Satisfied they were not about to be attacked, he plunged a gauntleted hand into the hold and hauled out Garrik.
‘We alive, brother-sergeant?’ asked the heavy weapons trooper. He was still clinging to his launcher, thick clumps of hard-packed snow disintegrating off his body as the heat from his power armour melted it.
‘Only in death, brother,’ Scipio replied, returning to his surveilling. ‘You know that.’
‘Duty it is then.’
‘Hold here. I want to recon our position.’
Garrik nodded, before going to dig out the rest of the squad so Scipio could scout further out.
First impressions were that the crash site was deserted. That was both good and bad. Good because it meant an attack was highly unlikely, as in their current disposition that could prove terminal. Bad because help would not be forthcoming or easy to summon.
High cliffs on either side shielded the valley basin from the worst of the elements. It was largely barren, with the caves rising up to enclose the south-facing aspect, and the jagged path that had led them to this point heading off towards the north. As Scipio scouted past the fifty-metre mark, he realised they must have travelled some distance. He could see all the way to the edge of the valley mouth, but even through the scopes there was no evidence of the battlefield they had left behind or Chronus’s tanks. If they were in retreat, or worse, destroyed, there was no way of knowing.
Scipio recalled the shadow under the ice just before the flash of light signalling the massed necron phase shift. Guilliman’s blood, it had been so sudden: a vast and immediate spike of teleportation that had caught the Ultramarines forces totally unaware. But that was not what had first alerted him to the danger. Chronus was caught between two enemy formations, one above the ice; one below it. Even the vaunted tank commander would struggle to overcome such odds. Just as Scipio had suspected, the necrons were far from defeated. They were not even diminished in their military efficacy – they had merely been dormant, and now they were waking up.
He tried the vox, hoping to contact one of the vehicles in the tank commander’s company, but got only static in reply. According to his retinal display, all vox-frequencies were down. Scipio guessed environmental interference was the cause. They would need to gain higher ground, and try again without obstruction. With sheer cliffs on either side, that made the caves their best hope of reaching a high enough vantage to get a signal.
Largo joined him beyond the fifty-metre perimeter. This was surprising, as he had been expecting his second-in-command.
‘Where is Brother Brakkius?’ Scipio asked.
‘Injured, brother-sergeant. During the crash, his legs were crushed. He can’t walk.’
That was a blow. Scipio relied on Brakkius’s counsel and experience.
‘Any other injuries?’
‘Brother Kastus is incapacitated. The Gladius’s prow bore the brunt of the impact. The glacis was shattered instantly, and it took some hits.’
Scipio met Largo’s gaze. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Sus-anic coma, brother-sergeant.’
‘At least that’s something,’ Scipio conceded. With both Brakkius and Kastus out of action, that limited their options. A march into the wastes was out of the question. ‘What about the ship?’
‘The prow is more or less intact but our Techmarine holds it must be repaired if we’re to get airborne again.’
‘Airborne?’ Scipio asked quizzically. ‘I assumed we were grounded.’
A voice a little farther away answered, the unmistakable mechanical cadence of Vantor.
‘The machine-spirit of the Gladius yet lives,’ said the Techmarine. ‘I can not only repair, I can also fly it in Kastus’s absence.’
‘How long do you need?’ asked Scipio.
‘Most of the damage is superficial. There is a split in the port-side wing that must be fixed, the prow you already know about. I’ll need to run a thorough diagnostic too…’
‘How long?’ the sergeant pressed, quickly tiring of Vantor’s loquaciousness when discussing mechanics.
‘I estimate an hour.’
Scipio shook his head ruefully. ‘Chronus could be dead in an hour. We need to send a message to Kellenport, and raise the tank commander if we can. He might be in need of reinforcement.’ He turned back to Largo. ‘Gather the rest of the squad. We’re going on a scouting mission.’
‘What of Brakkius, brother-sergeant?’
‘He stays with Vantor. Now go.’
Looking back in the direction of the crash site, Scipio could see that most of Squad Vorolanus was ready for deployment. Only Brakkius, currently laid up against the unburied side of the Gladius’s hull, would be absent.
