03 - Savage Scars (27 page)

The Iron Hands Space Marines were in many ways the polar opposite of Sarik’s
Chapter, and they measured such things as honour and duty according to a
different standard. Sarik’s people were the savage, proud children of the wild
steppes of Chogoris and much of their home world’s wildness flowed in their
veins. The Iron Hands, however, were often held to be aloof and distant, a
seemingly contradictory mix of emotionless, cold steel and the implacable,
burning heat that forged it. Sarik knew such a view point was overly simplistic,
but as with most stereotypes did contain a kernel of truth. Even though he had
served alongside Rumann for several months now, Sarik still had great difficulty
reading the captain’s intentions.

“Exterminatus is without doubt the most efficient means of defeating our
foe,” Rumann said. “But much has been committed to the ground offensive. Veteran
Sergeant Sarik is correct; there is no honour in evacuating as per the
inquisitor’s proclamation.”

“Then we are all in agreement,” General Gauge said. “Operation Hydra is to go
ahead, regardless of the inquisitor’s orders.”

Sarik nodded gravely. As Space Marines, he and Captain Rumann were at least
partly insulated from the wrath of the Inquisition. Lucian’s standing and his
rogue trader’s Warrant of Trade afforded him, in theory at least, some
protection. The general, however, was taking a great personal risk.

“You are a man of great honour, general,” Sarik said, nodding his head
slightly towards the pict screen displaying the general’s face. “You alone of
our number have much to lose. I shall not allow that to happen.”

“Nor I,” growled Captain Rumann.

Perhaps for the first time in the long months since the Damocles Gulf Crusade
had been launched, General Wendall Gauge looked genuinely speechless, perhaps
even moved. Sarik grinned, keen to avoid embarrassing the old veteran anymore,
and pressed on. “Friends, I move that this session of the command council be
wrapped up.” Lucian laughed out loud at that, and Gauge’s normally cold eyes
twinkled with amusement.

“Let our next meeting be convened at the Gel’bryn star port,” Sarik
concluded. “No more than twenty-four hours from now.”

Several hundred kilometres overhead, in orbit around Dal’yth Prime, death
incarnate was slowly awakened from a timeless slumber. Deep in the bowels of the
Blade of Woe, in a section of the mighty warship given over to the use of
Inquisitor Grand and his staff, ancient and all-but forbidden devices were being
activated. Inside a huge and lightless vacuum-sealed chamber sat a sleek, black
form, enveloped within a stasis field and blessed by the wards of a thousand
exorcists. A secret word of command had been uttered, and a cipher-sealed
communication heeded. The stasis lock was opened, and that which had been held
within stirred once more.

The stygian darkness was pierced by a wailing klaxon, an apocalyptic
forewarning of the end of a world. Flashing red lights penetrated the dark,
their illumination sliding across the black form like oil mixed with blood.

Within that sleek form, a billion viral slayers were freed from aching
stasis. Suspended in a blasphemous medium of hybrid cell nuclei, the slayers set
about the one and only task they were capable of doing. They replicated, and
with each reproduction tore in two their hapless cell-hosts. In a living being,
such catastrophic cell damage would lead to death within minutes, sometimes
seconds, as the host’s cells were literally torn apart and their body reduced to
a writhing sludge.

The process set in motion, death was inevitable. Either the viral slayers
must be unleashed upon a world, to infect the nuclei of every living thing, or
they would expend the artificial gruel they were suspended in, and potentially
break free of their prison. At that point, the slayers would have to be slain,
jettisoned into space or scoured by nucleonic fire lest a single one remain.

A deep, grinding moan echoed through the chamber, and the sleek black form
was in motion. The deck beneath it sank on well-oiled gears and jets of
superheated steam spurted from release valves. With a final mournful dirge of
sirens, the deadly payload was swallowed whole, inserted into the transport
conduit that would carry it to the launch bay.

The countdown to Exterminatus had begun.

As the sun rose, Operation Hydra got under way. Sergeant Sarik was at the
speartip of a mighty war host, and the sight of it filled his savage heart with
pride as he rode south in his Rhino.

Ahead lay the settlement codified Erinia Beta, and its strategically vital
bridge. Behind Sarik was the crusade’s entire contingent of Space Marines, the
livery of their Rhinos proudly proclaiming the colours of the White Scars,
Ultramarines, Scythes of the Emperor, Iron Hands and several other Chapters. The
Rhinos were accompanied by Predator battle tanks, Whirlwind missile tanks, land
speeder grav-attack vehicles and mighty Dreadnoughts. The skies above the column
were filled with the whining of jump packs as Assault Marines advanced in great,
bounding leaps towards the enemy.

