“I concur,” said Daxian, his second. Of the four Scouts in his squad, Daxian had the most experience and had fought alongside Issam on Pavonis. With Sergeant Learchus leading them, they had penetrated deep behind the tau lines and proven key to the final victory. It had earned Issam and Daxian an Imperial Laurel, but three others hadn’t made it back alive from that mission.
Janek Lycean and Uriel Dios won their laurels with Learchus on Espandor against the greenskins, and had earned his approbation, which was enough of a recommendation for Issam. His last Scout was a new arrival, a native of Iax named Aurelio. Issam hadn’t yet judged Aurelio’s worth, but so far he had kept up with the rest of them and hadn’t put a foot wrong.
Issam slung his magnoculars, and secured them to his belt, making sure they wouldn’t rattle or bang on his equipment. The last thing he needed was to give their, position away, though the odds of their being heard were minimal given the raucous blare of horns and random gunfire coming from the city. But their targets were equipped almost as well as his Scouts, and it didn’t pay to be careless. The five Scouts lay in a field of rotted vegetation, a mulchy carpet of decaying matter that looked like the aftermath of the Life Eater virus. Issam had seen the effects of that planet-killing weapon, and it was not a fond memory.
As unpleasant as it was, the lingering heat of chemical reactions in the rotting soil would conceal their body heat, which would make all the difference in their approach.
“Let’s move,” he whispered, crawling on his elbows with smooth, unhurried movements. He went forward slowly, halting any time he caught a flash of movement from the walls. With five targets and five Scouts, they needed an optimum firing position to ensure each target was eliminated without noise or commotion.
His squad weren’t the only warriors on Tarentus; several other teams of Scouts were tasked with infiltrating the devastated city, but Issam wanted the honour of taking out the city’s aerial defence guns himself. The augurs of the Vae Victus had detected only one source of activity on Tarentus, a base set up in the ruins of Axum, which was occupied by a sizeable force of enemy warriors. Heat signatures also revealed that the guns of the city were still functional, and Captain Ventris had tasked the Scouts with their elimination.
The ground squelched underneath them, its sticky matter pulling at the deep blue plates and darkened canvas of his uniform. After thirty minutes, they had advanced a hundred metres, and Issam spotted an irrigation channel with machine-finished sides and a frond-choked lip; the perfect place from which to shoot.
He and his Scouts slithered forward, easing themselves into the channel and swiftly unlimbering their sniper rifles from the camo-slings on their backs. Issam pressed his body to the rockcrete channel and gave his rifle a thorough check. The action was clear, the energy cell fully charged and the sights clear.
Daxian performed a ranging check with his magnoculars.
“Two hundred and fifteen metres,” he said.
“Just like being on the range at Agiselus,” said Uriel Dios, dialling in the range on his rifle’s sights.
Issam shook his head. “It’s nothing like being on the range, Dios,” he said. “These targets will shoot back if you miss. One shot, one kill. No exceptions.”
His Scouts understood, and Issam slid his rifle through the fronds. He rested the barrel on the rockcrete lip and closed one eye, pressing the other to the rubberised end of the sight. His breathing deepened and he relaxed his body, letting it mould to the flat sides of the channel and pressing the rifle to his cheek. The stock was warm wood, crafted to the contours of his features from a highland fir he’d felled over sixty years ago on the flanks of the Valley of Laponis.
His vision through the sight was a pale blue. The angles of the wall were dark and cold, the outlines of the figures walking this segment of the ramparts a soft, glowing white. A Mark V helmet drifted through the crosshairs, but this was no warrior of the Adeptus Astartes he had slotted in his sight. This was a traitor. This was a warrior who had betrayed everything Issam and the Ultramarines stood for. He deserved to die.
“Fire on my shot,” he said. “Take them down.”
Issam let the sensors from his sight tell him the wind velocity, ambient temperature and relative humidity. He followed the winking icon to compensate for the local conditions and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and curling his finger around the trigger.
