Damocles

by Various

  ‘Ambaghai is correct,’ he said, decision made. ‘The enemy seek to deny us our advantage, to limit our mobility by pinning us here. Those out there are merely the hand on our throat, but the blade will be descending soon enough.’ He looked around the room. ‘Wheel-and-spoke, my brothers. Cemakar, you and Jebe will be the wheel. Ambaghai, you and I shall be the spoke.’ He looked at Cemakar, who was already making as if to argue. ‘You will punch a hole through the tau lines with our armour, and half the bikes. Take Hasik. He’s our best rider, and he’s outrun the tau more than once. Don’t stop until you make contact with Gharchai.’ He looked at Ambaghai. ‘And we will hold the tau’s attention here. If that becomes untenable, we shall ride out after you.’

  ‘We’ve got a load of Castellans in the Whirlwind ready to fire,’ Cemakar said, begrudgingly. ‘That will buy us some time. But mark me, when they come, it’ll be with those blasted two-legged tanks of theirs.’ The others in the room growled or muttered at the mention of the enemy aburgma - the battlesuits. Such constructs were the bane of any battlefield, their destructive potential rivalled only by that of the Imperial Knights.

  Kor’sarro smiled. ‘I’m counting on it.’

  ‘This is the most powerful weapon in the universe,’ Thursk hefted his axe and spun it in a tight figure eight as he followed Ambaghai out of the command centre. ‘Axes can topple empires. They kill kings, daemons and monsters. On Phobian, axes are passed down from father to daughter, mother to son. This is the axe my mother used, and her father before her. She gave it to me, the day I was chosen to become a god of war. And though it has changed, as I have changed, it is still my axe.’ He glanced at Ambaghai. ‘Do you understand, Chogorian?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ambaghai said. He smiled. ‘However, your axe is here, and the enemy is, as yet, over there.’ He gestured at the outer wall. ‘Hence my question: would you like a bolter, cousin? Bok will not mind.’ He extended the bolter towards Thursk again. He was holding two, both claimed from the White Scars who’d fallen earlier.

  Thursk took the weapon. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Which one was Bok?’ He checked the clip.

  ‘The dead one,’ Ambaghai said. He looked away.

  Thursk looked at him, and then back at the bolter in his hands. It was an ornate thing, lovingly edged in brass and silver, with a dragon’s head embossed on the barrel. An iron ring, heavy with the teeth of orks, had been attached to the grip, which was plated with bone, likely taken from the same orks who’d provided the teeth. ‘On Phobian, we left the bodies of the dead for the bats,’ he said.

  ‘We did the same on Chogoris. Save we left them for the great eagles.’ Ambaghai sniffed. ‘Or we burned them.’

  ‘Fire attracted the bats,’ Thursk said.

  ‘I can see where that would be a difficulty,’ Ambaghai said. ‘Were they big, these bats?’

  ‘Fairly,’ Thursk said. ‘They ate horses.’

  ‘I’m given to understand there are large wolves on Fenris,’ Ambaghai said, after a moment. ‘They eat men, or so the Space Wolves claim.’

  Thursk made a rude sound. ‘Wolves,’ he said.

  ‘The sons of Russ are quite particular about their wolves,’ Ambaghai said. But he smiled as he said it. Thursk chuckled.

  ‘By the by, that was enlightening, back there,’ he said. The Stormseer looked at him, and the Dark Hunter held up a hand. ‘No mockery intended, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Among my brothers, command is not so fluid. One voice speaks, and all others listen.’

  ‘That has never been our way,’ Ambaghai said, somewhat chidingly, Thursk thought. ‘Even the great Jaghatai did not move without seeking council with his sub-khans. Men are not machines, cousin. They are not inclined to move in unison, or to act as one. A wise khan gives equal weight to every subordinate. He does not hesitate, but he considers, and then makes his decision accordingly, as every man must decide for himself to follow that decision. They must move as the spirit wills.’

  ‘By which you mean, they listen to you,’ Thursk said.

  ‘Of course,’ Ambaghai said, ‘Wasn’t that what I said? I speak for the spirits, after all.’ He spread his arms and sucked in a lungful of the harsh, cold air. ‘This is the best time, cousin. This is the right place for us. The battle’s red edge is our tent, our battle-brothers, our kinsmen, and the haze of war is our meat and drink.’

