Storm of Damocles Page 17

  Cadvan brought the Corvus Blackstar in so low that they could hear the scrape of snow as they skimmed over the surface, and Leonas had been the first out – leaping from the front hatch and landing with a crunch.

  Cadvan banked up and away, as Leonas led the kill team forwards at a run.

  He ran straight into the path of fifty fire warriors and a trio of their smaller battlesuits, skimming towards them.

  ‘Contacts,’ Leonas voxed and fired his plasma gun. He hit a drone with the first shot, one of the battlesuits with the next. The plasma punched it back into the path of the fire warriors.

  The fight was ferocious and brutal. Ragris cut one of battlesuits apart with his power axe as he was hit in the back by a bolt of plasma. He burned alive inside his suit. None of them could help him.

  ‘Atilio!’ Leonas voxed. The Ultramarine had the storm shield. He should be here to cover them, but what was left of Atilio was slumped against a lump of wreckage. Even his storm shield had been deformed by the power of the blast that had killed him. They were out in the open, outnumbered and out-gunned, and he had already lost two brothers.

  It was fifty yards to the hab-dome’s doors. There was only one thing for it, Leonas thought, as his lightning claw crackled with furious blue light – and he charged.

  The Corvus Blackstar had brought Konrad Raimer and his men to within five hundred yards of the hab-dome without the enemy even knowing that they were there. They deployed without resistance, marching across the open snow, guns ready to fire. Sardegna’s heavy bolter had knocked a heavy gun drone out, and then they were at the back door.

  Domitian had insisted they attack the service entrance, and as they approached the sealed doorway, Konrad pulled a melta charge from his belt.

  Before he could set the charge in place the door began to rise.

  ‘I told you,’ Domitian voxed.

  ‘It seems you were right,’ Konrad said.

  The tau were astonished to see Space Marines at their back door. The front ones fell back in terror as those behind pushed forwards. All of them died. And then Konrad’s squad were inside, moving through what appeared to be a kitchen, executing the survivors.

  Domitian led his warriors in over the mangled bodies of the tau. While the guards wore Ke’lshan grey, these bodies wore badges of a multitude of different septs.

  ‘Thirty-two tau confirmed dead,’ he voxed. ‘Entering hab-dome now.’

  It was fifteen feet to the third battlesuit, Leonas reckoned, as he led the charge on the front gate. The suit was already skimming about to face him, underslung plasmas heating rapidly.

  Leonas’ combi-plasma was already spent. He held the gun out before him and pumped the enemy with bolt-rounds. At such short range, the mass-reactive shots slammed into the battlesuit’s armour, knocking the foe off balance.

  But not, Leonas realised, for long enough.

  The twin barrels of the battlesuit swung towards him.

  He found the sept markings. Ke’lshan, he saw with fury.

  I am going to die at the hands of the Ke’lshan and with me shall end the ten-thousand-year history of the Black Consuls Chapter, he thought. This was not how he imagined his brotherhood ending, on an unknown planet in the Damocles Gulf, charging into a host of foes.

  Leonas had saved the round imprinted with Nidal until now. He slammed it into his bolter and roared his fury as his power-armoured legs forced his massive bulk towards the enemy, firing wildly.

  There was a muffled crack in his vox as the battlesuit fired. The globe of plasma shed white flames as it spat from the twinned barrels. Leonas’ visor compensated, dimming the world to soften the glare of the shot. Warning runes flared as the plasma impacted on his armour, and he knew that in a second, as the plasma tore through the layers of ablative ceramite, he would be dead.

  But then the heat was gone. The shots had scored a groove through his shoulder guard, and he was still driving forwards, with only two strides between them.

  Leonas laughed as he realised that his enemy had just fired both his guns and missed, and as Moaz’s voice came in his ear, he understood.

  ‘I spoiled his aim. Now you kill him!’ the Raven Guard sniper voxed.

  Leonas plunged the points of his lightning claw through the belly of the battlesuit and ripped out part of the crew inside. He felt more cracks of the stalker-pattern boltgun, and realised that he was hearing the shots through Moaz’s vox-link.

