“Second unit, yield the parallel!” ordered Mahora in the earpiece of each marine, and then followed that with, “Prepare the Blackouts for deployment!”
Ajax and Boone, with a score of other first unit marines, reached the second parallel and immediately began working to prepare its defense.
Only a handful of marines were already in position on the second parallel and as the marines from first unit poured in, the trench line began to bristle with rifles.
Boone slung his empty launcher and drew his sidearm, a pistol equivalent of the pulse rifles carried by the other marines, smaller in bolt caliber but it still packed quite a punch.
Ajax took a few seconds to swap out his carbon mag for a fresh one. While he still had plenty of ammunition left in the first, the next wave of enemies might not give him the chance to switch later.
“Ajax!” said a friendly voice to his right, and as the marine turned he saw his comrade, Sharif, standing on a firestep near the connecting trench, another rifle and a member of the casual circle of friends that all soldiers formed naturally over the course of any war. “Where’s Yao?”
“He didn’t make it this time,” answered Boone over his shoulder as he planted his feet at the edge of the connecting trench, seemingly having made his choice to defend that position, considering that his pistol would not do as well as a rifle on the open ground above. “You seen Hart anywhere?”
“I haven’t, but that’s kind of the point, right?” answered Sharif before gesturing back towards the anti-air gun battery up the hill, “Some trouble at Watch Tower I think, so the jarl sent him to check it out.”
“It did look like Tower got hit pretty hard with the spore barrage,” said Ajax as marines from second wave started to make their way down the connecting tunnel.
BLACKOUTS
“Guns up! Here they come!” bellowed Jarl Mahora as the large veteran warrior emerged from the press of marines in the trench to take a position near the opening of the connecting tunnel. “Blackouts into position!”
Ajax stepped aside, as did the other marines, with a mixed sense of reverence and fear as the troopers known as ‘Blackouts’ were led down the trench and to the connecting tunnels by their minders.
Every Einherjar was, for all intents and purposes, the same man he was when he first accepted the torc, the minders were just average marines, but the Blackouts were something else entirely.
Each one had been a marine, but the rigors of this endless war with the Garm had taken a toll on their minds, their very spirits, as much as it had their bodies. Blackouts were marines who had succumbed to what had everyone called ‘the black’, which was an unquenchable murderous rage that stayed with a marine no matter how many times the torc worked its miracle.
They had to be separated from the other marines, and kept imprisoned until those in command chose to unleash them upon the enemy. The Blackouts wore the same ceramic armor as the other marines, but instead of the dull camo patterns of the standard armor, theirs was painted in matte black, a symbol of their rage.
Two minders restrained the Blackouts by staffs attached to rivets in a collar at the base of their neck, which kept them from being within arm’s reach of anyone. The Blackouts possessed such an abiding hatred for the Garm, they would kill or injure any marine that stood between them and the swarm and it was best to keep them well managed until deployment.
Sharif and the others on the firesteps opened fire and Ajax knew that the first parallel was lost. The swarm was already crossing the no man’s land between the parallels, which meant that they’d filled the first with countless bodies of Garm and marine. Ajax could see in the murky distance several marines rushing down the connecting trench, the enemy only a few steps behind.
As he watched, a ripper drone got close enough to launch itself into the air with its powerful legs and down onto the back of a fleeing marine. The drone’s scythe like appendages sheared off pieces of the ceramic armor while it held the marine to the ground with its other limbs and its very weight. In seconds, the drone had worked its blades through the gaps in the armor and shredded the man within.
Ajax and another marine raised their rifles and blasted the drone to pieces, taking care not to catch the downed marine in the crossfire. Ajax kept firing into the trench, having trouble telling what kind of Garm he was firing upon in the gloom. He paused in his shooting as one of the minders shouldered him aside.
At a nod from Mahora, a third minder placed a heavy-duty automatic plasma pistol in one of the Blackout’s hands and a forty-inch titanium blade in the other that looked more like a meat cleaver to Ajax than a proper sword.
