He had a deep and abiding respect for Kantor, though the bond of brotherhood was more tenuous between them than it was between the Chapter Master and Alessio Cortez. This wasn’t something that bothered Drakken much. Friendship meant little to him, certainly far less than good solid leadership, as it should to any Adeptus Astartes worth his salt.
He had no strong love of Cortez, that was for sure. The man was arrogant, opinionated, noisy and boorish, and his status as some kind of invincible hero of the Chapter consistently got under Drakken’s skin.
It is the Blackwater thing, he thought to himself as he moved out from the corner of a sandstone hab and signalled his men to follow. The way they all stick–
Scout-Sergeant Mishina’s voice cut him off mid-thought.
‘Brother-captain,’ said the Scout over the link. ‘This is Shadow One. I have movement at the objective.’
Drakken’s hand went up immediately, motioning for his men to move back into cover. ‘Details, Mishina.’
‘A convoy of ork light armour, brother-captain. It’s moving along the main road towards the communications tower. The lead machines have already pulled up in the plaza out in front.’
‘Numbers?’
Mishina went quiet for a few seconds, then replied, ‘At least thirty vehicles that I can see, and dust clouds from more at the rear. If they wake up to our presence prematurely, my lord, we’re going to have trouble. A lot of it.’
Sergeant Werner and his party moved east at the base of the curtain wall, following the infrared splashes left by Scouts Vermian and Rogar, both of whom had been tasked with reconnoitring the route from the wall breach to the water purification plant.
So far, not a single bolt had been fired.
On a surgical strike like this, thought Werner, the longer it stays that way, the better.
He had to admire his Tenth Company kinsmen. Every few blocks, with his visor’s night-vision mode turning inky night into murky day, he would spot the crumpled bodies of ork sentries hidden in burned out doorways or stuffed between bullet-riddled barrels and crates.
In the shadows, nothing beat the quiet goodnight of a knife in the neck.
The Scouts were good. If they kept this up, Werner and his squads would get all the way to the purification plant without any of the alien filth raising the alarm. Once there, of course, any pretence at stealth would have to be abandoned. Things would become more overt. The melta charges would see to that. Once they were detonated, the whole damned planet would know that the Crimson Fists had come calling to dispense death and destruction in the Emperor’s name. Werner expected a fierce firefight on the way out. The streets would fill up quickly with the bestial scum. But, once the Fists were beyond the wall again, it would be a simple matter of calling in the Thunderhawks for pickup and holding a defensive perimeter until they arrived.
Whatever happened after that was for pilots, gunners and Navigators to worry about. Werner didn’t concern himself with things he couldn’t influence. It wasn’t his way.
He heard Drakken hailing him on the comm-link.
‘Leo, respond.’
‘Here, my lord. Go ahead.’
‘Status?’
‘About one kilometre out from our objective now. Scouts moving into sniping positions. Ork presence minimal so far, but I don’t think it’ll stay that way for long.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ said Drakken. ‘The comms tower is crawling with greenskin filth. I’m afraid we have to alter the plan as a result.’
Werner called his men to an immediate halt, and they went into overwatch, their bolter muzzles swinging up and around to cover every street corner, door and alleyway.
‘I’m listening, brother-captain,’ said Werner.
‘We’ve got ork light armour that just came in from the north. I’ve checked with Sergeant Solari. He is adamant that his Speeders weren’t spotted and neither were any of his men. They’re back aboard their Thunderhawk now, waiting to offer us close support should we need it. Listen closely, Leo, I know we discussed a simultaneous strike, but our best hope of knocking out that communications tower now depends on you drawing some of the defenders away. I need your team to strike first, and to make as much damned noise as you can.’
Inwardly, Werner cursed. The captain’s logic was sound, of course, the reasoning faultless, but it meant dropping his men right in the heat of things. Ork light armour might look like worthless junk, but it could move fast and, when they functioned properly, the greenskins’ heavy weapons packed as hard a punch as anything in the Imperial arsenal. The narrow streets would protect his men for the most part, but they would have to cross several wide roads on their way back to the rendezvous point. That meant a dash over open ground, probably under intense fire.
