Shadowbreaker - Steve Parker

by Warhammer 40K

  Truly, Coldwave had killed them the moment he had opted to destroy Alel a Tarag.

  It will be a cruel, slow death, she thought. But the Templar bastard is right about one thing. That the death is slow gives us this one shot. Shadowbreaker can still succeed. Arcturus can go out on a high note. My people are ready, and if the Emperor is watching over us, he will let us die in battle as true warriors deserve.

  The thought of a slow, withering death, of vomiting greater and greater amounts of blood while sores erupted on the skin, while organs failed and liquefied…

  Such thoughts chilled her blood.

  A pulse round to the skull would be welcome.

  For all she hated the xenos, all the years she had dedicated herself to the war against them, it would be better to die at the hands of a worthy enemy, a smart enemy, an enemy she could respect. And she had always held a grudging respect for the t’au. Anything less would have been self-delusion.

  Defeating the blue-skins today at Kurdiza would do little to hurt their expansion. They were relentless, vigorous, filled with the fires of ambition and entitlement. They would continue to encroach on Imperial space, bringing into the fold other races with promises of unity and prosperity for all.

  It hardly mattered if those promises were a glamour only. They worked.

  And one day, the Imperium, her beloved Imperium, would find itself in crisis, having underestimated the allure of the T’au’va.

  Human worlds would fall like dominoes.

  But I’ll be dead by then. I have today to make a difference. Only today.

  ‘Archangel to Scimitar Alpha,’ she voxed, making sure her voice was loud enough in the hold for her people to hear. ‘Arcturus stands ready. Do your part, and we will do ours. Archangel out.’

  She closed the link.

  Vyggs was looking at her with that expression again. He no longer tried to hide it now that he knew they would soon die. She hardened hers.

  Don’t say it, man. Please don’t. I know well enough. But let it pass unsaid, for both our sakes.

  He had loved her for years. He had never spoken of it, but she knew, as all women know when a man’s gaze lingers overlong and warm on them, even when they can’t see his face behind an omnishield helm and resp-mask.

  She had appreciated his affection somewhat, deep down. What person, man or woman, hated to be valued and adored?

  But she had resented it, too.

  Vyggs saw her as she had never allowed herself to. He saw a woman, and desired her. She had spent her whole life building herself into something else, a warrior and leader every bit the equal of her men. As a woman, it was not enough to be equal. She’d had to work far harder than any male officer. The Militarum had denied her her due so many times, throwing her over for promotion, choosing men with half her record or less.

  The Inquisition had not been so blind. The Ordo Xenos had seen her worth. It had vindicated her.

  Ordo service has been the best years of my life. I will not fail the ordo now. Shadowbreaker will succeed. On my life, on the lives of my men, Shadowbreaker will succeed.

  She checked the power cabling and connectors on her hot-shot lasgun, then ran a final check on the rest of her kit. Silenced bolt pistol, grenades, knife.

  She checked the stealth systems and photo-reactive camouflage of her combat bodysuit and carapace armour, her helm optics, comms and filters.

  All green.

  Gravity shifted. The Thunderhawk was swinging around on the drop zone.

  Noise erupted. Explosions. The rattle and smack of pulse cannon fire. The deep growl of the aircraft’s twin-linked heavy-bolters. The hiss and zap of its lascannons. Then, the angry buzz and shuddering boom of the turbo-laser destructor.

  ‘All brace,’ voxed the pilot. ‘Drop zone is hot.’

  ‘Wake up, Spear teams,’ she shouted above the noise.

  Her people snapped to attention. She tried to ignore that a few were stifling wet coughs.

  ‘Time to do what we do best,’ she told them. ‘Now remind me one more time where you ugly, tough-looking sons-of-grox were all born and raised!’

  Every right fist in the upper hold was suddenly thrust into the air. As one, they roared, voices drowning out all else.

  ‘Elysia!’

  ‘Elysia!’ Copley yelled back, her face split with a broad grin.

