Ajax worked his breathing and found himself wishing Hart was there with Hydra Company. Every marine felt better when they knew the sniper was out there somewhere on overwatch. The skald sniper was, when last they heard, attached to the heavy warship Stone Burner, which was embroiled in the thick of battle several quadrants over. Such was the life and death of the skalds, racing across the universe in their Prax gunships and doing what they could to support the larger military elements.
They were alone out here, crouching in a hastily dug trench network, holding the line for reasons they could no know.
Not alone, Ajax corrected himself, as the ground began to shake. It was gentle at first and then grew quickly as the marines scrambled to take up their firing positions.
"I can't see a damn thing through that mist," grumbled Ford.
"That's because it's mostly ash," noted Silas as he wiped his mouth and closed his faceplate, his breath wheezy from having exposed himself to the atmosphere for several minutes. "The volcanoes belch it out and a combination of the cold and moisture churns it up into a fog. In a few million years this planet will be a feast for the mining companies."
"How optimistic of you," quipped Rama as he toggled his ocular assist in an attempt to filter out some of the visual static. "We can't get solid air support or line of sight thanks to ashen skies, we can't get orbital bombardments because of all the geo-thermals, but a million years from now some guy is going to get rich drilling through our bones."
"Hey, aren't you the guy who insisted we take a moment to appreciate the natural beauty of all the hellholes they send us to?" added Ford, as he joined the other marines on the firestep. "I think it's pretty, makes me think of myths and legends. Beats city fighting."
"Ajax, would you mind telling your alien buddies that we aren't open for business today?" asked Rama as he turned to the other marine.
"UltraGarm right flank!" boomed the voice of Jarl Mahora over the company channel, the veteran warrior having positioned himself on the second parallel, dug into the mountainside to gain a better vantage point. "Spores incoming!"
Ajax and the rest of the marines in the trench double checked their respirators and braced for impact. It was only a few moments later that the globules of alien ordinance began pounding the trench. For better or worse, the shallow trench proved to be a boon when it came to weathering the bombardment. The marines had dug them only six feet or so deep, as the soil was thin on the ground, and led to thick bedrock not far below the surface. Given that there was so little room, the marines were spread somewhat thin across the length of the parallel.
As the spores burst open, their contents appeared to mix almost instantly with the ashen fog, causing the usual green clouds of infectious alien weaponry to clump and fall to the ground.
Ajax suddenly found himself thankful for Ageron's environment and hoped that command would make a note of the fog's spore neutralizing power. The only men who transformed into ragmen were those who suffered a direct hit from the globules. Considering that the trenches were so shallow, there was little area of effect that the exploding globules could cover.
The sporadic sounds of gunfire and madmen shouting the word 'meat' were drowned out an instant later by the thunder of many hooved feet slamming into the ground. The force of their charge reverberated through the shallow dirt and shook the very rocks beneath them as the UltraGarm swept in from the right flank, the unique call of the shriekers ringing out above them.
Ajax caught sight of a swarm of the garm fliers streaking through the low clouds overhead. The rolling fog bank made it almost impossible for the marine or the enemy to get a solid shot off. Chain-fires opened up on the ridge, soon joined by multitudes of pulse rifles. Ajax knew that Mahora and the marines of the second parallel were bearing the full weight of the shrieker attack. A chorus of deep-throated roars snapped his attention back to the swirling fog and rolling hills that comprised no man's land and he flexed his fingers on the grip of his rifle.
The UltraGarm swarm appeared as lumbering shadows in the ashen fog, and Ajax squeezed the trigger of his pulse rife. He sent controlled bursts at the shadows, though they were so tightly packed and the beasts so heavily armored that he could not tell if his projectiles had done much damage.
After six more rounds, Ajax paused to vent the heat from his rifle, although he didn't need too, but the marine had a feeling he would not have the chance again.
