This was an extraordinary breach of protocol. For the governor of any Imperial world, much less an entire sub-sector, to make personal contact over unrestricted vox-channels was all but unheard of. Such officials were creatures of protocols and procedures, usually, who lurked at the centre of vast bureaucracies like immense spiders lounging at the eye of their webs. Either this Governor Vandis was himself extraordinary - which was possible, though vanishingly unlikely - or he found himself in circumstances requiring extraordinary responses.
'Space Marines vessel, this is Governor Vandis, Imperial Authority over the Aurelia Sub-sector. Please respond.'
Aramus glanced at the trio of Blood Ravens at his side. Cyrus's expression was unreadable, Avitus's annoyed, and Thaddeus's a mixture of curiosity and concern.
'This is Brother-Sergeant Aramus of the Blood Ravens Fifth Company, Commander at Sail of the strike cruiser Armageddon.' He paused, and then continued, 'We come to your world in…'
'We knew that you'd come, but hadn't dreamt it would be so quickly,' the governor interrupted, speaking rapidly. 'Well, I knew that you'd come, but some of my inferiors insisted that the message hadn't got through. But no matter. Now, how soon do you expect to be finished?'
Aramus, perplexed, raised an eyebrow. 'Finished? And forgive me, but what do you mean, you'd expected us?' Did the governor understand that he was addressing an Adeptus Astartes? Aramus could not recall when he'd been addressed by a normal human with such disregard for niceties, with such brazenness.
'Simple, of course,' Governor Vandis answered. 'I ordered that the call for assistance be sent, and here you are.'
Aramus exchanged a glance with Thaddeus, who shrugged in bafflement. 'Assistance regarding what precisely, governor?'
Over the vox-channel, they could hear the governor sighing, dramatically. 'Why, the tyranids, of course,' he answered, exasperated.
IT HAD NOT proved easy, but in the end Aramus had been able to wring from the governor's report an accurate assessment of the state of affairs on the ground. It appeared that mycetic spores had rained down on the far side of the planet over the course of several days, a week or more before. Some days later, the first attacks were reported. At first the governor and his people had been unable to determine the nature of the attacks or the identity of the attackers, floating theories that it might be the forces of Chaos, whether cultists or actual warp-born daemonspawn, or perhaps even some entirely unknown xenos threat. But when a battalion of the Planetary Defence Forces was dispatched to deal with the matter, it was discovered that the attackers were, in fact, tyranids.
This discovery had, unfortunately, cost the lives of every soldier in that PDF battalion, none of whom survived the first encounter with the tyranids.
The governor had declared an immediate state of emergency, and ordered the planetary astropaths to send a general call for assistance to any Imperium forces in range. The governor had been less than pleased, of course, at the inability of his people to make contact with Fleet Admiral Forbes's flagship, or any of the other vessels of the Aurelia Battlegroup.
The fact that the other two ships of the Aurelia Battlegroup, heavily laden with refugees from Calderis, had failed to reach Meridian as yet was suggestive that something untoward might have befallen them. But since they might have fallen afoul of anything from an attack by spacefaring elements of Gorgrim's horde, to spaceborn offspring of the Great Devourer, or even something as prosaic as the treacherous topologies of warp space, there was little to be gained by worrying about their ultimate fate at this point.
Aramus found it difficult to impress upon Governor Vandis that his people had been right, and that there were no communications possible in or out of the Aurelia sub-sector at present. And Aramus likewise found it all but impossible to impress upon Vandis the severity of the threat now facing his world.
Governor Vandis was one of those who had never faced danger first hand. He had heard of the myriad threats to the Imperium, of course, but even having risen in the Imperial bureaucracy to such an elevated post, he had not experienced any of those threats himself. And like one who sees endless images of distant horrors which have never once been visited on him, Vandis had like so many others become inured to the dangers surrounding him on all sides. While he probably was in possession of more facts about threats xenos and otherwise than the average hab-dweller on Meridian, he did not comprehend what those facts portended, and did not feel the terror he should have felt.