  There was a judder as the Thunderhawk’s landing stanchions hit solid ground.

  The doors to the lower hold jerked open. Muted daylight was already flooding the space.

  Scimitar was charging out into battle.

  Copley heard the roar of a heavy flamer, the thump of a Deathwatch frag cannon.

  She was still grinning when she ran down the ramp to the lower hold, then led her people out at speed into the maelstrom that awaited.

  Up ahead of her, she immediately saw her objective, the atrium of the Kurdiza spaceport main building. Behind it, the air control tower thrust upwards into the early morning air, lights shining bright in the control centre windows.

  T’au were everywhere, pouring onto the rooftops and walkways of the two large terminal buildings on either side and from the roof and balconies of the atrium itself. On the ground, they fired from behind man-portable barricades of energy-absorbing alloys and ceramics.

  From all these places, they rained pulse, plasma and ion fire towards the Thunderhawk and the Imperial forces which spilled out onto the rockcrete. From Black Eagle’s front ramp to the main entrance of the atrium lay seventy metres of open ground – ground that should have been impossible to cross. But the Thunderhawk’s heavy-bolters were chewing apart the t’au cover, forcing their heads down, tearing apart the bodies of any foolish enough to dare return fire.

  Even so, during the mad, breathless sprint towards the broad windows and glass doors of the atrium entrance, two members of Vyggs’ team, Keel and Arlen, were evaporated, turned to ash and burning scraps of cloth by a t’au heavy weapon that managed to get off a blinding, stone-scorching blast.

  Black Eagle’s hurricane bolters turned the offending position to rubble and dust. The screams of t’au wounded were drowned out by continued drumming as the bolters then strafed the walkways left and right.

  Dozens of fire warriors were ripped to pieces. Weapons and bodies tumbled to the ground below.

  Copley registered all of this peripherally, but her focus was ahead of her.

  Ten metres.

  The t’au saw her getting closer to cover. They intensified their fire.

  Black Eagle punished them lethally for that, forcing them back down.

  Faster!

  Eight metres.

  The hurricane bolters couldn’t cover every angle. The t’au were determined that Spear Teams One and Two would not make the cover of the atrium.

  Faster, damn it!

  Six metres.

  Pulse rounds sang through the air so close she felt their deadly heat through her combat suit.

  Four metres.

  Two metres.

  One.

  Copley fired at the glass, weakening it.

  Then she charged straight through it, head tucked. The window exploded inwards. She skidded to a halt, lasgun raised.

  The atrium was wide and filled with light. There were slate-black holo-displays everywhere – on walls, on pillars, hanging from the metal beams of the high ceiling – but they were dead now. No timetables or safety information flickered and danced over them today. There were strange plants, too, blue in colour, some reaching as high as the second-floor galleries.

  It would have been easy to imagine this place on a normal day, filled with a multitude of beings from all the races the t’au had embraced, a mix of military, commercial, political…

  Today, it was a battleground.

  T’au defenders burst from cover or leaned from pillars to
open fire. The Elysians dived for cover of their own. Several tossed frags.

  There was a sharp staccato of explosions. Unbroken windows shook.

  T’au infantry staggered from cover, uniforms stained blue, flesh punctured by deadly shrapnel. They were gunned down immediately.

  Others still were concussed and stumbled into view. Lasgun fire ended their lives.

  Those still fighting were soon suppressed and flanked, the last of these shot in the back as he tried to flee through the far exit.

  ‘Spear One to Scimitar Alpha,’ voxed Copley as her people secured the stairs on either side of the hall and proceeded to clear the second floor. ‘We’ve taken the reception building. Proceeding to objective.’

  Broden’s answer was terse, his focus given over to battle flow. ‘Be quick about it, woman. I want Epsilon found!’

  Copley’s eyes narrowed. She cut the link.

  Arrogant piece of…

  Clearly, not all Adeptus Astartes were equal.

  ‘Second floor cleared, ma’am,’ voxed Vyggs.

