Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  The sergeant was already sick of the sweltering jungle. Numitor had led them into a humid hellhole, more reminiscent of Catachan than the ordered tessellations of Dal’yth’s surface. In theory, the idea of fighting right into the tau command zone was sound enough, and at first Sicarius had seen Numitor’s plan as the most direct and brutal way to make an impact on the war at large. In practice, he wasn’t sure if he would prefer going overground after all, even if it meant plasma spheres raining out of the sky.

  Something winked in the distance, just for a moment, a light on the edge of vision. Sicarius felt his senses sharpen and his blood thunder with hyperdrenaline. He held up an open hand, staying the advance of his squad.

  ‘Veletan,’ he hissed, ‘awaken your auspex. There’s something up ahead.’

  The familiar swooping click of Veletan’s handheld scanner-engine panned across the jungle, its machine-spirit hungrily searching the undergrowth for major life signs.

  ‘Unknown ident,’ said Veletan, ‘on the cusp of effective range. It’s a single set of readings, sergeant. I believe it to be the emission betrayals of a xenos warsuit, and a large one. It is stationary, however. I can only theorise it is–’

  The jungle suddenly came alive, hundreds of birds and insects bursting from nowhere as something shot through the trees towards them. Sicarius caught sight of a cluster of white missiles haring around the dense vegetation to slam into their midst, detonating hard against Glavius just as he turned his shoulder. The explosion sent him flying back to slam into a vine-clad tree trunk.

  Just as Sicarius drew his sword, another missile shot through the foliage to strike him full in the chest, pitching him backwards in a ringing blast of noise and light. He felt a moment of weightlessness before he slammed hard into the sludge. He rolled to one side on instinct, another blunt missile thudding into the mulch before detonating with a wet thump that would have taken his legs had he not moved aside.

  A thousand hot needles danced along Sicarius’ spine as the pain of the initial strike filtered through. It just made his bad mood worsen. He shot up with a roar, pistol held high, and blasted the black gunk from his jump pack with a blaze of flame. Another volley of missiles was veering through the jungle towards them, jinking and curving to avoid every liana and frond as they hurtled closer. Sicarius leaned hard to one side as a pair of warheads shot towards him; they missed his throat by a finger’s breadth.

  ‘Get in close, damn it!’ shouted the sergeant. His squad were swift to obey. Kaetoros, mid-leap, cleared away a swathe of vegetation with a gout of blazing promethium before landing in a shower of embers. Ionsian boosted forward, bolt pistol blasting a brittle curtain of vines to tatters as his battle-brothers followed behind. Numitor rocketed past with blurring speed, driving his crackling power fist right through the trunk of a tree to send it toppling over.

  Sicarius saw a tiny sliver of ochre in the distance, the telltale colour of the tau warrior caste. ‘Got you,’ he snarled, leaning forward to barrel through the dense foliage on twin tongues of flame. A trio of missiles arced in towards him, too fast for him to dodge.

  Numitor’s fallen tree came crashing down on top of them, the quicksilver projectiles unable to avoid the profusion of branches and thorny tendrils suddenly in their flight path. The triple thud of the missiles’ demise blasted splinters and vines in all directions. Sicarius spared a glance in his fellow sergeant’s direction, glad of his foresight.

  Numitor had ripped a vast slab of the fallen tree’s hollow trunk away, using it as a primitive mantlet as he advanced. Squad Antelion were close behind him, splashing through the mire and slashing vines with their combat knives as they fought to keep up. Missiles detonated upon the hard bark of Numitor’s improvised barrier, tearing it to flinders. Too little too late, thought Sicarius. The sergeant and his allies were well within engagement range now.

  Thumbing his plasma pistol’s activation rune, Sicarius leapt onto an outcrop of rock and boosted forward again. Ahead, the patch of ochre he had seen resolved into one of the gunner warsuits that Vespertine’s Astra Militarum platoons had called Broadsides. More missiles shot from the war machine’s shoulder-mounted launchers, from the drones hovering at its shoulders, and from the boxy gauntlets it had in place of hands. It was laying down a barrage of firepower that an entire Devastator squad would struggle to match.

