Each of the three primary runes represented a vital node in the planetwide
sensor network. Taking out those nodes would blind the tau to the exact details
of the main landings. The landings themselves could never be hidden, but at
least the tau could be put at a major disadvantage if they could not clearly see
what was happening at the landing zone. The defenders would be forced to commit
their forces piecemeal, probing for the Imperium’s armies.
“What of their air assets, general?” Lucian asked, his mind calculating every
possible risk to the successful landing of the main crusade ground forces.
“That is the great unknown, Lucian,” Gauge answered, with unusual honesty for
one of his station. “All ground forces will be equipped with as many anti-air
weapons as they can carry, and what sub-orbital fighter capacity we do have will
be fully committed. But frankly, we really have no idea what the tau might throw
against us.”
“Then why not wait, general,” said Cardinal Gurney, standing resplendent in
the finery of his office. “Or bombard the entire world into submission.”
“Cardinal,” Gauge bowed his head ever so slightly as he spoke. “I am merely
enacting the will of the council in this matter. I was given the task of
conquering Dal’yth Prime, and that is what I intend to do.” Then he looked the
cardinal straight in the eye. “I have done this before.”
“General,” Lucian cut in, forestalling any further interruptions or
objections from Gurney and his faction. “When will the main landings begin?”
“That, friend Lucian, is in the hands of the Adeptus Astartes.”
The dry ground at Sarik’s feet erupted into plumes of dust as the turret atop
the sensor pylon brought its weapons to bear on him and opened fire. He
continued running for another ten paces, before throwing himself to the right
into the cover of a large boulder.
The other warriors of his squad, who had reformed into a single ten-man unit
having disembarked from the two drop-pods, had caught up with him. Brother Qaja,
the Space Marine who commanded the
Nomad
’s fire control station when the
squad was serving as the frigate’s command cadre, was the first to join him. He
seemed unencumbered by the huge plasma cannon he carried in both hands, and by
the massive, humming power source on his back.
Sarik reached up and released the catches around his neck, then lifted his
helmet clear and shook his long, black topknot loose. He took a deep breath,
allowing his genetically enhanced senses to taste the air, testing it for
contaminants and other indications of the nature of the immediate environment.
Qaja too had removed his helmet, and appeared to be laughing.
“Something amuses you, brother?” Sarik said, grinning with the joy of battle
despite himself.
Brother Qaja shook his head, his long, plaited moustaches waving freely. “My
apologies, brother-sergeant,” Qaja said. “I am merely grateful to be on solid
ground once more, with my enemy before me and my battle-kin at my side.”
“Aye,” Sarik grinned. “I feel it too, brother.” Sarik risked a glance around
the boulder, hoping to get a fix on the turret that pinned him and his squad
down. No sooner had he leaned around the outcrop than he was forced to pull his
head back sharply. A torrent of rounds erupted against the rock, sending up
plumes of vaporised stone and shards of razor-sharp shrapnel.
Nonetheless, Sarik had learned all he needed. The pylon was a mere fifty
metres distant, its white tower rearing high above the arid landscape. Its form
reminded Sarik of the funnel of a great sea-going vessel, and it was covered in
domes and blisters that bristled with sensor veins. Sarik had seen a ring of
smaller structures around the base of the pylon, and halfway up its flanks the
turret from which the hail of blue energy bolts was being unleashed.
Furthermore, in the brief instant he had been exposed, Sarik had caught sight
of at least one squad of enemy warriors about the base of the pylon, weapons
trained on the boulder the Space Marines sheltered behind.
“Brother Qaja,” said Sarik. “I want that turret silenced. Squad,” he called
out, “Cover him!”
With that, Brother Qaja hoisted the heavy bulk of his plasma cannon, his face
split with a feral grin at the prospect of the coming destruction. Sarik nodded
once, and the Space Marine stepped out from the cover of the rock and brought
his heavy weapon to bear on the turret.
Even as Qaja raised his plasma cannon, Sarik and the remainder of the squad
emerged from either side of the boulder, each taking aim at one of the enemy
warriors. At the very same moment, they opened fire.
