Dawn Of War II

by Chris Roberson

  Martellus turned, his augmetic gaze taking in the greyish disc of Meridian turning slowly in the forward viewports. Weeks? Was it even possible that Sergeant Aramus and the others might survive a tyranid onslaught even half so long?

  And was there anything that could be done to improve their chances?

  Martellus remembered the words of the Cult Mechanicus's Fifteenth Universal Law: ''Flesh is Fallible, but Ritual Honours the Machine Spirit''. Perhaps in the rituals and rites of the Machine God an answer might be found. After all, as the Eighth Universal Law held, ''The Omnissiah Knows All, Comprehends All''.

  LIGHT YEARS AWAY, another planet turned slowly beneath an orbiting craft, and others considered whether anything might be done to save the world around which they circled. But here, the planet was verdant green, though quickly turning shades of sickly yellow and red, and the chances for its survival were already nil.

  'Sergeant Tarkus,' Fleet Admiral Forbes said, hands held behind her back, 'are all of your men safely aboard?'

  Tarkus bristled somewhat at the thought of proud Adeptus Astartes being referred to as mere ''men'', but stifled his initial response and nodded. 'Yes, admiral.' He paused, and then added, 'Those of us who are left.'

  From Admiral Forbes's expression, Tarkus could tell she knew all too well what it meant to lose troops in battle. 'How many were lost, sergeant?'

  'Nearly half, admiral.' Of the seven Blood Ravens who'd remained behind on Typhon Primaris, only four had returned. Brothers Mettius, Eumenis, and Produs had met their ends at the talons and claws of the tyranid, but had done honour to the Chapter before falling, making the unholy offspring of the Great Devourer pay dearly for their deaths. They would be remembered whenever the Bell of Souls was tolled, Tarkus would see to that.

  'You have my sympathies, sergeant,' Admiral Forbes said.

  All around them the command deck of the Sword of Hadrian was a hive of activity, as officers and crew scurried to ready the ship for an immediate departure from the Typhon system, and the transition to warp space.

  'Your sympathies are wasted on a Space Marine,' Tarkus said, with more venom than he'd intended. Then he softened, and added, 'You should save them for those on the planet below who we were not able to save, admiral.'

  Forbes's face closed, and she nodded curtly. 'We've carried away as many as we were able.'

  'Some thousands, by my count,' Tarkus said.

  'Three thousand, two hundred and five, to be exact,' Admiral Forbes corrected.

  Tarkus nodded, appreciatively. That the fleet admiral could recite with such exactitude the number of refugees spared the tyranids' wrath suggested that she valued their lives more highly than other Imperial Navy officers might have done, and that the three Blood Ravens who had been left behind on the jungle world had not died in vain.

  Commander Mitchels approached the admiral, a data-slate in his hands. 'Your pardon, ma'am, but all stations report readiness. We can depart on your command.'

  'Thank you, Mitchels,' Forbes answered, hardly sparing a glance at the data-slate.

  'So we're bound for Meridian, then?' Sergeant Tarkus asked.

  'Actually,' Admiral Forbes countered, 'I wanted to speak with you regarding our destination. I know that we agreed with your Sergeant Aramus that we would rendezvous with the Armageddon in the Meridian system once our mission of mercy was completed here, but circumstances have changed in the intervening days, and I would propose an alteration in our plans.'

  'An alteration?' Sergeant Tarkus cocked an eyebrow.

  'As you know, we've been operating in imposed silence for days, all astropathic communication blocked by what appears to be a shadow in the warp, the result of the tyranid hive fleet encroaching upon the Aurelia sub-sector. But in the last hours the interference has lifted, at least in part, and the astropathic contact we've established with the Armageddon suggests it's your Sergeant Aramus who we have to thank for that.'

  Tarkus could not help but feel a small swell of pride. Had it been so long since Aramus had been a complete novice, unskilled in the ways of command, and Tarkus assigned to help shepherd him to his full potential?

