by Marc
‘Native war-beasts advancing on the camp, colonel!’
Princeps Gaerius laughed, sounding like a drain emptying. ‘Now you will see!’
‘BRING THE TWO slaves forward!’ The order was barked out by the clan hetman. He stood in the middle of the village compound, wavy blond hair flowing down his hard-muscled back, a stone axe thrust into his belt of woven fern leaves. Colour Sergeant Hangist and Guardsman Leche were flung at his feet, where they cringed like dogs, peering left and right.
‘These are not warriors!’ the hetman roared at the villagers who were gathered round him. ‘These are slaves of the Giant Shining Men, the real warriors who have come again from the sky to do battle with us. That is why the gods gave us the Defenders: to help us fight the Giant Shining Warriors!’
Leche and Hangist could not, of course, understand a syllable of what the hetman was saying. All they understood by this time was that every second they remained alive and untortured was a miracle. At the same time, the knowledge that pain and death were coming closer second by second struck stark fear into their souls. Leche gibbered as he was once more wrenched to his feet. Hangist groaned with despair.
And then they saw them again. There were two of them, coming closer, pacing the plain one after the other, looming against the sky: archaeosaurs. They were like mottled grey and brown mountains with massive, reptilian heads on the end of long, sinuous necks, the weight balanced by enormous rippling tails as long as the bodies themselves.
This was the second time they had seen such monsters. The first time was when the beasts had destroyed the Imperial Guard camp. Leman Russ tanks had been unable to stop them. Basilisk artillery had been unable to stop them. They had trampled everything, moving surprisingly quickly on their eight sturdy legs, four on a side, thicker than any tree trunk. Guardsman Leche found it incredible, almost unimaginable, that there could be animals as huge as these.
Either one of the beasts could have trampled the village to dust by merely strolling through it, but instead they halted far outside its bounds, heads swaying. Despite their size, they looked placid enough for the moment. Leche knew that really massive animals would have to be plant-eaters, and there was no grass on this planet, only ferns and moss – endless fern forests and fern-covered plains. He could imagine the wide swathes the beasts would cut through such forests as they fed.
With whoops and shouts, the villagers dragged Leche and Hangist out of the village. Being sacrificed to the monsters would at least be quicker than the deaths suffered by many of his comrades, Leche thought. They came nearer, and now men could be seen crawling over the vast bodies as if on hillsides. The Guardsman could also see house-like structures erected on their backs, and – what seemed most weird – one such structure atop each massive head.
The steadily flickering daylight of Planet ABL 1034 gave the scene an unreal, disjointed appearance. Now Guardsman Leche could see how the tribesmen climbed onto the huge beasts. Rope ladders hung down from their sides and trailed over the ground. Leche found himself at the foot of one. A tribesman mounted a rung, seized hold of Leche by one arm, and jerked him upward. Haplessly the young man was hauled up the ladder, soon forced to assist in the climb or fall a lethal distance to the ground below.
Leche saw Colour Sergeant Hangist being dragged towards the second archaeosaur. Once the Guardsman passed the point where the ropes fell away from the beast’s hide, he saw how easy it was to move about on top of the archaeosaur. The immensely thick and tough hide was corrugated. On the lower slopes of the animal-mountain, one could walk in these corrugations as though in a trough or trench. Scrambling over these, he and his captors came close to the gigantic spine, where the corrugations smoothed out somewhat and it was like making one’s way on the top of a heaving hill.
Leche now realised that the beast’s hide was in fact armoured. Up here it was like stepping on steel or adamantium. Tribesmen dotted the vast back. The hetman had made his way here already. He bellowed and gestured. Leche was propelled forward, towards the beast’s head. Even facing certain death, Leche found time for a touch of pure curiosity about what was to happen. Certainly this was an unusual way to die, an adventure he would have enjoyed telling to his comrades of the First Ixist – if there had been any way he could have survived it.
