“All squads,” Sarik voxed to his Space Marines. “Increase visual scanning.
Inform me the instant you see
any
sign of movement.”
The upper hull of each of Sarik’s carriers featured a double-door hatch.
These swung outwards as Space Marines emerged to scan the surrounding landscape
for any sign of the enemy heavy weapons teams firing the missiles.
“Brother-sergeant,” a voice came over the net. It belonged to Sergeant Arcan
of the Ultramarines Chapter, his Rhino following directly behind Sarik’s own.
The sergeant was riding high in the roof hatch and scanning the surroundings
through a set of magnoculars. “I have a contact. Twelve nine, high.”
Sarik followed the squad leader’s warning, in time to see a salvo of rockets
arcing straight up into the air from behind a stand of trees a kilometre
distant. In the span of seconds, the missiles had streaked upwards through the
sky, closed the distance, and slammed into the
Animus Ferrox
.
A blinding white light flashed, and the Scout Titan was engulfed in a
billowing cloud of black smoke. At least some of the missiles had been stopped
by the war machine’s void shields, but in the process had overloaded the
projector. The invisible shield had collapsed in upon itself.
The Warhound’s torso swivelled left and right on its reverse-joined legs, its
huge weapons eager to engage its tormentor. Sarik keyed his command terminal and
sent Princeps Auclid the coordinates of the stand of trees the missiles had been
launched from.
“My thanks, White Scar,” the princeps transmitted in reply. There was
frustration in the man’s voice, no different to how Sarik himself would have
felt under sniper fire. The Warhound turned to bring both its weapons to bear at
once on the coordinates indicated. The ammunition feeds of its Vulcan
mega-bolter whirred as thousands of rounds were chambered ready to fire, and the
coils of its plasma blastgun pulsated with the staggering energies it was ready
to unleash.
Another salvo lanced upwards into the air, the launch point somewhere behind
a stand of purple-leaved trees. This time, Princeps Auclid saw it too, and
opened fire.
The Warhound’s Vulcan mega-bolter was, in effect, a cluster of oversized
heavy bolters, each one far larger than even a Space Marine could carry. The
sound of the weapon firing was like a bolt of silk being ripped violently in
two. Sarik gritted his teeth against the horrendous report, and fought the urge
to cover his ears. Up ahead, the stand of trees the missiles had been fired from
simply exploded into constituent particles. Trunks were ground to pulp, and the
pulp to a fine mist, by the merciless fusillade.
Surely, nothing could live through that.
But something had. As the breeze carried the mist away, a curved and sleek
form was revealed. It took Sarik a moment to register just what the form
represented. It was a vehicle, but its construction was more akin to the
gracefully wrought forms of eldar tanks than those of the Imperium, which were
solid, brutal and supremely functional in their design. Then Sarik realised that
the vehicle was not driven by a track unit like the majority of Imperial war
machines, but by some manner of anti-grav generator. Once more, the similarity
to the fiendish works of the eldar came to his mind. For such technology to be
so widely employed was a sure sign of the depths of the technological heresy to
which the tau had descended, and reason in itself, in the mind of the Imperium,
to prosecute a campaign of extermination against their empire. Sarik’s heart
beat faster at the prospect of combat against such a foe, but the vehicle was
already rising on its invisible anti-grav cushion. With a whine of turbo jets,
it swung around and was gone.
As the mist of the pulped trees drifted across the road in front of the
Warhound, Sarik caught sight of a thin, red beam of light scything through it,
which disappeared the instant the mist was caught on the air and dispersed. He
followed the beam to where it had originated, and saw another stand of
purple-leaved vegetation.
“Princeps Auclid!” Sarik called into the vox-net. “The fire is indirect,
there are observers in the treeline, they’re using some form of—”
Sarik’s words were cut off as the Warhound opened fire on the nearest
treeline. Sarik saw the red beam lance outwards a second time. The alien warrior
holding the source of the beam did so with countless thousands of mass-reactive
bolts thundering overhead in what must have been a deafening barrage. Despite
his loathing of such alien technology, Sarik acknowledged the skill at arms such
a feat represented.