  ‘Did your spirits whisper that to you?’

  ‘Don’t they whisper the same to you?’ Ambaghai said, tugging on his beard with a flick of his wrist. ‘Other Chapters merely wage war, cousin. The White Scars are war. We are the crash, the noise, the thunder. We are the confusion, and the madness and the inevitable end. We are the Star-Hunt. Where we ride, worlds die.’

  ‘One side, Phobian,’ Jebe said, brushing past Thursk, before the latter could reply. ‘Some of us have aliens to kill.’ The champion bounded out of the command centre, a spring in his step and a feral, childlike grin on his face.

  ‘He looks cheerful,’ Thursk said.

  ‘Of course he’s cheerful. He’s going to get to kill something,’ Cemakar grunted, joining Thursk and Ambaghai. Cemakar looked at the Stormseer. ‘Guard him well, Stormseer,’ he said. His face wrinkled up, as if he were uncomfortable saying the words.

  ‘Always,’ Ambaghai said. He inclined his head. Cemakar nodded tersely and stumped away. Thursk watched Cemakar follow Jebe towards the Razorback. Kor’sarro’s second in command barked orders with rapidity, gesticulating about him for emphasis. Of the two squads of White Scars that had ridden in the Rhino, one was staying behind, while the other was splitting its strength between the two Rhinos, both of which would be providing the muscle for the breakout attempt. The squad who’d come in the Razorback was staying behind as well. The transports were all but useless in the bastion, save as improvised barricades, and Kor’sarro had other plans for the defence of the place.

  While their commanders conferred, the White Scars had dragged rubble into position to create a series of zigzag strongpoints close to the command centre. As he watched, one of the White Scars used a meltagun to sear several sections of stone together into a crude bulwark. Thursk realised that they had no plan to block the hole in the wall, and immediately grasped the implication. The tau had a number of troops with the capability of entering the bastion by air, if they so wished, making the wall all but useless for defensive purposes. But those troops that couldn’t fly would be drawn to the gaping hole in the defences as their easiest point of ingress. The makeshift strongpoints were arranged in such a way so as to catch the inevitable assault in a killing field. It was a brutally efficient means of utilising their surroundings, and Thursk couldn’t help but be impressed. His own battle-brothers would have ignored the wall, but held the gap, leaving the courtyard empty, so as to draw in the flyers for dispatch.

  But that was the White Scars way, as he was coming to learn. They fought efficiently, utilising the least amount of effort for the maximum gain. It was the predator’s way, not the warrior’s. Bait and switch, induce and gut, bleed the enemy as much as possible before landing the killing blow. The tau fought in a similar manner, and he wondered whether Kor’sarro or Ambaghai had noticed. He refrained from mentioning it, for fear of giving insult. The White Scars weren’t as touchy as some of their Successors, but they could be oddly defensive when their way of war was called into question.

  He moved out into the courtyard, taking it all in. The Rhinos were stripped of everything that wasn’t necessary for the assault. In the field, the White Scars used their transports as mobile armouries, loading them up with anything they might require, so that they only rarely had to stop and resupply. Frag and krak grenades, replacement storm bolters, and packs of ammunition were brought into the entryway of the command centre, which had been converted into a temporary armoury. The bikes were stowed behind the strongpoints, for easy access. The courtyard was soon filled with the growl of engines, as the transports readi
ed themselves for departure. Once a decision was made, the White Scars acted on it quickly.

  The white-armoured Space Marines moved briskly, and more than one sang softly to themselves as they worked. They spoke to each other, joked and laughed, and the sense of camaraderie amongst the Star-Hunt was obvious. A hand settled on his shoulder. Thursk turned, expecting to see Ambaghai. Instead, Kor’sarro Khan stood behind him.

  ‘If you would go, now is the time, cousin,’ he said.

  Thursk hesitated. ‘Go?’

  ‘With Jebe and Cemakar,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘If I were in your place, I would not wish to be trapped here. And you are not under my command. You are here to observe, and learn, and if you would see us at our best, you must see us at the attack.’