  Copley ran up the right stairway. Vyggs and his team were stacked at the end of the second-floor hallway by a row of broad doors that opened onto covered walkways outside.

  The doors to the left and right would take them to the east and west terminal buildings – east for atmospheric traffic, west for traffic going offworld.

  The central walkway was the one they wanted – it would take them to the main control tower.

  Vyggs thrust his chin at its ornately carved doors. ‘No way we can just walk straight in, I suppose.’

  Copley knew he was grinning under his mask. She shook her head. ‘You know better.’

  The t’au would have rigged it to blow the minute they knew the spaceport was under attack. They’d know someone was coming for the control room.

  ‘Rooftop access?’ she asked.

  ‘Stairs far left and right through those exits over there.’

  Addressing everyone, she said, ‘We’re going up. There will be t’au still on the roof, so clear them out. We’ll run lines from the roof to the control tower and go in through the windows. They can blow the walkways if they want. It won’t make a difference. But be ready. Get to cover the moment you’re through the glass and secure the room for those coming in behind you. Clear?’

  Spear Team One took the left access. Spear Team Two took the right.

  Two minutes later, they crashed through several windows on the second floor of the air control tower and cleared that floor.

  In the main hall, they found two vators. Vyggs didn’t have to ask. The t’au would have rigged them, too.

  There was only one stairwell leading up. Spear Team Two took the lead.

  ‘Stack up on that door,’ Vyggs told his team.

  Copley’s team covered them from the rear.

  ‘Smoke the stairwell on entry and go in on infrared,’ ordered Vyggs. ‘Gaman. Ludo. You’re my first-footers. On three, two, one.’

  Doors were kicked. Smoke was popped. Sergeant Gaman and Private Ludo raced in.

  Lasgun fire lit the smoke like a strobe. There was a scream. Bodies dropped from the landings above, t’au and ISF both.

  The Elysians surged inside and began their ascent.

  Forty-seven

  ‘Ghost. Go high.’

  The Raven Guard didn’t need to be told twice. At a mental command, his jump jets flared, launching him up and over, onto the rooftop of the tallest hab.

  The rest of Talon went into cover and, shadow to shadow, pushed up the street, closer to the t’au blockade at the intersection ahead.

  There were blockades at every intersection now as Talon pushed closer to the spaceport and the rendezvous with the rest of the task force.

  Fire caste patrols and drones were sweeping the streets and rooftops, looking for those that had blown the power station and the north-east silos. Karras and his kill-team brothers evaded those they could and killed those they could not.

  The blue-skin response to the Imperial incursion had been swift and comprehensive, typical of t’au organisation and efficiency.

  The spaceport town had never needed much in the way of a garrison. Two hundred infantry. A dozen Devilfish transports. Half that again in Hammerhead tanks. Two Skyray anti-air units. The defence towers had been designed to make the garrison all but redundant. The t’au hadn’t imagined they might be brought down so easily from the inside.

  Karras peered out from the cover of a recessed doorway. Behind the barricades ahead brooded the sleek form of another TX7 Hammerhead. Deadly enough on its own, this one was accompanied by twelve fire warriors and their Fireblade officer, plus two of those damned drones the blue-skins were always depending on.

  Sharp as his eyes and autosenses were at this range, Karras needed to be sure neither of those fliers was a shield drone.

  ‘Scholar,’ breathed Zeed over the vox. ‘I’ve got a good vertical flank. Say the word.’

  ‘Drone types?’ said Karras.

  There was a pause. ‘Shield drones,’ said Zeed. ‘Both of them.’

  That complicated things. Karras might destroy them with psychic force, but only if he had a solid line of sight on each, and the way they were positioned within the barricades, that would mean putting himself out in the open.

  His armour could soak up enough of the standard t’au small-arms fire to give him a window on one of the drones, but the Hammerhead’s powerful railgun would be on him, stealth systems engaged or not, before he could crush the other. He couldn’t kill it and shield himself at the same time.

