by Phil Kelly
It was a high cost to the cadres, but it had worked. The cyclonic storm prowling nearby had changed direction towards the site of the battle, just as Farsight had predicted it would. Now it raged behind them with a terrifying intensity.
‘Lay meat before the hydra’s lair,’ Farsight had transmitted to his fellow commanders, ‘and it shall come to you.’
The cadres shot across the desert at maximum speed, the roiling wall of a rust storm rolling in behind them.
From Brightsword’s viewpoint, it looked huge and angry enough to swallow the world.
Bio-dome 31-8, Arkunasha
From the highest vantage point of Bio-dome 31-8, Mentor Y’eln stared out across the dunes. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she clutched a stolen pulse pistol in both hands, the weapon as familiar now as her notation disc. She had been the first to spot the dust wall, and the first to realise its significance. Hard-locking her transmission codes into the broadcast network, she had overridden the cycling propaganda broadcasts and brought the entire complex to high alert, its rail rifle turrets mag-loaded and poised for the fight to come.
She already knew it would not be enough. The black-green horde ploughing towards them was immense. She had dreamed of this moment; somewhere in their number was an ork that knew how to get past their walls.
This would be no siege. It would be a massacre.
The Rust Wastes, Southern Hemisphere, Arkunasha
A strident chime came across the cadre-net: a transmission from the air caste’s drone network, its data-voice perfectly androgynous.
‘Ork war horde inbound upon Bio-dome 31-8,’ it said. ‘Estimated number at thirteen thousand and nine hundred infantry, six hundred and fifteen bipedal vehicles. Air cover minimal.’
Brightsword felt the fires in his soul flare at the thought of so many orks on the attack. Yet his ire was dampened by a chill mist of regret. His eugenics cycle had barely begun; to die here would be to leave no legacy other than an early martyrdom.
As Brightsword touched down at the muster site, the commander-level data-net displayed the flattened icons of stealth drones flanking the slow-moving ork horde. Their footage confirmed Farsight’s suspicions. Marching at the head of the invading horde was a massive, cybernetic ork warrior with buzzsaws in place of hands: ‘Tooth Jaw’ himself. Brightsword zoomed out again, his screen filling with countless greenskins.
The storm front was less than a kilometre behind the ork horde. Up ahead, the horizon was broken by the hemispherical complexes of Bio-dome 31-8. The tau cadres had a matter of demidecs to slay the ork leader caste before the horde launched its attack on the beleaguered settlement. Only once the decapitating blow had fallen could the hunter cadres look to escape, flying out to the safety of the air caste ships in low orbit. Bereft of leaders and the vehicles to carry them away, the milling ork infantry would be easy prey for the ghost storm Farsight had drawn towards them with his earlier Mont’ka.
It was a bold plan, to say the least.
Brightsword flicked up the environ display once more. In their wake, the ghost storm howled ever closer, hungry and mad.
Gold symbols blossomed across his command suite as Commander Farsight finally gave the order to attack.
‘All battlesuit teams, with me,’ transmitted Brightsword across his cadre-net. ‘Ranged elements, continue past the horde and await those driven before the storm.’
Affirmation symbols flicked across the commander’s own isometrics. Shas’nel Xo’s Devilfish transports began to accelerate as the cadre’s battlesuit teams chimed in one by one. When the last of his cadre had confirmed understanding, Brightsword fired his jets at maximum burst and hurtled over the dune’s crest.
The ork horde ahead was immense, covering the undulating landscape far into the distance. Its spilling mass was lit by shafts of evening sunlight that refracted through the upper panels of Bio-dome 31-8. Looming, fat-bellied walkers lurched and staggered in the midst of the horde, grotesque in appearance but all the more menacing for it.
Farsight’s own cadre of battlesuits was attacking from above, each team diving down with the sun behind it. Brightsword eye-flicked a gun drone to detach from his XV8 bodyguard team and record the commander’s actions. He would not miss this, not for the world.
Explosions rippled across the outlying elements of the ork horde as team after team fired volleys from their missile pods. Wherever one of the enemy walkers hobbled around to return fire, a battlesuit would dart in from above to core it through with a column of plasma.
