Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  ‘Perhaps they are deploying heavier elements because we threaten a core world of their empire,’ said Aordus, walking over to join them.

  ‘Or perhaps because they have learned of us,’ added Numitor.

  ‘So we strike from above,’ said Aordus. ‘We’ll have time to make the kill before their reinforcements show up.’

  ‘We cannot rely on vertical envelopment in every engagement, Aordus,’ said Sicarius. ‘Especially with our fuel reserves low. We will have to improvise.’ Numitor heard a hard edge enter his fellow sergeant’s tone. ‘But not by using xenos tech as our own.’

  ‘It was a single instance,’ said Numitor. ‘A decision in the heat of the moment. And it worked, didn’t it? Without that shield generator disc, we too would likely be languishing at the bottom of that reservoir.’

  ‘A victory won with the weapons of the foe is another kind of defeat.’

  ‘So now he quotes Guilliman?’ asked Numitor incredulously. ‘After we left half our brothers behind? If we had just stuck to the Codex in the first place we could have destroyed that thing without resorting to desperate measures.’

  ‘It was a decision in the heat of the moment,’ mocked Sicarius. ‘Besides, you have no right to lecture me about adhering to the Codex Astartes, Numitor. Captain Atheus made it plain he did not approve of my recent departure, and has admonished me accordingly. But I wonder how he would look upon your appropriation of xenotech?’

  The sound of jump pack engines echoed around the ruined dome.

  ‘Just leave it, Cato,’ said Numitor. ‘We have company. The good sort.’

  Assault Marines roared down through the shattered dome in two groups of four, blue trails of fire guttering as they landed with an ear-pounding series of impacts. They straightened, mag-locking their smoking bolt pistols and gore-spattered chainswords as they greeted their brethren all around.

  ‘Sergeant Sicarius,’ said the tallest of their number, his flamer trailing wisps of smoke as he propped it against his shoulder. His power armour was scorched almost black, paint-layers flaking in the wind as if it was slowly disintegrating.

  ‘Brother Kaetoros,’ said Sicarius. ‘You found us. Well met.’

  ‘Not well enough,’ said Kaetoros. The timbre of his voice and the aggression in his body language was obvious, but just shy of an actual challenge.

  Sicarius felt Numitor step forward slightly to take position at his side. He was glad of the support, in truth. Kaetoros’ attitude was close to insubordination, and Sicarius had no wish to discipline him in front of another squad from the Eighth.

  ‘You left us behind,’ said Kaetoros.

  ‘Because you were too slow,’ replied Sicarius. He set his shoulders, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘The others thought on their feet and gained the vehicle. Why couldn’t you?’

  ‘We were covering Colnid and Denturis,’ he said coldly. ‘Acting as a team.’

  ‘It’s common enough to form combat squads in the heat of battle, Kaetoros,’ said Glavius, moving over to stand at Sicarius’ other shoulder.

  ‘A combat squad is formed when a full ten-strong squad is divided into two constituent five-man squads,’ quoted Brother Veletan, from Kaetoros’ side. His tone was as polished as his power armour. ‘Each component is given a separate task or duty that the greater squad could not achieve in its own right. However, sergeant, our squad was split into one group of six and one of four. Ergo…’

  ‘Yes, I get it, Veletan,’ hissed Sicarius. ‘Sergeants are entrusted with a degree of autonomy. I should not have to defend my decision.’ His nerves were always put on edge a little by Veletan’s habit of checking every act against the Codex Astartes. The thought of his battle-brother in a debrief with Captain Atheus did not sit well.

  ‘I do not see Austos here,’ said Kaetoros. ‘Did he fall?’

  ‘He did,’ confirmed Sicarius. ‘He was taken by a point-blank plasma blast.’

  ‘And was his body retrieved?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Sicarius. ‘His remains were not recoverable. He died fighting, may the Emperor guide his soul.’

  There was a moment of silence and reflection as the Assault Marines dwelt on the loss of their brother. During the fight over the reservoir he had lost Endrion, Austos and Dalaton. The recovery of their gene-seed looked unlikely.