And then another salvo of missiles came screaming in from a high angle. The
faintest glint of red light reflected from the side of the Warhound’s canine
head. A second later half a dozen missiles slammed into that exact point. The
Warhound’s void shields had been stripped, and even though the ornate cockpit
was heavily armoured, it exploded as the missiles struck. The mighty war machine
staggered backwards, its machine systems suddenly bereft of control.
“Get clear!” Sarik bellowed, ducking back inside his carrier as the driver
gunned its engines. “
Animus Ferrox
is wounded!” Folding down a periscopic
sight, Sarik witnessed the last moments of the
Animus Ferrox
as his
armoured carrier powered away from the Titan’s awesomely destructive death
throes.
The Titan shook, as if its war spirit fought to keep its crippled form
upright even without the guidance of the princeps, who had been killed the
instant the missiles had destroyed the head. Then one of its mighty clawed feet
slipped and the towering machine listed precariously to one side. The last thing
Sarik saw before his Rhino bore him away was the entire machine toppling to the
ground, thick black smoke boiling from the ragged wound where its cockpit-head
had been.
Then Sarik’s Rhino was shaken violently as the Warhound hammered into the
road and an instant later exploded. Secondary explosions ripped out, the Rhino’s
driver fighting all the while to maintain control of the bucking armoured
transport. Orange flames licked at the edge of Sarik’s scope, and the pristine
white heraldry of his transport was turned to scorched black by the raging fires
of the Warhound’s destruction.
When the explosions finally ceased, Sarik ordered his driver to halt. The
white of the road surface had been scorched black, great banks of smoke lit from
within by airborne cinders gusting past. The
Animus Ferrox
was reduced to
little more than its armoured carapace shell at the centre of a huge crater
strewn with blazing wreckage. Sarik bit back his grief that such a mighty, proud
war machine could be struck down by alien weaponry with such seeming ease. It
was one injustice amidst a galaxy of wrong, but the tau would pay for it
nonetheless, he vowed, in blood.
From out of the smoke reared the form of the Warhound’s twin, the
Gladius
Pious
. The second Titan paused a moment as it passed its slain companion,
before stalking forwards to take its position at the head of the advance, its
weapons tracking back and forth across the treelines either side of the road.
Sarik opened a channel to the
Gladius Pious
. “Princeps, this is Sarik.
I honour your fallen kin, and I suggest a change of plan.”
“Go ahead, Sarik,” the princeps replied, his bitterness and grief at the loss
of his fellow obvious in his voice. “But make it quick, I read multiple armour
contacts.”
“Understood, Princeps…?”
“Atild, brother-sergeant,” the princeps replied.
“Listen to me, Princeps Atild,” Sarik continued. “The tau are marking their
targets with some sort of laser designator, which the missiles are following.
They’re being launched blind, and the launchers are redeploying as we press
forwards.”
“I understand, Sarik. But what can we—”
“My force will press forwards,” Sarik said, aware that at any second another
salvo of missiles could come streaking out of the skies. “We’ll clear the
treelines of observers and flush out the launchers. If we force them to fire
over open sights, you can engage them before they get a chance to do so.
Agreed?”
“Sarik, you’ll be exposing yourself to—”
“I know, princeps,” Sarik interrupted, growing frustrated with the exchange.
Titan crews, even those of the comparatively light Warhounds, were accustomed to
dominating any battlefield. They were ill-disposed towards relying on infantry,
even elite Space Marines, to clear the way for them. Nonetheless, Sarik knew
that the princeps had just lost a valued fellow warrior of his order, and so he
gave the man some leeway.
There was a pause before the princeps answered, during which Sarik scanned
the sky impatiently, fighting back the urge to press the other man for a
response.
“Agreed, Astartes,” the princeps finally replied. “I am in your debt.”
“You can thank me later, princeps,” Sarik replied, finally able to enact his
plan. In moments, he was leading the column of armoured carriers forwards to
clear the treelines of tau spotters.
Even as the Space Marine spearheads were pressing westwards in their breakout
from the landing zone, the crusade’s Imperial Guard units were mustering to
launch the second wave of the advance. While the Space Marines represented small
but highly elite formations, the diamond-hard tip of the spear, the Imperial
Guard would form the inexorable main bulk of the attack, an unstoppable mass
that would roll over and flatten anything it encountered.
