As the other two veteran-sergeants returned to their place in the column with their squads, Veteran-Sergeant Hilts returned to his place in line before Taloc.
“Use well those enhanced senses you’ve been granted, Scout s’Tonan,” Hilts said in a low voice. “You’ll have need of them soon enough, I expect.”
From the information stored in the Imperial cogitators, the leaders of Task Force Gauntlet had known before ever setting eyes on Vernalis what the patterns of settlement and development on the world had been. The majority of the inhabitants resided in a bare handful of hab-domes near the north pole, with a small but functional spaceport situated nearby. Ground and air transportation across the surface of the world was limited, with the only major arteries being the tram lines that connected the hives to one another, and to the transport depots at the base of each of the orbital elevators that dotted the surface. Otherwise, there were no major roadways or other transit paths of note. Large regions of Vernalis’ surface were all but untouched by human presence, save for the massive pipelines that crisscrossed the landscape, both those laid above-ground and those which ran through subterranean tunnels. These pipelines carried the finished product of the refineries that ringed the oil seas to the orbital elevator’s transport depots, to be lifted into orbit and then ferried out of the system.
Vernalis had, as any Imperial world was required to do, raised a Planetary Defence Force. However, the most recent reports received by the Imperial authorities were that the Vernalis PDF was a relatively small force, a thousand or so infantry at best. The bulk of the planetary defence rested on the servitor-governed systems, consisting of station-to-ship batteries on the orbital stations and ground-to-air batteries at strategic locations on the planet’s surface.
The orbital surveillance carried out by the strike cruiser Titus when it approached Vernalis showed the devastation wrought on the world by the forces of the ruinous powers. The destruction of the orbital stations made clear that the station-to-ship batteries had been insufficient to the task. And the hives in the north showed considerable damage, the inhabitants having either fled or perished. A number of the transport depots had been demolished, but while the destruction could have been the result of enemy attack or sabotage, the damage could easily have been caused by the impact of the orbital elevator’s tether falling back to the surface after the elevator’s orbital equilibrium was upset.
However, it appeared that none of the automated refineries had sustained any significant damage, and while it was impossible to say from orbit what the state of the subterranean tunnels might be, the above-ground pipelines did not appear to have been disturbed or disrupted in any way.
The ground-to-air batteries of the automated planetary defences, finally, were intact, and appeared to be fully functional. Each of them was protected by an all-but-impenetrable void shield, each with its own independent generator. Crewed entirely by servitors and with all the defence systems governed by the master controls in the mountain stronghold on the western hemisphere, there were no human crew onsite who might run scared and abandon their posts. So long as the void shields were not deactivated, the batteries were virtually indestructible from any ground-based attack, and had enough firepower to knock any air-based approach out of the sky before an aerial assault could be launched. In fact, there appeared to be evidence of wreckage scattered along the southern edges of the western hemisphere that suggested some number of enemy craft had been shot down in just such an attempted assault, though it was just as possible that these represented the destroyed remains of the craft that had brought the enemy to the surface.
Captain Lysander’s best estimate, on receiving the updated intelligence and comparing it against the information from the Imperial cogitators, was that a small enemy force had managed to reach the surface. Then, before the inhabitants knew the enemy was among them, the enemy had infiltrated and taken control of the transport depots, and using the orbital elevators had sent munitions packages up to the orbital stations in the place of the regular petrochem shipments, possibly on timed charges set to explode as soon as they reached the stations. Only then did they launch their attacks on the planet’s population centres, when it was already too late for the inhabitants of Vernalis to escape or call for help.
It was a sound tactic, employing stealth to reach the surface and then cutting off the ability of the inhabitants to get off-world or make contact with other systems before even announcing their presence. It was an approach that the Imperial Fists themselves might have employed were the circumstances reversed, and they were cast in the role of invaders rather than reconquering defenders.