  Worse still, every missile seemed to have a mind of its own. Two of them peeled off to intercept Sicarius, but this time he was ready for them. He raised his pistol, and a burning sphere of plasma blitzed through the vegetation towards them. It didn’t hit them directly, but at maximum discharge, it didn’t need to. The sheer blast wave of heat that came from his shot was so intense that both of the deadly cylinders cooked off well before impact.

  Suddenly the sergeant was clear. The Broadside suit was standing motionless amongst the trees with a black drone brushing up against its antenna. Triggering maximum burst, Sicarius shot between two thick trunks to hit the battlesuit with the force of an azure thunderbolt. His tempest blade, held out like a spear, plunged deep into the torso unit to impale whatever foul excuse for a warrior hid within. Sicarius was rewarded with a fountain of sparks. The haywire energies played across the giant machine’s front, the drone hovering nearby zipping straight up out of harm’s way.

  The roar of a powerful chainsword came from below as Trondoris shot in towards them. With a cry of righteous hatred, he swung his two-handed eviscerator into the waist of the malfunctioning Broadside. The giant toothed blade juddered and jerked as Trondoris ground it through alloy and cable, his every muscle straining for the kill.

  With a sharp crack, the machine’s torso fell back, salvos firing upwards at random from its missile gauntlets as its top half toppled backwards into the mire.

  Sicarius gave a cry of triumph, grinning fiercely behind his helm as he savoured the taste of victory. Trondoris rammed his eviscerator point-first into the suit’s disembodied torso, hoping to churn the pilot within into ragged meat. The swordsman scowled, looking up at Sicarius in puzzlement as his blade found no purchase.

  ‘There’s nothing in there,’ he said.

  There was a shimmer from Sicarius’ flank, and Trondoris evaporated in a sizzling cloud of blood.

  The xenos warsuit that came looming out of the jungle was huge, easily twice the size of the Broadside walker. Gun-shapes flickered on its hulking shoulders, and fingers of plasma burned through the vegetation to stab into the Space Marines advancing around Numitor. The warsuit’s surface constantly rippled with green, brown and black striations that echoed the foliage behind it to an uncanny degree and made it almost impossible to delineate.

  The technological dervish emitted a low hum that set Sicarius’ teeth on edge even within his helm. Glitches danced across his readouts, fuzzing his targeting runes and turning his long-range vox to gibberish. A morass of blurring symbols danced across his vision, disturbingly reminiscent of the scrapcode feared by the Machine God’s faithful.

  Sicarius wrenched his faulty helm from his head with a growl of impatience, slamming it onto his belt with a clang. Every one of his squad was casting about for the assailant that had vaporised Trondoris, muzzles whipping right and left as they desperately sought for the source of the plasma fire that had pulsed from the trees.

  Incredulity jolted through Sicarius’ mind. The thing was right there! How could his brothers not see it? Revealed from its ambush site, the machine was gigantic, a shifting miasma of colour taller than a gun bunker. Then it struck him. The warsuit was somehow baffling its electronic presence, projecting camouflage signals so potent they were invisible even to auspex scans. It moved with almost silent grace through the dense vegetation; all that Sicarius could make out was a susurrus of white noise as it slid from trunk to trunk.

  ‘Helms off!’ shouted Sicarius, raising his pistol to send a ball of plasma searing towards the strange apparition. ‘It is invisible
to machine-spirits!’

  The monstrosity was already boosting up and over the shot, levelling the massive cannon-shaped silhouette of its right arm before firing a shot of its own. Sicarius hurled himself sideways a split second before a column of intense blue fire stabbed down. The blast incinerated the vegetation beneath him and sent up a cloud of scalding grey steam.

  ‘Quickly!’ Sicarius yelled as he vaulted behind a fallen tree. ‘Take your helms off, all squads! Hunt with the naked eye!’

  Glavius was the first to obey. Mag-clamping his helm to his waist, he recoiled in shock at the sheer size of the xenos warsuit suddenly visible before him. He took a bolt pistol shot on reflex, but the round went wide, winging something else entirely – the black disc-drone hovering between the trees. It gave a blurt of xenos tech-gibberish as it struggled to remain airborne.