  'We have also regained contact with the other two light cruisers which make up the Aurelia Battle-group,' Admiral Forbes continued. 'Their journey through the warp from Calderis to Meridian was more lengthy than anticipated, and they have only now emerged at the edge of the Meridian system. Now that they have been apprised as to the nature of the tyranid threat, I have ordered them to divert course immediately, to rendezvous with the Sword of Hadrian not in orbit above Meridian, as planned, but instead nearer to the location in interstellar space where our astropaths have estimated that the tyranid hive fleet will be found.'

  Tarkus rubbed his grizzled chin with a gauntleted hand. 'We had intended to join in the defence of Meridian with Sergeant Aramus and the others, my squad and I.'

  'I can appreciate that,' Admiral Forbes replied, 'but I'm afraid that to transport your squad to Meridian would simply take too much time, time that would be better spent in taking the battle directly to the hive fleet itself. And, in particular, to the hive mind.' She paused, and clasped her hands before her. 'Here is my proposition, Sergeant Tarkus. No offence intended, but four Space Marines one way or the other can matter little in the grand scheme when talking about a planetary defence, but those same four Space Marines acting as a strike force in ship-to-ship vacuum combat could make a very big difference indeed.' She gestured around the command deck. 'My people are well trained for orbital and vacuum manoeuvres, and though we've seen little action in the years we've been assigned to patrol Aurelia, I'd put them up against any spacefaring force of a similar size. But what we lack is boarding parties, vacuum-capable strike troops, and so on - precisely the sort of combat that Astartes are trained to handle.'

  Tarkus continued to rub his grizzled chin, thoughtfully. 'Have you any boarding torpedoes?'

  Admiral Forbes glanced at her first officer, Commander Mitchels, who still stood by with the data-slate in his hands.

  'None on board,' Mitchels reported, without having to check, 'but I have requested the magos technicus to begin work on adapting one of our ordinary torpedoes to that purpose, with life support and rudimentary guidance system.'

  'Won't need life support,' Tarkus said to Commander Mitchels, and to illustrate his point rapped his gauntleted knuckles his chest, the ceramite of his plastron resounding with a satisfyingly solid thump. With his helmet fixed on, a Space Marine in full power armour could survive in hard vacuum almost indefinitely. 'So long as you can shoot it and we can steer it, there'll be no complaints from us.'

  Tarkus turned from the first officer to the admiral.

  'Very well, admiral,' he said, nodding in her direction. 'You've got your strike team.'

  DEEP IN THE rockcrete canyons beneath the towering habs of Meridian, Sergeant Thaddeus and the Blood Ravens of the Seventh Squad were in their second day of continuous combat with the tyranid forces, and there was no end in sight.

  There had been six Space Marines in the Seventh when they'd jumped into the fray the previous day. Now they numbered only four. Battle-Brother Skander had been lost when a brood of raveners, six in all, had fallen on him from out of the shadows the night before, and had ripped Skander to pieces before Thaddeus and the rest of the squad could come to his aid. Battle-Brother Marr had fallen as the sun rose the following morning when a bio-acid spore mine empted beneath his feet, the acidic nodules clinging to him until they had eaten clean through his armour's ceramite and then began to dissolve the flesh and bone within.

  The spore mine had been hidden beneath refuse that had apparently been discarded in the mad flight of the inhabitants from the hives, and Marr had not seen it until it was too late. But the refuse and broken glass and junked land-vehicles were not the only things left behind in the exodus. Here and there were the bodies of those trampled by their own neighbours in the scramble to depart ahead of the invading monsters, left to rot in the midst of the w
ide thoroughfares.

  But not all who had been left behind were dead, as Thaddeus was to discover.

  The mission of the Seventh was to seek out and destroy any tyranids sufficiently developed to act as synapse creatures, those with the ability to receive and retransmit the directives of the hive mind. Their primary targets were the zoanthropes, the most powerful of that sort, but any of the other synapse creatures were also priority targets - hive tyrants, hive warriors, even broodlords if there were any to be found. So far, though, they had managed to locate no zoanthropes, and precious few of the other types, most often encountering lictors, gaunts, and raveners of different varieties.

  It was long past the fall of night now, the sun having long disappeared behind the habs to the west, but now that darkness had fallen it appeared that their luck had changed. Though whether for the better or worse, Thaddeus had yet to determine.

  'Warriors!' Battle-Brother Takayo shouted, his bolt pistol firing in one fist, his chainsword whirring in the other.

