by Andy Hoare
‘I agree,’ Sarik said, his mind made up. ‘There is no honour to be found in evacuating now, and even less in enacting Exterminatus.’
General Gauge nodded his thanks, and Sarik and Lucian looked towards the pict screen showing Captain Rumann.
The Iron Hands Space Marines were in many ways the polar opposite of Sarik’s Chapter, and they measured such things as honour and duty according to a different standard. Sarik’s people were the savage, proud children of the wild steppes of Chogoris and much of their home world’s wildness flowed in their veins. The Iron Hands, however, were often held to be aloof and distant, a seemingly contradictory mix of emotionless, cold steel and the implacable, burning heat that forged it. Sarik knew such a view point was overly simplistic, but as with most stereotypes did contain a kernel of truth. Even though he had served alongside Rumann for several months now, Sarik still had great difficulty reading the captain’s intentions.
‘Exterminatus is without doubt the most efficient means of defeating our foe,’ Rumann said. ‘But much has been committed to the ground offensive. Veteran Sergeant Sarik is correct; there is no honour in evacuating as per the inquisitor’s proclamation.’
‘Then we are all in agreement,’ General Gauge said. ‘Operation Hydra is to go ahead, regardless of the inquisitor’s orders.’
Sarik nodded gravely. As Space Marines, he and Captain Rumann were at least partly insulated from the wrath of the Inquisition. Lucian’s standing and his rogue trader’s Warrant of Trade afforded him, in theory at least, some protection. The general, however, was taking a great personal risk.
‘You are a man of great honour, general,’ Sarik said, nodding his head slightly towards the pict screen displaying the general’s face. ‘You alone of our number have much to lose. I shall not allow that to happen.’
‘Nor I,’ growled Captain Rumann.
Perhaps for the first time in the long months since the Damocles Gulf Crusade had been launched, General Wendall Gauge looked genuinely speechless, perhaps even moved. Sarik grinned, keen to avoid embarrassing the old veteran any more, and pressed on. ‘Friends, I move that this session of the command council be wrapped up.’ Lucian laughed out loud at that, and Gauge’s normally cold eyes twinkled with amusement.
‘Let our next meeting be convened at the Gel’bryn star port,’ Sarik concluded. ‘No more than twenty-four hours from now.’
Several hundred kilometres overhead, in orbit around Dal’yth Prime, death incarnate was slowly awakened from a timeless slumber. Deep in the bowels of the Blade of Woe, in a section of the mighty warship given over to the use of Inquisitor Grand and his staff, ancient and all-but forbidden devices were being activated. Inside a huge and lightless vacuum-sealed chamber sat a sleek, black form, enveloped within a stasis field and blessed by the wards of a thousand exorcists. A secret word of command had been uttered, and a cipher-sealed communication heeded. The stasis lock was opened, and that which had been held within stirred once more.
The stygian darkness was pierced by a wailing klaxon, an apocalyptic forewarning of the end of a world. Flashing red lights penetrated the dark, their illumination sliding across the black form like oil mixed with blood.
Within that sleek form, a billion viral slayers were freed from aching stasis. Suspended in a blasphemous medium of hybrid cell nuclei, the slayers set about the one and only task they were capable of doing. They replicated, and with each reproduction tore in two their hapless cell-hosts. In a living being, such catastrophic cell damage would lead to death within minutes, sometimes seconds, as the host’s cells were literally torn apart and their body reduced to a writhing sludge.
The process set in motion, death was inevitable. Either the viral slayers must be unleashed upon a world, to infect the nuclei of every living thing, or they would expend the artificial gruel they were suspended in, and potentially break free of their prison. At that point, the slayers would have to be slain, jettisoned into space or scoured by nucleonic fire lest a single one remain.
A deep, grinding moan echoed through the chamber, and the sleek black form was in motion. The deck beneath it sank on well-oiled gears and jets of superheated steam spurted from release valves. With a final mournful dirge of sirens, the deadly payload was swallowed whole, inserted into the transport conduit that would carry it to the launch bay.