Brightsword touched down for a moment at the edge of the horde, crunching into the rust behind a team of orks with heavy gun-harnesses. Crossing his battlesuit’s wrists, he activated his fusion blasters and whipped them out wide. Twin arcs of fusion energy cut through the orks, and the ruined halves of his victims fell cauterised to the floor.
A great roar went up from the orks as the slow-witted beasts realised they were under attack. A primitive rocket corkscrewed skywards from the ork ranks, then another, then a dozen hurtled up at once. The twilight was suddenly filled with weapons fire, tracer rounds punctuating a storm of lead. Brightsword boosted back with his battlesuit’s feet barely a metre from the ground, eye-flicking his teams to form a wedge behind him.
‘Keep low, trusted ones,’ transmitted Brightsword. ‘Locate and assassinate. Only engage with the rank and file if absolutely necessary.’
‘Affirmed, commander.’
Brightsword turned away, taking a stream of automatic weapons fire on the shoulder of his battlesuit before boosting in hard. There was killing to be done.
Commander Farsight dropped down into the great ridged furrow his cadre’s firepower had cut into the foremost portion of the ork horde. Not much of a defensible position, but the fire caste was not concerned with territory; in a matter of microdecs, it would become entirely irrelevant.
‘Secure the beachhead and watch for the leader caste,’ transmitted Farsight, eye-looping priority kills. ‘Ork designated “Tooth Jaw” is first priority. Maintain range whenever possible.’
To either side of Farsight’s position, flamer-wielding battlesuits burned back the orks spilling over the dunes towards them. A loose mob clad in crude, piston-driven armour lumbered over the ridge just as a clanking walker lurched down the furrow’s other side.
Farsight focused his eyes on different screens and thought fast. He triggered his firing solution, hitting two of the armoured orks full in the face with a pair of plasma bolts whilst his fusion blaster sliced the ork walker into a hissing ruin. The thing came on nonetheless, pincer arms snapping as gobbets of liquefied metal sprayed from its bifurcated torso.
Farsight rolled to the side and triggered his jets, punching his shoulder into the half-molten walker. The impact sent it staggering into an ork too slow to get out of the way. The walker fell onto its back, exposing a dense mass of wiring under its barrel torso. Farsight took his shot, detonating its power core and bracing to lean his shield generator into the resultant explosion.
A wide disc of energy flared white. The backlash knocked the rest of the armoured orks onto their backs, limbs flailing like upended beetles.
‘Hunter Team Va’shya, consolidate and destroy,’ said Farsight.
Almost immediately, a Devilfish transport moved in behind him, its fire warrior passengers disembarking to put kill shots into the downed orks.
Then the ghost storm broke over them.
A wall of tiny, jagged fragments flew horizontally, hurled by a hurricane as hot as arterial blood. Farsight altered his stance, but knew he could not resist for long. The storm’s gale force was so powerful it had knocked every one of the nearby fire warrior team from their feet, tearing a helmet from one of their number and snatching the pulse rifles from two more.
Farsight found his battlesuit jerked sidelong, his control cocoon swaying as he fought to restore equilibrium. He boos
ted into the wind, zooming in on the fallen fire warriors. They were all struggling to their feet; the one without a helmet was clutching a mask of blood where his face ought to be.
Farsight compensated for the gale and leapt, landing with a crunch a few feet from the stricken trooper. He boosted his energy shield to full for a moment, throwing a shallow dome of force around the fire warriors stood in his battlesuit’s lee.
A signal of thanks appeared on the commander’s distribution array as the fire warriors scrambled back to the Devilfish struggling nearby. Blipping a gold symbol of his own to the fire warrior team, Farsight strode to the lip of the furrow. He monitored his generator levels, noticing a small icon blinking to catch his attention: the upgrade protocol El’Vesa had appended to his shield program.