  Thursk looked at him. ‘In the Dellrond Campaign, my battle-brothers and I held the entrance to the Cathedral of the Emperor Ossified for five years against the greenskins,’ he said. He slung the bolter Ambaghai had given him over his shoulder. ‘By the end, we were using their bones as clubs.’ Kor’sarro said nothing. Thursk took that as an invitation to continue. ‘I am here to learn of your traditions, and see how you wage war, to learn the ways of Chogoris, and to show fealty to the Khan-of-Khans.’ He hefted his axe. ‘But this here, in this place, is how a Phobian wages war. Ambaghai said that the White Scars are war itself. If that is true, so too are the Dark Hunters, and I would show you that a son of Phobian can stand at the red edge as well as a son of Chogoris.’ He extended his axe. ‘And if I must fall where I stand to show you that, it is a small price to pay.’

  Kor’sarro smiled. He laughed, grabbed Thursk’s helmeted head in both hands and brought their heads together. ‘Show me, brother. And then after, perhaps I will teach you to ride, hey?’ He released Thursk and stepped back. ‘Come, brother. We have blood to shed, for the Great Khan and the Emperor.’

  Kor’sarro turned away from the Dark Hunter and raised his hands. The noise-level in the courtyard dimmed instantly. Outside the walls, he could hear the gathering storm. The xenos were readying themselves for their first assault. It would be artillery first, he knew. That was their way, and he did not begrudge them it. He looked around. ‘Go, and laugh while you kill,’ was all he said. The engines of the transports roared, and his men cheered.

  He unholstered his bolt pistol and trotted towards the wall. The Dark Hunter fell in beside him and Ambaghai as well. They, along with the remaining battle-brothers, would cover Cemakar’s assault. A Space Marine stalked past him, hefting one of the extra heavy bolters, loops of ammunition curling about him. The warrior caught his eye and patted the heavy weapon. ‘Honour of first blood, my khan,’ he asked. His tone was hopeful.

  ‘By all means, sing them a song of death, Godi,’ Kor’sarro said, recognising the White Scar. ‘Make it loud, and tuneful, eh?’

  ‘I’ll make it something cheerful as well, shall I, my khan?’ Godi said.

  Kor’sarro laughed and gestured to the wall. The Rhino that had been blocking it revved up, and pulled back, dislodging loose bits. Godi stepped into the breach and the heavy bolter roared. Without slowing his rate of fire, the White Scar stepped sideways, out of the breach. Another White Scar, carrying the second of the two replacement heavy bolters, followed suit, stepping out into the open, and then shuffling out of the path of the vehicles behind him. Spent shells dropped steaming to the snow from the feed-boxes of the heavy bolters.

  Past them, Kor’sarro saw camouflaged vehicles rising over the snow, weapons glowing with pale energy. Tau fire warriors, clad in white armour, hurled themselves to the ground, seeking cover. They’d been moving into position to make an assault, as he suspected. He wondered, idly, why they were called fire warriors. He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. There would be time for such thoughts later, once the enemy was defeated.

  The vehicles visible behind the fire warriors were mostly transports, but there was one bunker-buster, armed with the strongest energy weapons the aliens possessed, a Hammerhead, he thought it was called. Even when they’re being sneaky, they’re predictable, Kor’sarro thought. The tau forces were as dogmatic in their way as the warriors of Ultramar. That was both their strength, and their weakness. He slapped the hull of the Razorback. ‘Ride, brothers, ride and ravage!’

  As if in reply, the Razorback’s twin-linked heavy bolters roared, adding to the noise. Its driver gunned the engine and sent it rumbling forward out through the breach. Behind it, the Whirlwind fired a barrage of Castellans, littering the ground to either side of the breach with explosive mines. The Rhinos followed the Whirlwind, breaking to either side of the latter as they cleared the gap in order to cover it while it reloaded. The Rhinos’ storm bolters added their voices to the Razorback’s heavy bolters and the air was filled with scything death. Tau warriors died, torn apart by the explosive bolts. One of their transport vehicles slewed awkwardly aside and smashed up against the escarpment, exploding in a ball of fire. The flickering shapes which had sought to keep the White Scars pinned down revealed themselves as they fired at the transports.

  Kor’sarro gestured. ‘There, the sirguma!’ he roared. He’d been hoping they’d reveal themselves, if only long enough for the White Scars to teach them the price for doing so. Godi pivoted at his khan’s command, and the heavy bolter in his hands roared in harmony with the storm bolter from one of the Rhinos. The weird, bulky, insectile shapes of the armoured tau twitched and jerked as they were caught in the crossfire. Three of them fell, their armour sparking and hissing as it collapsed into mangled ruin. The others sped away, their forms blurring and vanishing in the still-falling snow that swirled thickly on the air.