The Blackout shook with rage and Ajax could tell that the voice mics inside the helmet had been intentionally deactivated, to spare the other marines on the company channel the insane ramblings of the Blackout, who spoke only of the explicit ways in which they wanted to kill Garm.
The swarm poured through the trench even as the rifles on the firesteps did their best to repel the monsters that attacked them across open ground.
“Deploy Blackouts!” ordered Mahora, giving the signal. The minders who had positioned Blackouts at the opening of each connecting trench released the catch on their charge’s collar. “Eight-man counter attack in his wake! Step up marines!”
Ajax steadied himself as the Blackout sprinted into the connecting trench, knowing that by standing at the opening and not ascending the firing step he’d basically volunteered himself for the counter attack. That was the nature of trench warfare against the swarm, the two opposing forces would grind against one another, pushing each other back and forth across the battlefield, until one or the other force was either obliterated or yielded the ground. It was a tedious and mind-numbingly gory way to wage war, and ultimately the only effective method of pushing back against the swarm.
Ajax gritted his teeth and tightened his shoulders as he watched the Blackout collide with the enemy, knowing that any second Mahora was going to launch the counter attack.
The Blackout, whose name had been obscured by the paint on his armor and the madness burning through his mind, hurled himself into battle. He raised his machine pistol and squeeze the trigger, spitting a tempest of bolts into the writhing mass of alien beasts.
The machine pistols used by the Blackouts were single use weapons, holding just enough ammunition to reach peak core temperature before exhausting the magazine. Constructing them in this way, without regard for damage done to the internal components, allowed the Blackouts to fire nearly three times the bolts, without venting, before the weapon was useless.
The Blackout never broke stride, rushing headlong towards the enemy, spraying rounds as he leapt over the smoldering corpses of those already slain.
“Marines on me!” growled Jarl Mahora as he gripped his pulse rifle and started marching into the connecting trench.
Ajax knew that the marines on the firesteps would be doing their best to keep the swarm from reaching the second parallel. Most of those would-be ripper drones and gorehounds, either survivors of the first swarm or more likely a reserve force that followed close on the heels of the initial wave. There might be worse creatures out there, but for a force assaulting a secondary objective like Hydra Company’s position, this was about what he expected. Ajax trusted his fellow marines to keep the shots coming and to hold the attention of the enemy to prevent them from flanking the counter attack.
The marine pushed himself to keep pace with Mahora as the jarl followed behind the Blackout’s wake of carnage. The Blackout had only been engaged with the enemy for a few seconds, but already he’d mowed through a dozen of the beasts. Ajax caught a glimpse of the former marine dropping his spent machine pistol in favor of his sword. The Blackout spun on his heels and swept the blade around in a wide arc that covered the width of the trench, cleaving two ripper drones into pieces as the precision sharpened blade passed through them.
As the Blackout slashed his way through another drone, Ajax thought that if the warrior had been facing human
beings the fear of his bloody display would have driven the enemy into retreat. Sadly, there would never be any such luck against the Garm, for the alien swarm knew no fear and they attacked him without regard for their own survival.
The Blackout reached the opening of the connecting trench and there his rampage was cut short. A gorehound had taken up position at the mouth of the connecting trench. The creature’s weapon appendage roared, spewing out a great gout of wriggling larva that swept the Blackout off his feet.
In the blink of an eye, the larvae that had not splattered against the ceramic armor of the former marine struck at the few gaps in the joints of his armor and chewed their way into the man’s body.
Each of the creatures was born exclusively to feed and though they were only perhaps a centimeter long the creatures ate their way through flesh as fast as any bullet could rend. As they chewed, their bodies bloated with the feast until they burst apart, creating wet secondary explosions inside the Blackout’s already ravaged body.
