In response to the order, every rifleman in the formation came smartly to
attention, stamping down in flawless precision as they shouldered their lasguns.
A gentle breeze stirred the feathers of their headdresses, but otherwise, the
ranks stood perfectly motionless. It was a sight to stir the heart, making
Lucian pleased that his political manoeuvrings had resulted in him taking
command of such a splendid force of warriors.
Then, Major Subad bowed at the waist, straightened, and addressed Lucian.
“Battlegroup Arcadius is hereby commissioned, and its command is vested in
Lucian Gerrit, bearer of the Warrant of Trade of the Clan Arcadius. Let it be
recorded in the regimental rolls, and let the foes of the God-Emperor tremble!”
Lucian bowed in return, then took a step towards the major, holding out his
right hand. The two clasped forearms, and the deed was done. Battlegroup
Arcadius, Lucian smiled inwardly at the name, was his to command.
“My thanks, Major Subad,” Lucian replied, looking from the hawk-faced officer
to the ranks of veteran warriors arrayed behind him. “Is the battlegroup ready
to receive orders?”
“That it is, my lord,” the major replied. “All companies have been assigned
orders of march and merely await your command to advance to glory.”
Lucian chuckled slightly at the officer’s turn of phrase, filled as it was
with beaming martial pride. The Rakarshans spoke an archaic dialect of Low
Gothic and he would have trouble communicating directly with the ranks himself.
The major, however, spoke High Gothic fluently, and would translate Lucian’s
commands as he passed them down the line. Nonetheless, Lucian thought it might
be worth learning some of the Rakarshan dialect, as he might be fighting beside
these fierce warriors for some time to come.
“Well enough, major,” Lucian said, grinning widely. “The command is given.
Let the advance to glory begin!”
Sarik vaulted the trunk of a large tree that had been felled by the Scout
Titan’s supporting fire, raising his boltgun one-handed and unleashing a
rapid-fire burst at the tau warrior who sheltered in the foliage up ahead. Bolts
stitched the alien’s torso, his blocky, sand-coloured armour penetrated in half
a dozen places. An instant later, the mass-reactive shells exploded within the
warrior’s body, and he fell to the ground a ragged mass of ruined flesh.
Sarik tracked his weapon back and forth across his surroundings, his squad
moving up behind him.
“Clear.”
The chest armour of Sarik’s victim was ripped wide open, as was the flesh
beneath it. A pool of blood swelled outwards, seeping into the dusty ground. The
alien’s blood was not red, but a deep blue-purple. The xeno-genitors attached to
the Departmento Tacticae postulated this was because their circulatory system
relied not on iron, as in human biology, but on cobalt. The only thing that
mattered to Sarik was that they bled, and that they died with honour.
Stooping, Sarik retrieved the weapon the dead warrior had carried. As with
all the tau firearms Sarik had encountered, it was rectangular and hard-edged,
lacking the ornamentation many weapons of human manufacture displayed. The grip
was too small for his gauntleted hands. It was designed to accommodate the tau’s
hands, which featured an opposable thumb and three fingers. Mounted atop the
weapon was a device Sarik had not seen before, though he guessed straight away
what it was. Lifting the weapon, he squinted into the device. As he suspected,
it was a sighting mechanism. Tracking the weapon back and forth across the
clearing, Sarik depressed a stud at its side and a needle-thin beam of red light
lanced out from the front.
Sarik guessed that a second stud at the weapon’s side would establish a
machine communion with a remote, vehicle-mounted weapons system. The link would
be maintained as the missiles homed in on the target indicated by the red beam.
Feeling suddenly tainted by his contact with the alien technology, Sarik
threw the weapon to the bloodstained ground beside its former owner.
The alien that lay slaughtered at Sarik’s feet was the third his squad had
killed, and reports from the other elements of the spearhead indicated that a
further dozen had been engaged. The Space Marines ranged ahead of the lone
Warhound Scout Titan, clearing each stand of trees of the observers. The weight
of missile fire had rapidly dropped off as the tau had discerned the Space
Marines’ tactics, allowing the advance to proceed again.
As the spearhead progressed, the stands of trees became increasingly regular
as it pressed in to cultivated farmland. In the distance, small, white
domed-shaped structures were nestled in amongst the vegetation, the first signs
of the conurbations that the spy-drones had indicated lay all around the tau
city.
