Blades of Damocles

by Phil Kelly

  A flash of insight struck him, ill-timed but profound. Less than a few weeks ago, he would have made that jump unhelmed, the better to drink in the sights and smells of an active war zone. No more, swore Numitor. No more unnecessary risks.

  He had brothers to avenge, life debts to pay, and they would be made good in xenos blood.

  Numitor made the leap to the sweeprail, his squad close behind him. They crunched down on the alabaster lip in quick succession, the transmotive twelve feet away to the right. The tau warriors ranged along the sweeprail’s edge scrambled to make the best of the enfilade. The closest opened fire, one of the shots punching into Numitor’s hip to spin him halfway over the sweeprail bridge’s edge. He sent a burst of fire from his pack that flung him upright – and then turned the momentum into a charge.

  ‘For Macragge! For Ultramar and Macragge!’

  The Assault Marines shot along the sweeping bridge, their flight all but horizontal. There was a burst of light and sound from some manner of suppressive grenade, but their momentum was unchanged; with their heads turned away and their photolens dampeners kicking in, the blast did little more than dazzle. Numitor and his squad hit the tau lines like a cluster of cobalt meteors, shoulders turned to slam into the milling xenos ranks with maximum impact. Three tau were hurled over the low wall of the sweeprail, tumbling to their deaths in the rubble-strewn streets below. Six more were bowled from their feet into their comrades behind, the domino effect of the serial impact knocking rifles wide and square-bodied pistols from shaking fingers.

  Then the Space Marines were in the thick of the foe, and the full power of their training was brought to bear. Aordus’ chainsword juddered through outstretched hands, wrists and breastplates to chew voraciously through the alien flesh beneath. Magros kicked a tau warrior over the sweeprail edge to bounce from a warsuit passing below, his pistol taking the machine’s head from its shoulders as it turned to face him. Duolor discharged his own plasma pistol at point-blank range. The shot from its fat muzzle burned through one tau warrior’s chest even as Duolor’s open palm crunched into another’s face. Golotan looked half-dead, the ceramite of his battleplate cracked in a hundred places by a pulse bomb, but he fought as if born anew, spinning and shooting and slashing with his chainsword until torn cadavers were strewn in his wake.

  Numitor’s contribution was sheer, crushing violence. He pounded one tau warrior into a crumpled heap with a downward swing of his power fist, then shot an explosive bolt into the gut of another to send a fountain of crimson viscera over the aliens taking aim behind. His fist came in once more in a backhand blow, a trail of lightning in its wake as it crunched horizontally through two xenos warriors frantically trying to get out of the way.

  In such cramped confines the tau’s long-barrelled rifles were proving worse than useless. With a narrow column of space separating them from the transmotive and the sheer drop on the other side of the sweeprail, they were at the Assault Marines’ mercy. Those at the back had begun to retreat to the far carriage, their brethren covering them with ill-disciplined volleys as their squadmates sought better shots. A lucky hit took Duolor’s plasma pistol in an explosion of burning light, the hissing liquid inside its cartridge burning across the Iaxian’s flank. He did not cry out, but instead dived further into the tau ranks, fists swinging to bowl over the tau warriors in arm’s reach.

  Numitor revelled in the shrill cries and wails of the alien as he killed. The xenos were scrambling away from him as if he were a daemon, some literally shaking with fear. Aware he was enjoying himself too much, he forced himself to think like a sergeant rather than a new recruit. Screams echoed from the Munitorum zone below, those of men in great shock and pain. With the tau breaking before him, he took a swift glance into the wider battle, and saw a storm of pulse rifle fire from a low roof on the other side of the transmotive sleeting into the Astra Militarum behind the aegis lines. A Chimera transport moved in to cover them, but the tau firepower was intense, and the vehicle detonated with a dull crump that took half a squad with it.

  An idea struck Numitor. He took a quick glance under the transmotive’s hull.

  ‘Get to the end carriage, equal spacing along its length,’ he voxed to his squad. ‘Frag grenades for suppression.’

  His squad acted as ordered, plucking frag grenades from their belts and short-fusing them to detonate a second after they were thrown. The tau massing in the carriage took cover, but most of their number were still hurled backwards or flattened by the violence of the serial explosions.