Lucian stood in front of the assembled ranks of the force that he himself
would soon be leading into battle, his heart swelling with pride. No Arcadius
had gone to war at the head of such a formation for several centuries, a fact
that Lucian hoped would seal his place in the annals of the clan forever.
The Dal’yth Prime landings were still taking place, but the majority of the
combat units had been ferried to the surface and local air superiority largely
consolidated. The plain was filled with thousands of marching troops and
hundreds of growling armoured vehicles, and overhead dozens of impossibly large
heavy landers plied to and from the vessels in orbit. Lucian had made planetfall
in his personal shuttle and made his way immediately to meet his new command.
The force was drawn from the veteran light infantry companies of the
Rakarshan Rifles, an ad-hoc battlegroup of around a thousand men and women who
were acknowledged as the finest infiltrators and mountain troops in the entire
crusade. In addition to their reputation for highly professional soldiering, the
Rakarshans were the subject of folklore amongst the peoples of the Eastern
Fringe, their ferocity in combat making them greatly feared by their enemies.
The tau had never heard of Rakarsha, but Lucian had promised his troops that
together, they would give the aliens cause to dread their coming.
As the last troops took their places, the formation was called to attention
by bellowing sergeant-majors. They were an impressive sight indeed. They wore
uniforms designed to blend in with the predominant subtropical environment of
their home world, and these had been retained, for the pale green and dusty
brown patterning was well suited to the arable lands around the tau cities.
While the camouflage was eminently practical, the Rakarshans carried plenty of
reminders of the culture that had spawned them. Each carried a short, curved
blade at his belt, which by tradition was not to be drawn from its
jewel-encrusted scabbard except to taste blood. Some said that should a drawn
blade not spill the blood of a foeman, it should do so from its bearer. In
addition, the Rakarshans each wore an intricately knotted headdress made of
rich, purple cloth wrapped about their heads. Mounted above the forehead was a
single black feather taken from a mountain vulture, a creature held as nigh
sacred by the superstitious peoples of Rakarsha.
A pair of officers stood at the centre of the formation. Major Subad would
serve as Lucian’s executive officer, enacting his orders and supervising the
more mundane aspects of the battlegroup’s operations. Sergeant-Major Havil would
be the battlegroup’s senior non-commissioned officer, in whose hands the
discipline and moral well-being of the warriors would rest.
When the troops were finally all in place, formed up in perfect lines by
platoons and companies, all fell quiet, apart from the ever-present background
noise of the more distant tanks and the landers flying overhead. Lucian stood
perfectly still, impatient for the ceremonial handover of command to begin so
that he could be about the business of conquest.
The two officers walked smartly forwards. Major Subad was a tall, lean man
who to Lucian’s eye had something of the ascetic about him. One of his eyes had
been replaced by an augmetic lens, which twinkled like a rare gem from his dark,
sharp-nosed face. The major wore a headdress similar to those worn by his
troops, not one, but three tall feathers mounted at its front. Though the major
looked to Lucian more a man of intellect than of action, he bore an impressive,
curved power sword at his belt. Lucian judged that by the man’s bearing he was
fully capable of using the blade to masterful effect.
At the officer’s side came Sergeant-Major Havil, a giant of a man with a
coarse beard and dark eyes that surely saw all that occurred in the ranks. He
too wore the traditional headdress of his home world, surmounted by a single
black feather. In his hand the sergeant-major carried a polearm as tall as he
was. Its head was a huge, double-bladed power axe. Though the weapon was
encrusted in gorgeous gems and was undoubtedly a regimental heirloom, Lucian
suspected that it was also wielded in battle, and would reap a fearsome toll
amongst the enemy.
Both officers halted in front of Lucian. Sergeant-Major Havil stamped his
feet with parade-ground precision, and bellowed an order in the tongue of his
home world so loud it made Lucian’s ears ring. The rogue trader decided
instantly that he liked the sergeant-major. The man reminded him of a cthellian
cudbear.