  The four vehicles ploughed through the tau lines, the Razorback’s reinforced hull smashing aside a tau transport in a crash of metal. The tau were not swift to react, seemingly stunned by the sudden assault. Kor’sarro hesitated, wondering if they should press the attack, but the moment passed. The air was split by the whistle of turbines. Heavy shapes dropped down through the snow, and the ground shook with the impact. The hulking shapes of the enemy battlesuits advanced slowly through the whirling snow. At the sight of them, the tau fire warriors seemed to gather their courage, and they began to advance, their pulse rifles snapping.

  ‘Back inside, brothers,’ Kor’sarro said quietly, trusting in the vox-circuit to carry his words despite the noise of the advancing tau troops. ‘It’s time to bait the xenos into a trap of our own.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Reload! I want incendiaries to cover our flanks. Heat disrupts the xenos targeting scanners. Set this whole blasted ridge on fire if you have to,’ Cemakar roared into his comm-unit. Around him, the air was filled with the thrum of the powerful engines of the Hunter’s Stroke. Other than the crew, he and Jebe were the only passengers aboard the Razorback. His augmented hearing could pick up every grind of the treads and every squeal of the armoured plates flexing. Even the company’s Techmarines didn’t have Old Shatterhand’s ear for ailing pistons and fraying filters.

  He grinned to himself, but was careful not to let it show on his face. The children thought he didn’t know about their name for him. He flexed his hand, feeling the pull of old wounds beneath the white ceramite. He had almost lost it once, pulling a screaming, puling wet thing out of the corrupted chassis of one of the nightmare engines of the Great Enemy. He had torn the chassis open and plunged his hand through the acidic bile that had filled it, even as the engine had tried to scissor him in half with its battle-claw. It had been a necessity, at the time. Now it was a story, to be passed around the fire. Such was the way of it.

  Jebe grunted in disgust and Cemakar dropped his hand. ‘We shouldn’t be disrupting them. We should be attacking them,’ he said. ‘I thought we were fighting, old man.’ The champion crouched awkwardly in his seat, his sword across his knees. Why he didn’t just sheath the damn thing, Cemakar didn’t know. Nor did he bother to ask. The only thing more worthless than Jebe’s
opinion was… well, there wasn’t really anything more worthless than that.

  ‘We are fighting them, or did you not notice the gunfire?’ Cemakar spat. He paused to glare at the champion. Cemakar had seen a hundred warriors take up the company’s honour for their own, and of that hundred, Jebe was easily the most annoying. He was the youngest to hold that position since Kor’sarro himself, and his trophy-pole was overbalanced with skulls and scalps. He saw a mulish glint flare in the champion’s eyes.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Jebe said, ‘We left the khan. We should not have done that!’

  ‘No, we shouldn’t have,’ Cemakar said. ‘But he is khan. And we have our task. Let us try and accomplish it with what grace we may.’ He looked hard at the champion. ‘Withdraw, and then return. That is our way. Strike, ride and strike again.’ He turned and hammered on the reinforced turret, where the Razorback’s gunner was busy firing at the tau that had pursued them. They’d managed to pull roughly half of the tau force in their wake. Everything that could keep up with them had come after them. That lessened the pressure on the khan, but it was going to make contacting Gharchai almost impossible. ‘Keep the khamar from getting too close to Yesugei’s Teeth, Mongke, or I’ll have your topknot,’ he said, referring to the Whirlwind. They needed the battle tank in one piece and functional. He turned and made his way to the driver’s compartment. ‘What’s waiting for us,’ he said, leaning through the hatch.

  ‘Our sensors and communications are still jammed,’ the driver said. ‘We’re charging blind.’ He paused, and then added, ‘Not that that’s anything new.’

  ‘So long as we keep charging,’ Cemakar grunted, dropping a hand on the Space Marine’s helmet and giving it a shake. ‘Don’t stop, Tolui. Our khan’s life depends on our speed.’

  ‘Speed I can give you. Just don’t ask me to get us there in one piece,’ Tolui said. Cemakar could hear the grin in his voice, even though his features were hidden beneath his helmet. He nodded, pleased. It was good that Tolui was cheerful. War was a craft, and a craftsman must take pleasure in his work, else why do it?