Mahora did not allow the ambush to go unanswered and pounded a bolt through the gorehound’s neck, swiftly decapitating it as the plasma burned through it. Ajax and the rest of the marines emerged from the connecting trench to form a tight wedge of rifles that started firing upon the gorehounds that stubbornly remained in the trench.
Ajax could read the fate of second unit in an instant, knowing that most of them had sold their lives dearly on the line before Mahora ever called for full retreat. This sacrifice was by design of course, as the eventual retreat of the marines pulled the swarm into the trenches themselves, their raw hunger driving the monsters to take the most direct path towards their prey. With the ripper drones and gorehounds bottled up in the connecting trench, they were set for slaughter by the Blackout and the resulting counter attack had a chance of retaking the trench.
“WarGarm!” shouted a marine and Ajax turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of the creature before being knocked aside by Mahora.
The WarGarm were the elite warriors of the swarm, nightmare amalgamations of the lesser broods that stood easily three meters in height. The creatures were covered in armor like that of the gorehounds, sported scythe appendages like the ripper drones, and carried ferocious projectile weapons in their awful hands. Where the other broods fought in groups, the WarGarm stalked the battlefields alone, fighting to support the greater actions of their more numerous kin.
The monster’s weapon emitted a high pitched keening noise and coughed up several twelve inch projectiles that had always reminded Ajax of the quills belonging to the porcupines of Earth.
The marine who had first seen the creature was now riddled with spines and had fallen to the ground, jackknifing with spasms that were likely the result of the horrific toxins contained within the already deadly projectiles. Mahora took two in the side, but they appeared to be embedded in his armor and did not seem to have pierced his body glove to sink into his flesh, though the ceramic was cracked and would need replacing.
Boone shouted and started firing his pistol, but the creature’s body armor was sufficiently stout to deflect the shots. The WarGarm exchanged fire with Boone and another marine who had lent his pulse rifle to the fight, the latter managing to blow apart one of the WarGarm’s scythe appendages before he was pierced with four spines and splashed down into the mud.
From where he’d landed after Mahora’s shove, Ajax could see that the other marines were busily shooting it out with several gorehounds on the other end of the trench, one of the marines already writhing in the mud as he was consumed by the larva rounds.
Mahora pushed himself off Ajax and raised his rifle to fire from a crouched position. His bolt rounds spanked off the WarGarm’s armor but he managed to spoil its aim. A line of spines sunk into the trench wall above Boone, a salvo that would surely have killed him.
“Ajax, get that chain-fire online and turn it back on the second parallel!” snapped the jarl as he and Boone, who had taken up his fallen comrade’s rifle, concentrated their fire on the WarGarm, driving the beast into the far wall of the trench and destroying its weapon.
Ajax did his best to ignore the violence around him as he climbed the short ladder leading up to the gun emplacement. When he reached the top rung, he saw the mangled corpse of the gunner spread across the deck. Once he stood on the emplacement he had to kick over the charred remains of a ripper drone so that he could swivel the weapon back towards the second parallel. The flares that had illuminated no man’s land were sinking to the ground, though in their dying light and the partial illumination of a fresh batch of flares shot from the second parallel, Ajax could see the mess that had been made of the swarm.
The ground in front of the first parallel was choked with corpses. On top of them writhed the broken bodies of the many gorehounds and ripper drones that had been wounded, each one driven to carry on despite the heinous damage they’d been dealt.
Mercifully, the strength of the swarm seemed to have been spent on seizing the first parallel and the aborted assault on the second parallel, as no more enemies charged out of the darkness to reinforce the beleaguered Garm that clung to their briefly won territory.
Ajax thumbed the ignition and the chain-fire snarled to life as the marine heaved the gun around on the swivel so that he could bring it to bear on the second parallel.
Ajax took in the sight of the battleground. While there were far fewer rifles defending the second parallel and no chain-fires, the marines were keeping up a steady rate of disciplined shooting that had so far managed to keep the swarm from overrunning the trench.