The countdown to Exterminatus had begun.
As the sun rose, Operation Hydra got under way. Sergeant Sarik was at the speartip of a mighty war host, and the sight of it filled his savage heart with pride as he rode south in his Rhino.
Ahead lay the settlement codified Erinia Beta, and its strategically vital bridge. Behind Sarik was the crusade’s entire contingent of Space Marines, the livery of their Rhinos proudly proclaiming the colours of the White Scars, Ultramarines, Scythes of the Emperor, Iron Hands and several other Chapters. The Rhinos were accompanied by Predator battle tanks, Whirlwind missile tanks, land speeder grav-attack vehicles and mighty Dreadnoughts. The skies above the column were filled with the whining of jump packs as Assault Marines advanced in great, bounding leaps towards the enemy.
As impressive a sight as the Space Marines were, they were merely the smallest fraction of what followed in their wake. Nineteen entire front-line Imperial Guard regiments surged forwards as one. First came the armoured regiments, each consisting of dozens of battle tanks, their huge cannons levelled at the distant settlement with unequivocal threat. Behind the armoured spearhead ground forwards the Chimera-mounted regiments of the Brimlock Dragoons, scores of armoured personnel carriers throwing up a storm of dust into the air overhead.
The host’s right flank was made up of the lighter regiments, including the Rakarshan Rifles and the Brimlock Fusiliers. These would move forward on light trucks, then fight on foot, following in the wake of the armoured thrust and consolidating its victories whilst guarding the flanks and rear against enemy infiltration.
But it was towards the army’s left flank that Sarik looked as he rode high in his transport’s cupola. There was to be seen the most impressive sight of all. Even through the haze thrown up in the host’s passing, the distant figures of the crusade’s Titan contingent were visible. Gauge had massed the gigantic war machines into a single force, which even now strode forwards towards its position at the head of the advance. The first Titans to move forwards were six Warhounds, their characteristic stooped gait and back-jointed legs giving them the appearance of loping dogs of war. Behind the Warhounds strode the even larger, upright Reaver-class Battle Titans. Each of these was half as high again as a Scout Titan, with huge banners streaming from their turbo-laser destructors proclaiming the symbols of the Legio Thanataris. High atop the carapace shell of each Reaver was an Apocalypse missile launcher, each carrying as much destructive potential as an entire Imperial Guard artillery company.
Yet even the mighty Reavers were small in comparison to the single Warlord-class engine that followed in its companions’ wake. As the Warlord strode forwards, it broke through a drifting bank of dust, parting it as a huge ocean-going vessel emerging from a seaborne fog. Even at a distance of several kilometres, the ground shook as the Warlord advanced. Its head was wrought in the image of a long-dead Imperial saint, its gold-chased features ablaze in the white morning light. The Warlord’s right arm was a gatling blaster, each one of its multiple barrels many times larger than a tank’s main weapon and capable of rapid-firing a storm of shells. Its left arm was a volcano cannon, one of the most powerful weapons in the Imperium’s ground arsenal, and capable of obliterating even another Titan in a single shot. A pair of turbo-laser destructors was mounted on its shell-like armoured carapace above each shoulder, in all probability making the Battle Titan the single most lethal combatant on the entire planet, if not the whole region.
As the Titans strode in from the flank, the Chimera-mounted Brimlock Dragoon regiments took position behind them. Gauge intended to use this mighty armo
ured force to smash through the main body of the tau forces and press into the city itself without even stopping. Aside from the tau destroyers, the Departmento Tacticae had not identified anything in the enemy’s arsenal heavy enough to confront a Titan. On the evidence gathered so far, the tau did not utilise Titan equivalents, as so many other races did. That scrap of good news had been disseminated throughout the army, and was very welcome indeed.