‘We’ll be heading towards the caves,’ Scipio told the Techmarine. ‘Make sure the gunship is flight-worthy by the time we return.’
Vantor nodded. ‘Be wary, brother-sergeant. I have never seen such ingenuity and resilience in a foe before as I have with the necrons.’
Scipio looked askance at the Techmarine. ‘I think I am starting to agree with Brakkius.’
‘How so?’
‘You sound like you admire these creatures.’
‘As I said to him, it is merely fascination. But also respect. They are devious and possess technology about which we know almost nothing. They are deadly, Sergeant Vorolanus.’
Scipio said nothing, and returned to the downed gunship to gather his squad.
CHAPTER NINE
ARMOUR KILLS
The Honour of Calgar was ablaze. Tongues of fire lapped eagerly across its scorched hull, its crew trapped inside and without hope of rescue. They did not try to escape. They were sons of Guilliman. They kept fighting. It burned for another eight seconds, floundering blindly, sponson guns chugging, before its fuel and ammunition cooked off and the Predator exploded. The shrapnel struck a second battle tank, Hera’s Banner, which was mired in ice. Half its hull was sunk beneath the permafrost, tracks whirring but skidding badly and failing to find purchase. Unable to defend itself, Hera could only await the inevitable as an arachnid necron construct clambered over its roof and gutted it from close range with a heat ray. Metal sloughed to molten slag under the weapon’s angry glow, the incumbent crew likewise. Within a few seconds, Hera was no more. It did not even resemble the proud war machine it had once been. ‘Scrap’ would have been too kind a term for it.
Glaring at Chronus on his retinal lens display, the icon for Hera went from amber to crimson. As the tank commander brought the Rage of Antonius around for another pass, he saw several other war machines were flaring terminally on the tactical feed too.
Two Razorbacks had been eviscerated by heat beams, their lascannon fusillade seemingly ineffective against the shielding of the spider-like walker that had destroyed them both. A third had been cut in half, then rendered down by a focused beam from a second arachnid construct.
Four Rhinos were blazing wrecks, still burning despite the snowfall, and pluming oily smoke. It smeared the sky, and blackened Chronus’s already bitter mood.
But it was the Vigilant that had been the first to die.
Caught in the act of dismantling the pitiful necron infantry, the Ultramarines armour had been strung out and lacking cohesion when the phase shift manifested, bringing with it a vastly superior and more manoeuvrable war host.
How quickly triumph had turned to urgent desperation.
The Vigilant was a veteran war machine, a Crusader-variant Land Raider. It took three hits simultaneously, still turning as it tried to bring its guns to bear. The first tore up its steering then severed a track guard before finally wrecking the armoured tread itself. The second punched a hole into the Vigilant’s back, taking out any remaining motive power and damaging its secondary weapon systems. The third destroyed it, the grizzled old Raider mushrooming upwards with the force of its own internal detonation, only to
crash down again seconds later in a fire-wreathed heap.
The two other engines in its squadron, Merciless Orar and Lord Protector, gave retaliatory fire but by then Chronus was ordering a full withdrawal to a more cohesive formation.
Engines fighting engines was bad. Without infantry support, especially against the anti-gravitic and hyper-manoeuvrable skimmers the necrons possessed, the tanks were at a distinct disadvantage. But even caught unawares, Chronus believed he could rally his forces back into some semblance of order and regain the upper hand.
It was only partially successful. As the tanks unleashed suppressing fire to try and stultify the swift necron assault and were forming up into a sweeping line breaker formation to scatter the enemy, a second force emerged from below.
The walkers were spider-like in aspect and came from under the ice. They broke up Chronus’s hastily restored order, appearing across the battlefield seemingly at will. It was as if some overarching consciousness commanded them, one that could perceive the entire theatre of combat and predict each of its unfolding acts before they transpired. Despite their less than robust design, the arachnid constructs were hard to kill, protected as they were by some kind of energy shielding.