The UltraGarm erupted from the fog bank, their footfalls shaking the ground so badly that the marines in the shallow trench had difficulty with keeping a steady aim. As the wall of alien flesh and bio-blades came into full view, Ajax could see that the sustained blind fire from the marines of the first parallel had not been without effect.
Many of the UltraGarm were as covered in horrendous wounds as they were bristling with menacing weaponry. The living battle tanks moved almost parallel to the trench line, altering their course once they emerged from the fog bank so that they could sweep their long scything blades down into the trench while they charged.
The shallow trench meant that the marines had nowhere to flee as the alien creatures swept past them, dragging the massive blades through the trench line like plows in a field.
Ajax watched in horror as two marines were cleaved into pieces by a vicious stroke from an UltraGarm as it bent its head to gouge the trench. Poole, the grenadier, managed to leap clear of the blade just in time. Ajax seized the opportunity for a clean shot at the beast's exposed neck and pounded three bolts into his target. The monster's upper torso exploded in a shower of gore as the plasma rounds did their work and the smoldering carcass collapsed in a heap that slid across the ground for several more feet before stopping.
Silas had noticed the same thing and heaved himself over the lip of the trench. The marine came up in a crouch and raised his rifle to his shoulder with such speed and precision it was almost hard to believe that only moments before he'd been puking his guts out. Silas began firing, and he too was able to bring down one of the tremendous beasts with precise and sustained fire. As the marine vented the excess heat from his rifle another UltraGarm, one that had not changed its trajectory, trampled right over him.
Ajax turned and sank down on his haunches, the bio-blade of the UltraGarm passing just inches over where his head had been. The marine's armor was showered in the viscera of his comrade as the UltraGarm leaped easily over the trench, and the body of Silas spinning through the air and smashing into the lip of the opposite side of the trench before sinking down into the churning mud.
Next to Ajax, a pulse rifle roared as Ford crouched low to put his back against the inner wall of the trench and cut loose at the deadly beast. Ajax joined Ford in peppering the UltraGarm with bolts, and let out a whoop of victory as a round struck the beast in the exposed joint, just behind the knee of its foreleg, and sent it sprawling. Once on its side, Ford and Ajax, now joined by Rama, were able to tear into the beast's exposed underbelly, and the combined plasma rounds left little of the monster untouched by fatal trauma.
Ajax vented his weapon and risked looking out over the trench to see that while the UltraGarm charge had cost the lives of both garm and marine, it was time for the Einherjar to yield the parallel. Given that Silas was gone, and no other marine was working to get the others moving to their backup position, Ajax activated his comms and took charge.
"Alpha Trench is lost! Falling back to the rally point!" shouted Ajax over the company channel.
The marines who defended the first parallel had been expecting such an order, it was standard Einherjar battle rhythm to blunt the initial swarms and then fall back. However, they had not expected a swarm of UltraGarm supported by shriekers and ridgebacks. Which meant that the other broods were still lurking out there, waiting for their moment to strike, just as other marine units did the same.
"Manticore found the ridgebacks, Quinn and his mob are taking the fight to them," announced Jarl Mahora, his broadcast punctuated by the screams of both men and shriekers,
"Alpha Trench, hit your rally point and sound off. Get the blackouts into position!"
Ajax took a deep breath and held up his hand, with three fingers extended, prompting a nod from Rama and Ford. Poole ignored them and continued to fire sporadically, alternating his fire between the UltraGarm on either side of the trench.
Now that their initial charge had ended they were spread across the battlefield, each individual beast seeming to follow their own instincts, as if the Hive Mind, or whatever WarGarm was lurking out there giving them unfathomable orders, had cut them loose.
Ajax found himself thinking that it wasn't the worst tactic, considering that beasts of such size allowed to rampage according to their own instincts would create significant chaos. Ajax counted down from three fingers to two, one, then balled a fist. The three marines launched themselves out of the trench.