The boltguns spat explosive death towards the aliens, who should have been
cut down in a bloody swathe. But instead of striking the tau warriors and
exploding inside their bodies, the rounds detonated in mid air without striking
a single one.
“Energy shield!” Sarik bellowed, frustrated once more by the perfidiousness
of the aliens’ technology. The tau warriors brought their own long-barrelled
rifles to bear on Brother Qaja. Before the Space Marine could fire, a dozen blue
energy bolts lanced towards him as the alien soldiers opened fire through what
was clearly a one-way energy shield that allowed the tau to fire from behind its
protection.
Brother Qaja was caught in the storm, the blue bolts slamming into his power
armour and vaporising large chunks of ceramite and the flesh beneath.
Sarik bellowed a wordless curse at the sight of his closest battle-brother
gunned down before him. The two warriors had shared such glories and such
tragedies that a wound to one was a wound to the other. Rage and pain welled up
inside Sarik and reason threatened to flee his mind entirely, so strong was the
urge to avenge his fallen brother.
But Sarik’s curse turned into a howl of joy as he saw that his battle-brother
was far from dead. Dragging himself up onto one knee, his face a mask of grim
determination, Qaja levelled his cannon at the turret.
As the turret’s multi-barrelled weapons tracked him, Qaja opened fire. His
target was high up on the side of the massive sensor pylon, and was not
protected by the energy shield that had saved the alien warriors on the ground.
The plasma cannon spat a roiling ball of raw energy, which lanced upwards and
slammed into the turret. The side of the pylon erupted in an explosion of
blinding violet light as the turret disintegrated, showering the tau below with
liquid gobbets of the fabric of the pylon, turned molten by the plasma blast.
Sarik saw his opening. “White Scars!” he bellowed, filled with battle-rage.
“On them!”
Limbering his boltgun and drawing his chainsword, Sarik surged out from
cover, his battle-brothers close behind. As he passed Brother Qaja, he saw that
the warrior was grievously wounded, but willing and able to fight on. The plasma
cannon whined as it drew power for a second shot.
The world became a blurred rush of sights and sounds as Sarik powered across
the open ground in front of the pylon. His armoured boots pounded the dry ground
and his blood thundered in his ears. His heart sang with the sensations of
battle and he roared a savage cry to lead his warriors onwards. As the range
closed and the White Scars approached the nearest of the smaller structures
circling the pylon, the enemy warriors opened fire again. The weight of fire had
lessened, for a handful at least had been incapacitated or killed by the molten
debris showered on them from above by the destruction of the turret. Small yet
deadly bolts of blue energy split the air scant centimetres from Sarik’s body or
stitched the ground at his feet. Miraculously, Sarik crossed the open ground
without being struck and slammed into the nearest structure, a projector for the
invisible energy shield.
Sarik took cover behind the structure as a second bolt of plasma blasted
through the air and struck the flank of the main pylon. Sarik could not see its
effect, but he heard it a moment later. One of the tau was screaming in what
could only have been pain, and another was coolly issuing orders in their alien
tongue, the voice made oddly artificial by the helmet the leader wore. Trusting
Qaja to do his duty, Sarik went about a hurried examination of the structure he
had reached.
The projector was around three metres tall, and made of the same hard, white
material as the main sensor pylon. Sarik pressed his hand against it, seeking to
judge something of its properties. Even through the armour of his gloves, he
felt the hum of machinery within, and judged that he had been correct in his
guess as to its function.
Sarik’s squad was closing on his position. He had but seconds.
“Keep going!” Sarik bellowed, activating the blade of his chainsword so that
the diamond-hard, monomolecular-edged teeth came screaming to deadly life.
Gripping the chainsword’s hilt in both hands, he plunged it tip first into the
side of the projector.
The structure had been built to survive small-arms fire, the white surface
withstanding the strike until Sarik redoubled his efforts and the screaming
blade began to pierce the armour. Another second and the chainsword was plunged
halfway into the structure, and then Sarik felt its tip come into contact with
the systems hidden inside.