Faced with the almost certain destruction of his forces, Chronus had little choice but to abandon formation and give the order for all vehicles to engage the nearest target and pray to the Throne the Ultramarines could weather the storm long enough to reassert dominance later.
As his battle tanks effectively duelled with the necron skimmers over several kilometres of churned snow and ice, a close-quarters encounter despite there being at least fifty metres between most of the vehicles, it was proving frustrating for Chronus.
‘All weapons!’ he snarled to Vutrius below, taking personal account of their lascannon turret. ‘Tear that thing apart.’
The Rage of Antonius shuddered, muzzle flare roaring from its side sponsons before Chronus cored out one of the arachnids with an accurate las-lance from the twin-link. They were moving at maximum combat speed, the Predator’s machine-spirit and advanced systems compensating for the continuous motion over the rugged ice. A flash of verdant fire made Chronus grimace despite his battle-helm. The larger skimmers were coming in again, not content with the destruction wreaked in their previous attack run.
Chronus slewed the turret around and fired across the necrons’ front arc, as Novus poured on more speed to get away from the floating, barge-like skimmers. As far as the tank commander had been able to discern during the sudden and unheralded enemy assault, there were two major necron engines involved in this armour skirmish. One was fashioned into a simulacrum of a scorpion, an ersatz tail rising from its rear aspect with its primary weapon location on its underside, encased in something approximating a metal ribcage or exoskeleton. Its single crewman was necron, of course, but appeared to be of a higher caste than the foot soldiers Chronus had been slaughtering before he had sprung the trap. The other engine was reminiscent of an anti-gravitic throne-barge, with a vast cannon array positioned above its two crewmen who were suspended in control cradles either side of the weapon’s power source. Whatever drove it, the effects were terrible to behold. A single blast had shredded open Hellhunter, but the Predator had survived and limped on.
These necrons, the ones driving their infernal vehicles, were much more advanced and tactically adroit. That lesson had been learned now, but had cost Chronus three major engines and six support vehicles.
Amidst the chaos of chattering shell bursts, whining beam weapons and energy discharge, Chronus opened up the vox.
‘Gnaeus, try to bring your flank together and put the heavier armour to your rear.’
The necrons were almost running rings around the slower Ultramarines vehicles, though the tanks could take more of a beating. As soon as it became clear they would not be able to regroup, Chronus had the company split into three separate battlegroups commanded by himself and his two sergeants.
Gnaeus’s affirmation rune flashed up on Chronus’s lens display, indicating he had understood and would proceed as ordered. Gnaeus had drawn together two of the Vindicators, The Ram and Glory of Calth, as well as Fury Unbound and Ceaseless Endeavour from the Whirlwind squadron. The other siege tanks had managed to disengage from the frantic melee on Gnaeus’s orders, putting some distance between themselves and the enemy so they could regroup and offer stationary bombardment. With the engagement so tightly packed, the opportunity had yet to present itself.
The two Land Raiders, Merciless Orar and Lord Protector, reduced speed and dropped back behind Gnaeus’s Destructor, Secutor Maximus, the last of his Predator squadron. At the brunt of the necron assault force when it materialised, Gnaeus’s engines had been the hardest hit but were digging in now and showing their mettle.
A beam flashed overhead, hot and angry, and Chronus was forced back down into the cupola.
‘Guilliman’s holy blood!’ he swore, checking his shoulder guard where the beam’s passage had seared it. The paint was stripped down to bare armour and even the outer ceramite layer was burned off. The vox-link was still open. ‘Egnatius…’
Chronus roughly held the centre, though the battlefield was ever changing and difficult to predict, leaving his sergeants to the flanks. Of the three officers, Egnatius’s battlegroup was the only one unscathed, aside from minor glancing hits.
His rune flashed up on a sub-screen on Chronus’s display, indicating they were in contact.
‘Pull your Predators wide, brother, and send the remaining Raiders to reinforce my flank.’
There was no answer at first, and Chronus was about to curse his fellow tank commander and the malfunctioning vox-link he had evidently failed to repair when Egnatius replied.