  Squad Antelion, adapting to the new threat with fluid competence, opened fire. Those near enough to hear Sicarius’ order took off their helms and formed a loose skirmish line, loosing a fusillade of mass-reactive bolts from behind tree boles and moss-covered rocks. The ghost suit turned towards them with alarming swiftness, raising the blunt stub of an arm to send out a swarm of tiny projectiles.

  Impossibly, the miniature seekers collided head-on with every one of the tactical squad’s bolts, detonating them in a string of mid-air pyrotechnics. Not a single shot hit home. Then the giant warsuit returned fire, weapon arm projecting a column of white fire that incinerated two Ultramarines as it leaped back between the trees.

  Right into the path of Jorus Numitor.

  With a defiant yell, Numitor slammed his power fist home into the battlesuit’s knee joint. The blow tore away its lower leg in a gout of clear fluid and crackling sparks. With its shroud-tech disrupted, the giant’s disembodied limb flickered ochre and white as it toppled into the muck.

  Reeling from Numitor’s attack, the warsuit engaged the jet engine array at its back and shot vertically upwards, bursting through the jungle canopy in a shower of loose vegetation.

  ‘After it!’ shouted Sicarius, soaring upwards on a column of blue fire. All of his squad bar Glavius, still lumbered with his sergeant’s empty jump pack, launched themselves after him.

  There was a moment of thrashing green-black motion, and Sicarius blasted into the warm haze of artificial sunshine atop the canopy. A cloud of jade mantids billowed around him as he cast about for his prey. Every time one of his squad burst from the foliage to join him above the canopy the sergeant span around, pistol levelled, but the tau warsuit was nowhere to be seen. Sicarius shut down his jump pack engines, coming to rest on a thick and twisted bough as he scrutinised the horizon for any signs that would betray his quarry.

  Numitor joined them in an explosion of leafy fronds. His expression was that of the hunter whose spear had already pierced the prey, eager to finish the kill.

  ‘It’s gone, brother,’ said Sicarius. ‘No sign of it.’

  He shaped quite another message with his fingers, however, using the sea-cant of the Talassarian ocean gangs – a language he had taught Numitor years ago during the doldrums of an interstellar haul.

  Watch. The. Insects.

  Numitor gave a slight nod. Suddenly his eyes widened.

  Sicarius was already turning as a cloud of scintillating mantids flocked upwards on his flank. He leapt to the side, pistol roaring as he sent a blazing white fireball right past the column of fusion energy searing the air in his wake. The plasma bolt connected with the shimmering ghost image behind the mantid swarm. Burning liquid splashed across the warsuit’s hull. Its camouflage systems shorted, flickered through a dozen colours, and died altogether to reveal an ochre monstrosity missing a lower limb.

  The thunder of bolt pistols echoed loud as Squads Numitor and Sicarius opened fire. One mass-reactive shot after another cratered the ghost suit’s carapace, each explosion so fierce it would have ripped an unarmoured tau in half. The warsuit was punched off balance, flailing a club-like arm against Kaetoros’ jetting gout of promethium.

  Numitor came in fast from its blind side and struck it with a thunderous uppercut. The thing was hurled backwards, smashing through the canopy in a cacophony of snapping timber to crash down into the black mire beneath. Looking down, Sicarius could just make out a drone darting in to press its antennae against those of the fallen giant. He made to take a kill shot, but his plasma pistol had yet to recharge.

  ‘Is it dead?’ asked Numitor.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Sicarius, ‘it’s dead.’

  ‘Good. We must be on the right track if these are the creatures they send to stop us.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ agreed Magros. ‘Perhaps these tau are merely testing us. Seeking to take our measure, just as we seek to take theirs.’

  ‘Then they shall find us more deadly than they ever imagined,’ said Sicarius, turning and dropping back down through the canopy without a backward glance.

  The Stone Dragon watched the intruders upon a bank of curving screens, a hemisphere of images that curved around the front of his analysis cradle. His eyes, darting and flickering rapidly, controlled the flow of information cascading across the displays. A slight smile creased the wrinkled, noseless slab below.