Before he could shoot, his target vanished from sight as through dragged to the ground. A squirt of glowing light spurted upwards. Issam kept his aim for a few seconds then swept his rifle along the length of wall his squad had chosen as their entry point to Axum.
The wall was empty, no trace of the enemy Astartes to be seen.
“What just happened?” hissed Daxian, sliding back into the channel and unslinging his magnoculars.
Issam didn’t answer and kept scanning the ramparts. They were empty, no sign of occupation and certainly no sign of the sentries.
“We happened,” said a soft voice at Issam’s shoulder, and he jerked back, the rifle falling from his hands as he scrabbled for his combat blade.
A fluid shape rose from the darkness of a shadowed culvert.
“The way into Axum is clear, Sergeant Issam,” said Captain Aethon Shaan with a hint of amusement. “Your approach was made with great skill, but this is Raven Guard work.”
Issam swallowed his pride, recognising that Shaan’s stealth skills made him look like a stumbling recruit.
He nodded. “Then let’s get this done,” he said.
THE ULTRAMARINES SCOUT and the Raven Guard entered Axum without difficulty, and Issam was impressed at how efficiently Shaan’s warriors had slain their targets. To get close to a target as well equipped as a Space Marine, even one branded a traitor, required an incredible gift of stealth.
He knelt by one of the dead bodies. The head was severed, cut cleanly from the neck with an energised combat blade. He had no doubt the other sentries had been killed by similar killing blows. To inflict such grievous wounds in complete synchrony required incredible skill and perfect coordination.
“Your warriors are good,” whispered Issam as Shaan knelt beside him.
“I know,” said Shaan.
Issam examined the renegade warrior carefully. He was encased in a poorly maintained suit of Mark V armour, breaches in its cabling crudely repaired with patches of liquid sealant. He scanned the armour pattern and turned the shoulder guard around with a grimace of distaste. To touch the body of a traitor was unpleasant, but a good scout gathered intelligence where he could. After all, know thine enemy was one of the cardinal rules of warfare.
The ceramite plates were painted with vivid slashes of black and orange, like the stripes of a tiger. The shoulder guard was without insignia, simply a repetition of the same slashed pattern.
“You recognise the markings?” asked Shaan.
“I think so,” replied Issam, thinking back to the infrequent alerts on Chapters declared Excomunicatus. “The Claws of Lorek.”
“They are a long way from the Maelstrom.”
“That they are,” said Issam.
They concealed the bodies and ghosted over the ramparts, making their way into the remains of the city. Lights blazed in the distance and blaring warhorns spat foul imprecations to dark and bloody gods into the night sky.
“Makes our job easier,” said Issam, as Shaan appeared next to him.
“Almost too easy,” said Shaan, and Issam wasn’t sure whether the Raven Guard was irritated or suspicious of such ease.
Before Issam could reply, the warrior slid into the shadows and it took all Issam’s considerable skill to keep up with him through the darkened, corpse-strewn streets of Axum. The bodies of those slain in the city’s fall lay where they had been butchered, and the air reeked of decay. Ripened bodies bloated with noxious gasses rotted in the warm climate, and buzzing clouds of carrion flies grew fat on the human bounty.
“Guilliman’s oath,” hissed Janek Lycean. “They just left them to ro
t!”
“Quiet,” hissed Issam, catching Shaan’s glance of disapproval. “Control yourself, Lycean.”
Despite his rebuke, Issam shared his Scout’s outrage, but kept that anger bound with iron control. This mission required clinical detachment, but that was asking a lot when you were confronted by an entire city of Ultramar’s dead.
Shaan bunched his fist and made a series of quick chopping gestures. The Raven Guard moved out, ten of them, each advancing with smooth steps and flowing movements that were simply breathtaking.
They moved through the city, keeping to the shadows and avoiding any signs of activity. Orbital surveys had detected that the bulk of the enemy presence was located within the ruins of the Prosperine Tower, and the Imperial troops gave the main entrance of that structure a wide berth, heading towards the generator compound located towards its rear.
