She nodded. ‘Al Rashaq. A warp anomaly unlike any other, lost in the past, believed to be no more than a legend. It is real. And, through it, the mistakes of the past could be erased. The Emperor could be spared His eternal suffering upon the Golden Throne. Mankind could rule over all. Our endless war, ended at last.’
‘You dance close to heresy, woman,’ spat Rauth.
‘I am of the Inquisition,’ she bit back. ‘I decide what constitutes heresy.’
Karras shook his head. ‘You are mad. And I have orders. I must take you back. You have crossed too many lines.’
‘I cannot go back. Not now. I have the t’au exactly where I want them. Here on Tychonis, I have advanced Blackseed further than anyone at Facility fifty-two could have imagined. Omicron would order you to assist me if he could only–’
‘Omicron?’
She laughed. ‘You do not even know who you work for. Did you think Sigma sat at the apex?’
‘I care not where he sits,’ said Karras. He rounded on the woman, gripping her by the upper arm. ‘Enough words,’ he growled, thrusting his fearsome face at hers. ‘You are coming with us. Your business here is over.’
Epsilon’s eyes blazed with anger. In a blur, her hand flashed towards his face. She was incredibly fast, neurally augmented, a lethal weapon in her own right.
But she was no Space Marine.
Karras caught her wrist four inches from his cheek. He turned his red eyes to her hand, saw the ring there, the spike that had emerged from it, the black poison on its point.
‘It takes a rare poison to kill a Space Marine,’ he growled, low and threatening. ‘But you’d have access to just such a thing. Wouldn’t you?’
He considered breaking her arm. He squeezed it instead, until she hissed in pain through clenched teeth.
‘Watcher,’ barked Karras. ‘Execute them all.’
Rauth quickly and methodically slaughtered the t’au techs, dropping each one with a single shot to the head while Karras marched between them, pulling Epsilon along with him.
As she was dragged helplessly forward, the woman reached her free hand between the folds of her dress. From a holster on her inner thigh, she pulled a small, high-yield plasma pistol and quickly jammed the muzzle to Karras’ skull. As tall as she was, she had to stretch to manage it.
There was a sound like a muffled cough.
Her hand suddenly stung, sharp and incredibly painful.
Rauth had shot the weapon from her grasp. She was lucky. By choice, he had left her fingers intact.
He kept his Stalker bolter’s muzzle trained on her. ‘Next time, woman,’ he warned, ‘I’ll take an arm.’
Karras swung her around, red eyes blazing. Holding his rage in check, he made a decision. ‘Sleep a while,’ he said, and struck her on the jaw with just enough force to knock her out. He slung her limp form over his left shoulder, turned and walked past Rauth.
‘Easier this way,’ he told the Exorcist.
Rauth’s eyes were on the Geller field generator. ‘Scholar.’
Karras paused beside him. ‘Speak.’
‘I’m not leaving that intact and in t’au hands.’
Karras turned and looked from the machine to Rauth and back again. ‘It is the only thing suppressing the tyranid call. To destroy it would damn every living being on this planet, Watcher. The rebel tribes have supported us from the start. I would not damn them by–’
Rauth’s bolter barked. Exploding rounds struck the generator, biting great holes in the metal, turning it to smoking scrap. Waves of psychic light briefly danced and flickered around its shattered form, then vanished.
‘In Terra’s holy name!’ spat Karras.
Rauth met his gaze, unflinching.
‘You’ve just doomed an entire world!’
‘I’ve doomed nothing,’ said Rauth coolly. ‘Give me every piece of explosive ordnance you’ve got.’
There was a second of tense silence, then Karras hit the release on his webbing and handed it to Rauth.
Rauth took it, stepped around him and strode back into the hold. ‘Get her away and leave these monstrosities to me. They won’t have time to call the hive-mind.’
Karras shifted Epsilon on his shoulder and continued down the ramp to the lower hold.
The Geller field was down. He felt the warp all around him again, its tides crashing against his inner gates, unable to flow through while he kept them firmly closed. Arquemann’s soul was there, a presence again, hungry for lives, its aura bleeding into and blending with his own.