  They'd been making their way gradually east since the previous day, plunging deeper and deeper into enemy-held territory. The tyranids were not interested in occupying, though, but merely in overrunning and tainting, and as the Blood Ravens pushed east the tyranids were racing even faster towards the west. So it was that, as Thaddeus and the other surviving members of the Seventh managed to wipe out the last of the hormagaunt brood that they had encountered before sunset, a new wave of tyranid forces raced from the east towards them.

  It was tyranid warriors, just the sort of synapse creature they'd been sent to eliminate. But this was no lone warrior, nor even a mere brood of a half-dozen or so creatures. There were dozens of warriors racing towards them, a rolling tide of horrible chit-tering monsters. Not just dozens, but perhaps even hundreds. And all of them barrelling down the thoroughfare on which the Seventh stood, hunger and murder in the tyranids' cold, lifeless eyes.

  They were a few hundred metres away, and closing fast.

  'We've got to get off this street,' Sergeant Thaddeus said, his eyes cutting back and forth, searching on all sides. Without any cover, standing out in the open as they were, with nothing but the carcasses of the fallen gaunts around them, they didn't stand a chance of surviving an onslaught of so many warriors. They might be able to take a few dozen with them, perhaps more, but in the end the numbers of tyranids would overwhelm them. If they were able to get behind cover, though, barricade themselves somewhere with a narrow approach, then they could pick the warriors off in smaller numbers as they approached, and perhaps stand a chance of getting them all.

  To their left rose a hab, looming impossibly tall, without any break or opening in its rockcrete face. On their right, though, was another hab, just as tall, with a narrow opening at ground level. It appeared to be a service access door of some kind, probably intended only for use by servitors - habdwellers would seldom venture out of doors, if they could help it. But if the footprints and tracks that spread from the opening were any indication, the doorway had been used by many habdwellers in recent days, perhaps the entire population as they fled out into the open and scurried to the west, chased by reports of marauding monsters from the east.

  The door was open, it was narrow - perhaps just wide enough for a Space Marine in power armour with jump pack to enter sideways, but not face-on - and it appeared to be defensible. There were no other alternatives at hand, and the window to act was quickly closing.

  'There!' Thaddeus said, pointing at the doorway with the blade of his chainsword. 'Get behind cover, now!'

  Takayo was closest, and went first, approaching the opening sideways and sidling in. As it was, the top of his jump pack scraped the top of the door, sending out a shower of sparks, and his breastplate rubbed against one side of the door while the back of his pack scraped against the other.

  'I'm in,' Takayo voxed. 'Looks clear.'

  Brother Brandt was next, followed quickly by Brother Kell. Sergeant Thaddeus was last, slipping into the opening just as the first of the tyranid warriors reached their position. As it stabbed its talons in through the opening, about to push its bulk through, Thaddeus fired a barrage of hellfire rounds at the beast, stopping it cold. As it convulsed in the opening, he retreated a little further into the darkness, to find a better vantage point.

  'Sergeant?' Takayo called out loud, from deeper in. They were in a service conduit of some kind, a squared-off hallway that continued for a half-dozen metres in either direction before branching off and out of sight. Takayo had ventured deeper into the conduit to scout ahead, after getting through the door. 'There's something back here you should see.'

  Thaddeus fired another barrage of hellfire rounds at the next warrior to venture too close to the opening, and then called over to the others. 'Brandt, Kell, cover the door, I'm going to check on Takayo.'

  The others flashed their acknowledgement, and Thaddeus pushed past them to follow the sound of Takayo's voice.

  When he caught up with his battle-brother, Thaddeus was brought up short.

  'What is this?' Thaddeus said, lowering his bolt pistol's barrel to the ground.

  'I'm Phaeton,' said the young boy who stood blinking in the light cast by Takayo's lamp. He nodded his head at the even younger boy who stood beside him, clutching his hand. 'This is my brother Phoebus. We're lost.' He spoke Low Gothic in a guttural accent, one which Thaddeus found very familiar.