  Leonas did not pause. He singled out the fire warrior leader, cut him into shreds with his lightning claw, and kept moving.

  ‘Keep it up,’ Moaz voxed, and Leonas heard the muffled crack in his earbud and felt the bolt-rounds whizz past his helmet.

  Harath, the Salamander, was the only warrior still beside him, killing tau fire warriors with a master-crafted thunder hammer. The two of them waded through the fire warriors, mowing the enemy down.

  ‘I’m with you!’ a voice shouted, and the Black Shield, Hadrian, appeared, bolt pistol in one hand, power sword in the other, cutting his way through the foe. ‘Come!’ the Black Shield voxed. ‘The cadets are inside the hab-dome!’

  Leonas wiped the splattered blood from his helm lenses and saw both that the enemy were dead and that there were more – hundreds of them – coming at a run from the south west with two Devilfish and a Hammerhead approaching from the direction of the starport.

  Wherever Moaz was, it was obvious that he had to get clear.

  ‘I’ve got trouble,’ he voxed suddenly, and Leonas started sprinting towards the hab-dome’s gates.

  ‘Follow me!’ he shouted to Harath and Hadrian as he slammed vengeance rounds into his storm bolter and fired wildly as he charged. ‘Let’s get inside!’

  Leonas reached the gates of the hab-dome. The entire team were wounded.

  He kicked a way through the doorway as the Hammerhead fired and the shot landed short, showering them with dirt and ice. Hadrian and Harath were right behind him. They had to keep moving inside. They had to disable the shield and find the cadets.

  It was furious hand-to-hand killing with the three Space Marines working as one. Harath was a stalwart. Hadrian fought with murderous speed. The defence stubbornly clogged the corridors. They were fire warriors, as far as he could tell, though there were others mixed in. Earth caste, he thought, their bodies packed in with the rest. Two battlesuits.

  It took nearly two minutes to clear the defenders at the head of the stairwell and more fire warriors were coming into the hab-dome behind them. Hadrian was keeping them at bay.

  This mission was going badly wrong.

  ‘No sign of tau,’ Leonas voxed, then, as fire warriors appeared behind them, he added, ‘I thought the White Scars were drawing off the enemy!’

  He ducked back as what looked like a stealth battlesuit appeared across the dome. A searing stab of blue plasma lit the corridor from within. Leonas felt the shot pass inches in front of him, then lifted his storm bolter and fired. He had no idea if he had hit or not, but jumped out. He was furious.

  ‘What are the White Scars doing?’ he said, as he ran into a squad of fire warriors and emptied a magazine into them.

  They were going too slowly. ‘We’re being bogged down!’ he voxed. ‘Nergui? Konrad?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Domitian!’

  Nothing. Leonas’ storm bolter magazine clicked empty. He slammed it into the face of a fire warrior and felt bones break. Tightly synchronised plans tended to unravel. Leonas cursed. It was taking too long for the White Scars to strike, and they still had not managed to get the hab-dome’s shields down.

  Chapter Thirty

  The footsteps had long since passed through the kitchen, but H’an did not dare move.

  He was shivering with cold and terror. Ch’an reached out and took his hand.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must go. We must figh
t!’

  From inside the stairwell there was the echo of gunfire. H’an closed his eyes as if he could will it all away. ‘Come!’ Ch’an dragged at H’an’s arm, but his gunner would not move. Ch’an pulled him. ‘Come!’ the veteran said again. ‘We must fight!’

  Ch’an dragged H’an from the ground, and pulled him through the ruins of the kitchen.

  The smell of burned skin and blood was thick on the air. The door had been jammed open, the control hatch shot away. H’an gazed out at the scene before him in a flat-faced look of horror.

  The space port burned as fuel dumps lit the sky, and tracers and pulse rounds stabbed into the night. The planetary defence turrets were burning like beacons on the four hills. There were heaps of dead fire warriors, lying where they had fallen.

  A Ke’lshan fire warrior ran from the direction of Fireblade M’au’s command dome. A sniper shot rang out, and the warrior fell as if punched in the side of the head, and did not move again.