It couldn’t be helped. Orders from a brother-captain might just as well be orders from the Emperor Himself. They were to be obeyed no matter what. Werner was a Space Marine; he would walk straight into certain death if his superiors ordered it. How he died didn’t bother him at all. It was how he lived that counted. ‘Leave it to us, my lord,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the facility up so bright the damned orks will think the sun’s come up early.’
‘Good. Make it happen, Leo,’ said Drakken. ‘I want to know the minute you’re in position. Command, out.’
Werner waved his Adeptus Astartes on, and with righteous murder on their minds, they closed in on their target.
Mishina was about as close as he wanted to get. There was little more he could do for Captain Drakken’s party now, save cover them with sniper fire and keep them apprised of enemy movements. There was no more quiet clearance work to be done. That phase of the operation was over. After muttering a short prayer of gratitude to his deadly blade, he sheathed it for what he supposed would be the last time tonight. It had claimed the lives of sixteen of the oversized alien abominations.
Not a bad tally for a night’s work, he told himself.
He wondered how many xenos his sniper rifle would claim once the shooting started. More than sixteen, he hoped.
The other Scout assigned to provide forward eyes and sniper cover for Drakken’s team was a fairly fresh initiate by the name of Janus Kennon.
Brother Kennon was young, and Mishina had expressed concerns to Captain Icario that the inexperienced Scout needed more training before a critical deployment like this. But Kennon’s innate skills had apparently marked him out for great things. In over a hundred years, no other initiate had come close to matching his scores on the practice range, even in thick simulated fog. Kennon’s accuracy and targeting abilities bordered on the preternatural, and Mishina got the impression that Captain Icario saw a potential protégé in the young Space Marine.
Kennon was currently crouching on the corner of a dust-covered rooftop about eight hundred metres to the north-west of Mishina’s current spot, covering the ork defensive post on top of the comms tower from a western flanking position.
At least, that was where Mishina had told Kennon to go. Had it been anyone else, Mishina would have assumed his orders were being followed to the letter, but not so with Kennon. The boy was far too sure of himself. The captain’s praise had gone to his head.
Mishina couldn’t help himself. For a brief moment, he turned his goggles north-west and increased magnification.
He soon detected Kennon’s heat signature… exactly where it was supposed to be.
Mishina felt the briefest flash of shame for doubting a fellow Crimson Fist.
Jealous, Ezra, he asked himself? Jealous of the boy’s talent? You’ve no reason to doubt him. He went through the same psycho-indoctrination programmes you did. Trust in Captain Icario’s choice.
These thoughts had barely filtered through to the front of Mishina’s mind when Kennon’s voice addressed him over the comm-link.
‘Shadow Four to Shadow One. Can you hear me, sergeant?’
‘I hear you, brother,’ said Mishina. ‘Speak.’
‘Sergeant, I’m not sure whether you can see
this or not, but a monster of an ork just dismounted from some kind of truck in the middle of the plaza. He’s climbing a stair on the west side of the building. It must be the greenskin leader. The beast is as broad as Brother Ulis!’
Mishina doubted that. Ulis was a Dreadnought, one of the Chapter’s revered Old Ones, and about four metres across from shoulder to shoulder. The largest ork Mishina had ever seen in person had been almost three metres across. It had taken a direct hit from a Predator tank to slay that bastard.
Mishina squinted up ahead, but, from this angle, he couldn’t see the creature Kennon was talking about. He was about to move to a neighbouring rooftop for a better angle when Kennon reported, ‘He’s going up to the rooftop of the bunker. I have his ugly face right in the centre of my crosshairs, sergeant. Requesting immediate permission to take the shot.’
‘Request denied, brother,’ said Mishina. ‘Hold position while I–’
‘I can take him out, sergeant,’ Kennon insisted. ‘He must be the leader. One kill-shot could put their entire force in disarray. Again, I strongly request permission to fire.’
Mishina’s words were as hard as bolts themselves. ‘You will not take the shot until Captain Drakken gives the order. Is that understood?’