If any among Task Force Gauntlet recalled that the Emperor’s Children had before their fall to heresy been the most devoted warriors of the Imperium, brilliant strategists and supremely efficient combatants, none of them were willing to mention the fact aloud.
Now the mountain loomed so high in the west that the advancing column did not need to climb the next rise to catch a glimpse of it, but could see its grey peak from the lowest points of the valleys and gullies which snaked between the hills. The Scouts who followed Captain Taelos surely felt that each rise they crested was certain to be the last before they reached the foot of the mountain, but every time there was another valley and another hill before them, and the mountain loomed ever larger.
At the head of the column, Captain Taelos glanced at his auspex again, tempted for the hundredth time today to simply deactivate the device altogether. It was certainly doing him little good as it was. Whatever it was in the atmosphere that was interfering with vox-traffic had begun to baffle the auspex’s ability to sense its surroundings as well. In the hour or so since he had called a halt and conferred with his sergeants, he had lost regular contact with the columns of the 1st and 5th Company elements to the north and south, able to send and receive only brief bursts by vox every few minutes.
He knew that Captains Lysander and Khrusaor were advancing steadily to the west, that they expected to reach the base of the mountain within the hour and that they had as yet not made any verifiable contact with the enemy. Only the damnable shrieking and howling that droned ever on and on gave any hint of the presence of the Chaotic forces, but as Veteran-Sergeant Hilts had pointed out there was no solid way of knowing whether the sounds were travelling a metre or a kilometre or even more.
The wind shifted, and a gust blew a plume of fine grey dust into Taelos’ face, searing his eyes and gritting his teeth. His helmet hung at his waist, but like the veteran-sergeants who followed behind him Taelos had chosen not to don it. When leading Scouts who had perforce to march into harm’s way with their heads bare and unprotected, it appeared to Taelos unseemly that their commanding officers should not do the same.
His body responded flawlessly to the dust, tear ducts flushing the irritant from the eyes, and the grit that had blown into the mouth being simply swallowed, to be later broken down and isolated by the preomnor if it proved any kind of threat.
With a glance over his shoulder, Captain Taelos motioned to Veteran-Sergeant Hilts that they would continue over the rise and down the next valley. Hilts passed the signal back to the other veteran-sergeants with a wave of his hand. There was no point in employing vox-comms unnecessarily, after all, and with the howling shriek rising over the whistling wind, they would have to shout to be heard from one end of the column to the other if they were to pass orders vocally.
Sliding down the scree as he descended, the shale and flint in places not densely packed enough to support an Astartes’ immense weight, Captain Taelos reached the lowest point of the depression between the two hills, and made his way across the narrow gully to the point where the next hill began to rise before them. He could almost hear the thoughts of the Scouts behind him, hoping that this might be the last hill before they reached their destination. He glanced back at the column, and saw that the rearguard was now descending the scree, the rest of the Scouts maintaining formation as best they could as they bunched u
p in the low valley. And suddenly, silence fell.
Captain Taelos almost reached up to check his helmet’s audio intake, before remembering he wasn’t wearing it. But the sensation was almost exactly like when the audio from the surrounding environment had been cut off.
But then Taelos picked up the sound of the Scouts’ boots crunching on the shale, and the faint rasp of his own breathing. He could still hear the low mournful whistling of the wind, as well.
What he couldn’t hear was the shrieks and screams and thrumming howls of the Chaotic forces.
Taelos considered, and then immediately dismissed, the possibility that his Lyman’s ear might be somehow malfunctioning, involuntarily filtering out the hellish screams of their enemy as background noise. But a quick self-check was all that it took to prove that his implant was functioning normally and at peak efficiency.
And it wasn’t as if the enemy had drifted too far out of range for the column to hear, either. One moment the sounds had been as loud as ever, louder in fact, and the next they were replaced with complete silence.
Which could only mean one thing. The enemy had suddenly and unexpectedly fallen silent.
And Captain Taelos had a suspicion he knew precisely what that meant.
