Despite all this, the noise grew louder, and closer. Something hammered on the blast doors. It sounded eerily like a tau hand, desperate to get in.
‘They’re coming!’ a technician shouted, his dry voice tight with terror. There were screams of tau, the roar of shooting, the stink of gue’la.
Another tau threw himself on the locking mechanism. ‘Closed. Locked and secured!’ he declared. He checked his readings and almost smiled with relief as the hammering started again. ‘The bulkheads are closed and locked,’ he repeated.
There was a shout as a crackling blue axe suddenly appeared through the metal. Then a great hand, flaring with blue light, crumpled the reinforced doorway and tore a chunk away. In three rips there was enough room for a foot, which kicked away the rest of the door, and then the gue’la were inside, and the command deck filled with the sound of dying.
The command hub was full of smoke and fires and fumes from the shattered consoles.
‘Command hub destroyed,’ Cadmus voxed.
Corith’s voice came back, heavy with exertion. ‘Charges laid along the power ducts. Six minutes until detonation.’
Nuoros led Cadmus and Cerys back through the scattered and wounded defenders. As they strode along the ruined corridors, the Dark Angel raised a vox-link to the Nemesis.
‘Charges laid,’ he announced. ‘We are making our way back. Cerys is hit. He is with us. We are going to get him out.’
They found a team of fire warriors battling with the boarding torpedo’s machine-spirit. They scattered as the thud of the Terminators echoed down the corridor, and Nuoros helped the Imperial Fist back into his harness.
Cadmus’ magazines were almost empty as he backed up the assault ramp. As soon as he reached the top, it slammed closed.
‘Disengaging,’ the machine-spirit announced.
The retro rockets blasted them free.
Thirty seconds after their torpedo had blasted out into the void, the charges blew. It took a few seconds for the overload to become critical, and then the super-heated cables ignited and a series of explosions in the lower decks spread rapidly as fireballs raced through the interior.
Without the command hub to section the blazes off they reached the magazines and a cascade of detonations rose up through the spine of the platform as the plasma bays ignited.
Security Orbital VX-223 exploded in a ball of blue flame and debris.
The crew of the tau escort-class Defender had spent the last month in diligent sweeps of the system. With its multi-arc railgun battery and recently modified and upgraded suite of torpedoes, the crew of this sturdy vessel were confident that they could fight off anything that strayed into their vicinity. So, they listened in astonishment as Security Orbital VX-223 was boarded by an unseen enemy.
‘Is this an exercise?’ their commander hissed, but the wild chatter that came over the intercoms was too chilling and convincing. You could not fake that terror as the bridge crew defended themselves. There was the sudden noise of gunfire and then the link was lost.
‘Visual,’ Kor’el Um’ng, air caste commander, ordered, and as the long craft swung about to come to the aid of the Security Orbital, its multi-arc railgun panned for targets. ‘Power to shields and close-range fire turrets.’
‘Shields raised,’ a keen technician reported. ‘All power subbed to anti-boarding defence arrays. Railgun charging.’
Automated quad ion turrets scanned close space, searching for boarding vessels.
Kor’el Um’ng bent over the consoles. ‘Bring us close. I cannot see what has attacked them.’
The Defender accelerated towards the Security Orbital as fires ignited on its underside. They watched in astonishment as Security Orbital VX-223 exploded in a shower of burning debris.
Kor’el Um’ng hailed his Shas’vre. His voice was calm. ‘Security Orbital lost. Prepare for possible boarding attack.’
‘Maximising all defences,’ Shas’vre Rs’tu responded. ‘Battlesuits deployed on all levels. We shall contain and then expel intruders.’
A siren blared, and one of the earth caste technicians pointed through the wide clear dome of the defence platform. A vast white shape was powering towards them.
‘Enemy identified. Gue’la.‘
The Defender’s shields flared as the White Scars strike cruiser opened fire. The barriers flickered and held. As soon as the chief gunner reported ‘Railgun charged,’ Kor’el Um’ng gave the order to return fire.