  H’an was terrified. But he drew strength from his bonded pilot.

  ‘Will we make it?’ he hissed.

  ‘I cannot say,’ Ch’an said. ‘But we have to make the effort.’

  Ch’an set off. H’an watched him, limping across the ice and then crouching as he ran. He caught the older warrior up, put his arm under his armpit and took his weight.

  The two – pilot and gunner – struggled across the ice. A stray round hissed past their heads and Ch’an fell behind a defensive barrier.

  H’an touched something warm. At his feet a disembowelled Ke’lshan fire warrior was already beginning to stiffen with cold. He recoiled and wiped the gore from his palm.

  The defensive line led to within thirty feet of the suiting domes.

  ‘Let’s crawl,’ Ch’an said.

  It was a painfully slow process. There were dead warriors lying where they had fought, but the battle had passed on, and the suiting dome seemed quiet and silent.

  It took ten minutes for H’an to pull Ch’an across the compacted snow. At last they came to the entrance.

  H’an reached up and slammed the access stud but it did not move. ‘Locked,’ he hissed, and pounded on the door with his fist.

  ‘Try the code.’

  A missile exploded fifty feet away and the flash blinded H’an for a moment. He managed to punch the code in. The door hummed and slid open.

  As it closed behind them, Ch’an rose to his feet. Above them, each standing in its chamber, ten Stormsurge battlesuits stood waiting, batteries charged, guns loaded, ready for battle.

  Ch’an turned to his bonded gunner and the two of them clasped hands.

  ‘They are waiting for us,’ Ch’an said, and slowly and solemnly the two warriors approached the battlesuit, and bowed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Aun’ui Hoo’nan’s personal quarters were in a separate complex. As soon as he had left his command bunker, Fireblade M’au knew that his first duty was to ensure the ethereal’s safety. He gave orders for his battlesuit to be made ready and then went to personally inform Aun’ui Hoo’nan of the danger.

  The ethereal was sitting in his meditation chamber, his robes arranged about him and his hands folded neatly in his lap. He spoke with slow and deliberate tones, seemingly unaware of the explosions outside. At one point he looked up and said, ‘Fireblade. Do you think the facility is in danger?’

  Another boom sounded from the direction of the space port. The explosion made the ground tremble. Fireblade M’au thought about this and said, ‘No. We have assessed the risk. Our fire warriors are being recalled from their forward bases. Hunter Cadres Three and Nine are both within minutes of the base. Hunter Cadre Five will be here within half a dec. Seven and Four are also on their way.’

  The ethereal took in the information and nodded slowly. ‘You are concerned, though, for my safety.’

  Fireblade M’au bowed. ‘Always.’

  The ethereal nodded. ‘And you would like me to go somewhere… more steadfast.’

  Fireblade M’au bowed once more. ‘Yes, Most Honoured One. I have asked for a chamber to be made ready for you in the sublevels. I have sent the great strength of Hunter Cadre One there. They will protect both you and the cadets. The safety of you and the cadets is my prime concern. My warriors and I will make sure that you are secure.’

  Aun’ui Hoo’nan thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘As you wish.’

  It was too dangerous for Aun’ui Hoo’nan to cross the open ground between his personal quarters and the hab-dome, so a Devilfish was brought up, and an honour guard of Ke’lshan fire warriors stood around him as the ethereal was escorted into the back.

  ‘Apologies,’ Fireblade M’au said. ‘We have not had sufficient time to make this more comfortable.’

  Aun’ui Hoo’nan smiled. ‘Do not trouble yourself,’ he said. ‘This is a moment of trial for us all.’

  The fire warriors stood guard as the ethereal was made comfortable, and Fireblade M’au stepped inside and personally oversaw the whole process. Aun’ui Hoo’nan seemed almost apologetic for the inconvenience he was causing, and his humility only made their feelings for him more intense. He was both wise and humble. He was greater than them in all things. Fireblade M’au felt this as keenly as the others. At the end he bowed once more and apologised.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ Aun’ui Hoo’nan said, ‘that you will deal with this threat. You have been chosen, Fireblade M’au. You are one of our sept’s finest warriors. You will honour our sept. Of that, I am sure.’