He sensed his battle-brothers outside, their signatures flaring and flowing with the rush of battle.
And something else, something that dominated all, a new ethereal presence of imposing power and weight. He couldn’t pinpoint it, couldn’t identify its nature or its location. It seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet somehow nowhere.
It was vast and potent, and it defied all his attempts to probe it with his mind.
He knew one thing without a doubt – it was far more powerful than he.
And he had a feeling, seated deep in his gut like a lead weight, that Talon Squad had finally seized Epsilon only to have her taken away.
Fifty-six
Zeed jumped, jets flaring, launching him into the air at an angle just as the t’au grenade went off. It would have taken a leg, maybe both. It hadn’t done that, but it had forced him out of cover and up into plain sight.
A hail of fire from the ground leapt up towards him. He cut his jets and dropped hard, straight at the enemy squad engaging him, their fire sizzling and cracking as it smacked into his ceramite greaves.
He landed right on top of one of them, crushing the alien soldier’s bones to powder, an instant kill. His claws flashed as he cut the others down before boosting away again, slipping under the fuselage of the t’au ship in time to evade another barrage.
Coming up on the other side, he found himself confronted with the towering form of the Riptide.
The Riptide’s AI-assisted sensory suite tagged the Raven Guard immediately. Coldwave whirled the battlesuit around to face him, sweeping the barrel of his ion accelerator in a lateral arc almost too fast to see.
Zeed boosted straight up, his only chance to evade, and crashed hard into the underside of the spacecraft’s wing. His jump pack took damage. His jets cut off, unresponsive. He hit the ground. Red runes blazed on his retinas. Adrenaline surged. His primary and secondary hearts raced.
He pushed himself up onto hands and knees, shook off the impact and looked up at the Riptide.
The wide muzzle of the battlesuit’s primary weapon began to glow, charged particles gathering there as it prepared to fire.
Not like this, he silently raged. Not on your knees, Space Marine.
As he straightened on his knees to face his killer, he tugged a thundershock EMP grenade free and tossed it, a last blow before he was erased from the world.
It detonated just as Coldwave was about to fire.
The glow vanished. The weapon had shorted out.
The thundershock had detonated dead centre, right over the Riptide’s cockpit, not with enough force to shut the battlesuit down but with enough to penetrate the shield and interfere with several subsystems.
A halo of light flickered intermittently around it, the battlesuit’s shield phasing in and out as the AI-enhanced defence control systems struggled to cope with electromagnetic disruption.
Movement control systems were unaffected. The Riptide stepped forward, Coldwave filled with fresh rage and murderous intent.
As the battlesuit’s three-toed foot hit rockcrete, there was a flash of burning light. Twin lances of lascannon fire hammered into the shield generator on the Riptide’s left arm. The disc-shaped generator exploded. Hot fragments hit the ground. The Riptide staggered and sank to a metal knee.
Zeed turned towards the source of the blast. To the south, he saw Chyron. The Lamenter was storming towards the battle, and he was not alone. Beside him strode the unmistakable figure of a Space Marine in Terminator armour flanked by five others.
Scimitar Squad lived.
‘Their shas’o finally shows himself,’ boomed Jannes Broden over the vox. ‘And seals his death by that mistake!’
It was what the Black Templar had been waiting for.
Certain that Coldwave wouldn’t come out until the last moment, Broden had ordered his kill-team to stay buried, to let the t’au think them dead. Let false confidence ensnare them until that moment, that critical moment, when the fire caste commander could hide no longer, when the ship had to emerge on the landing field.
At that moment only, the full fury of the Deathwatch would erupt and rain righteous slaughter down on the contemptible t’au.
Broden had used the others to keep the blue-skins occupied, to misdirect them. Talon, Sabre and the Spear teams would whittle away at the t’au forces until Scimitar was ready to take the prize.
