For an instant, Lucian felt a stab of guilt for inflicting such a grisly
death upon another sentient being. He was just about to fire again, to end the
alien’s obvious suffering, when Sergeant-Major Havil did it for him. Voicing a
shrill, ululating war cry that drowned out the alien’s pain-wracked wailing,
Havil stormed in and brought his power axe in a wide, horizontal sweep that
scythed the tau’s head clean from his shoulders. The decapitated head flew in
one direction, while its helmet spun away in the other.
Lowering his plasma pistol, Lucian glanced around, scanning the ruined
buildings for more targets. Furtive movement further ahead suggested the tau he
had just shot was not alone, but no solid targets showed themselves. The
sergeant-major’s maddened voice sounded a second time, and Lucian saw an arc of
purple blood spurting outwards from behind a shattered dome. He started
forwards, the platoon of Rakarshans at his side. As they closed on the cover
where Lucian had seen movement, the riflemen drew their blades and uttered their
own chilling war cries.
Lucian and the riflemen pounded forwards after the sergeant-major, rounding
the corner to see Havil standing over the bodies of three more tau. These wore
lighter armour that the main line infantry, suggesting they were scouts or
spotters of some sort. And where there were spotters, Lucian knew, there was
inevitably something to be spotted for.
Lucian turned to find the platoon commander, seeing the officer running
towards him in the midst of his men. He opened his mouth to order the man to get
his men to cover, when he saw a red light paint the ground at his feet.
“Get—!”
It was as if lightning struck the ground not ten metres from Lucian. An
instant before, the air became charged and his skin stung, then everything went
white. He was propelled backwards to crunch painfully into the side of a
building, though his power armour absorbed the worst of the impact.
Temporarily blinded, Lucian had little idea what had struck the Rakarshans.
The air had crackled as a deafening wail had screamed in from somewhere to the
south, and it sounded as if the air itself had been ripped in two.
Even after the explosion, the air was filled with crackles and buzzes, not
unlike the sounds that dominated a warship’s generatorium.
Then, just as Lucian’s vision began to clear, the screaming began.
“What the…” Lucian started. The surface of the road along which the Rakarshan
platoon commander had been running was a blackened crater, seething with arcs of
bright energy. Inside the crater was scattered the charred remains of the
officer and at least five of his riflemen, every single bone of their bodies
pulled apart, their flesh burned away by whatever had struck them.
The screams were coming from those riflemen not caught in the blast’s full
effect, but who had been close enough to suffer from its blast wave. Men writhed
upon the ground, arcs of what looked like electricity sweeping up and down their
bodies and burning their flesh wherever they passed.
“Medics!” Lucian bellowed into his vox-link. “All commands, I need
immediate—”
Lucian stopped, the channel howling with interference that popped and
crackled in time to the energies spitting from the crater. He looked around, and
located his signalman, who had only recently returned from treatment for the
wounds he suffered at the hands of the alien savages what seemed like many weeks
ago.
The vox-officer was furiously working his vox-set, desperation written
clearly on his face.
“It won’t work,” Lucian said as he grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Go get help.
Find Subad and tell him to get some anti-tank up this way too. Now!”
The signalman nodded, hoisted his vox-set onto his back and dashed back
through the settlement towards the battle group’s rear. As he ran he passed
another platoon pushing forwards, grabbed the command section’s medic, and
pointed towards the crater. The medic followed the gesture, nodded grimly, and
in an instant was at the side of the nearest wounded rifleman.
Lucian’s skin tingled, and this time he took the warning. He dived across a
low, ruined wall and rolled into cover just as a seething ball of energy
crackled overhead. He did not see where the shot impacted, but he heard the
detonation, and guessed that it had been aimed at the second platoon pressing
forwards through the settlement.
“Damn it…” Lucian spat. “Havil!”
When he heard no response, he raised his head above the ruined wall and
looked about for the sergeant-major. It was no wonder the man had not heard his
call, for he was up and running already, a handful of Rakarshans at his heels.
Then Lucian saw what the sergeant-major was charging towards. It was a tau
grav-tank, its turret surmounted by the previously unknown weapon that had
unleashed the devastating energy ball. The tank was moving down the far end of
the street, several dozen tau infantry flanking it as they passed quickly
through the ruins on either side.
