When Lysander had departed the night before, he had equipped Captain Taelos and the 10th Company with a cache of heavy weaponry—flamers, melta guns, plasma guns and bolters—with which they could defend the Bastion, as well as two Thunderhawks at Captain Taelos’ disposal. Before the sun had risen on the next day Taelos had already dispatched the two craft on missions. One of the Thunderhawks, carrying Veteran-Sergeant Karn and the Scouts of Squad Vulpes, would carry out a reconnaissance sweep of the planet’s northern hemisphere, searching for any remaining enemy elements, while Veteran-Sergeant Derex and the Scouts of Squad Ursus would carry out a sweep of the southern hemisphere. Remaining in vox-contact would be problematic, given the interference from the particulate matter in the atmosphere, but it was hoped that with the added height of the Bastion mountain and the Thunderhawks themselves able to fly higher in the atmosphere, the interference could be largely mitigated.
“It will be tedious work,” the veteran-sergeant continued, “patrolling the perimeter and guarding the refugees, but we have been given our orders, and we will fulfil them. And always remember that it could be worse. Captain Taelos has his hands full liaising with the local grandees, and I don’t think any one of you would want to switch duties with him.”
Jean-Robur couldn’t suppress a brief grin in response. He had only caught a glimpse of the Vernalian nobles in their sumptuous robes and finery, but he had been reminded of the Caritaigne nobles of his youth, and of self-important wastrels like his cousin. As a young man, really little more than a boy, he’d had no choice but to play their games of etiquette and protocols, and to smile in the faces of fools when his every instinct had been to reach for his falchion’s handle. But he was no longer a boy, but was only one step away from his final transformation into a superhuman Astartes.
And though the Space Marine’s every training and indoctrination drilled into him the need to protect and defend the citizens of the Imperium, Jean-Robur was not sure that he would be able to resist reacting inappropriately if he was forced once more to endure the kind of simpering foolishness he had once endured. With strength and speed at his command, if the Vernalian nobles were able to drive him to the acts he had only imagined committing upon the nobles of Caritaigne, Jean-Robur could do significant damage, to say nothing of bringing shame on himself and his Chapter.
“There are too few of you and too many tasks to perform to operate as a squad, as is typical, so instead I’ll be breaking you into smaller teams. Scout Zatori, you’ll be team leader with Scouts Valen and Sandor,” Veteran-Sergeant Hilts called out, indicating the three neophytes with abbreviated nods of his head. “You are to survey the interior of the Bastion, with particular attention to the defensibility of the inhabited areas. I want a full analysis on the situation with power conduits, air, water and fuel, and in particular an idea of what kind of petrochem reserves we’re standing on. The last thing we need is for the oil to explode the mountain out from under our feet if some refugee accidentally strikes off a spark. And get me an accurate headcount on the number of refugees within—we have estimates from the locals, but I don’t know how accurate their data might be.”
Hilts turned to the next Scouts in the line.
“Scouts Fulgencio and Jedrek, you’re with Scout Taloc. I want you to survey the external approaches to the mountain. We know about the hatch”—he waved a gauntleted hand at the enormous metal door open behind them—“and the pipeline”—he motioned to his left, towards the northern side of the mountain, “but are there other points of access above ground? I spied access doors where the pipeline meets the mountain, but constructed of what material? And are they defensible? We’ve got a good enough view of the eastern approach”—he waved towards the east, and the rolling hills of shale they had marched across the day before—“but are there concealed approaches from the other directions which an enemy might employ?”
The veteran-sergeant then turned his attention to Jean-Robur and the Scout who stood to his right, the ex-pitfighter, Rhomec.
“I’ll be completing a survey of the controls of the planetary defences and the communication systems, located deep beneath the mountain, and I want you two, Scouts du Queste and Rhomec, to accompany me. While I study the systems, I want you to scout the surrounding tunnels. We know there are subterranean passages which link many of the essential locations on the planet, and we have high-level schematics, but I want to know the realities on the ground. What are the dimensions of the passages, and how can they be sealed off? How many passages are there, and where do they lead?”