A muffled explosion sounded from inside the projector, but Sarik gritted his
teeth and forced the chainsword even deeper. His battle-brothers reached his
side, and he pushed harder, bringing his full strength, augmented still further
by the dense fibre bundles of his power armour, to bear.
A second explosion sounded from with the projector, and a crack appeared
across its face. The air became suddenly charged, as it does the instant before
a lightning bolt strikes the ground. Sensing danger, Sarik pulled his chainsword
from the ragged wound it had inflicted, and pushed himself backwards.
The air pulsed with searing white light, and the projector exploded,
showering the White Scars with fragments of shrapnel, their power armour
deflecting the worst of it. The detonation of the first projector was followed a
moment later by the next two along, and then by the next, until within seconds
every projector around the main sensor pylon had exploded in sequence.
Sarik let out a joyous war cry as his battle-brothers charged across the
ground that had previously been denied them by the invisible energy shield. Mad
laughter came unbidden to his throat as he pulled himself upright, the sound of
chainswords rending alien flesh and bone filling the air.
The main pict screen dominating General Gauge’s command centre lit up with
flashing runes as the tacticae logic engines plotted the progress of each of the
Space Marine attack forces. “All assaults now under way,” Gauge’s chief of staff
reported. “First assault report their target was surrounded by some form of
one-way energy shield; all commands advised.”
“Main viewer,” General Gauge said. As the assaults on the sensor nodes had
developed, the command centre had become increasingly busy as Gauge’s staff
officers made final preparations for the main landings, which would follow as
soon as the tau’s sensor grid was disabled. As the image on the screen shifted,
almost every head in the crowded centre turned towards it, the tension building
as the stakes got higher with every passing minute.
Near silence descended, the only sound coming from the ever-chattering
vox-net channels. The image on the screen now showed the scene of the White
Scars’ assault on their objective, and Lucian knew that his friend Sarik would
be down there, at the very speartip of the Damocles Gulf Crusade.
As the spy-drone relaying the picts passed almost directly over the scene of
the White Scars’ assault, the shape of the main pylon came into view. A ring of
burning structures was visible around it, and to the west a group of
white-armoured figures moved relentlessly forwards towards their objective. A
string of bloody corpses marked their defeat of the alien warriors that had
defended the objective.
And then, Lucian saw movement at the top of the pylon, a number of circular
shapes, each roughly a metre in diameter, detaching themselves from the
structure to circle steadily about its flanks.
“General Gauge?” Lucian said.
Gauge had not yet seen what Lucian had, but Cardinal Gurney had. “I am quite
sure, rogue trader, that the mighty Astartes require no aid from us,” the
cardinal sneered.
Though no professional soldier, Lucian was not a stranger to the battlefield,
and as he watched it became clear to him that the White Scars had yet to detect
whatever was deploying on the far side of the pylon.
“Wendall?” Lucian said, deliberately using General Gauge’s first name. Gauge
nodded smartly in response.
“Give me that,” Lucian said to the nearest staff officer as he grabbed the
vox-set from the man’s head. “Patch me through,” Lucian said as he placed the
set on his own head and adjusted the pickup. “Now.”
“I really think—” Cardinal Gurney interjected, before General Gauge shifted
sideways to block his view.
“Vox-communion established, my lord,” the staff officer reported.
“Sarik?” Lucian said, his eyes fixed on the screen as he spoke.
“Gerrit?” the response came back a moment later. “Make it quick. I’m a little
busy.”
“Understood,” Lucian replied, not wasting time with formalities. “You have
company. Two four, high, from your location.”
“Thank you, Lucian,” Sarik’s voice came back. “You just can’t help it, can
you…” The channel went dead as the Space Marine closed the link.
“You really should stop doing that,” came the amused-sounding voice of
Admiral Jellaqua, who had crossed to stand beside General Gauge. The admiral was
a large man bedecked in reams of naval finery and his jowly face was split by a
friendly grin as he spoke. “You’ll only annoy him.”
“I know,” said Lucian. “But someone has to…”