“Mad bastard…” Lucian growled, stepping out from the ruins. “Rakarshan!” he
bellowed, drawing his power sword and raising it high so that every rifleman
nearby would see him and have no doubt as to his meaning. “Rakarshans, forward!”
“Rakarshan!” dozens of voices repeated, accompanied by the metallic ringing
of ceremonial blades being drawn from jewel-encrusted scabbards. Seconds later,
scores of Rakarshans were charging headlong down the street, and Lucian was
caught up in the ferocious charge, carried forwards by its inevitable momentum.
The Rakarshans discarded all notion of tactics and subtlety as they closed on
the tau. Though expert stealthers and mountain troopers, when it came to the
charge the Rakarshans fell back on the atavistic nature of their ancestors. The
tau unleashed a desperate fusillade as the Rakarshans closed, felling at least a
dozen in the last seconds. The rifleman to Lucian’s left was felled by a gut
shot, doubling over as he grasped his stomach to keep his innards from spilling
out of the smoking wound. The rifleman to Lucian’s right was shot in the knee,
his entire lower leg blown away as he collapsed to the ground. Lucian bellowed
along with the Rakarshans as he closed on the tau warrior only twenty metres
ahead.
The alien raised his carbine and brought it to bear on Lucian’s head. For one
awful second which felt to Lucian like an eternity, he felt the alien’s
crosshair settle right between his eyes. Then an alien voice called out an
order, and the alien lowered his weapon to the ground. He pumped the action of
an underslung launcher, and a projectile spat from a secondary barrel. It
slammed into the ground between the aliens and the charging humans, and Lucian’s
vision was filled with flickering motes of energy.
He kept going, as did the Rakarshans. Everything around him swam as the air
distorted and perspective slewed out of kilter. Colours bled into one another
and the spectrum abruptly reversed. Then he was through the bizarre effect,
which was evidently intended to disorientate an assaulting foe, and upon his
enemy.
The tau in front of him raised his carbine instinctively as Lucian swept his
power sword downwards. The energised blade scythed the weapon clean in two, and
then did the same to the alien’s torso, spilling its internal organs across the
ground at Lucian’s feet before the two halves fell apart. Lucian continued
forwards, and the next tau warrior died as its head was split in half by a high
strike.
On either side of Lucian, the Rakarshans were butchering the tau infantry.
What little resistance the aliens had been able to mount was rapidly turning
into a rout as the enemy sought desperately to break off. The melee swept into
the ruined buildings on either side of the road, and for a moment, Lucian found
himself alone in the open, his power sword smoking in his hand as he took a
great gulp of air and looked around for another enemy to slay.
A high-pitched whine assaulted Lucian’s senses, and he looked up. Thirty
metres ahead, the grav-tank was advancing, its huge main weapon lowering towards
him.
“Sir!” the voice of Lucian’s signalman rang out. “Down!”
Lucian dived to the right and an instant later a hissing roar thundered down
the street. He came up in a roll as the missile streaked overhead, and flung
himself into the cover of the nearest ruin.
Less than a second later, the missile struck the grav-tank with a deep,
resounding wallop. Then something detonated within, and the entire tank blew
itself apart. The blast wave vaporised the road surface, throwing up an instant
curtain of dust within which flames danced. The grav-tank’s turret was thrown
directly upwards into the air, the barrel of its weapon shearing off and
spinning away into the distance. Then the turret crashed down into the ruins of
the building Lucian was sheltering in, showering him with shrapnel and embers.
Lucian’s power armour took the worst of the shrapnel, though its livery would
have to be lovingly reapplied much later, and triple-blessed by a confessor.
Though the skin of his face felt singed and bruised, Lucian was alive.
The jade sky above darkened as a figure was silhouetted against it.
“Sir?”
Laughter came unbidden to Lucian’s throat as he focussed on the signalman
standing over him. He let it out, giving voice to a deep, booming laugh that
must have sounded to the officer like that of a madman.
“Sir?” the signalman repeated, bright cinders dancing around him.
“Glad to see you, lad,” Lucian said when the laughter had passed. “Now help
me up.”