It was clear, though, from reading between the governor's words, that the threat was far graver than Vandis had even imagined. The infestation of Meridian had already begun, and had been allowed to proceed unchecked for more than a week.
Meridian was not a dead world yet, but it had already begun dying. Unless something was done, and soon, it would only be a matter of time.
SERGEANT ARAMUS SURVEYED the squads mustered in the launch bay of the Armageddon, as servitors completed the final preparations on the trio of Thunderhawks. At any moment, when the gunships were finished and prepared for take off, Aramus would order the Blood Ravens to load up, and they would descend like lightning bolts on the planet below. He had spent the final hour of their approach to Meridian surveying what they knew of the geography and layout, and taking long-range orbital scans of the planet's surface, identifying locations of densest enemy infestation. With inputs from the other sergeants, Aramus had devised a mission plan that would make the most of their relatively sparse resources, while at the same time producing the greatest results.
The sergeants had not been unanimous in their support of Aramus's plans. The others, Sergeant Cyrus in particular, had not been pleased by his proposal regarding the use of the fifteen aspirants. The youths were even now spending their final moments before the onset of the evening rest period in study with Chaplain Palmarius, but after they awoke when the morning came, they would find even greater tests awaiting them.
But of all the sergeants, Avitus was the most outspoken in his objections to Aramus's plans. Even now, he wore a look of extreme displeasure on his grizzled face, and when Aramus looked his direction, Avitus did not avert his eyes, but raised his chin and spoke. 'It is a waste of manpower and munitions, Aramus, I say it again.'
'Your opinion has been expressed and noted, Avitus,' Aramus replied, his tone level.
'But not understood, it seems,' Avitus said. He paused, and then added, 'Sir.'
Aramus narrowed his eyes. 'In deference to your years of service, sergeant, I'll grant you one chance to rephrase that.'
Avitus bristled. 'Your pardon,' he said, making the apology sound like a curse. 'But I'll say again that we could get greater and more immediate results if we discarded concerns about collateral damage…'
Aramus held up his hand. 'Let's not use euphemisms, sergeant. You're saying, rather, that we could kill the tyranids faster and easier if we didn't mind killing a few million innocent civilians in the process. Isn't that it?'
'Yes,' Avitus answered without hesitation, his expression grim. 'If it means striking a blow at the hive fleet, then any cost is worth paying.'
'But if we don't protect the innocent,' Thaddeus put in, stepping forward, eyes flashing with barely controlled anger, 'then just what is it we are protecting?'
'The Imperium!' Avitus roared in reply. 'We serve the Emperor, not these mewling maggots!'
'Enough!' Aramus shouted, stepping between the two, who looked about to come to blows. 'Enough. Now, I am not prepared to abandon the human inhabitants of the planet below us to their fate. We serve the Imperium, and we protect the Emperor's subjects, and that means that we will stand and fight in the defence of Meridian whatever the cost, whatever the odds.'
'If we only had more Space Marines…' Sergeant Cyrus began.
'But we don't,' Aramus said quickly, cutting him off. 'Unless and until we can pierce the shadow in the warp cast by the tyranid fleet, we're on our own.'
'Actually,' interrupted the voice of Librarian Niven, who called to them f
rom the far side of the launch bay. He walked towards them quickly, with Lexicanium Konan following in his wake. 'That may not necessarily be the case.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BROTHER-SERGEANT ARAMUS AND the other five members of Third Squad were arranged in a defensive posture, surveying the area around them as the Thunderhawk rumbled up into the grey Meridian sky, bound for its next landing site. Assuming that the Third Squad was able to accomplish their revised mission goals here, Aramus and the others would proceed to the planet's capital city, Zenith, located on the far side of the world, using whatever transport was available to them. Assuming, of course, that any of them survived.
Librarian Niven's revelation in the final moments before the Thunderhawks departed for planetfall had not affected the missions assigned to the other squads, but it had at least imparted to those plans the faint sense of hope, that their mission objectives might, in the end, actually be accomplishable. The success of all their actions, though, now rested on the shoulders of Sergeant Aramus and the rest of Third Squad.