  He called up the pict feed from the Raven Guard’s helm and considered the enemies’ relative positions.

  ‘Ghost,’ he voxed. ‘You’ll drop right down on the left drone. The second you do, those troopers on the east edge of the barricade are going to turn their weapons on you. Don’t give them time. The instant your drone is down, you jump back to cover.’

  ‘I can handle them, Scholar. I’ll stick to them until they’re meat.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll jump as ordered. Clear?’

  Zeed snorted. ‘Your game, your rules. Got it.’

  ‘Watcher, flank left. The minute both drones are down and Ghost is out of there, hit the front of that Hammerhead with a thundershock grenade.’

  ‘EMP won’t knock out a Hammerhead, Karras. You know that.’

  ‘It will knock out the gun drones in its nose. You’ll take them out, then turn your bolter on the infantry. Frag them if they cluster.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Prophet, you’ll flank right, find cover, and put crosshairs on the Fireblade. When the shield drones go down, take his head off. After that, kill at will. The t’au on the west side will be firing up at Ghost. Drop them.’

  ‘Moving off now,’ said Solarion.

  ‘Scholar,’ said Voss, hefting his Infernus heavy-bolter a little higher than usual, as if to say, Put me to work!

  Karras nodded to him. ‘You’re with me, Omni. We’re going right down the middle. I’ll take out the right-side shield drone first, but I’ll be dangerously exposed after that while I deal with the Hammerhead’s railgun. You’ll suppress the infantry out in front. Bolt or flame or both, just keep them off me.’

  ‘As good as done, Scholar.’

  ‘Get yourselves into position. The chrono is ticking and I could do without an earful from Broden.’

  Black shapes separated from each other.

  Two minutes later, the intersection erupted in violence.

  Three minutes later, it was silent, awash with blood and black smoke. Not a single t’au drew breath.

  Five minutes later, a patrol came across the scene of the carnage and called it in.

  Talon Squad was already half a kilometre away, moving at speed, pushing south to the landing fields and the battle that
was already raging there.

  Reaper Three swung west for the spaceport landing grounds. Chyron, hanging under its tail, held there by magna-grapples, turned his optics to the fires and smoke below.

  To the left and right, Reapers One and Two paced his craft, just a little to the rear in delta formation, watching the skies and their scopes. There were still two Razorshark fighters out there within striking distance.

  From this position, his view largely obscured by black hull, Chyron hadn’t seen much of the fight with the first. He had heard the vox chatter, had known one of the t’au jets was on an intercept course. At the last moment, as the Razorshark was just opening fire, the other Stormravens had swept in on its flanks and torn it to pieces.

  Chyron had seen a flash, and then the burning wreckage had appeared in his vision as it spiralled groundward. It smashed into a large storage facility, igniting whatever was kept there.

  Settling into formation, the three Stormravens pressed on towards the spaceport.

  Broden’s plan had tested Chyron’s patience already. He had had to remain hooked up to the assault craft while it took down its share of the town’s perimeter defences during the initial assault window.

  Three of those towers lay in ruins thanks to Flight Lieutenant Dargen and his gunship. As the Stormraven had screamed away, fire caste soldiers had flooded onto rooftops with man-portable missile systems to try to close the new gaps in the perimeter. Stealthed and with full electronic countermeasures active, Reaper Three was impossible to lock onto. Not invisible, however. At this altitude, just a few hundred metres up, the glow from her turbofan engines was visible from the ground. That was how t’au infantry had guided the Razorshark in, and ultimately doomed it.

  As the three Stormravens cut the distance to the spaceport in half, then half again, bright pulse and plasma fire arced up into the night.

  Chyron growled. As he swung to and fro in the clutches of the magna-grapples, he felt helpless and frustrated. Xenos were firing on him and he could not retaliate.

  ‘Get me groundside,’ he snarled, but only to himself. There was no point taking it out on Dargen. He couldn’t fly any faster.