  Numitor blasted forwards over a carpet of alien corpses, skidding to a halt to reach under the transmotive with his power fist. The gauntlet’s disruption fields crackled and snapped in protest as he grasped the mag-bar underneath and wrenched it loose, buckling the entire length and sending energy fizzling haywire as it was broken free from the magnetic field of the single rail beneath. Unbalanced, the entire carriage tilted over towards him.

  ‘Backs to it, and heave!’ shouted Numitor. His men, already in position, obeyed without question. The carriage was massively heavy – alone, even a Space Marine could not have prevented himself from being crushed like an insect beneath it. Five straining together, however, was a different matter. The tilting carriage slowed, and stopped.

  The weight was immense. Numitor ground his teeth, but he could feel his foothold slipping. He braced one leg against the sweeprail wall, then the other, to stabilise himself. Duolor followed his example, the others finding purchase of their own.

  Still the transmotive carriage bore down on them, inch by inch, metal shrieking in protest as its sheer tonnage was brought to bear.

  ‘On… my… mark,’ said Numitor, jaw clenched. ‘Boost!’

  All five Space Marines pushed backwards with everything they had, the servo-motors of their battleplate whining as they triggered maximum thrust from their jump packs. The carriage lifted swiftly, reached its apex and toppled in the other direction amongst a howling of jump engines, its sole remaining mag-tether rail acting as a hinge. It slammed down on the other side of the bridge with such force that its coupling to the carriage behind it was torn clean away. The entire section, tau passengers and all, went over the far side of the sweeprail in a spray of debris.

  There was a split second of silence as it fell.

  Then, with a titanic boom, the transmotive carriage crashed lengthwise into the fire warrior gunline on the roof beneath. The sound resounded across the battlescape as its immense bulk smashed through the cylindrical building, taking perhaps fifty xenos riflemen and sniper teams with it in an avalanche of rubble.

  A vast cloud of dust billowed up, twin curtains of alabaster bracketing the sweeprail as the Assault Marines renewed their attack, bolt pistols spitting death into those few tau left atop it. Numitor slammed in a fresh clip as he strode forward, putting down the last two aliens with pinpoint shots that blossomed into messy explosions of gore. He was smiling fiercely beneath his helm.

  Make a weapon from your environment, Roboute Guilliman had written in the holy tome of the Codex Astartes. Make it your sword, and make it your shield.

  Numitor had made it a hammer, but that suited him just fine.

  Atop a domed roof scattered with tau corpses, Cato Sicarius laughed grimly. He was liberally covered in xenos blood from the waist down. It made him feel unclean, but somehow righteous. Nearby, his squad dismembered the last of the aliens to resist.

  An impact smacked into the small of the sergeant’s back, burning pain flaring as his compromised armour yielded. Then another impact. This time he stumbled, putting the hilt of his tempest blade against the gentle slope of the roof to stop himself from going over altogether. He turned as he got back up, eyes wide and plasma pistol aimed toward the source for the return shot. He could see no xenos in the street below.

  A flare of white as another impact hit him, this time in the temple. A killshot, stopped only by an inch of power a
rmour. Shaking his head to clear it, Sicarius found his right eye sticky with blood, with one ear ringing and torn ragged by slivers of dislodged ceramite.

  ‘I’ll kill you all!’ he roared, firing half-blind into the street. His men followed suit, but their bolts found nothing.

  ‘Cease!’ shouted Sicarius, not willing to waste any more ammo. He was livid. It was happening again. The stealth-ghosts were hunting him.

  ‘Down into the street,’ he said, firing up his jump pack and leaping in a controlled descent to land with a gravelly crunch. His pistol muzzle swept the area as his squad landed nearby, autosenses scanning.

  Another flash of white plasma bolts, this time from the left. Two of them took Ionsian in the shoulder, the big warrior’s grunt of pain and surprise audible over the vox. Three more took Kaetoros in the chest, knocking him over in a cloud of flaking black paint. Still gripping his flamer, he sat up fast, a boost of his jet pack hurling him forward and up into the air. He sent a glorious cloud of flame roaring into the streets, hoping to consume whatever was hiding there, but even the gouting promethium fires found nothing.