The archaeosaur’s neck, though long, was not all that lengthy as compared with the huge body. It had, after all, only to reach ground level in order to feed, so it was little longer than the eight comparatively stubby legs. Traversing it was like walking up a mountain trail. And there, set on top of the giant reptilian head, was a square hut or covered platform. It was open at the front and back, and three tribesmen squatted in it. Leche got an odd feeling. It was like looking at a primitive version of the bridge of some fearsome war machine!
Leche was pushed through the hut and out the other side. In passing, he saw what at first he took to be a dozen bony spines projecting from the top of the archaeosaur’s skull, but then he realised that they were rudely shaped stone spikes hammered into the animal’s head! Before he could wonder what these were for his fate was revealed to him. Forward of the hut, also mounted on the beast’s head, not far behind the eyes, stood a timber X-shape. Guardsman Leche’s captors fastened him to this, limbs spread, and left him there.
Leche could hear the beast’s stentorous breathing. It sounded like nothing so much as the engine of a Leman Russ tank. Turning his head, he was soon able to see Colour Sergeant Hangist spread-eagled on an identical X-beam above the eyes of the second war-beast.
So here Guardsman Leche was: a mascot, an emblem, a figurehead, and perhaps a taunt to the enemy. The archaeosaurs were going into battle. Against another tribe? Or a third Imperial Guard expedition?
From behind him came banging, clinking noises. The Imperial Guard officers who had faced these war-beasts had been at a loss to know how the primitive tribesmen control-led them. Here was the answer, though Leche could not look around far enough to see it. The stone-age people had lived on Planet ABL 1034 for a long time, and they had learned much. The stone spikes had been driven through the archaeosaur’s skull to precise points within the tiny brain. By banging the spikes with his stone hammer and making them vibrate, the mahout could stimulate nerve centres at will. One spike and the creature would advance. Another spike and it would retreat. Others, and it would turn left, turn right, fly into a rage, and attack. Another, and it would spew fire!
The hetman barked an order. The squatting mahout banged one spike, then another. The two archaeosaurs lumbered off, away from the village.
Towards the Giant Shining Warriors.
‘HERE THEY COME,’ said Princeps Gaerius. ‘Ready to move out!’ The bridge crewmen of the Lex et Annihilate took up their positions, pulling down the control sets to link with the metal sockets set into their skulls.
As commander, only Gaerius himself was free of such an interface. Chief Engineer Moriens was most encumbered. His head almost disappeared amid a nest of pipes, tubes and leads. It was his responsibility to keep contact with the whole internal machinery of the Warlord, to supervise its running crew, and to keep everything functioning whatever the damage. Tactical Officer Viridens would actually guide the giant battle machine, moving it like his own body at Gaerius’s orders, with a direct neural connection to the power bundles.
The chief engineer was also effectively blind, seeing nothing outside. Gaerius, Moriens and Weapons Moderati Knifesmith had access to the conning holos. Gaerius looked to the right, where the companion Warlord Principio non Tactica stood, also gearing itself up to move.
The Lex et Annihilate roared. Warlord Titans had the imprinted mental nature of the grizzly bear, a powerful bad-tempered animal native to Terra, and this sometimes made them difficult to handle. The Principio non Tactica also roared. At a word from Gaerius, they each took a gigantic step forward, carefully treading in the spaces cleared for them. A few steps more, and they were outside the camp and striding towards the horizon.
‘There are only two of them,’ Gaerius murmured. ‘I had expected more.’
At first it was difficult to estimate the size of the archaeosaurs as they loped onward. It was the speed of their approach, perhaps, that made them seem not as large as they really were. Moving with a shuffling motion on their eight sturdy legs, they appeared to Gaerius’s eye scarcely larger than Terran dinosaurs. He relaxed. This should take no more than moments, after which the natives were unlikely to have any stomach for further action.
Gaerius, as acting group commander, outranked Efferim for the duration of the engagement. He spoke briefly into his communicator, issuing orders to his fellow princeps. Fibre bundles humming like swarms of angry hornets, leg shanks clanging, the twin Titans strode out towards their primitive challengers.
And then Gaerius caught his breath in surprise. The brief blurred transmission from the destroyed second expedition had not prepared him for what he now saw. The archaeosaurs were enormous – bigger than he would have believed remotely possible for any land animal, even taking the low gravity into account. The monster’s head, when raised, reared even higher than the Warlord’s!