Jean-Robur cut his eyes to the right without moving his head, and saw the jagged-scar smile on Rhomec’s face which left his expression all but unreadable—when he presented a grin to the world at all times, it was almost impossible to see what the ex-pitfighter’s real emotions were. Rhomec was not Jean-Robur’s first choice as squadmate with whom to be partnered, but he was not the last choice, either. Better Rhomec’s cruel humour and endless scarred grin than Zatori Zan’s murderous glances and simmering anger.
Veteran-Sergeant Hilts stepped back and ran his gaze from one end of the rank to the other, nodding slightly to himself. “Are there any questions?” Silence was his only response. “Then you have your orders. To your duty, Scouts!”
While the Scouts began their surveys of the Bastion, Captain Taelos was deep within the mountain stronghold itself, barraged by the questions and protests of self-appointed leaders of the refugee community. He sat at the table in the midst of the high-ceilinged conference chamber, and wished he were anywhere else at that moment.
“This is intolerable,” shouted the man in robes the colour of a Vernalian sunrise, the fiery reds and garish yellows offset by the cool blue of the luminescent tattoo inked upon his forehead. Delmar Peregrine’s family crest depicted a raptor in flight, but there was little of the hunter about the man. Corpulent, what muscle he might once have possessed had long since run to fat, the flesh of his fingers verging like the petrochem tide around the edges of the too-small rings he wore, threatening to swallow them whole. “Our homes lie in ruins, the malefactors still walk freely over the land and we’re kept prisoners here in the Bastion by those who should be our salvation?”
Captain Taelos took a deep breath in through his nostrils and held it for a moment, finding his still calm centre and trying not to laugh. If the Vernalian’s misplaced outrage was not so aggravating then it might have been comical.
“You are the ruling elite of Vernalis,” Taelos finally said, his tone level and low but with a hint of iron beneath the words. “And I am charged with defending you.”
“You must forgive Delmar, Captain Taelos,” said the woman in the purple gown, who came to lay a slender hand on Peregrine’s round shoulder. Meribet Ofidia’s family crest was a golden medallion hung on a chain around her neck, depicting a serpent coiled around the trunk of a tree. “His holdings in the north were the worst hit of all in the recent unpleasantness, and we have yet to have word of the fate of his sisters and their families.”
Ofidia smiled like a hungry serpent, teeth white against lips the colour of blood, while Peregrine glowered darkly at her, eyes shadowed beneath his thick and bushy brows.
“I sympathise,” Captain Taelos said, nodding slightly in Ofidia’s direction, his eyes cutting back towards Peregrine. “These must be trying circumstances for you”—he paused, and then added—“and for your people.” It was a calculated addition, as he had yet to hear any mention by the three self-proclaimed “leaders” of the people they ostensibly were leading. The three Vernalian nobles seemed far more wrapped up in their own immediate concerns, in one way or another. “But you must understand that while some level of threat remains, you are all perfectly safe now, and that the sergeants and squads under my command will do whatever is necessary to scour any remaining taint of Chaos from your world.”
The serpentine Ofidia’s smile faltered, if only for a moment, and Taelos detected the briefest flash of annoyance on her painted features.
“If that is true,” said Septimus Furion from the shadows at the far end of the chamber, “then why have two-thirds of your… of your Scouts, as you say… why have two-thirds been sent elsewhere on Vernalis? If any threat remains to the security of the Bastion and we who harbour within, should the full force available to you not be stationed here in our defence? Or do you simply leave enough guns here to keep us prisoner? This hardly seems the sort of task typically given to Space Marines.”