The ashen fog bank had never stopped expanding, and as the marines were vaulting over the lip of the trench their vision began to cloud even more than before. Perhaps that was why the UltraGarm were being allowed to fight on instinct alone, Ajax considered as he sprinted towards the base of the small mountain upon which Mahora and the rest of Hydra Company fought off the shriekers. The WarGarm in charge would be able to sense its own troops, but without any visuals of the marines, the enemy had no clue where they were, and so rampaging chaos made sense.
The enemy tactic paid off a moment later, when an UltraGarm barreled past them, exploding out of the fog at full tilt speed, swinging its massive head back and forth. The motion of the beast's skull made its scything blades function like a farmer's scythe, and Rama was caught in the arc. The bio-weapon sheared through both of the marine's legs, and he went down in a fountain of blood. The beast was moving too fast to turn and finish the job, and it continued to gallop into the fog, chased by rounds from Ajax and Ford.
Ajax turned in time to see Rama's body begin to twitch, and he could tell from the thick pool of blood soaking into the loamy soil that his friend was gone. Ajax knelt quickly and removed Rama's torc, wishing he'd thought to do so for Silas before they'd retreated. There was always so little time, and Ajax found that truth made him furious. The marine stood up and swapped out carbon magazines, and then switched his rifle to full auto. Silas looked confused at first, and then followed suit.
The two marines then continued their retreat, using the firefight at the ridge for guidance when the low clouds parted just enough for them to make out which direction they were going. A roar sounded from behind them, and the marines turned, their weapons at the ready, just in time to catch an UltraGarm rushing directly at them. It appeared focused on something ahead of them, and Ajax was sure that it was just as surprised to see them as they were it. Both marines tore into the beast, one from each side, and their combined automatic fire overwhelmed the monster's naturally thick armor. The chitin cracked as it stumbled forward and Ajax continued to fire where he saw stress fractures. In moments the armor shattered and the last handful of rounds from the marine's weapon cooked the beast from the inside out.
Ajax and Ford swiftly vented their weapons, reloaded, and continued to run. They began to pass by the broken bodies of shriekers being killed above them and one even fell down from the sky and splattered just to the left of their path. Soon the jagged edges of the mountain base loomed in the fog.
Before they reached it, a loud cracking sound filled Ajax's ears and Ford suddenly pitched forward. The force of a pulse rife impact had pulped Ford’s body.
Ajax swept his rifle back and forth but found no marine responsible emerging from the ashen haze. There were the sounds of pulse rifles firing everywhere, though in the strange environment it was impossible to tell whether it was coming from the chaos on the ground or the bloody grind on the ridge.
Friendly fire incidents were rare among the disciplined ranks of the Einherjar, though this was just the sort of madness to test even these hardened marines. Perhaps it was best that it would remain a mystery who killed Ford, as no marine wanted that on their conscience, even if it was a legitimate accident. Such was the chaos of battle, and as Ajax slipped the torc from his fallen comrade he was keenly aware that he too could be hit at any moment.
Ajax pressed on, and moments later reached the rally point, which was the opening of a deep ravine that nearly bisected the small mountain Jarl Mahora had chosen to defend. Ajax saw that several marines had already reached it and were entering the ravine. It was wide enough for perhaps four men to walk abreast, which made it perfect for what was to come. As Ajax approached the ravine, Poole materialized out of the haze and nodded curtly at Ajax. The two of them waited for a few moments more, and when no other marines joined them, and they could wait no longer, they turned and went into the ravine.
If there were still marines out there, which Ajax was positive there were, either lost in the fog or trapped defending the trench, they were on their own for now. As he and Poole picked their way through the ravine, Ajax started to hear a buzzing sound. At first, he thought it was his helmet, and then he realized it was the odd acoustics of the ravine itself warping and twisting the sounds coming into it. When he stood still and listened more closely, Ajax realized what he was hearing and knew the marines who had not yet made it into the ravine were surely lost.
It was the noise made by hundreds of mandibles clacking open and shut. The sound of chitinous armor plates rubbing against each other. The throaty, hungry groan of ripper drones as they swarmed over the first parallel.