  ‘Has the captain spoken to you?’ asked Kaetoros, his anger replaced by flat pragmatism at the news of Austos’ death. ‘We cannot reach him.’

  ‘Atheus held court less than an hour ago,’ said Sicarius, ‘though we too have lost contact. We must presume the worst. Last time we spoke, he ordered us to cleave to the Codex at all times.’

  ‘The captain, wise as ever,’ said Brother Duolor, checking the readouts on his plasma pistol. His strange backwards syntax was typical of the Ultramarian garden world Iax, but Sicarius had never quite got used to it. On the oceanic planet of Talassar, anything other than classical Macraggian was frowned on to the point of practically being illegal.

  ‘The foe’s measure has yet to be taken, at least in full, Sergeant Sicarius,’ Duolor continued. ‘Perhaps this is not a time to improvise.’

  ‘Alright!’ protested Sicarius. ‘We lost Austos, yes, and some of your squad too. But I have had censure enough today. Warriors die. Space Marines die. And when pitted against the might of empires, there are times when their bodies cannot be recovered. We are no stranger to that truth.’

  ‘Squad Vengrus maintains that you and Numitor faced only a single warsuit,’ said Kaetoros.

  ‘And that single warsuit was the lord of the entire xenos warrior caste,’ said Numitor. ‘An exceptionally skilled foe, armed with the finest wargear the tau can forge. We overcame him nonetheless.’

  ‘Atheus has ordered us to finish what we started, and bring back the tau leader’s corpse,’ said Sicarius. ‘He would not have done so unless he considered the xenos warlord a priority target.’

  There was silence as the sergeant’s words sank in.

  ‘We cannot stand divided,’ he continued. ‘Slay the enemy’s command, and the rest will be cast into disarray.’

  ‘This we know,’ said Duolor. ‘This the Codex teaches us.’

  ‘When the foe is guided by a great leader, strike him down, even should the cost be high,’ quoted Brother Veletan. ‘Sever the head of the serpent, and the body will die.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Sicarius. ‘But rest assured, our blades will find more than just the commander we fought over the reservoir.’

  ‘Speak on,’ said Kaetoros.

  ‘If we track him down at the right moment,’ said Numitor, ‘he will likely be surrounded by advisors, lieutenants, and high-level operatives from the other castes.’

  ‘And we will bring death to them all,’ said Sicarius, relishing every word.

  Words of grudging agreement were murmured around the interior of the dome.

  ‘It could potentially do the entire caste system irrevocable damage, to cut the high command from each of them,’ said Duolor. ‘As a plan, it is sound enough.’

  ‘So how do we find this xenos warlord?’ asked Kaetoros. ‘Do you have a location?’

  ‘We have a precise bearing,’ said Sicarius. ‘The vector of his ship as he made his retreat in extremis, and the geostation points to take it from. He was wounded, and badly. His pilot would have made directly for a facility large enough to save his life.’

  ‘It is also likely his officers and advisors will still attend him there,’ said Numitor. ‘We can extrapolate his journey, and when our path crosses a major xenostructure, we hit it with everything we have.’

  ‘A plan has been devised for this pursuit, I presume?’ said Kaetoros. ‘Something that will keep xenos pilots from simply picking us off en route?’

  ‘Underground,’ said Numitor. ‘We go underground. That should get us much of the way there. They�
��ve bombed the translocator network flat – the tau, not the Navy. That tells us they want us to stay out of that region. And if this place is anything like Vespertine, there will be a honeycomb pattern of dwelling places that run underneath the surface, even under the reservoirs. Builder-caste facilities, perhaps even an extensive subterranean arterial.’

  ‘It could get us out of the city, at least,’ agreed Brother Magros, moving beside Numitor to look out at the urban sprawl. ‘It is a sound course, sergeant. In all my twenty-eight years fighting the alien I have not seen a xenos metropolis with as much underground substructure as this.’

  ‘And you think the enemy commander you fought will still be there?’ said Kaetoros, incredulity in his tone. ‘It is unlikely he will be good enough to wait for us.’