Within the hour, they reached the edges of a vile fortification built around the generator. Bathed in the stark glow of a score of arclights, it was an unlovely creation of rectangular blocks adorned with bloody spikes of sharpened metal. Corpses hung from every spike, and Issam felt his control slipping as he saw the violations inflicted on the bodies.
Atop the highest spike was the desecrated corpse of Rufus Quintus. The wounded veteran had been stripped of his armour and crucified on a pair of crossed girders, his arms spread-eagled and pierced by bolts fired from a heavy-duty rivet gun. His legs were missing and the angle of his neck told Issam that the hero of Ichar IV was unquestionably dead.
Issam tore his gaze from the horrific mutilations and forced himself to take stock of the defences. The sounds of shouting, gunfire and revving chainswords came from the Prosperine Tower, eclipsed by the intermittent squalling of a warhorn ripped from a Titan. Mortals in scavenged armour and fright-mask helmets sat on the walls with their rifles held loosely over their shoulders. What they wore couldn’t be called uniforms, but there was cohesion in the blood staining their right shoulder guards.
“This is it,” said Issam, hugging the cover of a claw-scarred buttress. “The generators are inside. Take them out and the defence turrets will go offline.”
“How long until the reserve generators take over?” asked Shaan.
“They won’t if that machine of Magos Locard’s works like it’s supposed to.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“About two minutes.”
“Will that be enough time?”
Issam smiled. “For Captain Ventris? More than enough.”
“Are the rest of your squads in place?” asked Shaan.
Issam flipped down his visor lens and sent a rapid data squirt on a prearranged frequency. A series of icons flickered to life on the lens, each representing one of the four Scout squads that had made their approaches from different sectors.
“In place and ready to shoot,” he confirmed.
“Then I’ll see you on the inside,” said Shaan, and Issam heard the relish in his voice.
The Raven Guard vanished into the shadows, what few there were in the harsh glare of the arc lights, and Issam drew a bead on an enemy soldier whose face was obscured by an iron mask in the form of a snarling bear.
“All units, fire on my shot,” he commanded.
He counted to ninety, keeping his target locked in his crosshair as it made an all too predictable traverse of the wall. On the ninetieth second he squeezed the trigger, and the warrior pitched backwards, the shot going through the eyeslit and blowing out the back of his helmet in a near soundless explosion of blood and bone.
Others dropped in concert with Issam’s target, and he expertly shifted aim and took out another target. Masked faces stupidly looked out from the wall, and Issam took them down too. Three more enemy soldiers fell to Issam’s lethally accurate fire as they milled in confusion, but the rest had learned their lesson and kept their heads down.
Issam watched as the Raven Guard quickly scaled the blocky walls and slid over the ramparts, killing the warriors who cowered behind the walls with brutally efficient sweeps of blade and lightning claw.
“Go!” ordered Issam, running bent over with his rifle clutched tightly to his chest.
He reached the walls and slung his rifle, vaulting onto the uneven blocks and scrambling up with practised ease. Within seconds he was at the top with his combat blade unsheathed, but there was nothing left to kill. His squads were merciless in the accuracy of their sniper fire and the Raven Guard had been equally thorough in their close-range killing.
All around the crude fortress, Ultramarines Scouts were swarming over the walls, rifles poised to take down any last resistance, but what little was left was being quickly and efficiently ended by the claws of the Raven Guard. Issam and the Ultramarines moved down into the space enclosed by the tumbledown walls, despatching any wounded enemy soldiers with quick slashes of their combat blades.
“Daxian,” hissed Issam, waving his second towards the main generator building. “Get the charges planted and rig the disruption pod to the reserve generator trunk cabling.”
“Yes, sergeant,” said Daxian, running for the columned portico of the generator building.
Magos Locard had provided the Ultramarines with an experimental disruption pod, a device that would register any break in the power supply to the aerial guns. If it functioned as the magos claimed, it should prevent the reserve generator from kicking in once the main power supply was taken out.
