03 - Savage Scars (5 page)

Brielle continued to stare fixedly at a vast holographic display below, her
mind swimming with doubt as she desperately sought a way out of her predicament.

“My lady?” Naal repeated.

“Thank you, Naal,” Brielle said finally, not taking her eyes off the vast
display that filled the centre of the command deck.

“The tau wish to remind us that we have a task to perform. The envoy will be
with us shortly. He expects your full report on the crusade fleet’s strength.”

I’ll give him his report, Brielle seethed inwardly. I’ll find a way out of
this mess yet…

“Brielle,” Naal pressed, his tone low and conspiratorial. “Brielle, you
joined the tau willingly, and they offer you much in return. But there is a
price, as well you knew.”

Brielle rounded on the man who was at once her co-conspirator, her lover and
her jailor. “They offer much,” she hissed. “But how much of it is of any worth,
tell me that?”

Naal glanced furtively about the command centre, before leaning in to speak.
The whole space was brightly-lit and spacious, and there was nowhere for the
pair to hide from suspicious eyes. “The tau have made you their envoy to the
entire Eastern Fringe, Brielle. Who amongst your line holds such power, aside
from your father?”

Brielle resented the mention of her father, who she had no doubt believed her
dead before the Damocles Gulf Crusade had even commenced its assault into tau
space. “I’m a rogue trader, Naal,” she said. “Such power is hardly a novelty to
me.”

“I understand that, my lady,” Naal said. “But you joined the tau at least in
part to recover what status you lost when your stepbrother was named your
father’s successor. Remaining in the clan was a dead end, or so you yourself
believed when you agreed to join the tau and forge your own destiny.”

That much was true. Brielle had indeed seen something of value in the tau’s
collectivist philosophy, something which she could be a part of after her family
had rejected her. But she had recently come to realise that she had acted
foolishly, and in haste. In truth, she had allowed herself to be seduced by the
aliens’ words and ideals, seeing something in their notions of the “Greater
Good” that she could be a part of. Later, as the scales had slowly lifted from
her eyes, she had seen that she had merely sought to escape the cruel twist of
fate that placed her forever in the shadow of her stepbrother and robbed her of
her rightful inheritance as bearer of the Warrant of Trade of the Arcadius Clan
of rogue traders. Then she had sought to turn the situation to her advantage,
her rogue trader’s instincts asserting themselves once more. But it was now
clear to Brielle that there was no profit to be made in working with or for the
tau, no matter the plaudits they heaped upon her. She desired only to escape
them, and already, a plan was forming in her mind…

“My lady?” Naal interrupted her brooding. “Por’O Dal’yth Ulor Kanti
approaches.”

Brielle looked up as the tau diplomat, who preferred to be addressed as
“Aura”, approached. His long silver robes and fluted collar shimmered in the
light of the command centre, dancing with the multihued reflections cast by the
huge holograph below.

“Mistress Arcadius,” Aura said as he inclined his head towards Brielle. As
with all tau, his face was flat and blue-grey in colour. Compared to a human’s
it was relatively plain, with black, almond-shaped eyes, a wide, flat mouth, no
nose and an odd, slit-like organ in the centre of the forehead. “The time is
upon us. You will soon be attired as am I, in the robes of an emissary of the
water caste, and you will go before the humans and demand their surrender. But
first, as we have discussed, you must appraise us of their full military
potential, that our brothers and sisters upon Dal’yth might put a stop to human
aggression and force them to negotiate, as reasonable beings.”

Reasonable beings? Brielle suppressed a snort of derision as memories of
Inquisitor Grand and Cardinal Gurney came unbidden to her mind. What they had
done to the tau prisoner they had taken in the opening phase of the crusade was
hardly the act of reasonable beings…

“Mistress Arcadius?” Aura repeated.

Gathering her thoughts, Brielle bowed to the tau envoy. “Indeed, Aura,” she
said. “I will be happy to provide a full appreciation of the enemy’s
capabilities.” Aura turned, his silver robes shimmering as they swept behind
him. Steeling herself for what she was about to do, Brielle followed in his
wake.

Veteran Sergeant Sarik grunted as the drop-pod lurched violently and
its retro thrusters flared to life. Not much larger than a tank, the drop-pod
was essentially an armoured passenger compartment attached to a hugely powerful
retro thruster, and although it would be recovered later, after the coming
battle, it provided an essentially one-way journey directly into the heart of
battle. Such operations had led to the Adeptus Astartes being labelled the
“angels of death”, warriors of vengeance who descended on their foes atop
pillars of fire. The White Scars were masters of the lightning strike, drop-pod
deployment just one of their many forms of attack.

The tactical cogitation readout in the centre of the pod’s cramped passenger
compartment told Sarik that it was seconds away from slamming into the surface
of the world the alien tau called Dal’yth, the world the Damocles Gulf Crusade
had come to conquer in the name of the Imperium.

“Steel your hearts, brothers,” Sarik called out to his four companions. The
other five brethren of his ten-man squad were in another drop-pod, his squads
deployed as five-man units for the initial drop. “Your ancestors’ eyes are upon
you!”

The thrusters reached full power, and no more words were possible.
Withstanding forces that would incapacitate any unaugmented human being, Sarik
readied himself for the glorious moment when the drop-pod would touch down and
release him into the crucible of battle. All that remained now was to mouth a
final prayer to the primarch of the Chapter, honoured be his name…

And then the impact came. Even with its descent arrested by the drop-pod’s
potent thrusters, the shock was stupendous. Every bone in Sarik’s body was
jolted, despite the huge bars that restrained him and kept him from being turned
to pulp. The thrusters died and a klaxon wailed. With a pneumatic hiss the
restraint bars lifted upwards. The bulkhead in front of each Space Marine
dropped away to form an assault ramp, which slammed to the earth with a
resounding crash. Harsh light filled the pod, followed a moment later by the
unfamiliar air of the new planet.