Kennon was silent.
‘I said is that understood, brother?’
Reluctantly, not bothering to mask the contempt and disappointment in his voice, the young Scout replied that it was. Mishina immediately contacted Captain Drakken and said, ‘Shadow Four reports that he has what he believes to be the ork leader in his crosshairs, captain. He is requesting permission to take the shot.’
Drakken barely needed time to think about it.
‘Negative, Shadow One. Authorisation denied. Sergeant Werner and his squads are preparing to assault the water purification facility as we speak. I want those orks drawn off before we strike the comms bunker. Is that absolutely clear?’
It was. If Brother Kennon took the shot – hit or miss – the orks at the comms bunker would deploy all their light armour against the most local, most immediate threat.
Mishina could understand Kennon’s eagerness well enough. It was a shot he would like to take himself, a single squeeze of the trigger, one muffled cough from his weapon’s muzzle that would garner the kind of glory and honour few brothers in Tenth Company would ever have a chance to claim. To think that a single shot might defuse, or at the very least, greatly delay a potential Waaagh…
Not just a triumph for Kennon, thought Mishina, but something the entire company could be proud of. There would be decorations for everyone deployed here.
At the very back of his mind, a tiny voice said: Results come first. Let Kennon take the shot.
Mishina had heard that dangerous voice before. He expected to hear it again many times throughout his life. He responded to it now as he always did. He crushed it to nothing, just as he had been trained, just as his mind had been rigorously conditioned to do. He drowned it out with a silent litany of obligation.
Think of the Chapter, he told himself. Think of the primarch, of the Emperor and Terra.
None of these were best served by indulging one’s sense of personal pride. A true Adeptus Astartes was better than that.
There was a sudden brief transmission on the comm-link’s mission channel. ‘Sergeant Werner’s force is about to light up Objective Two,’ Drakken barked. ‘Brace yourselves!’
A sudden clap of thunder shook the rooftop under Mishina’s feet, and a great flash of white light, super-nova bright, lit the whole town from the direction of the south-eastern precinct. It was followed by three more in rapid succession, each shaking the entire town like the footfalls of a mighty Titan.
Mishina screwed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the direction of the blasts, anxious not to be temporarily blinded by the glare. Sergeant Werner’s party had launched their attack on the water purification plant in spectacular style. Stealth protocols were no longer in effect.
When the sound of the melta explosions had dropped to a ringing in his ears, Mishina opened his eyes. From the buildings all around the comms bunker, a great cacophony of orkish grunts and roars could be heard, merging together with the revving of powerful, fume-spewing engines.
The sound of distant gunfire echoed from between the streets and alleys around the water purification plant. Mishina’s supremely honed ears recognised the distinctive bark of bolters being fired from about ten kilometres away. There was an awful lot of fire being traded. He muttered a prayer to the Emperor for the safety of Sergeant Werner and his men. From the plaza in front of the comms bunker, the first of the ork bikes and buggies began to move off in the general direction of the gunfight, their engines growling and sputtering like mad animals.
That’s it, you brainless muck-eaters, thought Mishina. Keep moving. Go and see what it’s all about.
It was happening exactly as Captain Drakken had anticipated and, for the first time since the ork vehicles had shown up, Mishina started to feel truly confident that everything would go according to plan.
That was when he heard Kennon on the comm-link again.
‘The warlord is moving, sergeant. I can’t wait any longer. I’m taking the shot!’
Mishina almost forgot himself. Scouts were habitually quiet individuals. Shouting tended to give one’s position away. Even so, he almost yelled over the comm-link, ‘Hold your damned fire! That’s a direct order. If you take that shot, upstart, I’ll see you flayed alive, by Throne! Do I make myself cl–’
There was a brief burst of blue-green light from the direction of the comms bunker. Mishina felt his primary heart skip a beat. He knew instinctively what the flash meant. Kennon had taken the shot anyway. His magnified vision confirmed it when Kennon fired a second time, then a third. All of Kennon’s rounds had been right on target, but they had detonated with brief, bright, harmless flashes on some kind of invisible energy shield.