As the tread of the Titan force shook the entire landscape, a deep roar passed high overhead. Squinting against the harsh morning light, Sarik saw the massed formation of the crusade’s fighter and bomber force streaking south. Gauge and Jellaqua had committed the crusade’s entire sub-orbital air force to a single, vital mission. The force was tasked with intercepting the tau’s destroyers and bombing their airfields, protecting the Titans from their super-heavy weapons. Both leaders knew that they were asking the veteran aircrews to embark on a nigh suicidal endeavour, and the crews themselves knew it too. Nevertheless, the men and women of the Imperial Navy tactical fighter wings were amongst the most dedicated servants of the Emperor in the crusade, and every one had vowed to undertake the task given to them so that not a single Titan would be lost. Most of the aircrews had already received the last rites from Gurney’s army of Ecclesiarchy priests.
As the massed fighter and bomber wave plied south on miles-long white contrails, the Imperial Guard’s artillery opened up. Several hundred Basilisk self-propelled artillery platforms lobbed their shells high into the air from the army’s rear, the first strikes blossoming amongst the pristine white structures of the tau city. The outer suburbs on either side of River 992 had already been relentlessly bombarded, and these were targeted for yet more devastation so that the enemy infantry defending them would be driven to ground. Missiles streaked overhead from Manticore launchers alongside the Basilisks. These fell amongst the defended ruins and sent up vast mushroom clouds as they exploded. What little cover the tau might have found amongst the ruins was blasted to atoms, reducing the settlement to a scarred wasteland.
‘Five hundred metres to phase line alpha,’ Sarik’s driver reported.
The sergeant turned his attentions from the vast spectacle of the crusade army going to war, back to his own small part in the mighty endeavour. Sarik’s objective was to take the bridge over River 992 at the Erinia Beta settlement. Though the mission sounded simple enough, the success of the entire operation would hang on that single bridge being taken intact, and without delay. Without that happening, nineteen regiments of Imperial Guard would be forced to bridge the river individually, an operation that could not possibly be completed in the face of enemy opposition and within the brief window before Inquisitor Grand carried out his threat of enacting Exterminatus upon Dal’yth Prime.
Sarik’s grip tightened on the cupola’s pintle-mounted storm bolter as he tracked the weapon left and right to test its action. The terrain grew denser as the Space Marine column neared the river, and Sarik trained his weapon on every potential hiding place he passed in case enemy spotters were concealed within.
Where were they? Sarik raised his magnoculars to his eyes and tracked across the ruins up ahead as best he could with the Rhino bucking and shaking as it ground forwards. Smoking ruins filled the viewfinder, and fresh craters were visible across the road leading towards the bridge. Still, no enemy troops were to be seen.
Had they fallen back in the face of the crusade’s advance? The tau had displayed such an ability at the tactical level, when individual squads would pull back and re-deploy with well drilled precision and often-deadly effect. But for the tau to enact the same doctrine at the operational level was not something the crusade had anticipated.
‘Two fifty, sergeant,’ the driver reported.
Sarik’s Rhino was now passing through the outer limits of the wrecked settlement, the scorched, dome-shaped structures clustered near the river.
‘Slow down to combat speed,’ Sarik ordered, before he opened the command channel. ‘I want all Predators and support units forward, now.’
Sarik’s driver steered the Rhino to the left of the road, its tracks grinding over a low wall and crushing it to a powdery residue. Three Predator battle tanks prowled past, one belonging to the White Scars and two to the Ultramarines. Their turret-mounted autocannons and sponson-mounted heavy bolters tracked back and forth, while the tanks’ commanders rode high in their cupolas in order to spot any enemy that might lurk in the ruins armed with short-ranged but devastating tank-busting weapons.
As soon as the three Predators had ground past, three Rhinos followed close behind, two of the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter and one of the Black Templars. Each of these would shadow one of the battle tanks, ready to deploy the squads it carried to counter-attack any enemy infantry that approached through the cover of the ruins.
As the column pressed forwards, the bridge over River 992 came into view. It was an impressive structure, a hundred metres across and twenty wide. It was by far the largest bridge across the river, and far larger and sturdier than anything the Imperial Guard’s combat engineer units could have erected even had there been time to do so. The bridge was pristine white, unmarked by the devastation that been unleashed on the buildings of Erinia Beta. Even a single stray artillery round or rocket could have rendered the bridge unusable, but the bridge was perfectly intact.