Mortars would have been an effective way of defending Trench 16, but prolonged galactic warfare and the unique complications of combat against the swarm had made mortars ineffective, not to mention the Garm’s unique ability to shrug off concussive damage that would otherwise kill most organisms.
Ajax peered through the target finder and chambered the first of two remaining ammo drums. It made sense, he thought, sighting in on a clutch of gorehounds who were exchanging fire with a few rifles on the edges of the illumination offered by the flares, that the marines would find that the best way to fight the Garm was to burn them.
Ajax squeezed the trigger and the chain-fire belched out dozens of bolt rounds that quickly reduced half of the gorehounds to quivering lumps of smoldering alien flesh. The remaining gorehounds were thrown into confusion by the crossfire, allowing the rifles on the second parallel to exploit the moment and wipe them out with concentrated fire.
Ajax swept the barrel of the chain-fire across no man’s land, taking care not to fire into the connecting trench, and blasted at clusters of Garm that were still out in the open. Though it had cost them lives, thought Ajax as he drilled another group of ripper drones, it was good that the War-Garm had made an appearance.
The Einherjar had learned early in the war that the swarm always followed the biggest and the baddest bug in the area and that usually meant the WarGarm. By having Mahora and the others tangling with it down in the trench and the counter attack in general, the swarm now caught in no man’s land was in a state of disarray. Some were far enough into the fray they continued to assault the second parallel, while others fought in the trench against the counter attack. Still more seemed to be rushing towards the area where the WarGarm struggled for its very life.
Ajax couldn’t see the beast, but he could hear its pained bleating over the sound of gunfire, and as expected, he was met with groups of Garm attempting to reach it.
He was being as selective as he could with the chain-fire, doing his best to vent the heat, but as he kept peppering the exposed enemy, Ajax began to wonder why he hadn’t heard anything from the Watchman since the call for flares had gone out. Then he caught sight of Hart in his target finder. It was all he could do to release the trigger when the scout sniper entered his field of fire.
Ajax blinked. He’d swear a long, dark shape had slithered into the gloom and vanished outside the half-light of the flares, then he lost si
ght of Hart as well.
“Hydra Company, leave rearguard in position and advance on the first parallel!” boomed Jarl Mahora from somewhere down in the trench below. Ajax saw through his target finder as dozens of marines emerged from their firesteps and started marching across no man’s land.
Ajax only dared to fire upon individual Garm for a few more moments, before abandoning the chain-fire in favor of his rifle. It would not do to cause any friendly fire incidents and the chain-fire had done its job beautifully. Now it was on individual rifles to engage the enemy and secure the trench.
Without the target finder, Ajax couldn’t see the advancing marines, though he knew from his own training and experience that they were marching in a straight line, like an execution squad or the military formations of ancient times. They would sweep across no man’s land, herding the Garm that remained, finishing off the wounded, and then re-taking the trench. Ajax could do little from where he was, and determined that he was needed back in the trench.
The marine leapt off the gun emplacement and moved across the lip of the trench on the Garm side. He had his back to the enemy’s frontline, however distant, but did his best not to be afraid of that nagging truth. From his vantage point Ajax saw that the jarl and his counter attack had been able to finish off the War-Garm, turning its body into smoldering pulp and bits of shattered armor. The marine snapped the rifle to his shoulder and put two bolt rounds into a gorehound he saw rising from beneath a pile of Garm and marine corpses, then continued his march across the length of the trench.
The swarm was a single-minded thing, and once it launched an attack all the creatures would press onwards until the very last one died or victory was achieved. While this made for terrifying battles at the outset, if the marines could hold out long enough to break the strength of the swarm against their ramparts, much of the battle would continue as it was now. This terrifying blitzkrieg of a battle had transformed into a seek and destroy mission, as the once mighty Garm swarm had been reduced to small clutches of beasts or individual monsters that yet stalked the field in search of prey.
Extinction Fleet 1: Space Marine Ajax Page 3