Zooming in further, Mishina could see the shield-generating apparatus strapped to the monster’s back. No sniper was going to fell that beast. Kennon had just given himself away for nothing.
The ork boss spun in Kennon’s direction, took a great lungful of air, and bellowed out a battle cry that seemed to vibrate the foundations of the entire town.
Absently, Mishina registered that Kennon hadn’t been exaggerating greatly about the creature’s size. It was a formidable-looking thing, the great bulk of its blocky apparatus only adding to the effect.
A half-second after this thought ran through his mind, bright light stabbed into Mishina’s eyes. The orks on the roof had turned searchlights out into the night, and the Scout-Sergeant’s night vision goggles hadn’t been able to adjust to the sudden brightness quickly enough. Mishina threw a hand up over his face. Stubber and heavy weapons fire begin spitting out in all directions. Countless alien throats began calling out threats and challenges in what passed for their rough alien tongue.
Any chance of splitting up the greenskin force at the comms tower was now lost.
‘Shadow One to Captain Drakken,’ said Mishina urgently.
‘Don’t bother, sergeant,’ snapped Captain Drakken on the other end of the link. The ink-dark streets where the ork searchlights couldn’t penetrate now began to strobe with muzzle flashes as the battle-brothers of Third Company moved up, claiming the first of their kills early in the exchange. ‘If we live through this,’ continued a furious Drakken, ‘you can explain to the Chapter Council what in damnation just happened.’
Mishina loosed a bitter curse and promised he would see Kennon strung up for this. Then he knocked his bolt-rifle’s safety off, checked that there was a live round in the chamber, and scanned the streets below his position, sector by sector, eyes alert for anything that threatened to flank Drakken’s men as they stormed towards their objective.
Gunfire from both sides rang out for hours on end.
The dry, dust-caked streets of Krugerport soon ran red.
‘Adeptus Astartes, f
all back!’ bellowed Drakken.
He wasn’t sure they could hear him, wasn’t sure the micro-vox circuitry in his gorget was sending them his voice. His helmet had been struck by some kind of greenskin plasma round that burned right through, crisping the flesh of his left cheek.
His visor had gone dead. He’d had to strip the ruined helm from his head in a hurry, enemy rounds rattling like hail on his armour while he was temporarily blinded. Now, with ork stubber-fire blazing all around him, shells ripping onto the hab walls on either side of the street, he had to shout his orders.
The enemy kept coming, spilling from everywhere, no matter how much fire he and his Fists spat back at them. They had felled scores, perhaps hundreds, of the slab-muscled aliens already, but the charges continued. They trampled their dead into the blood-soaked dirt without the slightest reverence. A foul odour came with them, an odour Drakken knew well, stale sweat and fungal stink, worse than rotting garbage.
Drawing a bead on the largest, darkest-skinned ork he could see, Drakken pulled the trigger of his bolt pistol. Nothing. Without pause for thought, he switched magazines, his armoured hands moving in a well-practiced blur. He took aim once more. The beast had covered ten more metres, lumbering forwards on legs as thick as a man’s torso. He fired, and a bolt thundered into the centre of the creature’s sloping forehead.
It kept running. Orks didn’t go down easily. A second later the exploding bolt blew out the creature’s brain, and its heavy, headless corpse hammered against the dusty street spouting thick red blood.
Drakken took a second to look down the avenue behind him and saw that his orders had gotten through. His squads were making a staggered retreat in the direction of the breach through which they’d come. Sergeant Werner’s group would rendezvous with them there. Whoever reached the gap in the wall first was to hold it and wait for the others.
Across the street, in the shadow of another hab, Drakken saw one of his Adeptus Astartes, Brother Cero, laying down cover with a heavy bolter. The massive weapon chugged and chattered, throwing its lethal rounds out in great scything arcs, cutting the front ranks of the charging orks to ragged red pieces. The death toll was so great it caused the ork charge to momentarily falter, as those immediately behind the fallen tried to turn and force their way to cover.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 71