  Sicarius cast about, desperately looking for a psyker in the hope that their extra-sensory perception could reveal their persecutors. He found his opportunity, but it came from something else entirely.

  To the west, the lead carriage of the transmotive on the high sweeprail was toppling onto the roof below, collapsing an entire building floor by floor. Cobalt-armoured figures punched the air on the bridge above. A billowing cloud of dust exploded outward, racing towards the Conquerors.

  ‘Edifice damage!’ Sicarius cried over the vox. ‘Must be Numitor’s sloppy work!’

  The reply was distorted, but by the tone the sergeant picked up its meaning well enough.

  Then the wall of debris and dust was upon them. With it came revelation. No matter the camouflage, no matter their technology, the tau stealth operatives would be hit by the dust as much as any other.

  ‘Look for them in the clouds!’ shouted Sicarius. ‘Hunt and slay!’

  Harsh shouts of assent came over the vox as his warriors plunged into the choking mist. Sicarius ran pell-mell down the street, aware that he had seconds at best. The words of the Codex Astartes rose in his mind – opportunity is fleet, and so must be the victor.

  But never hunt alone.

  ‘Glavius, Veletan, Ionsian, stay close to me,’ ordered Sicarius. ‘A spear’s length apart, we bar this end of the street. Kaetoros, Colnid, Denturis, get to the other end as fast as you can. Lay down flame and close it off.’

  ‘Aye, sergeant,’ came the responses. Sicarius heard something in their voices, a note of warmth, even relief. Kaetoros and his comrades roared away, the dust swirling into eddying vortices behind them as they made it to the end of the street in a single bound. An orange glow appeared in the distance as Kaetoros threw a linear inferno across the street.

  There – a bulbous shape, as much an absence of solid matter as a recognisable anatomy. Three more disturbances in the dust shimmered behind it. Sicarius bellowed like a bull, hurtling forward with blade outstretched in an exaggerated Talassarian lunge. The stealther swung its arm-cannon, dust swirling around it, but it was too slow. Sicarius felt his arm jolt in his shoulder as the tempest blade ran through the thing’s torso and punched out the other side. A crackle of disruption energies, and the stealther was visible, a weirdly-shaped biped with an oval core and backjointed legs.

  ‘Not so clever now,’ said Sicarius through gritted teeth, bracing his foot on its chest and pulling his sword free in a spurt of blood. Veletan was nearby, driving his chainsword up with both hands to rip the arms from another of the stealther tau. Glavius dived left as a stream of shots pulsed from another’s quad-barrelled cannon, one of them scoring the ceramite of his jump pack. Ionsian was on the xenos in a flash of blue, slamming into the warsuit from the side to knock it sprawling. As the tau warrior scrabbled to get upright, Ionsian stamped on the sensor unit that formed its head, dislodging it from the body before driving the tip of his chainsword straight down into the gap. He was rewarded with a spray of blood and bone. Sicarius had seen the warrior’s chainsword chew through a hundred different types of armour – no matter the sophistication, it always made a horrible mess of whatever was inside.

  The dust was clearing, but the sounds of detonating bolt rounds and the whoosh of promethium let Sicarius know the men he had stationed at the end of the street were still engaged. He looked back to see two trails of mist making for the corner of the street, and his nostrils flared at the thought of some of his foes slipping the net. Without the dust to reveal them, the stealthers would be able to hunt the Ultramarines on their terms once more.

  A bald, stooped girl in torn Baleghast fatigues staggered around the curved corner of the building, clutching her stomach. She gave a gurgling yell and spasmed, projectile vomiting a copious stream of what looked to Sicarius like egg yolk. The stream turned into a geyser, gushing into an escaping a tau stealther. It pushed the warsuit back, its feet slipping and skidding, into the opposite wall. Congealing, the stringy vomit pinned the stealther in place, a yellowish spider’s web that had trapped a meaty morsel of prey.