That was not the only comparison between the two. Behind the Titans, using them for protection like mice scurrying behind a man, came the Imperial Guard force: tanks, mobile artillery, and infantry. It was the same on the other side. A ragged column of at least a thousand nearly naked primitives, armed with spears and stone axes, trailed behind the archaeosaur, ready to take on whatever their battle-beasts left alive.
How did the creatures stand up? Their bones must be made of steel, he thought with incredulity – or adamantium. Still, they could not conceivably withstand the Titans’ armament. He barked orders again. The Warlords angled out to approach the archaeosaurs from their flanks and get an easier target, then their huge legs pumped faster, propelling them almost at a run.
By now, Tactical Officer and Weapons Moderati had almost become a single personality, joined by the grizzly-bear-essence imprinted on the Lex et Annihilate. The shoulder cannon swivelled, aimed at the flank of one of the impossibly huge beasts, and opened up. A shattering noise echoed through the cranium of the Titan as a volley of shells went hurtling towards the defenceless target.
Disbelievingly, Princeps Gaerius watched as the entire volley bounced off the beast’s armoured back. Some exploded in mid-air; others flew away and fell to the ground. The archaeosaur, however, seemed unhurt by the explosions. It lumbered around to face the Titan with its smouldering, yellow eyes. Now Gaerius saw that what he had taken to be a fringe or crest on the creature’s skull was actually an artificial structure in the form of a covered platform, and within it squatted men. Did these men manage to control the animal? If so, how?
But there was something else. Set in front of the platform an X-beam had been erected. To this – uniform torn and ragged, face covered in dirt – was bound a Guardsman.
Up to now, Gaerius’s feelings for the enemy – whom he had scarcely considered an enemy, so inferior were they – had been neutral. Now his heart filled with hatred.
‘Poor wretch,’ he muttered to himself. There was no way he could help the prisoner, who was sure to die along with the archaeosaur. He put him from his mind.
He doubted that Weapons Moderati Knifesmith’s aim was good enough to hit the swaying head. ‘Aim lower!’ he ordered. ‘The belly will have less armour!’
Again the shoulder cannon roared their ferocious violence. This time, several shells struck home, creating a brief smoke screen. When it cleared, Gaerius expected to see the smashed carcass of the archaeosaur lying on its side, twitching. He gaped with renewed astonishment to see the monster still standing. True, some of the shells had penetrated the hide and left deep gaping wounds. Yet the archaeosaur was unshaken. It was as if it did not even feel the torn flesh and flowing blood.
And it was still on the move, turning to face the Titan. Gaerius was about to order another volley, but first he glanced towards the Principio non Tactica and momentarily froze. The second archaeosaur, also dripping blood from a cannon volley, was charging towards the Warlord at a run. Suddenly its jaws gaped open, and from between its rows of teeth came a white-hot gout of fire which enveloped the upper part of the Principio.
To the astounded princeps, it looked just like a plasma weapon – something with which he had not thought to equip the Warlords. Who would have thought to need it on a world like this? He did not know of the archaeosaurs’ prodigious digestive system with its twenty-three stomachs, building up acetylene gas at high pressure, or of the unusual metabolism which mixed pure phosphorus into that acetylene. When the archaeosaur belched, which it did when angry or when made to do so by a bang on the appropriate stone spike, the acetylene was squirted out and ignited by the phosphorus on contact with the air. Evolution had devised the phenomenon as a defence against predators. It was even more effective as a weapon.
The Principio’s bridge must have been completely blinded during the discharge, though the void shields would have protected the crew from the heat. But there was a second tactic to the archaeosaur’s attack. It reared up on its four hind legs. It now towered over the Warlord. When Princeps Efferim’s view cleared, he saw the vast beast come crashing down on his land-war machine in an attempt to topple it.
‘Assist Principio!’ Gaerius shouted. ‘All weapons!’