'Nothing on auspex yet, sergeant,' Battle-Brother Voire reported.
'Keep scanning,' Aramus replied. 'We'll fan out and proceed to the north, but I want everyone to remain within line of sight of the Space Marine to either side of them, and for no one to drift outside of vocal range. Understood?'
The other Blood Ravens acknowledged.
'Then let's move out.'
Aramus knew that Niven had been troubled by the presence of the tyranid hive mind in the Aurelia system, and the Librarian had made mention of the fact that he was unsure why the interference due to the hive fleet's shadow in the warp would be so much stronger here in the Meridian system, ostensibly at a greater remove from the fleet itself than the Armageddon had previously been. It wasn't until the strike cruiser came in close approach to the planet Meridian itself, though, that Niven had been able to work out the cause of the discrepancy.
'The vanguard creatures are somewhere in this vicinity, if our intelligence is correct,' Aramus called out to the other Space Marines as they moved steadily towards the north. Their projections had been unable to pinpoint the exact location of the creatures, but they had been able to narrow it to somewhere in this strip of verdant green, one of the sheltered park zones that dotted the face of the planet. 'Keep your eyes and ears open for any sign of movement, and shoot anything that moves.'
Librarian Niven had explained that the hive mind of the tyranid fleet was being reinforced by ground-based tyranid vanguard creatures, specialized variants of the zoanthrope type; brains who acted in concert to extend the shadow in the warp, strengthening the interference. With the fleet so far removed from Meridian, there was no other explanation for the fact that the shadow should fall so far. Niven realised only now that the zoanthropes glimpsed on Typhon Primaris must have been fulfilling a similar role, but knew that the jungle world was already too far gone for the knowledge to have done the Blood Ravens any good.
On Meridian, though, with the infestation still in its early stages, there was still cause for hope. If the vanguard creatures could be located and eliminated, then the interference caused by the shadow in the warp would be lessened, perhaps sufficiently for the Armageddon to get an astropathic call out to Blood Ravens elements outside the Aurelia sub-sector. If contact could be made, then reinforcements could be requested, and once they arrived Meridian might still be saved. It was too late for Typhon Primaris, but perhaps if additional Blood Ravens forces arrived in time then no other world in the Aurelia sub-sector needed share the doomed jungle world's fate.
If Aramus and his squad failed, then the only hope that Meridian had was that Admiral Forbes and the Aurelia Battlegroup might be able to cut off the interference at the source, taking the fight to the hive fleet itself. But it was, at best, a distant hope that the Sword of Hadrian would be able to survive even the approach to the fleet, much less be victorious in combat against whatever forces protected the tyranid hive mind.
'Sergeant Aramus,' called Battle-Brother Siddig, who had taken up the far left flank position of their formation. 'I may have spotted something.'
Aramus swept his bolter around, eyes narrowed behind his helmet's protective visor.
The grass underfoot was lush and verdant, and the trees and hedges that marched from one side of the immense garden zone to the other in their serried ranks were in full leaf, emerald bright. In inclement weather a force shield extended from atop the walls of the zone, sheltering the plants within, but when the sun shone and the winds died down, the garden zone was open to the grey skies above, to absorb as much sunlight as possible. It must have been a sunny, cloudless day when the mycetic spores of the tyranid invasion drifted down from above, settling here in this little spot of green and taking root. With so much organic material at hand, the spores would have reproduced and grown at an alarming rate, perhaps explaining why this garden appeared to serve as one of the key loci of the invasion.
The hedge in front of which Brother Siddig had halted began to shake, the leaves rustling.
'Something is moving within,' Siddig said in a low voice.
Then the branches suddenly parted and something shot forward, moving almost too quickly to see, with whirring blades in the air.
'Contact!' Siddig shouted, and he, Voire, and a few of the others immediately unleashed a torrent of bolter rounds towards the object.
'Cease fire!' Aramus barked, holding up his fist.
The bolters fell silent, and Aramus strode forward to inspect the carnage.