The third Vernalian noble wore a tunic and trousers crafted of a velvet dyed a blue so dark it was almost black, the colour of a moonless Vernalian night. Picked out in gold thread across Furion’s breast was his family crest, depicting a small land-mammal reared up on its hind legs, with its forelimbs held out defensively before it. The man had small close-set eyes, and though he was so thin as to appear that he seldom ate at all, when not speaking Furion sucked at his teeth habitually as if he had food stuck between them. Perhaps he was too busy looking dour and unhappy to ever find time to eat, Taelos mused. Was it simply Furion’s sour disposition, then, that made it seem that he was raising objections which he himself didn’t seem to share? It appeared to Taelos that Furion didn’t care a whit where the Imperial Fists went or what they did. It was almost as if Furion was objecting simply because it was expected of him.
Captain Taelos turned to address Furion, who had remained sitting at the end of the table that dominated the centre of the chamber since Taelos had entered. As the captain spoke, Ofidia and Peregrine crossed the floor to seat themselves at a pair of empty chairs beside him.
“You are not our prisoners,” Taelos said as evenly as he could manage, “but our responsibility.” But he had to admit that Furion was right about one thing, at least—this was not the sort of task typically assigned to a Space Marine. So why had Lysander given the order? Taelos paused, considering for a brief moment, and then continued. “If there are enemy elements remaining on Vernalis,” Taelos said, “as Captain Lysander and I believe, then they should not be allowed to dig in deeper than they already may have done, but should be hunted down and rooted out.”
He did not mention the arch-traitor Sybaris, thinking that perhaps the less they knew of the notorious warband leader, the better.
But Taelos could not help noting that the other two Vernalians also sat on the opposite side of the table, so that now all three sat in a line facing him like some kind of tribunal, with Taelos as the one standing to judgment.
“At the same time, however,” Taelos went on, “the civilian population should not be left unprotected. Hence my decision to station a third of my Scouts here in a defensive capacity. Even now they are taking a full survey of your security systems and defensive capabilities, and making any necessary alterations or emendations.”
As Taelos spoke he studied the expressions of the three Vernalian nobles. Was it possible that Furion’s frown deepened when the captain mentioned changes to the defensive arrangements of the Bastion, or that Ofidia had darted a quick glance in Furion’s direction at that same instant?
“We are most gratified by your assurances, captain,” Ofidia said through her widening smile, the gold of her medallion flashing brightly against the rich purple of her gown. “I know that, with you, we are in capable hands.”
Captain Taelos felt that there was something subtly wrong but could not put a finger on what precisely it might be. Something in Ofidia’s too-easy smile, perhaps, or in Furion’s obligatory objections? Or was it simply that Taelos was still uncertain in diplomatic missions after his failure on Nimbosa, the last time he was required to sheath his blade and holster his bolter and use mere words as his only weapons?
Taelos could not say for certain. All he did know with any certainty was that he would much rather face the ravening hordes of Chaos with his power sword in hand than fence verbally with the nobles of Vernalis a moment longer.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Captain Taelos said, already turning towards the door, “I must signal my sergeants for status reports.”
He strode from the room, his heavy booted footfalls echoing through the corridors and chambers bored through the living rock itself, leaving the three Vernalian nobles to their own devices… for the moment, at least.
“Do you think he suspects?” Peregrine said, as soon as the echoes of Taelos’ footfalls disappeared down the hall.
Furion only shook his head in disgust, but Ofidia turned to the corpulent noble, her smile replaced with an angry scowl.
“If he suspected, you fool,” Ofidia hissed in anger, “we would all be dead. So stay quiet and keep your wits about you. We will not have long to wait now.”
“What do you read on the auspex, Fulgencio?” Scout s’Tonan called down to the foot of the mountain, eyes squinting against the bright noonday sun.
“It’s solid rock from here down,” Scout Jedrek called back before Fulgencio could answer, punctuating his words by kicking the heel of his boot against the jagged flint underfoot. It rang out a flat, discordant note, like a drum filled with sand.
“He was addressing me,” Fulgencio said, scowling at Jedrek, “or did all that salt-water as a child rot out your ears?” Then he turned back to Taloc and motioned with his own auspex. “But he’s right, Taloc. Solid rock underfoot, no subterranean passages or chambers that I can detect.”