Now, with the Riptide’s shield crippled and a fresh wave of foes closing in, Coldwave was forced to confront the possibility that he might not survive this. At a thought, he commanded his Riptide’s pilot-support system to pump neuro-accelerators into his body.
They hit his system hard. Within two seconds, he felt wired. Hyper-aware.
How long until his Razorshark reinforcements arrived?
One minute.
He saw the clawed Space Marine roll under the ship and out of sight. He couldn’t follow. Too little clearance under there for the Riptide. He would catch that one on the other side.
Fire struck his left arm again from the south.
His jump jets flared. He was a blur as he leapt away from the danger, arcing north to the other side of the ship, there to be shielded from the lascannon and assault cannon fire by its armoured bulk.
As he leapt, he ordered several fire cadres to eliminate those arriving from the south. Scimitar and Chyron were in the open. The fire warriors dashed to appropriate cover positions and began blazing away.
Chyron and Broden, largest of the targets, soaked up a tremendous amount of fire. They staggered, runes flaring red, cooling and shielding systems struggling to cope, but they didn’t stop. They pushed forward. Broden’s storm shield negated much of the heat and kinetic energy he had taken, but it was close to shorting out. Chyron’s thick plate weathered the worst for him, but that, too, was nearing its limits. It was gouged and pitted so deep that, in places, the titanium frame beneath was beginning to show through.
Sundstrom of the Executioners was hit hard and dropped to a knee, blackened flesh showing through a hole in his cuirass, right over his upper abdomen. He grunted in pain and swung his frag cannon’s muzzle around on a cluster of blue-skins on his eleven o’clock.
The weapon chugged, shunting a heavy grenade round in a high arc. It struck behind the fire cadre’s cover and detonated, cutting down half a dozen of them. Their wounds were grievous. Blue blood pumped out. Three died within seconds. The others cried out, but their fellows had no time to aid them. The pressure from Scimitar was too great.
‘Forward, Deathwatch!’ shouted Broden. ‘The Emperor’s eyes are upon us. Death to the xenos in His holy name!’
On the starboard side of the ship, Zeed slammed himself into cover beside Voss.
‘Damned Riptide almost had me,’ he growled. ‘If old junk-box hadn’t fired on him…’
‘Looks like the raven has been grounded,’ said Voss, noting the significant damage to Zeed’s jump pack.
‘I’ll still never be as slow and clumsy as you, you grox. Besides, I’m rerouting power. My jets will be back to forty per cent in a few seconds. Once they are, I’m taking another shot at that bastard.’
‘You’ve got tunnel vision. My kill count is at least triple yours now.’
The Raven Guard laughed. ‘If I take down the Riptide, you lose, whatever your count is.’
He mag-locked his lightning claws to his cuisses, pulled his bolt pistol and started one-shotting t’au infantry that were trying to flank from the right.
‘Where are they all coming from?’ said Voss. ‘They’re like ants.’
‘So crush them like ants,’ rumbled a familiar voice over the vox.
‘About time you showed up, scrapheap,’ laughed Zeed. ‘I see you picked up some strays on your travels. Try to force the Riptide into cover so I can close for a kill.’
‘I give the orders, Raven Guard,’ snapped Broden.
‘You went offline, Templar,’ said Voss in reply. ‘Archangel is back in command.’
‘No longer,’ said Broden. ‘Does the woman yet live?’
‘On your five, Scimitar,’ replied Copley on the vox. ‘Three hundred metres from you and closing.’
‘Why did you leave the control tower? You were ordered–’
‘Assumed you were dead, Scimitar. Made a tactical decision. No time to lay it out for you. Look west. Nine o’clock high.’
Voss and Zeed turned and glanced up. Six sleek shapes were screaming in towards the battle.
The Razorsharks from Na’tol.
As the Space Marines were looking at them, two more shapes swung in to join the formation – the two Razorsharks that had been in a holding pattern out of range since early in the assault. Now they had the reinforcements they had been waiting for.
Behind Voss and Zeed, the hum of the t’au spaceship’s engines intensified, vibrating the rockcrete underfoot.