  The two boys were covered in dirt and grime, like walking shadows, their eyes and teeth stark white in contrast. Their clothes were tattered and worn, their shoes scuffed and holey, but Thaddeus could see that this clothing had never been finery, even when clean and new. Between the clothes and the boy's accent, it was clear - these were low-hab-dwellers, just as Thaddeus had been, a lifetime ago.

  'Everyone else ran away, but we couldn't find our mother,' the younger of the boys said. 'So we stayed to look for her. Have you seen her?'

  Thaddeus, who had for years gone into battle with a smile on his lips, and who had in recent actions found himself slipping into a grim moroseness that he could not escape, felt pity welling in his chest for the two boys before him, each a mirror of himself at their age.

  'Courage,' Thaddeus said, holstering his bolt pistol and laying a gauntleted hand on the older boy's shoulder. 'We'll look for her together.'

  'THIS IS AGAINST Chapter protocol, sir,' Sergeant Cyrus said again, for the tenth time.

  'So noted,' Sergeant Aramus replied, his eyes on the Thunderhawk braking for a landing atop the governor's palace. It had been only hours since Aramus and the surviving members of the Third Squad had been ferried back to Zenith on board Thunderhawk One, and with Thunderhawk Two making its final descent from the Armageddon the last stage of his emergency strategy was about to begin.

  Cyrus scowled and shook his head, his hair whipping around in the backdraft of the Thunderhawk's engines. 'I don't like it…'

  Aramus wheeled on him, eyes flashing angrily. 'No one is asking you to like it, sergeant. I appreciate your concerns, but these are desperate times, and call for desperate measures.'

  'But they're not ready for this, Aramus,' Cyrus said, sounding for all the world like he was still the instructor and Aramus still the neophyte. 'They don't stand a chance.'

  Aramus drew his lips into a tight line. The landing pad shuddered as the Thunderhawk touched down and the hatch began to cycle open. 'They stand the same chances as any aspirant walking onto the field of the Blood Trials,' he said, his tone even. 'They will either live, or they won't.'

  The hatch opened, and Chaplain Palmarius emerged, the moonlight glinting off the silver metal of his death's-head mask, the ribbons and scrolls of his purity seals fluttering in the wind. He stepped out onto the landing pad, and struck the ferrocrete beneath his feet three times with the butt of his crozius arcanum.

  In response to the three resounding thuds of the staff, the other passengers of the Thunderhawk followed the Chaplain down the ramp and stood before him. There were fifteen of t
hem in all, the tallest barely standing as high as the Chaplain's waist, all clad in blood-red bodygloves that covered them from the neck down. All fifteen were armed, some with autoguns, some with shotguns, others with lasguns, the weapons all seemingly ridiculously oversized in their young hands.

  'The aspirants stand ready to fight, Sergeant Aramus,' Chaplain Palmarius said, and though his expression was unreadable behind his silver mask, from his tone Aramus could see that the Chaplain no more approved of his plan than Cyrus did.

  'And fight they shall,' he said. He strode forward to stand before the assembled youths, who tried valiantly to hide their mounting terror, but failed.

  Aramus cast his gaze over the fifteen youths. His head was bare, and he allowed the boys to see the pride in his expression.

  'You are not yet Blood Ravens,' he said, his voice booming even over the sound of the Thunderhawk's engines, 'not even yet initiates, but even as bare aspirants you still do our Chapter honour.'

  The fifteen youths had been fed well aboard the Armageddon, and allowed the benefit of a few days' combat and weapons training, but Cyrus and Chaplain Palmarius both insisted it wasn't enough. It wasn't simply Chapter protocols at issue, they had said, but a matter of simple logic. The youths had scant training, no experience, and none of the physical advantages enjoyed even by a Scout, much less those of a full-fledged Space Marine. But Aramus had insisted that they had potential, and hoped they would be eager to prove their worth.

  'Each of you was selected to compete in the Blood Trials, for the honour of initiation into the Blood Ravens Chapter,' Aramus went on. 'Circumstances are such that those Trials could not be held, and so you have waited for the chance to prove yourself worthy.' He waved his hand to the east. 'Out there, in the darkness, are the massed hordes of tyranids, offspring of the Great Devourer, who threaten to overrun this world, and destroy all life on it. Let this be your Blood Trial, then. Rather than fighting one another, you will face the tyranid.'