‘Manoeuvring now.’
He sounded preoccupied, but then they all were. This kind of fight, an enemy this quick and with advanced shielding and weapon technology… A human tank commander would have crumbled under the pressure. As it was, Chronus saw all. He knew the fight was still winnable. The necrons were swift and their war machines possessed phenomenal attacking power, but they lacked true grit and endurance.
‘Dismantled. Piece by piece,’ Chronus swore to himself beneath his breath. He would make it so.
A long-range autocannon burst from one of Egnatius’s Destructors slipped through a skimmer’s shielding, splitting the ark-craft in half and sending viridian energy coursing over its broken frame.
‘Ha!’ Chronus clenched his fist in a vicarious expression of triumph as he watched the skimmer’s demise on the tactical display.
A second salvo went close to the Antonius, spurring alert runes in urgent warning.
‘Watch your firing solutions,’ Chronus snapped at Egnatius over the vox.
The sergeant did not respond, but his tanks were moving into a flanking position as ordered.
Chronus had little time to think on it, for they were headed right into the teeth of a necron formation – two of the throne-barges and a single ark. A pair of arachnid walkers scuttled either side, seen through the Antonius’s vision slits.
Vutrius unleashed their heavy bolters frontwards, ignoring the walkers who were stitching desultory heat beams across the Antonius’s battle-seared hull.
‘Keep that speed up, Novus,’ Chronus said to his driver, having to shout above the roaring din inside the tank. By maintaining combat speed, they were a tougher target. Thus far, three heat beams had connected but failed to penetrate their outer armour. Slow down and that would change fast.
Enthroned at his command station, Chronus pulled down the scopes that would give him a lascannon’s-eye view of the battle. Verdant gauss fire rippled from the approaching enemy skimmers. Eldritch lightning arcs flashed across the visual display, but Chronus kept the crosshairs steady, adjusting each time Novus slewed the Antonius aside from a coruscating beam.
‘Maintain heading,’ Chronus orde
red calmly, as the necron ark slipped into his targeting grid. The whine in his ears told him the lascannon’s power coils were at maximum. Waiting another two seconds to bring the ark a few crucial metres closer, he seized the triggers.
Twin las-beams lanced from the turret, striking the ark midway along its spine before severing the scorpion tail. Not needing to see its destruction, Chronus swung the turret around incrementally for a second shot at one of the throne-barges. It tried to jink but the beam cut it a glancing hit, ruining its aim. The second throne-barge hit the Antonius square.
Novus roared, his cry of pain strangely muffled by his battle-helm and the interior noise, and a series of alert klaxons began sounding.
‘Can you drive, brother?’ shouted Chronus across the claustrophobic hold.
He saw Novus nodding, one hand clutching his upper chest, the other firmly grasping the steering control.
With both barges slipping beyond his immediate targeting arc, Chronus slammed the scopes back into the ceiling recess and disengaged the locking clamps on his command seat.
‘Pour on the power, punch us through!’ he said.
Throwing open the roof hatch, Chronus took up position in the cupola, swinging around as the Antonius rumbled past the necrons to get a first-hand look at the battlefield and the damage they had obviously sustained.
Smoke was billowing up from the Predator’s left track assembly and a section of armour plating was gouged open and bleeding fluid.
Chronus patted the hull, and muttered, ‘Sorry, old friend.’
He relayed orders down to Novus to decrease overall speed and reduce the strain on the damaged track.
Across the ice plain, skimmers and battle tanks were locked in a brutal armoured engagement. The contrast in tactics was stark. Where the necrons utilised their enhanced manoeuvrability, the Ultramarines relied on their ability to absorb punishment and return it with interest. Though the tesla-lightning and heat-ray weaponry was potent, it was better suited to the annihilation of infantry. Against heavy Space Marine armour it was not enjoying the same level of dominance. The necrons did have weapons in their arsenal that could hurt them, however. The smouldering wrecks of Hera’s Banner, Honour of Calgar and The Vigilant were testament to that.
Damnos - Nick Kyme Page 41