But that in itself raised further questions. The reason the Space Marines were ranging ahead of the main crusade army was to ensure that the tau did not have time to destroy the bridge should they fall back. Clearly, the tau had gone, but why then had they not undermined the bridge?
The lead Predator, a venerable Ultramarines vehicle with the title Son of Chrysus, edged towards the ramp of the bridge, its autocannon tracking left and right threateningly. Sarik’s vox-bead clicked, and the tank’s commander came onto the channel.
‘Phase line reached, veteran sergeant,’ the commander reported. ‘Your orders?’
From his position further back in the column, Sarik had only a limited view of the bridge. He needed to know more before he committed his force.
‘Choristeaus,’ Sarik addressed the commander of the Son of Chrysus. ‘Can you see any evidence of demolitions being set?’
There was a pause as the vehicle commander scanned the base of the bridge and the supports that were visible from his vehicle. ‘Negative, sergeant,’ the commander reported. ‘No evidence at all. Request permission to proceed.’
Sarik had no time to consider the implications of the commander’s request, for the crusade army was following hot on the heels of the Space Marine column. To delay the crossing of the bridge and the securing of the far shore would impose an intolerable bottleneck on the army, and the momentum of the entire advance would be lost. The consequences should that occur were too dire to ponder.
‘Proceed, sergeant,’ Sarik answered. ‘But with caution. All other units, follow on when Son of Chrysus is halfway across.’
Dozens of acknowledgements came back over the vox-net as the Ultramarines tank powered up the bridge’s ramp. The next two Predators edged forwards, their weapons tracking protectively back and forth, covering any scrap of cover that a tau spotter could be using to train a laser designator on the Son of Chrysus.
His Rhino halted by the side of the road, Sarik raised his magnoculars again, and trained them on the far side of the river. More ruined domes lined the shore, palls of smoke drifting lazily upwards. Dotted all around the ruins were stands of fruit trees, reduced to little more than splintered skeletons by the relentless bombardments. Sarik increased the magnification, his view almost entirely obscured by banks of smoke and darting cinders. He tracked left, towards the great loop in River 992 that led south around Gel’bryn. Seeing nothing but wreckage, he tracked the magnoculars right, his view temporarily obscured by the blurred mass of the Son of Chrysus as the Predator ground inexorably forwards. The shore five hundred metres to the righ
t of the opposite end of the bridge was even more obscured, a pure white bank of smoke sizzling with inner turmoil making it impossible to see anything more.
Something about the white cloud made Sarik pause. He reduced the magnification so that the entire right side of the bridge was visible. With the view widened, Sarik could see what had raised his suspicions. The area of white was an anomaly, for the smoke rising from the rest of the ruins was grey or black. Where the banks were lit by orange fires deep in their innards, the white area seemed to shiver and pulse, as if charged by some unknown energetic reaction.
Then the wind changed, and the sharp taint of bleach filled Sarik’s nostrils. Ozone.
‘Choristeaus!’ Sarik called into the vox-net. ‘Ambush right, six-fifty, the white patch of smoke!’
Sarik did not need the magnoculars to see what happened next. The Predator’s turret tracked right as sergeant Choristeaus located the area Sarik had indicated. ‘My thanks, sergeant,’ the tank commander replied. ‘Standby.’
Then the white smoke was parted by the passage of an invisible, hyper-velocity projectile. It left no trail or wake, and struck the Predator’s glacis plate at an oblique angle. The entire front left section of the tank was vaporised, tearing a ragged wound in the prow, peeling back layer upon layer of armour and exposing the Predator’s mangled innards. The driver was killed instantly, his body directly in the path of the projectile. No trace of it was ever found.
‘Power loss,’ the tank’s commander reported, his voice calm and steady even as death closed in on him. The white smoke that had parted when the projectile had been fired now drifted clear, revealing that it had been generated by some hybrid gas/distortion charge device mounted on a grav-tank. The tank prowled forwards threateningly, lining up a second shot with its massive, turret mounted gun.