The Lex et Annihilate swivelled. Moderati Knifesmith let loose with both shoulder cannon and the belly lasgun. The Principio staggered back, its own belly lasgun also opening up, trying desperately to keep its footing against the monstrous weight of the angry beast. It probably would have succeeded, but the archaeosaur had yet another trick. It turned aside. The vast tail came swinging round and crashed into the body of the Titan, where the power source and main engines were located. The carapace buckled.
Now a red steam obscured the view as Principio’s two heavy lasguns bit into the beast and vaporised huge amounts of its blood. Through Gaerius’s communicator came a faint voice – that of Efferim’s chief engineer.
‘Void shields down.’
Then, with utter horror, Princeps Gaerius saw the Principio non Tactica fall, first losing its balance, unable to correct the momentum imparted by the archaeosaur’s tail, then one foot lifting off the ground, then the huge structure descending with slow majesty in the low gravity, until it smashed into the hard earth.
Once a Titan was toppled, there was virtually no chance of it getting to its feet again. Princeps Gaerius shrieked orders, turning his attention back to the archaeosaur threatening the Annihilate.
‘The head! Aim for the head!’
Alert to the fate that had overtaken the sister Titan, Viridens backed away, jinking aside to prevent the creature mounting a similar assault, even though it was clear by now that the archaeosaurs were more agile than their bulk gave them any right to be. Shoulder cannon barked, and both missed the waving head as it turned on its sinuous neck to follow the Warlord. Gaerius was dimly aware of the other archaeosaur trampling the fallen Principio non Tactica, rending and splitting the defenceless carapace. Briefly the lasgun hissed out again, but it was unable to target the beast.
Then Gaerius glimpsed a final indignity. Men were spilling out of the cracks in the casing like maggots from a festering body. And he could see what they were fleeing from: a blinding-white, ravening glow in the interior. The Warlord’s fission reactor was in meltdown, its fuel elements fused together by the force of the archaeosaur’s trampling.
Now Gaerius knew what had happened to the Gargants. And now, its business finished, the second archaeosaur was coming to join its brother. It was frightening how the mountain of an animal was still able to move with great chunks torn out of it by four repeat shoulder cannon and two heavy lasguns. It seemed the monsters were unstoppable. The bones of the beast were even exposed, a lustrous grey in colour. Gaerius could well believe they were made of iron or even steel.
‘Aim right, Moderati! Aim right! Look out for the tail!’
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The warning came too late. The tail lashed out swifter than the eye could follow and struck the Titan on one knee. The Warlord juddered. A muffled battle report came from Chief Engineer Moriens.
‘Left leg disabled.’
Despite himself terror struck into Princeps Gaerius’s soul. His Titan had lost mobility. And two archaeosaurs were bent on toppling and trampling it.
‘The brain!’ he insisted. ‘You must go for the brain!’
Weapons Moderati Knifesmith did not need urging. He was still trying to target the head on which Guardsman Leche was strapped like a sacrificial victim. It was easier as the beast came closer. With a feeling of desperation he watched shell after shell bounce off the giant skull. Was there any brain in it? Was it pure metal-laden bone through and through?
Tactical Officer Viridens shifted the Warlord’s good leg, attempting as best he could to brace the Titan against the strain that was to come. Both archaeosaurs spewed streams of burning phosphorus-acetylene, temporarily blinding the bridge crew. When the white-hot fumes cleared they faced the dreadful sight of two battle-beasts rearing on their hind legs, blotting out the sky.
Moderati Knifesmith realised that everything now depended on him, and that it would all be over in the next few seconds. In an act of intense concentration, he divided his firepower. He aimed one shoulder cannon up at the lower jaw of the first archaeosaur. At the same time, he levelled the belly lasgun and the other shoulder cannon together at the same target: one of the deep wounds in the second, grievously injured animal.
The hiss and racket of the weapons was brief. A single shell passed through the archaeosaur’s jaw and entered the skull to explode within it and blast it to pieces. Meantime both cannon shells and laser beam ate their way deep into the innards of the other beast, inflicting explosion after explosion at the centre of the massive body. The enormous spine shattered. Both beasts fell, one soundlessly, one with mangled roars, to lie writhing in its death throes.