The commander was about to investigate when a brutish ork wielding a giant twin-bladed axe crested the dune, a dozen more following behind it. Unbidden, a Crisis XV8 suit emerged from the commander’s right to bathe the thing in fire. The ork came on regardless, green flesh blistered black. Farsight’s olfactory relays conveyed the stink of its burning flesh as a nearby fire warrior team picked off the smaller orks in its wake.
When the leader-creature was close enough to touch, the commander levelled the oblong muzzle of his fusion blaster and discharged a beam of blinding light. The ork’s eyes and mouth glowed white for a microdec before it simply disintegrated.
‘My thanks for the distraction, Shas’ui Tharota,’ Farsight transmitted to the nearby XV8. The icon of affirmation stuttered on his display in response. In the storm, communications were limited to short bursts at best.
Gaining the crest of the shallow furrow and pounding down the other side, Farsight saw a burning tau gunship dug prow-first in a rust dune. Even over the storm, the stink of its electrical fires bled into his sensor suite. Atop the fallen skimmer was a baying mob of orks holding primitive rocket launchers above their heads. One of the hunter cadre’s Piranhas hissed over a dune to intercept them, but the two-man craft did little more than wobble crazily before being yanked away by the tempest.
‘All skimmers, stay low. I repeat, stay low.’
Farsight made a quick calculation and leapt right into the wind’s fierce embrace, letting it carry him towards the ork tank hunters. Pivoting with a burst of thrust, he kicked one of the beasts from the tank’s cupola before reducing its brutish comrades to clouds of blood with successive shots from his plasma rifle.
The commander landed on the far side of the Hammerhead gunship with a crunch, his gyrostabilisers fighting to compensate for the hurricane wind. According to his meteorological readouts, the storm was the most violent they had yet encountered.
He was beginning to fear that he had led Arkunasha’s cadres into a battle they could not possibly win.
To the east, a swarm of minor orkoids scampered over the dune’s crest, jabbering and screaming in their unintelligible tongue. There were hundreds of them, clambering and gouging at each other in their haste. Farsight eye-flicked the symbol of the nearest flamer-pattern Crisis suits.
‘Team Ghuo, come in,’ he transmitted, his tone terse. ‘Deal with this distraction.’
Affirmative gold winked on his sensor suite. A moment later, a pair of Crisis suits flanked him. Taking a low firing stance, their flamers poured fire across the dunes. The orkoid creatures shrieked high and loud, thrashing in agony as their limbs burned tinder-thin.
Their screams were muffled by a pounding reverberation. A scattering of sand spilled from the crest of the dunes nearby. With a jolt, Farsight realised the diminutive orkoids had not been attacking, but fleeing something far larger.
The quadruped was immense, a scaly monstrosity as large as an Orca drop-ship. It bellowed against the storm, giant jaws gaping wide. Its metal-bound tusks scattered battlesuits and skimmer tanks alike as it ploughed towards Farsight’s position.
‘Broadsides, engage on my mark!’ he shouted as he ran in to intercept the beast. Team Shu’lythan blipped an engagement signal.
The distinctive whip-crack of heavy rail rifle fire cut across the white noise of the rust storm. Four jets of gore erupted from the beast’s flank, black blood gushing from the cratered ruin the Broadside salvo had left behind.
Somehow the thing still came on. It stamped a malfunctioning battlesuit into a crumpled heap of alloy and plastic, before barging a Hammerhead gun-skimmer onto its side as its driver fought to pivot away.
‘Just kill it, Shu’lythan,’ muttered Farsight.
A microdec later, one of the creature’s rolling eyes turned into a black pit, the telltale crack of a heavy rail rifle not far behind. The beast’s front legs gave way and it fell, gouging its enormous tusks into the horde of orkoid slave-creatures. Commander Farsight allowed himself a thin smile.
‘Fine work, shas’vre,’ he transmitted, plunging on into the tornado.
The beast had been enormous – exactly the kind of status symbol an ork would find impressive.
The elders had to be close.
Brightsword pounded through the hurricane, the remnants of his scattered cadre fighting to keep up as best they could. According to his sensor suite, Commander Farsight was already over the lip of the next dune, engaging a knot of orks that projected a strange energy signature.