Taloc nodded, and looked from the pair of squad-mates on the slope below him to the point to the north were the mountainside curved around out of view.
“We’ll continue on another dozen paces and take more readings,” Scout s’Tonan ordered. “We should reach the juncture with the pipeline in another few legs, I estimate.”
The two sailors’-sons nodded in return, and then turned to head towards the north, almost colliding into each other as they did.
“Forget my water-logged ears,” Jedrek sniped, “did all that unfiltered starlight as a child burn out your eyes? Watch where you’re going.”
Taloc shook his head, and headed north. The going was slower higher up the mountain’s slope as he was, but at least at a slight distance from the other two he could tune out their near-constant bickering. But while the bond between the two sailors’-sons engendered an almost sibling-like rivalry, in the heat of battle the two were able to coordinate their movements to such an extent that one was almost tempted to suspect them of having psyker abilities, and of sharing their thoughts between them.
After years of training and indoctrination, all of the Scouts of Squad Pardus, and in fact all of the Scouts of the 10th Company in general, were able to complement one another’s strengths and skills to some degree in battle. Fighting as a unit and not simply as individuals was a trait that the veteran-sergeants had drilled into them for years, and which Captain Taelos had emphasised time and again when speaking to the company. When the Scouts had fended off the attack of the Roaring Blades the day before, Fulgencio and Jedrek had stood side-by-side, one with a blade and one with a bolt pistol, picking off enemies as smoothly as if they were both parts of the same machine, like two arms governed by the same mind.
No, Taloc realised, not like two arms, but like two hands.
He recalled the words that Chaplain Dominicus had recited whenever one of the neophytes had been helped out of the scouring embrace of the pain-glove by their fellow neophytes.
“The one hand clenched in a fist, to strike your enemies. The other hand held out to your brother, to share your strengths.”
Scout s’Tonan motioned to the other two Scouts to stop and take another set of auspex readings when they’d covered a dozen or so metres. The mountain the locals called the Bastion was easily as large as the biggest peak back on Taloc’s native Eokaroe. But the mountains of Taloc’s youth had been riven with the scars of ancient lava flows, pocked with caves where pockets of air had formed beneath the molten rock as it cooled, and studded here and there like whiskers on an old man’s chin with the green growth of trees and ferns. By contrast, this Bastion was all but featureless, a cone of grey st
one that rose to a point high above them, its surface rough and irregular at the narrow scale but when viewed from any distance seeming to be nearly perfectly conical and symmetrical.
When the other two had read off their findings, bickering all the while, and Taloc had recorded them in his data-slate, they continued on to the north, stopping twice more before finally reaching the pipeline on the northern slope.
The pipeline was easily twice as tall as an Astartes in full power armour, and on examination proved to be not a single pipe as it appeared from a distance but several that lay side-by-side and bound together by massive metal bands. Each of the three pipes was perfectly circular and symmetrical in circumference, so that the pipeline altogether was three times as wide as it was tall. The pipeline marched directly north from the mountain, unwavering as it travelled across and over the undulating hills, until it disappeared at last on the far northern horizon.
A blockhouse of metal and stone marked the join between the pipeline and the mountain itself, with a variety of access panels dotted here and there, and a pair of large metal hatches, one opening to the west and one to the east. The hatches and access panels seemed to be locked and secure, but Taloc was not sure how much punishment the materials used in their construction could take before breaking. An Astartes in power armour would likely be able to break through into the blockhouse’s interior with only a few moments effort by pounding on the seam between hatch and stone with his gauntleted fists, without even the need to employ any kind of implements or heavy weaponry. And if an Astartes was capable of breaking through, could any less be expected of a Chaos Space Marine?
After Fulgencio and Jedrek had taken full-spectrum sensor readings with their auspexes, and Taloc had dutifully recorded their findings in his data-slate, the trio continued on to the west around the circumference of the mountain. Veteran-Sergeant Hilts would be expecting their report in short order, and they had little time to lose.
[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn Page 19