While Daxian completed his part of the mission, Issam deployed the Scout squads into covered positions on the walls. Their rifles were aimed outward for any sign their swift assault had been detected, though this seemed unlikely since it had only taken twenty-six seconds from his first shot to the capture of the position.
Something wasn’t right, but Issam couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him, so he climbed the rugged slope of tumbled blocks and glanced up at the flame-lit grace of the Prosperine Tower. Named for an ancient god of fertility, the tower’s name was in somewhat poor taste, but it had been in use since the earliest days of Ultramar and the Ultramarines were great respecters of tradition, so it had stuck.
Uriel Dios watched his sector beside the dead man Issam had shot in the opening salvo of the attack and nodded to him as he squatted beside the corpse. Issam pulled off the blasted remains of the corpse’s iron mask. The man’s face was gone, punched inwards by the shot and there was nothing left to tell where he had come from or what he had looked like. Dressed in combat fatigues and a padded jacket with circles of loose stitching where Issam guessed rank and insignia badges had been torn off, the dead man was clearly a deserter from an Imperial Guard regiment. How he had come to be in the service of the Archenemy, Issam couldn’t begin to guess.
He looked along the length of the crude defences, seeing more of the dead men and wondering at the stupidity of its defenders.
“Sergeant?” said Uriel Dios.
“What is it, Dios?”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Dios, tapping the body with his boot.
“What doesn’t?” replied Issam, though he was pleased the young Scout shared his sense of something being off about this whole set up.
“This,” said Dios, jerking a thumb back towards the power generator. “The enemy must know this is the most vulnerable part of the defences, so why are there only mortals on these walls? Why are there no traitor Astartes around the generators?”
Issam cursed himself for not seeing it earlier, but before he could answer, a perfectly controlled blast destroyed the defence guns’ generator, the noise of the detonation swallowed by the screaming klaxons and gunfire echoing from within the Prosperine Tower. The building was undamaged, and Magos Locard’s disruption pod functioned perfectly, feeding a power signal to the reserve generator and fooling its cogitator into thinking the main generator was still functioning.
Ninety seconds later, the Ultramarines assault began in earnest.
URIEL'S THUNDERHAWK SWOOPED in from the east and blasted its way ov
er the walls in a roar of jet engines. Two others followed it, their battlecannons pummelling the Prosperine Tower, reducing its upper section to flaming debris and collapsing the bulk of its structure into itself.
Seconds later, the lead gunship hammered down in the main plaza before the tower, its assault ramp slamming down and Ultramarines warriors fanning out in precisely orchestrated manoeuvre patterns to seize pre-selected objectives.
Uriel dropped to the surface of Tarentus, his bolter pulled in hard to his shoulder as he led his warriors towards the hellish, molten crater of fire and smoke which was all that remained of the Prosperine Tower. A gnawing sense of deep unease pervaded his entire body, and it wasn’t just because he had opened fire on an ancient building that had stood proud on a world of Ultramar for thousands of years.
No, something else sat ill with Uriel, but its source wouldn’t coalesce in his mind.
A flickering tactical overlay appeared on Uriel’s visor, displaying the location of his forces. Issam’s Scouts were picked out in green along the ramparts of a crude and hastily assembled bulwark, which had all the hallmarks of the Iron Warriors’ brutal simplicity.
“Issam, report,” said Uriel.
“Traitor Astartes on Axum’s outer walls, but only rebel mortals here. All are dead, but I have no count on enemy forces within the tower.”
“Understood. Maintain overwatch.”
“Affirmative,” said Issam. “Though I suspect there will be little left to oppose you.”
“I hope not,” snarled Uriel. “This enemy has killed citizens of Ultramar and defiled a world of Roboute Guilliman. I want them to feel the severity of our retribution.”
The two follow-on gunships landed in a storm of dust and billowing engine smoke. More warriors charged out, and Uriel saw Learchus and Pasanius at the head of their squads. Together with the Scouts, this force represented the entirety of the 4th Company’s strength, and as Ancient Peleus unfurled the brightly coloured company banner, he felt that familiar pride that came from leading the greatest warriors in the galaxy into battle once again.
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