Soon most of them would fill the ravine, even if some of them scaled the mountain face. This fight was far from done, and Ajax hoped that the sacrifices made by the men of Alpha Trench would be worth the exchange in alien lives.
As Ajax reached the end of the ravine and rushed past several warriors who were bound by manacles and wearing matte black armor, he knew they would be. This was a tight space, were the ripper drones could only approach a few at a time, the perfect place for blackouts to conduct a slaughter.
Twenty minutes later Ajax picked his way across the fog covered ground that lay between the ravine and Alpha Trench. It was slow going, as the surviving marines carefully moved over the ground, executing any wounded garm they came upon.
The blackouts had indeed wiped out the ripper swarm. The drones hurled themselves into battle without no care for their own lives and the berserkers had been eager to take them.
Sharif, Boone, and Yao, or more correctly, the dark warriors that had once been those men, were all torn to pieces once they emerged from the mouth of the ravine, but not before they finished off the rest of the swarm. Ajax was impressed at the sheer carnage and found himself wishing that the terrain would lend itself to such lopsided fighting more often.
The marine found it odd, as he put a bolt through the skull of a wounded UltraGarm which had fallen into the ditch that passed for Alpha Trench, that his sense of the garm was actually increasing as their numbers were eliminated. He felt the pull more powerfully now since he had been reawakened, and as the call came out over the command channel that the garm presence had been eliminated from Ageron, he resolved to inform the jarl. It was as if now that the deafening background psychic buzz of the immediate area had been cleared away, he could sense the pulse of garm power more clearly.
The fog was lifting, for the marine and for Ageron.
PORT CHIRASCRURO
The dropship shook, though whether it was from entering atmosphere or from the impact of anti-aircraft fire, Ajax could not tell. His restraints pulled tight across his chest, the thick weave of the chair's harness holding him in place against the near concussive turbulence. The marine blinked his eyes, clearing away troubled dreams of serpentine monsters and desperate battles by torchlight, and found that he had no idea what the mission was.
Ajax drew in his breath, slow and deep in an attempt to calm himself, as every fiber of his being was howling with panic. He was positive that he'd only recently been resurrected, as he could still feel the post-resurrection cocktail moving through
his system, a standard injection that was feeding his body a mixture of nutrients and stimulants to help his mind and new body reach an equilibrium. The splitting headache was familiar and indicative of him being rushed from the forge directly into a deployment detail. That would pass in a few hours, though what troubled him was the lack of awareness about the deployment itself. That was new.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder, steadying the marine, who, upon being touched, realized that it wasn't the dropship shaking, but his own armored body.
"Be calm, warrior, you are among brothers," came the smoothly monotone voice of Hart over Ajax's headset, and the sniper held out his open hand, offering it to the marine. "I am Skald Sniper Hart, you are Marine Ajax. Yes?"
"It's all a blur. I know our names, but, time and place," rasped Ajax as he slowly overcame his seemingly involuntary spasms and grasped Hart's hand forcefully, almost like a man drowning might cling to a buoy thrown from shore. "Where are we going? I feel the garm, pressing in on my mind."
"Into battle, of course," smiled Hart, and he patted Ajax on the shoulder warmly. "We are en route to Port Chiaroscuro, the most vital trading post world in the UHC, where most of the marines in this dropship have already laid down their lives a number of times in the last seventy-two standard hours.
“It was you who led us here, after the battle on Aegon you were able to gain more control over your ability to sense the garm. The Watchman theorized that your ability to seek out Grendel level alpha garm was being throttled by the sheer overwhelming presence of the Hive Mind throughout human space. Wiping them out on Aegon essentially gave you the space to hone in on the psychic emanations of the remaining Grendel level alpha garm. It is here, on Port Chirascuro."
Ajax looked away from Hart and cast his gaze across the cramped compartment of the dropship. There were roughly fifty marines packed into the troop compartment, which Ajax knew would put the ship significantly over its weight limit thanks to all the weapons and gear.
Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3) Page 15