The vast railgun fired a solid munition the size of a land ship at a velocity unhindered by atmosphere. The energy of its passage lit a searing trail though the near-vacuum of space.
The first shot caused the shields of the White Scars strike cruiser to flare and already the second railgun was being brought to bear. But as it focused its energies on the enemy before it, a black shape came at it from the opposite direction, and opened up.
Nemesis’ dorsal lance batteries fixed the smaller craft in their sights, and fired as one.
The Defender’s gravitic shielding was overwhelmed by pinpoint lance strikes at the same time as the bombardment cannons spat fury across the void. The ordnance ripped great holes through the defence platform. Some of them tore right through, others exploded within, wreaking terrible carnage and setting off the generators in a ring of explosions that broke the Defender into three pieces, which peeled away from one another and tumbled burning to the planet’s surface.
The world had been stripped of its last defences, the way for the planetary assault was now clear.
Chapter Twenty-Five
On the hill overlooking the starport, the southern terrestrial defence rig remained on automated watch as Shas’vre O’man lost his third game of p’ao. He shook his head in disgust at himself and went outside while Shas’ui K’len collected his winnings.
O’man threw on his coat and ducked through the exit hatch, rubbing his three-fingered hands against the cold. As he stood he saw a flare in the night sky. It grew in brightness until it was a star, gleaming – a star that started to fall to earth. By the time he ducked back in, Shas’ui K’len had turned the intercom on full. They listened in astonishment to the panicked exchanges from Orbital Security Platform VX-223. They heard the wild chatter as the crew defended themselves, and then there was the sudden noise of gunfire and the link was lost.
Shas’vre O’man vaulted into the gunner’s seat as a siren began to wail. The scanners had been blank five minutes ago. Now three blips showed up as clear marks on his targeter. Three mid-sized cruisers. He swung around to face the nearest of the enemy spacecraft.
‘Deploy stabilisers!’ he commanded, and the giant gun rig braced itself as its twin railguns traversed upwards, their generators beginning to whine as they powered up for the first shot.
Reports were coming through fast now as all the terrestrial defence rigs began to react. As information began to appear about the probable angle of attack, some of the great rigs lifted on their jet packs, looking for improved lines of fire, while others deployed stabilisers and charged their railguns for firing.
Shas’vre O’man had one of the best teams in the outfit. He was desperate to get the first kill, and had already calculated the attack vectors of an approaching gue’la spacecraft.
‘Targeting alien craft,’ he reported. ‘Estimated time to firing, four seconds.’ The electromagnetic generator whine reached a pitch of readiness. He made final adjustments for the distortion in the atmosphere and fired a solid projectile at speeds many times that of sound.
It still took eight seconds before his targeter confirmed a hit.
‘Reloading,’ Shas’ui K’len called as the railgun’s whine rose in pitch again. The six piston stabilisers that ringed the gun rig adjusted for recoil. The gue’la craft was not even bothering to take evasive manoeuvres. A drone alarm sounded.
‘Intruders,’ O’man called.
&
nbsp; ‘Gue’la approaching from the north!’ K’len shouted. O’man pulled up the visual on his screen. There was a bike, bouncing through the snow.
‘Lone gue’la?’ he checked, as the targeting matrix locked on to the spaceship.
‘Affirmative,’ K’len reported. ‘Drones deploying.’
In his helmet he could hear the targeting locks as the rig’s deployment of four drones aimed and fired. In the chamber the intruder alarm was still sounding. The main railgun powered up with a whine of electromagnetic force. As it fired, a cloud of snow rose about it, vibrant with the concussive aftershock. As he waited for the confirmation of a hit, O’man turned to his targeter. ‘Have the drones contained the threat?’