The signalman took hold of Lucian’s power-armoured forearm with both hands,
and put all his weight into hauling Lucian up. As he stood, dust and ash fell
away from Lucian’s armour, the dark red and gold trim of his clan’s colours
almost entirely obscured by debris and burns.
The street outside the ruin was wreathed in smoke and a driving rain of
glowing embers thrown up by the burning wreckage of the tau grav-tank. Riflemen
were rushing past, firing into the ruins as they drove off the remnants of the
tau counter-attack. Major Subad was striding towards him, another signalman
hurrying behind him. Lucian was relieved when he heard the booming voice of
Sergeant-Major Havil further ahead, pushing the riflemen onwards against the
remaining tau.
“My lord,” said Major Subad as Lucian stepped outside into the street. “What
happened to you?”
“Never mind me, major,” Lucian said as he looked back down the street towards
the scene of the grav-tank’s first attack. Company medics were already getting
to work on the wounded. “Call in a medicae lander,” Lucian said. “I want those
men evacuated.”
“Yes, of course, my lord,” Subad replied, gesturing to his signalman to enact
Lucian’s order. “But…”
“What?” Lucian said. It was obvious that the major had bad news.
Subad hesitated. “What?” Lucian repeated, on the verge of losing his temper.
“I have just received word straight from General Gauge’s a.d.c,” Subad said.
It was going to be very bad news.
“What did he say?” Lucian pressed. “Out with it, man.”
“He wished that you be informed that Cardinal Gurney has just left the front
line, and is returning to the
Blade of Woe
.”
“He’s what…?” Lucian started. But he was interrupted by the sight of a
shining gold shuttle streaking overhead. A moment later a deafening sonic boom
rolled across the ruins, and the shuttle was gone.
“Bastard…” Lucian growled. “Subad? Pass me that vox-set.”
Word of the Space Marines’ assault upon River 992 was disseminated quickly
through every level of the crusade’s ground army, the command echelons of the
nineteen front-line combat regiments passing it down to their line companies,
who informed the platoons. The Titans, now in position at the army’s head,
strode forwards, ready to support the Brimlock Dragoons as their massed armoured
transports raced towards the bridge. As the army advanced, enemy counter-attacks
gathered momentum, and soon it was not only Battlegroup Arcadius that was
fighting to keep them at bay, but every light infantry unit at the army’s
flanks.
But the Space Marines were forcing their way across the bridge, and the order
was given. Cardinal Gurney himself had been at the head of the force, bellowing
his battle-sermons and filling the hearts of tens of thousands of Imperial
Guardsmen with resolve and courage. When the first of the tau counter-attacks
struck at the army’s flanks, Gurney redoubled his efforts, ordering that his
words were relayed through the command-net and amplified through the vox-horns
on each signalman’s set so that every warrior would hear them and take heart.
Gurney’s sermons drove the beleaguered flank units to superhuman efforts, his
furious imprecations ringing in the ears of the combatants, lending strength to
the arm of the Guardsman, succour to the wounded and dying, and even planting
fear in the hearts of those tau warriors close enough to hear them. Enemy units
mounted in fast-moving grav-effect carriers looped wide around the Imperial
army, the passengers disembarking to unleash fusillades of withering fire at the
flank companies. At one stage the fastest of enemy cadres threatened the army’s
mobile artillery concentrations at the rear, which were moving forward in great,
bounding advances while keeping up a storm of supporting fire for the front-line
regiments. The Brimlock Light Infantry moved swiftly to counter the sudden
threat, redeploying seven companies and holding the enemy at bay long enough for
the heavy weapons companies to set up their field pieces and drive the enemy off
completely. The fight was bitter and intense, but Gurney’s words rang out across
the battlefield as the sun reached its zenith in the jade sky, pushing the
warriors of the Emperor to ever-greater feats in the service of their lord and
god.
Then something happened. It would never be known who sent the original
transmission, but as quickly as word of the Space Marines’ assault across the
bridge had reached the lowest levels of command, so this new piece of
information spread equally as fast. Cardinal Gurney, so the message stated, had
quit the field of battle to return to orbit. Yet, how could this be? The
cardinal’s voice boomed out of every vox-horn on the battlefield. Surely, Gurney
was at the very leading edge of the army, only waiting for the Space Marines to
take the bridge before he would lead the faithful across, into Gel’bryn and on
to victory.