Moving to the edge of the plantation, Sarik prepared to call his transport
forwards towards the next area of cover an alien spotter might be concealed in.
At the edge of his hearing, which was far superior to that of any normal man,
Sarik detected a rising drone, like turbines slowly powering up. The sound was
emanating from behind a low rise, and could represent only one thing.
“Squad,” Sarik called into the vox-net. “Enemy armour located. I want the
missile launcher forward, and all other brethren on overwatch.”
A battle-brother appeared behind Sarik and knelt down beside him. He
shouldered the very same weapon that Sarik had used the previous day against the
tau flyer that had slain its previous bearer. The sound increased in volume, and
Sarik saw a curved prow edge its way out from behind the rise, followed by the
low, almost piscine form of the rest of the tau vehicle. Last to be revealed was
the splayed, wing-like structure of the multiple launcher mounted high upon its
back, its paired vanes underslung with three missiles each.
The launcher was slowly rotating. An undetected observer must have managed to
bring his laser designator to bear on the
Gladius Pious
. Sarik turned to
the battle-brother at his side, about to issue the order to engage, when he saw
a red reflection glinting from the Space Marine’s helmet.
Sarik dived forwards, shunting his fellow Space Marine aside at the very
moment a missile fired to life and streaked through the air towards the pair.
Both hit the ground hard, rolling apart as the missile burst through the
foliage. With a supersonic scream, the missile passed by a mere metre over
Sarik’s head and struck the bough of a tree on the other side of the clearing.
The entire plantation erupted as the missile detonated, shards of wood
transformed into potentially lethal shrapnel by the power of the explosion.
Rising, Sarik scanned the clearing, which had been reduced from an orderly
plantation to a scene of devastation. None of his warriors was injured, but that
would not last if the observer drew a bead on any of them a second time.
Opening a vox-channel to the
Gladius Pious
, Sarik said, “Princeps
Atild. The enemy have changed their tactics. They are targeting us, but the
spotter remains concealed. I suggest you engage possible locations while we deal
with the launcher, over.”
“Understood, Sarik,” the princeps replied. “Activate transponders and stand
by.”
Relaying the order to the squad leaders under his command, Sarik activated
his transponder unit. The device would transmit the location of each Space
Marine and Rhino in the spearhead to the Warhound’s strategium, so that the
Scout Titan’s weapons would not be turned upon its allies. Ordinarily, the
transponders might be left to continually transmit, but the Departmento Tacticae
had warned that the tech-heresies of the tau were so dire they might be able to
detect the transmissions. The Space Marines were not prepared to take that risk.
“All units, stand by,” Sarik said over the command net, the blood rising
within him.
Then the skies erupted as the Warhound turned its Vulcan mega-bolter on the
nearby treelines, sweeping the weapon left and right as thousands of explosive
bolts hammered into any and every possible location a tau spotter might be
concealed in.
“Squad forward!” Sarik bellowed, praying his voice would be carried over the
vox-net, for it was not audible over the deafening torrent of fire. “Take it
down!”
Sarik burst from the cover of the plantation and emerged into the open. A
second later the warriors of his squad were at his side, and the black-armoured
Scythes of the Emperor were not far away. Before them, the tau grav-tank had
engaged the huge thrusters mounted on its flanks and was rising up as its
retractable landing treads folded into its underbelly. The thrusters swivelled
downwards to give it additional lift, and as the power built they emitted a
high-pitched whine so loud it was soon competing with the thunderous report of
the Warhound’s mega-bolters.
Stowing his boltgun, Sarik drew his chainsword and brandished it high so that
his warriors would follow his example. Then he brought the snarling blade
downwards, pointing it directly at the tau grav-tank. A missile lanced from the
treeline the Space Marines had just left and slammed into the side of the slowly
rising grav-tank.
The missile struck a thruster unit on the grav-tank’s side, and although the
vehicle’s thick armour deflected the worst of the blast, the engine was
crippled. The vehicle slewed around, its remaining thruster screaming as it
fought to maintain lift.