“Out!” Sarik bellowed, surging forwards and grabbing his boltgun from the
nearby quick release cradle. In an instant each Space Marine was bounding down
his ramp and setting foot on the ground of the alien world of Dal’yth.

The ground was dry and sandy, coloured the dull ochre of a semi-arid land.
The sky above was a serene shade of jade, and Sarik could see thin, column-like
mesas rising into the skies all around the drop zone. The temperature was warm
and the air appeared clean, though Sarik’s armour systems would need a few more
minutes to declare the atmosphere entirely free of toxic elements. Sarik’s
preparation told him that while other regions of the surface were host to
cultivated farmland, this particular area had been left in its natural state,
untouched by the aliens’ hands or their heretical technologies, and not a single
plant was visible.

Sarik rejoiced in the feel of solid ground beneath his feet and the knowledge
that his enemies were nearby. Soon, the deaths of so many of the
Nomad’s
crew would be avenged.

“The ring of horns!” Sarik called out, using the unique battle-cant of the
White Scars Chapter to order his warriors into a defensive perimeter around the
drop-pod. The act of issuing orders to his fellow White Scars was a simple,
long-missed pleasure; one denied Sarik at the bridge of his frigate.
Hyper-velocity projectiles spat across the jade sky, fired from a distant
defence turret towards more Space Marine drop-pods streaking through the air
upon churning black contrails. The passage of the rounds through the sky was
marked by silvery lines of disturbed air rather than the smoking black contrails
of the Imperium’s ordnance.

Sarik grinned savagely, knowing that even the aliens’ heretically advanced
anti-drop defences could not hit so small and fast-moving a target as a
drop-pod, for the vehicles plummeted at impossibly fast speeds, slowing only at
the last possible instant. Nonetheless, Sarik noted several shots coming
perilously close to the drop-pods, evidence, if any were needed, of just how
fearsomely effective the aliens’ weapons truly were.

Sarik activated the tactical display within his helmet, reams of battlefield
and command script suddenly appearing across his field of vision. Status runes
indicated that the six White Scars drop-pods were all safely down, and the
thirty warriors were all deployed as per their mission orders. A line of text
scrolling across the lower portion of his vision told him that the other Space
Marine contingents were also under way, each with the objective of destroying
one of the sensor pylons that formed an extensive network across the entire
surface of Dal’yth.

The White Scars were one of the smaller contingents amongst the two hundred
or so Space Marines accompanying the crusade, the Iron Hands, Ultramarines and
the Scythes of the Emperor far more numerous. The Ultramarines and the Scythes
of the Emperor were each spearheading one of the other two main assault groups,
with the smaller squads of the other Chapters each attacking a secondary
objective. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Sarik was determined that his
Chapter would claim its share of the glory, and he would lead his brethren to
victory. General Gauge’s main force would only be able to land once a bloody
wound had been torn in the heart of the aliens’ defence network.

Satisfied that the assault groups were all on target, Sarik scanned the
surrounding area for his own objective. A kilometre distant, in the midst of a
cluster of tall rock columns, Sarik located the massive tau sensor pylon.

“White Scars!” Sarik shouted above the high-pitched whip-crack of tau
projectiles splitting the air overhead. “Move out.” With savage joy welling
within him, he added, “Let’s complete our mission before the Ultramarines
complete theirs!”

“White Scars deployed,” the chief of staff reported. “Ultramarines groups in
nine minutes, Scythes of the Emperor group in twelve minutes. All other
sub-groups within twenty minutes.”

“Good,” replied General Gauge, turning from the huge pict screen that
dominated the main wall of his command chamber aboard the
Blade of Woe.
The entire space was crowded with command terminals, glowing readouts and
blaring phono-casters describing every detail of the landing operations.
Tacticae advisors and Imperial Guard staff officers manned dozens of stations,
and vox-servitors and Munitorum logisters shuffled from one to the next,
collating and dispensing raw data in ream after ream of parchment. Located in
the heart of the
Blade of Woe
, the command chamber was Gauge’s personal
domain and it could have been a high command bunker at the front line of any of
the Imperium’s sector-spanning wars.

Gauge faced Lucian and the others of the crusade council who had assembled to
witness the assault on Dal’yth Prime. “Gentlemen,” the scarred, craggy-faced
veteran soldier addressed his fellow councillors. “Phase one of Operation Pluto
is under way.”

The general nodded to the chief of staff, and then turned back towards the
huge pict screen. The image resolved into a real time capture of the surface of
Dal’yth Prime, transmitted by an orbital spy-drone controlled by one of Gauge’s
command staff. The dry atmosphere of the world below contained few clouds, so
Lucian and the councillors were afforded a clear view of the main continent’s
eastern seaboard.

“As you can see,” General Gauge indicated the centre of the image, “this
region is ideal for our purposes. The land is relatively flat, and the sea to
the east and the mountains to the north will mask our landing operations from
those two directions.”

The staff officer worked the controls of his command terminal. The image on
the pict screen blurred, and then came back into focus having magnified the
central region.

“Sector zero shall be the site of the main landings,” Gauge said. Lucian
caught a glint in the old veteran’s eye, something that told him the general
would be quite happy leading the planetfall operation from the very front. He
smiled wryly as the general continued. “The main landings can only commence once
the tau’s sensor network has been disabled,” Gauge gestured towards a number of
blinking, red runes that represented the primary objectives being assaulted by
the White Scars, Ultramarines and the Scythes of the Emperor, “here, here and
here.” Lucian saw that around a dozen secondary objectives were also marked, but
the general was only interested in the primary ones, for now at least.