  Sicarius and Ionsian were running over to kill the stealther when a ten-foot warsuit hovered into view above them, flames licking from the weapons systems on its arm and shoulder. It poured a torrent of fire and plasma into Ionsian. An unearthly scream came from the big warrior as his ceramite and flesh melted away. Sicarius blasted upwards to meet the battlesuit head on, passing a low rooftop where a wizened, black-skinned psyker looked right at him. Then the battlesuit’s flamers roared, and Sicarius was consumed by fire and ash.

  Numitor leapt onto what was left of the transmotive, looked back to the Imperial compound, and swore an oath of frustration. Everywhere anarchy reigned. The Astra Militarum were fighting a dozen skirmishes at once instead of working as a single united front. Lakes of flame burned amongst them, sending columns of choking smoke skyward that billowed this way and that in the tempest of war. For all their fortifications, plans, orders and military precision, the Imperial Guard had been taken apart in a matter of minutes – and from what Elixus had said, the same story was being repeated across the planet.

  Yet the bedlam was by no means confined to the Imperial lines. Every tau ambush site had been smashed, burned, stormed or collapsed by the intensity of the counter-attack. Tau bodies littered the streets in greater numbers than dead Guardsmen, a victory of sorts. Flames ran wild in the streets, appearing like capering elementals or writhing serpents in those places where Vykola’s pyromancers unleashed the powers of their haunted minds. To the north, a dome of flame shed flickering light across the whole grisly vista, making shadows dance. They looked to Numitor like devils rejoicing at some hellish feast. The Imperium had brought utter chaos to this world.

  The sergeant shook his head, appalled at where those thoughts were leading.

  Retribution. They had brought retribution.

  A few roofs away, Elixus and his Terminator-armoured brethren were smashing apart the last of a warsuit team optimised for supporting heavy weapons fire. It was a rare honour to glimpse the First Company at work. The plasma blade borne by the unit’s sergeant left bright blue trails in the air as it sliced through battlesuit, pilot and drone without slowing, the grace and swordsmanship of its bearer impressive despite him being clad in the heaviest armour the Adeptus Astartes could field.

  Numitor was not the only one to notice the Terminator assault. A team of wide-bodied drones, jutting rifles underslung beneath them, appeared from the core of a split-cylinder building to the south east. Pivoting smoothly, they spat fire into the melee. Numitor gasped as they struck Elixus three times, tearing away chunks of his chest and stomach before sending him sprawling from the roof into the streets below.

  A low hum, and the squadrons of the tau pilot caste came through the clouds once more, spher
es of crackling plasma held suspended beneath them. One after another they dropped their strange munitions, the energy payloads detonating amongst the Terminators on the rooftops. The Ultramarines raised their storm shields high, only for the drones that had felled Elixus to hammer a volley of ion energy into their exposed arm joints.

  More bombs rained down. Two of the Terminators went over, the heavy crunch of their impact audible even across the battle-torn plaza. They were stranded, their foes out of reach. Even their priceless and irreplaceable suits of Tactical Dreadnought armour had limits. A few more bombing runs, and the veterans would be no more.

  ‘Squad Numitor,’ called the sergeant, ‘close in. We have work to do.’

  Sicarius opened his eyes to see the intense fires that eclipsed his vision flow over his head, encapsulating him with the web-trapped stealther and the stooped young woman. The flames roiled and poured like liquid covering an invisible dome. Intense amber light cast dancing shadows across the strange tableau.

  ‘We are safe,’ said the girl softly, wiping ectoplasm from her mouth with the back of her sleeve as she looked around the fire dome.

  ‘He’s not,’ said Sicarius, driving his tempest blade sidelong into the wriggling tau stealther’s headpiece. The xenos fell still.

  Sicarius scraped his blade on his forearm and made to leave, but the heat of the dome around him was so blisteringly intense he fell back again. He could not go through without risking severe burns, or worse, the ignition of his jump pack’s fuel.

  ‘This will not stand,’ he said. ‘It’s still up there, the flamer suit. And Ionsian is down.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ the girl said seriously, shaking her head. Ruddy light played across the contours of her skull, wispy strands of psyker-stuff coiling around it. So small, thought Sicarius. So easily crushed.