  On the upper left was displayed the double waveform of the trespassers’ heartbeats and the breathing patterns of their multiple lungs. They had inbuilt redundancies for their vital organs, noted O’Vesa approvingly. Whoever had designed this warrior species knew his craft. On the upper right screens were displayed the flatlining signals of the prototype they had just shattered. The up-scaled Stealth suit had been tentatively named the XV98, later nicknamed the Ghostkeel by his aides. The name had stuck – the battlesuit had been inspired by O’Shaserra’s analogies concerning Kan’jian spirits, after all, and it was all but invisible to sensors. Its electronic countermeasures had worked well, up to a point, as had its mirage generators. The Mantle was still a long way from perfect, and the impromptu kauyon ambush had been only a partial success. Still, it had been more than worth it for the data harvest.

  The flood of logistics information harnessed by O’Vesa’s analysis cradle was not theoretical data, nor the conclusions of a puppet war waged against the earth caste’s best estimates. This was the real thing. Empirical evidence, intoxicating in its purity.

  One of the trespassing gue’ron’sha was speaking to its fellows in short sentences, curt and efficient. The spooling autotrans underneath each intruder’s image made a decent job of converting it to the tau language, though O’Vesa would have to bring a member of the water caste into his confidence if he wished to understand the finer points of their speech. No matter, he thought. Their actions spoke loudly enough by themselves.

  As he watched, the warriors with the bulky flight packs removed their helms. Even the Ghostkeel prototype was a formidable terror weapon against such superstitious foes. The idiocy of the invaders leaving their most vital location vulnerable would have surprised O’Vesa, had he not already witnessed these strange, impulsive creatures acting with little more intellect than an ork.

  Straying into a network of the enemy’s weapons testing arenas showed a fatal lack of wisdom in itself. O’Vesa was more than willing to make use of it, and would broadcast his findings across Dal’yth and beyond.

  A tiny screed of data played across the mantle-screen of the suite. It was Ob’lotai, blipping the signal of his approach. O’Vesa sat upright, got out of the arch-backed viewing station, and bowed deeply to the shiny black disc hovering towards him.

  ‘Ah, Helper Ob’lotai,’ said the Stone Dragon, ‘a fine performance out there.’

  ‘I think not,’ replied the drone in a disappointed monotone. ‘Only a single casualty, and a cutting-edge battlesuit lost. Clearly death has not improved my martial skillset.’

  ‘One confirmed kill, yes,’ said O’Vesa, ‘but think of the data, my friend!’ The earth caste scientist’s eyes w
ere alight with the glow of enthusiasm. ‘In many ways, I’m glad we gave these gue’ron’sha a chance to do so much. Actual battle data from a wide variety of weapons over more than six microdecs of engagement – and not a single tau life lost in the process! That is truly a great success.’

  Ob’lotai wobbled the disc of his fuselage from side to side in grudging agreement.

  ‘Every parameter has been recorded and properly marshalled,’ continued O’Vesa. ‘It is only awaiting compilation before I sign it over to the fire caste for the betterment of the war effort. This is a breakthrough, Warghost, nothing less.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Ob’lotai. ‘Though next time I shall take a far greater toll.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said O’Vesa indulgently, passing the tip of his data wand over the drone’s forward lip. A series of green-blue lights winked along its length as Ob’lotai’s own data harvest cascaded into the earth caste databanks.

  ‘I believe there is yet more opportunity to be exploited, if you are willing,’ said O’Vesa.

  ‘Of course. Information is the key to victory. Should my sentience be damaged beyond recovery, I shall die once more in the name of the Greater Good.’

  ‘And who could ask more? But this time, my faithful helper, you shall not go alone. It is time our false Pech fought back.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ob’lotai doubtfully. ‘Did Commander Farsight not condemn the active elements of the Pech project as a dangerous precedent?

  ‘He did indeed. Technically, however, he holds no influence over earth caste protocols. And whilst we have such an unparalleled chance to put our guests to the test, it would be counter-intuitive not to use it.’

  ‘In this instance, perhaps it is forgivable. To test the capabilities of the foe, rather than the weapon.’