  ‘Even if he has left,’ said Numitor, ‘if the place is a large enough facility to repair his command warsuit, with upper echelon presence and medicae staff that can swiftly get him back into the fray…’

  ‘…then when we start killing his friends,’ finished Sicarius, slamming a fist into his open palm, ‘he’ll come running soon enough.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Numitor.

  ‘Even if we are that lucky,’ said Kaetoros, ‘we’ll have to breach a heavily defended xenos fortress to get to him. We’ll likely be outnumbered hundreds to one.’

  ‘We’ll find a way to deal with that en route. And since when have the Eighth ever let the numbers of the enemy stand in their way?’

  Kaetoros had no answer to that.

  There was a long moment of silence as the squads digested the plan and ran their own mental theoreticals.

  ‘Any other objections to Numitor’s course?’ asked Sicarius.

  ‘This time,’ said Kaetoros, his eyes boring into Sicarius’ own, ‘we stay together.’

  ‘Yes, brother,’ said Sicarius. ‘You have made your point, loud and clear.’

  ‘We are mustered, then, and we have a plan,’ said Numitor. ‘Let’s move out.’

  ‘Keep your eyes open for entrance points that can get us underground,’ said Sicarius. ‘Oh, and Kaetoros,’ he added, looking over his shoulder as his jump pack roared into readiness, ‘do try to keep up.’

  Sicarius shot like a bullet out into the city, the rest of his squad engaging their jump packs and leaping from the shattered dome into the hexagonal plazas below.

  Numitor ran two steps and threw himself after the sergeant with arms outstretched, body canted to counterbalance the weight of his power fist. A sharp blast from his jump pack and he was clear, sailing over the curving shoulders of the building in the lee of the shattered dome, then freefalling towards the debris-strewn plaza below.

  Speed was one of the Eighth Company’s most potent weapons. The vigour and focus of each new assault was a combination that usually broke their enemies in the first few minutes of combat. Cato Sicarius revelled in being the fastest in his squad, but in combat Numitor could match his fellow sergeant blade to blade, for a time at least. He had tested that theory in the practice cages many times. Without his cumbersome powered gauntlet slowing him down, they were close to evenly matched.

  A burst from his turbines and Numitor was alongside his fellow sergeant. They brought their legs forward as one, another blast of fuel slowing their descent at the very last second so their landing did not shiver their bones. The sudden impact of ceramite boots shattered the tau plaza’s rockcrete-like surface instead. Hairline cracks spread out with the force of each Space Marine’s landing.

  In scant moments the Assault squads were airborne again, each battle-brother engaging his pack to roar in a low leap to the other side of the plaza. Sicarius was at the fore, wan sunlight glinting from the blood red of his helm.

  Numitor rejoiced in the sight of the Eighth Company racing across the city at full speed. It was a glorious sight, even with half their number scattered and slain.

  The warrior lords of the Adeptus Astartes did not believe in adapting their colours to fit their environment. Ultramarines were Ultramarines, no matter the war zone. They were forever resplendent in the same lustrous blue worn by the primarch Roboute Guilliman, the Chapter’s forefather and author of the sacred Codex Astartes. They would sooner peel the skin from their flesh than change their proud heraldry.

  Amongst the muted ochres and whites of the Tau sept world the Ultramarines stood out, bold and stark, each flash of rich blue the sign of an invader intent on conquest. To a soulless race such as the tau it would perhaps seem illogical, even foolhardy, to present such obvious targets. But the Ultramarines cared little for the reasoning of cowards. Let the enemy know the Space Marines were coming and tremble, for they brought with them death.

  By contrast, the tau warrior caste had already displayed the ability to adapt their colouration depending on environment. Some of their warsuits were protected by stealth fields that rendered them all but invisible to sensors, shimmering like mirages even to the naked eye. It was a disturbing thought.

  To the xenos mindset, to go to war in so obvious a fashion as the Space Marines was to invite disaster. For one outside the Emperor’s grace, it would be impossible to comprehend the glory of the Angels of Death – the pride and the conviction that came with the right to bear the heraldry of the primarchs and the martial excellence it represented.

  Upon Dal’yth, the strident colours of the Space Marines would cost them dearly.