'A gardening servitor,' he said, nudging the ruined man-machine with the tip of his boot, leaking blood and oil out on the verdant grass. The blades affixed to its arms still clipped and clacked, but would never trim another hedge.
'Sorry, sir,' Siddig said, shamefaced.
'No reason to apologise, Brother,' Aramus said. 'In a contest such as this, better to react too quickly than not at all.' He turned to the others. 'The servitors won't be programmed to notice our presence, so if you're about to have your limbs trimmed or your head pruned off,' - he kicked at the still clattering blades of the servitor, each as long and as wickedly sharp as any combat knife - 'don't hesitate to put them down.'
The other Blood Ravens nodded their assent.
'Then let's move out. They're in here somewhere, and it falls to us to find them.'
GOVERNOR VANDIS LOOKED at Sergeant Cyrus and the five Scouts who accompanied him, displeasure evident on his round face. 'I understood that Space Marines were to come to our defence,' the governor said, his tone nasal and almost petulant. He narrowed his eyes, taking in Cyrus's windblown hair and battered scout gear. 'Where is your commander?'
Cyrus straightened, but long years of training restrained him from uttering the first responses that popped into his thoughts. 'I am Sergeant Cyrus of the Blood Ravens Tenth Company, seconded to Captain Davian Thule's Fifth and currently under the direct command of Sergeant Aramus. My Scouts and I have been tasked with reinforcing the defences of Zenith, and with liaising with the Meridian Planetary Defence Forces.'
Vandis waved a hand in Cyrus's direction, as though shooing away a fly. 'I requested Space Marines, not Scouts.' He glanced back at the functionaries who had accompanied him to the landing pad, seeking approval. One or two of the functionaries nodded eagerly, but most of them cast worried looks in Cyrus's direction, obviously fearing reprisal.
Cyrus took a single step forward, towering over the governor. 'I am a battle-brother of the Adeptus Astartes, Excellency, and have served Chapter and Emperor for the better part of two centuries. And these' - he indicated the five Scouts who stood with him - 'are neophytes of the Blood Ravens Chapter, already blooded and tested in combat and trained in the arts of planetary defence, and they will have your respect.'
The governor blanched, unconsciously taking a step backwards, craning his neck to look up and meet Cyrus's smouldering gaze. 'I… that is… but…'
Cyrus held up a hand, palm forward, silencing him. 'We go now to
inspect the capital's defences. Have the divisional commanders of the PDF mustered and ready for briefing when we return.'
'But…' the governor began, but Cyrus ignored him and turned away to face the Scouts.
'Watral, you're with me. We'll survey the city perimeter from due west to north-north-east. Tubach and Muren, you're team two, and have north-north-east to south-east, and Jutan and Xenakis are team three with south-east to due west. Mark any defensible positions, any weak points, and any potential barricades. Maintain vox contact at all times, and report back here at 1800 hours. Questions?'
The Scouts shook their heads.
'Then let's get moving.'
With that, the six Blood Ravens split up and moved out at high speed, leaving the governor and his retinue standing alone on the landing pad.
'I shall lodge a complaint,' Governor Vandis said, turning and heading back towards the steps leading back down into the governor's palace. 'See if I don't.'
Behind him, the other members of his retinue exchanged worried glances, but kept their mouths shut.
THADDEUS LOOKED OUT the window as Thunderhawk Two rumbled over the towers and spires of Zenith. Somewhere far below, deep underground, were the darkened, murky warrens of the underhive where he'd spent his formative years, running with the other members of the Lower 40th Ward Riot Boys. He'd killed a man before he'd reached the age of eleven - in self-defence, but the blood was on his hands, all the same - but all these years later he found it difficult to bring the dead man's face to mind. Just as he sometimes found it difficult to remember the sound of his mother's voice, or the cloying stench of the rotgut ''amasec'' his father used to drink. But he could remember every wrinkle, scar, and line on the face of every battle-brother who'd been lost these last years, the curse of the Blood Ravens' vaunted memory. Seeing the once familiar and now strange skyline of his home-hab only served to remind him of what he could never remember, and the things he could never forget.
Dawn Of War II Page 19
