched an aerial salute.
‘To have you at the tip of the spear is a relief,’ said Duolor, holding his plasma pistol in both hands at his side as it recharged. ‘And to welcome you back is a pleasure.’
‘The red warsuit leads us into a vertical trap,’ said Aordus, jump pack flaring as he swooped within a hand’s breath of the hex-tower. ‘Let us not make an easy target.’
‘Good advice, Aordus,’ said Numitor. ‘Everyone close to the wall, and ready frags.’
The captain’s fuel gauge was dropping low, but there was still enough to get to the top of the tower. The tau commander had been banking on the Assault Marines having limited reach, but once again he had underestimated the Eighth – and Numitor intended to mak
e him pay dearly for the error.
Either that, or Aordus was right, and Numitor was about to repeat the mistake that had cost him his command squad.
The giant gold orbs that studded the exterior of the tallest hex-tower flashed by, then a luminous strip of glasteel-analogue, the viewing gallery beyond empty of all but light.
‘Calgarians!’ he shouted. ‘Let me take the first volley! The rest of you burn slow! Grenades on my mark!’
The Assault Marines fell back a little, enough to claim they had followed the order, but not enough to prevent them from taking some of the shots meant for Numitor if it came to it. The captain clenched his teeth in frustration. No time to reprimand them.
‘Now!’’
Four frag grenades were flung upwards, cresting the tower’s roof to detonate in a devastating hail of shrapnel. Numitor braced himself for a storm of plasma as he crested the lip of the tower.
Nothing.
Sicarius stood in the centre of the roof, his tempest blade held out wide with his squad close by. The crimson battlesuit stood alone before him, maybe twenty feet distant, the boxy blaster on its forearm held behind a long-barrelled plasma weapon and a shimmering disc of force.
Numitor was about to hurtle in for the kill when he recognised when he had seen Sergeant Sicarius’ stance before.
It was the en garde of a Talassarian honour duel.
Commander Farsight took in every detail of the Space Marine warrior that faced him. The creature was stocky, but powerful – half the size of a battlesuit and nowhere near as well armed. But he had seen these creatures fight. They were strong, fast, and determined; those that wore the coloured helms of their elite most of all.