“Defensive positions!” he shouted, racking his bolter, his gaze sweeping the hilltops on all sides. Raising the firearm in his left fist, he drew his sword with his right. “Prepare to engage!”
The Scouts of Squad Pardus stood fanned out in a wide arc, their bolt pistols trained on the hills to the south and to the north-west. The other two Scout squads covered the approaches from the other directions, Squad Ursus covering north-west to east, and Squad Vulpes covering east to south.
Like Scout du Queste and the rest of the members of Squad Pardus, the other squads in the column had seen limited combat since joining the ranks of the Scouts. Isolated firefights, exchanges of fire in skirmishes while on reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines, running exchanges from the backs of Scout bikes with enemy mobile units. Each of them had faced the enemy and survived—though not all of their fellow initiates had been as fortunate—but in every instance the exchange with the enemy forces had been brief and isolated, ending either when the main body of battle-brothers arrived on the scene, or Thunderhawks and other aerial elements took out the enemy from above, or any one of a dozen different reasons. And none of the Scouts of the three squads had ever fought in close combat with an enemy, but had rather exchanged fire only with ranged weapons.
But now, Scout du Queste and his squadmates stood with bolt pistols and blades in hand, ready to face an enemy assault.
Jean-Robur could not help but remember the first time he had gone into battle, alongside his cousins and uncles on the green shores of Eokaroe. But though the sensation was similar, it was not the same. Jean-Robur could remember quite clearly how he had felt that morning on Eokaroe, though he could not now recall the surname of the cousin that had tormented him that morning, or the name of the other officers with whom he had trained. He had felt fear, welling deep inside. But it was not fear that he felt now, but rather something closer to anticipation, almost exhilaration.
He was ready to face the enemy, and to test his mettle and his blade against his foe. And he was not willing to wait any longer than he already had.
“Come on, you heretical bastards!” Scout du Queste shouted to the howling winds. “I tire of waiting!”
Veteran-Sergeant Hilts shot du Queste a sharp look, the kind of hard expression that was typically accompanied by the phrase “Five minutes in the pain-glove”. But Hilts did not have a chance to speak.
As if in response to Jean-Robur’s taunting yell, the enemy came surging over the hills to the north-west and the south-west, howling like the damned as they came, wicked curved swords waving in their hands.
“Finally!” du Queste shouted, and opened fire.
CHAPTER NINE
The forward-most of the Roaring Blades, a gaunt-faced and skeletal figure who might once have been a woman, took two shots to the chest from Scout du Queste’s bolt pistol and kept right on coming. A third shot seared into the Roaring Blade’s shoulder, but did not stop the heretic’s forward momentum. Throat open and howling a deafening shriek, the Roaring Blade swung a long jagged-edged sabre in a killing-stroke aimed at Jean-Robur’s head. He was able to block the attack with his own blade, but the force of the impact jarred his arm to the shoulder, setting his teeth buzzing in his skull. Though the Roaring Blade wore ragged battle-armour which had deflected some of Jean-Robur’s shots, at least one of the three bolts that Jean-Robur had fired had bored into the Roaring Blade’s flesh itself. But even with one of its arms blown away below the elbow, the injury was not slowing the Roaring Blade down—if anything, it seemed to draw strength from the injuries, even pleasure. The cracked and dirt-caked lips of the renegade pulled back in a sickening parody of a smile as Scout du Queste forced it back with a shove of his own sword against the jagged sabre.
The Roaring Blade’s shriek turned into something that was almost a song, eyes wide and ecstatic, the rising and falling of its hoarse and croaking voice like the tones of some insane hymn to dark daemonic powers.
Even with his Lyman’s ear to filter out the din, Jean-Robur felt the Roaring Blade’s song like a knife in the brain, lunatic harmonics that hinted at inhuman intelligences from beyond the veil of the material world. He ignored the noise as best he could, shooting his bolt pistol from the hip, the shot catching the Roaring Blade in the abdomen. Then he thrust forwards with his sword.