The young commander pushed his jetpack to maximum boost, riding the storm over the dune just in time to see Commander Farsight overload the primitive forcefield protecting his prey. Brightsword arced down, his fusion blasters overlapping to cut a steaming cross into the ork mechanics. His attack left all bar one in scattered pieces.
‘Die, worthless ones,’ Brightsword said through his XV8’s vocalisers. ‘This planet is ours!’
Farsight blipped the sign of appreciation before striding into the storm. Impossibly, the rust hurricane was intensifying. Brightsword spared a glance at his environ suite. Somehow, the eye of the storm that should have been inbound on their position had vanished.
Farsight’s plan had been to let the storm rage over them until they were in the relative safety at its heart, but with the deadly gales concentrating their wrath on their position, there was no chance of coordinated escape.
Brightsword pushed on through the storm, blipping a request for new orders just as he saw Farsight put down another two of the enemy. Behind their slumping corpses, a slender ork in brightly coloured clothes was shuddering as if in pain. A great stream of greenish-yellow energy gouted from its mouth, splashing across the front of Farsight’s battlesuit. The commander toppled into the dust. Brightsword punched up the transmission link, but got nothing but static.
Shouting in anger and grief, Brightsword pounded round the edge of a dune’s thin crest. Guns raised, he burst through in a shower of rust. The motley-clad ork turned, gibbering in pure terror as the young commander rose up to his full height.
Brightsword aimed his fusion blasters and slashed. The creature fell apart in three heat-sealed sections, each of which was quickly ripped away into the whirling storm.
He turned and ran back to O’Shovah’s stricken battlesuit. Its plexus hatch was open, foul-smelling smoke gouting from the inside.
The torso unit was empty, its salvation transmitter a molten mess.
Commander Farsight was lost, exposed and alone in a killer storm.
O’Shovah dropped to his knees, hoping to flatten his profile and thereby escape the worst of the airborne maelstrom’s wrath. His skin itched like fury as the rust whipping through the air gnawed at him. Competing instincts warred within him: to cry out for salvation, to run, to fight.
All impossible.
The commander shielded his eyes, squinting through a crack in his fingers as best he could. He was dimly aware that his skin was bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts, but he pushed his fear to one side. A shadowy shape was coming through the storm, something heavy enough to shake the sands.
A buzzsaw s
wished down through the storm, missing Farsight’s head by a finger’s breadth as he threw himself sidelong. Skidding on his stomach, he scrabbled into the lee of a dune.
‘Why are you making this worse?’ Farsight shouted at the storm, driven half-mad with the pain of the flaying wind. His voice was hoarse, made ancient by rust. ‘We want to stop the orks, just like you did! Don’t you understand? We’re trying to stop them!’
The storm wind shifted direction suddenly, hurling the commander backwards just as Dok Toofjaw loomed from the red-black murk. A rotary saw-arm buzzed out in a killing arc, but found nothing. Undeterred, the ork warlord charged onwards, whipping his lethal disc-saws left and right. Another slash, and Farsight was forced to throw himself backwards, gracelessly tumbling down the dune in a windmill of bleeding limbs.
The fallen commander’s vision was ebbing away when his spine collided with something hard and unyielding. The cracking pain brought him back to full awareness with a sick jolt.
Farsight looked up through ruined fingers to see a massive Broadside battlesuit looming above him. Its plexus hatch hissed wide open. There was no pilot inside.
A ghost, perhaps, thought Farsight.
‘Get in, old friend,’ said the voice of Ob’lotai. ‘We have kills to make.’
13-0
The Rust Wastes, Southern Hemisphere, Arkunasha
The Broadside’s plexus hatch slid closed, cutting out the dreadful howl of the storm. Commander Farsight sank into its control cocoon. A riot of conflicting sensations warred in his head. Crippling pain and crawling unease fought with outrage at what was undoubtedly El’Vesa’s work. The feelings were mingled with relief, and a slow-burning need for revenge – not against the scientist, but the brutal orks.
The flames of Farsight’s righteous anger burned low as he looked at his ravaged fingers. Their tips had been slashed to little more than wet red stumps.