  Fireblade M’au bowed a third time and then dismounted. As the rear hatch closed he slammed his hand onto the fuselage as a signal for the driver to set off. A pair of Devilfish escorted it across the yard to the hab-dome. He watched them enter the dome’s transport hatch in single file, and did not leave until he had the report that they were safe inside.

  He led his bodyguards to his personal armoury, issuing orders all the time to his hunter cadre’s shas’vre. ‘Secure the hab-dome. All cadets are to wait in the sublevel. Aun’ui Hoo’nan must be protected within the substructure. If any of the enemy break in then they must be resisted with all strength. Reinforcements are on the way.’

  A tau philosopher once said that there was no greater unity than between bonded warriors, or a warrior and his battlesuit.

  It was so with Fireblade M’au. When he was harnessed inside his Crisis suit he felt greater than he had been before. He scrolled through the internal data logs and flexed the arms of his XV8. His right armhad a double-barrelled plasma rifle, the left a long shield generator – the most up-to-date Ke’lshan could equip him with.

  He sat back in his suit’s cabin. The hatches closed about him; lights, monitors, gun readings all came to life at his touch. He sent out a message to all shas’vres. ‘Fireblade M’au is now personally leading the defence of M’Yan’Ral.’

  With those words his battlesuit lifted from the ground and his shas’vre bodyguards trailed after with a cohort of drones in close support.

  Fireblade M’au rallied the remains of the M’Yan’Ral guards as the attack on the hab dome started. The speed and power of the attack had rocked his forces back.

  Earth caste technicians fed him constant streams of information, gleaned from drone observations, turrets and teams of fire warriors. Pict-feeds fed into his battlesuit from drones and observation turrets. The gue’la were few in number. No more than twenty, he was sure. His confidence rose with each minute as the attack on the hab-dome stalled and drone pict-feeds showed dead gue’la. Their drop pods had exhausted their ammunition by now, or had been knocked out by precision strikes from the Hammerheads. Three Razorsharks had managed to get aloft and were hunting a biker across the crater fields. A team of stealthsuits had tracked down a sniper and were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse through the wreckage of the starports. The vespid claimed to have killed a gue’la near their rock. Th
ey had joined up with Hunter Cadres Three and Nine, and both of them were skimming over the snow to join him. Kroot patrols were being brought in as the hunter cadres came across them.

  Pathfinders were to join the Devilfish and Hammerheads to clear the space port of remaining infiltrators. His Crisis suits and fire warrior strike teams were to storm the hab-dome after the infiltrators and kill them before they managed to fight their way through to the sublevels.

  The stresses of managing a camp of cadets began to lift from his shoulders. Fireblade M’au smiled for the first time in months, as he began marshalling his hunter cadres into their attack formations. This was war. It was what he was born for. It was what he excelled at.

  The upset would be unfortunate, but it would be contained, he decided. The honour of Sept Ke’lshan would be enhanced. As he considered this, a new pict-feed streamed into his battlesuit displays.

  It was an infrared image from a pathfinder team attached to Hunter Cadre Five. He paused for a moment, not believing what he saw. A new gue’la, largely mechanised, with strong air support.

  His optimism ebbed. But there was no time for shock. The gue’la had caught them out a second time. But war was all about outmanoeuvring the enemy. It was about surprise and overwhelming force delivered with a pinpoint precision.

  He started redeploying his forces to counter this new threat.

  Leading an impromptu force of vespid, pathfinders, Devilfish and a Hammerhead, Fireblade M’au nagged away at the flanks of the White Scars time and again. His railgun’s shots left great steaming craters in the ice, and every time the White Scars tried to move forwards he engaged them in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

  Each time the gue’la bikes and speeders tried to turn his flank or encircle him, the tau commander pulled his forces back, regrouping for another strike. As the White Scars columns drove inexorably forwards he became more reckless.

  ‘They cannot be allowed near to the hab-dome. Stall them. As soon as the hunter cadres arrive we will destroy them.’