Even while blood and viscera pored from the fourth and newest wound in its body, the heretic all-but-swooned in ecstasy, and when it battered aside Scout du Queste’s thrust it was with even more force and speed than before.
A headshot would drop the Roaring Blade, surely, but it was also just as clear that the howling figure was not about to give Jean-Robur the chance to take the shot. When he raised his bolt pistol to take aim, the Roaring Blade surged forwards again with a maddeningly fast attack. Scout du Queste barely had time to parry, and any shot he made with his bolt pistol would have gone wide.
Jean-Robur was convinced now that the only sure way to defeat the Roaring Blade was to disarm it, whether by battering the sabre from its hand or removing the hand from its arm or whatever other solution presented itself, and then dropping it with a bolt to the head when the way was clear.
He began to chant a familiar litany of Dorn under his breath to clear his thoughts and counter the enemy’s distracting howls. Then a slow grin tugged up the corners of Jean-Robur’s mouth.
Close-quarters combat with an enemy swordsman, with no choice but for Jean-Robur to use his superior skills with the blade to overcome his opponent? This was the kind of contest he was born to fight.
There were nearly a thousand of the Roaring Blades pouring over the hills towards the column of 10th Company Scouts. The Traitor Guard got their name from their predilection for close combat with bladed weapons of all kinds, and for the fearsome clamour they made in the ecstasy of battle, and the howls they made as they raced towards the Scouts certainly lived up to the name.
The Roaring Blades were so corrupted by their worship of Slaanesh that they found pleasure in all sensation, the more intense the sensory input the greater the pleasure, and so sought out pain as the ultimate indulgence. It was believed by Imperial intelligence that the nervous systems of the Roaring Blades had been altered by their masters in the Emperor’s Children, so that their bodies now reacted in the same way to pain that a normal human body reacted to adrenaline. As a result, if a Roaring Blade received injuries on the field of battle, even fatal ones, they would actually be strengthened as a result, becoming ever more ferocious and deadly, right up to the point when they finally collapsed from their wounds.
Most of the Roaring Blades were armed only with sabres and scimitars, but a few here and there were equipped with lasrifles and shotguns of antique Imperial make, no doubt scavenged from the bodies
of the Traitor Guard’s fallen enemies. Had the Roaring Blades kept their distance and attempted simply to exchange fire with Captain Taelos and his Scouts with ranged weaponry, the twenty Imperial Fists in the column would doubtless have made short work of them, even given the Roaring Blades’ superior numbers. But heedless of any personal risk to themselves or the potential casualties they would incur, the Roaring Blades instead rushed headlong towards the Scouts and their commanders, swords waving in their hands and yelling themselves hoarse as they charged mindlessly towards their enemies.
It was a tactic of desperation, or so it seemed to Captain Taelos at first, to simply throw superior numbers against the enemy, to bury a better-armed and better-equipped opponent in mounds of your own dead. But as the Roaring Blades ploughed ahead despite the first shots of bolt-fire which exploded in arms and heads and chests like red blossoms, and Captain Taelos saw firsthand the effects of the Roaring Blades’ rewired nervous systems, he was forced to admit that perhaps there was less desperation in the tactic than he had supposed. For every Roaring Blade who was dropped by a direct shot from a bolt pistol to the head, or left incapable of advancing when well-placed bolt-fire blew their legs out from under them, there were five more who charged on, ignoring the gaping wounds in their trunks and arms.
And there was always the possibility that this seemingly mindless attack could be only a delaying tactic, or perhaps a first wave to gauge the strength of the Imperial Fists column, with a second wave waiting in reserve to take advantage of any newfound weakness.
Captain Taelos drew his power sword in his right fist, energy coruscating up and down the blade’s edge like golden lightning. Already some of the Scouts had worked out that close-quarters would win this engagement, silencing their bolt pistols and raising their blades to close with the enemy.
[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn Page 16