  Commander Farsight led a sky full of Orca transports, each packed to the gunwhales with his battlesuit cadres, across the outskirts of Gel’bryn City towards the last of the Imperial insertion points. He had the merest fraction of his attention devoted to the course, and it would remain that way until a pre-programmed proximity sensor blipped him. The rest was delving deep into analysis of the invasion unfolding across Dal’yth. Already there were a dozen theatres of war, but an Imperial command centre had been located by the air caste, and there was much to assess before the strike was launched.

  Every jolt of the Silent Aftermath’s passage through the turbulent skies sent agony crackling through Farsight’s aching joints, a wildfire of pain across his still-healing skin that challenged his meditative state to the limit. Eager to get back into the fray, he had pulled rank on the earth caste scientists to be discharged from the healsphere prematurely. Now that decision seemed churlish at best. Still, he could not allow himself to be absent whilst asking his brightest and best to dive headlong into the conflagration of war.

  Barring this last beachhead of a hundred or so intruders, the gue’ron’sha had been repelled from Gel’bryn City. The interlocking counterassault was a great victory, already touted by the water caste as indicative of the tau’s supremacy over the Imperium. To say that Farsight had been instrumental in its achievement was an understatement. For once, he could look at those morale posters depicting a stylised version of his profile without feeling a nagging sense of disquiet.

  The commander called up relevant footage for the vertical attack he had planned, searching for ways to optimise a top-down strike. His dispersion array showed the icons of his grid-like net of Orca transports surrounding a pair of far larger Manta missile destroyers as they came in low. Here and there an Imperial warhead would arc in towards them, but flechette arrays and electronic countermeasures tore them from the skies well before impact.

  Vivid red lights flashed, an urgent beep sounding as one of the blunt-nosed warheads found its way through the defence net.

  ‘Open bay doors,’ said Farsight, disengaging the locks of his transport cradle. ‘I see an opportunity.’

  ‘As you wish, commander,’ transmitted Kor’ui Y’eldi.

  Farsight was already moving, the hangar filling with noise and pressure as he threw himself out of the passenger bay in a blast of repulsor jets. He tucked his customised XV8 battlesuit into a somersault and hit full boost to reverse direction, carving under the Orca to overtake it with his honour pennants flutter
ing. The dot of the Imperial seeker-missile was becoming larger and larger. When it passed into the shadow of the Orca, Farsight slashed a fusion blaster beam right through its midsection, sending the intact nosecone tumbling end over end to detonate upon an Imperial-held position far below. Farsight smiled at the irony. The drone footage of his new flight vanes and thruster array in action would be a gift for the water caste; no doubt their information optimisers would make use of it.

  The commander zoomed in on the ruins below. The vivid yellow squares of Imperial drop craft marred the cityscape, smaller blue shapes dotted around them like the buds of Kan’jian peak-blossom. Not for these proud gue’ron’sha the notion of camouflage. They would rather announce their presence loud and clear in the hope their sheer belligerence would intimidate their foes.

  For this, they would be made to pay.

  ‘Let the blade fall,’ transmitted Farsight over the cadre-net. The response was instant. Three by three the battlesuit la’ruas bailed out from the Orcas as they passed over the gue’ron’sha beachhead. The Mantas dispatched larger teams of five, shield drones circling around them in wide circles like electrons orbiting a nucleus.

  Down they came en masse, their dispersal so neat the sight made Farsight feel genuine pride in his chest. Their numbers were impressive, reminding him of a Vior’lan seedstorm floating to earth. On either side of him were the bodyguard teams of his fellows, the gifted young Commander Brightsword and the dauntless Bravestorm, each with readiness symbols glowing gold.

  ‘Where the foe strikes, strike back harder,’ said Farsight. ‘Where the swordblow is levelled, parry swiftly, the better to riposte with a killing thrust.’

  ‘The wisdom of Master Puretide is perhaps more relevant here than ever,’ said Bravestorm. ‘I can scarcely believe the temerity of these humans, invading in such pitiful numbers.’

  ‘These are not humans, Bravestorm,’ said Farsight as they burst from the cloud cover to be greeted with a vista of explosions and shattered domes. ‘These are gue’ron’sha, and they fight like armoured snowtigers.’