‘Hit!’ the targeter shouted. K’len checked outside. The gue’la rode a crude bike one-handed. It seemed impossible that one warrior would attack a weapon of war so vast and powerful it could knock out targets in space. But this warrior was.
‘Where are the drones?’ O’man demanded.
‘They are silent!’ K’len shouted.
‘Take him down.’ Shas’vre O’man’s voice betrayed a sudden sense of panic. ‘Get out there and deal with it.’
There was a rack of pulse rifles on the wall. K’len grabbed a pair and tossed them to the warriors next to him. ‘Let’s go!’
Kallos, Tyrannic War veteran of the Ultramarines Chapter, had been deployed from a Corvus Blackstar an hour earlier, his bike leaping from the hovering craft and landing with an explosion of snow and a crunch of suspension. This was how he loved to fight – alone, able to strike and move and strike once more. He had already disabled a pair of automated sentry drones and had come at this vast NG-4 terrestrial defence rig from the north, unseen, lying low as a Devilfish patrol hummed by, and now moving in for the kill.
The vast rig was a low dome, with a squat railgun pointing towards the sky. Its stabilisers had been driven deep into the ground. It fired with a crack of concussive energy that made the snow jump for hundreds of feet.
It disappeared for a moment as a fog of ice was thrown up about it. The turret swivelled and lined up for another shot. A drone appeared, targeter lights searching for him. Kallos fired one-handed as he wove from side to side. He knocked the first one down, and it fell smoking to the ground. Three more came for him. Kallos picked them off, the last one showering the ice with fragments of armour and wire and smouldering alloys.
His bike jumped over a hollow. Shapes emerged from the rig’s rear exit hatch.
He skidded as pulse rifle shots lanced towards him, then started returning fire. The twin-linked bolters hit a fire warrior in the chest and punched him back into the snow. He killed another before the third ran back inside, as hellfire rounds exploded about him.
The rig’s gravitic drive engaged, but its stabilisers had been driven too deep into the snow for it to come free. It shuddered as they held for a moment too long, then broke free with a low hiss, and the whole rig lifted and began to rise with a shower of snow and ice.
Kallos tore a melta bomb from his belt. By the time he had approached, the rig was already twenty feet above him. He engaged the magnetic clamp and hurled the melta bomb towards the rig’s underbelly. It hit with a satisfying clunk.
He swung his bike around and accelerated clear. The melta charge tore a hole in the rig’s belly, ripping through the power relays. The gravitational drive failed immediately. The vast gun rig lurched dangerously as the crew struggled to regain control, and then it slipped sideways and slammed into the ground with a shower of ice.
Kallos dismounted, slammed a fresh magazine of hellfire rounds into his bolter and strode towards the smoking gun rig. There was something almost tragic in such a vast weapon of war being unable to defend itself against a lone warrior, like him. It reminded him of a fearsome creature of the sea, left stranded and immobile as the waves retreated. He dragged the rear access hatch open. His helm’s sensors cut through the smoke and debris. Five crew still living. His helm retina display was already lining them up in neat order.
Five hellfire shots rang out.
Kallos’ black-booted feet crunched back towards his bike, as smoke continued to rise from the ruins of the gun rig.
Tau Objective One accomplished, Kallos swung a leg over the back of his bike and settled into his seat. This bike had kept him alive through the Tyrannic Wars. He trusted it as if it were a brother. He swung the front round as the tau camp lit up with floating gun rigs, Devilfish and the low red pilot lights of squadrons of drones, streaming out searching for foes.
The trick with any pugilist starting to rock backwards was to just keep hitting them until they fell over.
The back wheel spun for a moment as Kallos accelerated down the hillside. A drop pod left a long white contrail as it burned through the high atmosphere. He watched for a moment as it slammed into the ground with a great cloud of dust, and allowed himself a moment of brief satisfaction.
The direct assault phase had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In his command centre on M’Yan’Ral, Fireblade M’au stared at the contradictory information from sensor towers and drones, and could not understand what the readings were telling him. He could not contact either the Security Orbital or the kir’qarth, and now he was trying to raise a link to the next tau waystation to call for assistance.