The grav-tank’s nose dipped towards the ground, and Sarik sprang forwards,
putting all his strength and that granted him by his power armour into sprinting
across the open ground before the vehicle could recover and escape. As Sarik
closed with his target, the pilot finally regained control and the vehicle began
to rise again.
Finally, Sarik was on his foe, his battle-brothers a mere step behind. As the
grav-tank rose, the air beneath it rippling with the anti-grav field that kept
it aloft, Sarik leaped upwards, and caught hold of one of the secondary control
vanes at the grav-tank’s prow.
Pulling himself up onto the curved surface, Sarik looked for a handhold.
Finding none on the alien machine, he located a crew hatch high on its spine and
threw himself towards it even as the grav-tank gained altitude. The barking
report of half a dozen boltguns sounded from below as Sarik’s warriors opened
fire on the anti-grav generators keeping it aloft.
His grip on the curved surface threatening to desert him, Sarik finally got a
hold on the small hatch, and dug his armoured fingers in around its collar.
Hauling with all his might, Sarik bellowed a wordless war cry, which turned into
a joyous outburst of savage victory as the hatch peeled back under his efforts.
The grav-tank dipped violently, whether from the effects of his
battle-brothers’ fire or the pilot panicking Sarik could not discern. A red
battle fury descended upon him. He plunged his arm inside the hatch right up to
his shoulder plate, and pulled furiously on the first thing he grabbed hold of.
As Sarik retracted his arm, the grav-tank dipped crazily forwards. He dragged
the pilot through the hatch and held him in the air victoriously. Then he
brought the tau’s body downwards upon the spine of the vehicle. He broke his
victim’s back across the hard armour, before flinging the ragged form to the
ground below. It was only then that Sarik’s berserker rage lifted, as the
grav-tank slewed wildly out of control towards the structure it had been hidden
behind.
In the final seconds before the tau vehicle slammed into the dome-shaped
building, Sarik threw himself from its back, propelled clear by a last, powerful
thrust of his legs against its hull. Even as he fell backwards towards the
ground Sarik saw the grav-tank strike the building, gouging a great wound
through the structure. Sarik struck the ground, the breath hammered from his
lungs by the force of the impact. Then the vehicle upended itself, its nose
ploughing through the building, before the entire structure collapsed upon it
with a mighty release of dust, smoke and falling masonry.
“One down,” Sarik snarled, rising once more to his feet. An entire empire to
go…
The landscape ahead of Lucian was dominated by low rises and dense
vegetation, making it a perfect hunting ground for the veteran light infantry of
the Rakarshan Rifles. To the south, a vast column of black smoke rose many
kilometres into the sky, marking the death of one of the Legio Thanataris Scout
Titans. Lucian had monitored the advance of Sarik’s spearhead over the
command-net, and warned his own companies to be vigilant for the missile
grav-tanks and the observers directing their fire. Perhaps because the Rakarshan
Rifles used no vehicles, they had not attracted the attentions of these
supremely deadly armour killers.
Now, Dal’yth’s sun was high overhead, and the battlegroup’s advance was
proceeding well. The Rakarshans had been transported forwards on Officio
Munitorum conveyances, each large enough to carry a whole platoon and its
equipment, before pressing forwards on foot. The warriors were well suited to
the terrain, and were able to make intelligent use of the folds in the land and
the regular stands of cultivated trees, whilst maintaining a rapid and steady
advance.
Enemy resistance had been relatively light at first, with the lead platoons
pressing through what ambushes they had encountered. The Rakarshans had proved
themselves fearsome attackers and many had blooded their ceremonial blades
already. The ambushes were growing in frequency, however, as the tau adjusted to
the Rakarshans’ tactics and redeployed their highly mobile forces to counter
them.
“Communiqu� from command,” Major Subad said, his hand raised to the vox-set
at his ear. “Spy-drones report a substantial concentration of enemy infantry
amassing in the conurbation ahead.”
Lucian raised a gauntleted hand to shield his eyes from the white sun, and
squinted in the direction indicated. The land rose and fell in a series of low
hills, the eastern slopes of each covered in row upon row of the now familiar,
purple-leaved fruit trees. Nestling in a shallow valley around five kilometres
ahead, Lucian saw a cluster of white, domed structures, and in amongst them,
evidence of enemy infantry moving to and fro.