‘Chyron!’ said Voss urgently. ‘Start hitting the port-side engine. Your lascannons might be all we have that can take it out.’
‘Do it,’ ordered Broden.
The Razorsharks were dropping speed and altitude. They’d already marked Chyron and Scimitar Squad. They were out in the open. So, too, were Copley and Spear Team One. Easy targets, all.
Chyron’s lascannons blazed. The beams hit the engine housing dead centre, but the armour was thick. It glowed white hot, but the engine continued to power up unhindered. The weapon recharged. Chyron fired again.
‘Keep hitting it,’ Broden told him.
The Razorsharks were seconds away from raining death down upon them. There was nowhere to go. No cover within reach.
‘Moving to engage air targets,’ said a voice over the main vox-channel.
Out of the east, three black shapes materialised, engines at full power, guns already blazing. They cut straight into the path of the Razorsharks.
A hurricane of fire was exchanged.
The lead Razorshark was shredded. Its carcass spun, shedding metal and advanced ceramics, striking a storage building on the eastern edge of the landing field and exploding on contact.
Reapers One and Two took the full force of seeker missiles slamming into their cockpits. In the instant before the missiles hit, knowing with certainty that this was the end, Ventius and Graka angled their craft for a mid-air collision.
Reaper Two fell just short, almost grazing the Razorshark on the trailing edge of the formation.
Reaper One turned starboard side up at the last moment. Its wing sheared right through the same Razorshark that had killed it.
Three ruined aircraft plunged to the ground.
Black Eagle, largest and toughest of all, was hit hard by burst cannon fire, but the additional armour on the Thunderhawk’s hull saved it.
Or so it seemed.
As the Thunderhawk flew on between two of the t’au jets, their tail-mounted ion cannons locked onto it. They hammered the gunship with streams of glowing rounds.
Black Eagle’s armour would have endured, but the dorsal engine was struck dead on. It erupted in flame and black smoke. She was down to one turbine now, and it was struggling. Several cooling lines had been ruptured in the first fusillade. Engine t
emperature went straight into the red. The last turbine began stuttering and coughing, then spewing out thick black smoke.
The pilot, Tarval, knew his aircraft didn’t have long. He wrestled with her controls and managed to turn her north. On a trail of smoke, raining debris as she came, the Thunderhawk gunship streaked towards the much larger t’au ship on the ground.
‘Let’s make a difference,’ he said to his ship. ‘One last time.’
Black Eagle smashed straight into the t’au ship’s port-side engine mount.
There was a stutter of explosions. Fire and smoked rolled outwards in an angry sphere. The t’au ship was shunted hard, swinging around anti-clockwise on gravitic impellers. The lowered rear ramp threw up fountains of sparks where it scraped a black curve in the rockcrete.
Copley had witnessed the bravery of the ordo pilots. They had saved those on the ground from the Razorshark attack run. She was wordless, powerfully moved by their brave sacrifice.
There were no more Imperial gunships now. No more air support. They had given their last. They had died with honour, exemplars of warrior spirit.
Now, with the remaining Razorsharks banking for another run, she and her Elysians were as good as dead.
It wasn’t much, but maybe the smoke from the wreckage of the downed aircraft might offer a slightly better chance. If they could make it…
‘Sprint!’ she yelled.
The t’au jets were so damnably fast. Rounds began stitching the ground, most towards the Space Marines just up ahead but enough towards her and her men that death looked imminent. The Elysians were still far short of the wreckage when the worst came.
Chyron and Broden were hit hard, rounds drumming on them like rain. Again, dense armour and shimmering storm shield resisted, absorbing and negating the deadly force. Chyron’s torso and shoulders shed hot shards of armour at an alarming rate as the fire from the jets staggered him. Another barrage like that would be his end.
Two of the Razorsharks fired seeker missiles, four in total, their guidance systems spearing in with a solid visual lock on the Lamenter.
As the missiles closed fast, Broden cut in front of the Dreadnought, placing himself directly in their path.
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