At least, he thought, the enemy were still in space. With shields raised and their formidable terrestrial defence rigs, they should be able to hold off any enemy until assistance could be brought. Until then he needed to understand what was happening.
‘Find those missing patrols!’ he called to his aide, as Fio’ui Ph’al, chief earth caste technician of the base, came back after a thorough scan of read-outs.
‘Nothing, Shas’o,’ the technician reported with Ke’lshan certainty. ‘There is no trace. I have checked all the sensor drones and towers. There has been no infiltration. I can assure you that there are no enemies upon this planet.’
Fireblade M’au was not one for excessive displays of emotion, but he slammed his hand down, the three fingers splayed out wide. ‘Then what is that noise?’
The earth caste could hear the explosions as well as any of them, but he hesitated for a moment in confusion. ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘I see no way that the enemy could have infiltrated our defences.’
Fireblade M’au slammed his fist down again. ‘We are being attacked, and you have no trace of enemies landing. Nothing?’
The earth caste began to tremble. ‘Nothing!’
Fireblade M’au cursed as drone-captured pict-feeds of a piranha nose-diving into the lower slopes of Vespid Rock played on his visuals.
‘Something shot that down,’ he said.
Fio’ui Ph’al turned to his attendants and the earth caste bent over their instruments in a manner that showed that the readings made no sense to them.
‘No sign of infiltration,’ one of them said after a long pause.
Fireblade M’au cursed them again. ‘Then what is attacking us? I want answers. There are five hundred sensor turrets on this planet. One of them must be able to tell you something!’ He paced up and down the row of earth caste technicians. There was an air of tension as they flicked through screens, their flat, grey faces uplit by the glowing monitors, their long slender fingers punching buttons. An alarm went off, and one of the technicians jumped and hurried to shut it down as another explosion erupted to the south.
The ice beneath them trembled.
‘What was that?’ Commander M’au shouted.
This time the readings were clear. ‘Southern terrestrial planetary defence rig has… exploded.’
Two more explosions made the building rattle.
‘Get the shields up!’ he shouted.
There was a moment of frantic slamming of buttons and checking of display readings. ‘The shields are already up,’
one of the earth caste attendants said. His voice was hesitant.
‘How can they be up… unless the enemy are among us?’ M’au said, as realisation dawned on them all. ‘They are among us. All hunter cadres here to defend the base. Urgent call. Our defences have been compromised. Get me the other terrestrial defence rig commanders. Ask them to commence fire…’
‘Links are down.’
M’au slammed his hand against the central column. He calmed himself for a moment. They had conquered whole swathes of Taros with less forces than he had here now. ‘I want all forces armed and ready. Mantas, Stormsurges. Everything. We have to assume this is a critical situation.’
The orders were relayed along all the lines that were still working. Something roared overhead. A trail of missiles slammed into a Riptide. An explosion tore it apart and scattered smoking fragments for hundreds of yards in all directions.
‘Where is our air support?’ M’au shouted.
A drone pict-feed showed the space port. ‘Mantas are destroyed.’
‘They have been shot down?’ M’au was incredulous.
‘No, Fireblade. They did not make it off the ground.’
Fireblade M’au shouted for his bodyguard. ‘You will take your two best warriors and defend the Most Honoured One. The rest of you, with me. Get my battlesuit ready. It is time to fight.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The ice flats of the space port facility erupted in chaos as six deathstorm drop pods slammed onto the flats. One hit a Manta’s broad wing, smashing through to the ground beneath, before its payload of missiles exploded, flipping the huge craft onto its side where it began to burn.
The rest landed safely, their five assault ramps slamming down as assault cannons and missiles were unleashed into crews and craft alike. Within seconds the whole starport began to burn, as acrid smoke drifted across the facility.
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