As impressive a sight as the Space Marines were, they were merely the
smallest fraction of what followed in their wake. Nineteen entire front-line
Imperial Guard regiments surged forwards as one. First came the armoured
regiments, each consisting of dozens of battle tanks, their huge cannons
levelled at the distant settlement with unequivocal threat. Behind the armoured
spearhead ground forwards the Chimera-mounted regiments of the Brimlock
Dragoons, scores of armoured personnel carriers throwing up a storm of dust into
the air overhead.

The host’s right flank was made up of the lighter regiments, including the
Rakarshan Rifles and the Brimlock Fusiliers. These would move forward on light
trucks, then fight on foot, following in the wake of the armoured thrust and
consolidating its victories whilst guarding the flanks and rear against enemy
infiltration.

But it was towards the army’s left flank that Sarik looked as he rode high in
his transport’s cupola. There was to be seen the most impressive sight of all.
Even through the haze thrown up in the host’s passing, the distant figures of
the crusade’s Titan contingent were visible. Gauge had massed the gigantic war
machines into a single force, which even now strode forwards towards its
position at the head of the advance. The first Titans to move forwards were six
Warhounds, their characteristic stooped gait and back-jointed legs giving them
the appearance of loping dogs of war. Behind the Warhounds strode the even
larger, upright Reaver-class Battle Titans. Each of these was half as high again
as a Scout Titan, with huge banners streaming from their turbo-laser destructors
proclaiming the symbols of the Legio Thanataris. High atop the carapace shell of
each Reaver was an Apocalypse missile launcher, each carrying as much
destructive potential as an entire Imperial Guard artillery company.

Yet even the mighty Reavers were small in comparison to the single
Warlord-class engine that followed in its companions’ wake. As the Warlord
strode forwards, it broke through a drifting bank of dust, parting it as a huge
ocean-going vessel emerging from a seaborne fog. Even at a distance of several
kilometres, the ground shook as the Warlord advanced. Its head was wrought in
the image of a long-dead Imperial saint, its gold-chased features ablaze in the
white morning light. The Warlord’s right arm was a gatling blaster, each one of
its multiple barrels many times larger than a tank’s main weapon and capable of
rapid-firing a storm of shells. Its left arm was a volcano cannon, one of the
most powerful weapons in the Imperium’s ground arsenal, and capable of
obliterating even another Titan in a single shot. A pair of turbo-laser
destructors was mounted on its shell-like armoured carapace above each shoulder,
in all probability making the Battle Titan the single most lethal combatant on
the entire planet, if not the whole region.

As the Titans strode in from the flank, the Chimera-mounted Brimlock Dragoon
regiments took position behind them. Gauge intended to use this mighty armoured
force to smash through the main body of the tau forces and press into the city
itself without even stopping. Aside from the tau destroyers, the Departmento
Tacticae had not identified anything in the enemy’s arsenal heavy enough to
confront a Titan. On the evidence gathered so far, the tau did not utilise Titan
equivalents, as so many other races did. That scrap of good news had been
disseminated throughout the army, and was very welcome indeed.

As the tread of the Titan force shook the entire landscape, a deep roar
passed high overhead. Squinting against the harsh morning light, Sarik saw the
massed formation of the crusade’s fighter and bomber force streaking south.
Gauge and Jellaqua had committed the crusade’s entire sub-orbital air force to a
single, vital mission. The force was tasked with intercepting the tau’s
destroyers and bombing their airfields, protecting the Titans from their
super-heavy weapons. Both leaders knew that they were asking the veteran
aircrews to embark on a nigh suicidal endeavour, and the crews themselves knew
it too. Nevertheless, the men and women of the Imperial Navy tactical fighter
wings were amongst the most dedicated servants of the Emperor in the crusade,
and every one had vowed to undertake the task given to them so that not a single
Titan would be lost. Most of the aircrews had already received the last rites
from Gurney’s army of Ecclesiarchy priests.

As the massed fighter and bomber wave plied south on miles-long white
contrails, the Imperial Guard’s artillery opened up. Several hundred Basilisk
self-propelled artillery platforms lobbed their shells high into the air from
the army’s rear, the first strikes blossoming amongst the pristine white
structures of the tau city. The outer suburbs on either side of River 992 had
already been relentlessly bombarded, and these were targeted for yet more
devastation so that the enemy infantry defending them would be driven to ground.
Missiles streaked overhead from Manticore launchers alongside the Basilisks.
These fell amongst the defended ruins and sent up vast mushroom clouds as they
exploded. What little cover the tau might have found amongst the ruins was
blasted to atoms, reducing the settlement to a scarred wasteland.

“Five hundred metres to phase line alpha,” Sarik’s driver reported.

The sergeant turned his attentions from the vast spectacle of the crusade
army going to war, back to his own small part in the mighty endeavour. Sarik’s
objective was to take the bridge over River 992 at the Erinia Beta settlement.
Though the mission sounded simple enough, the success of the entire operation
would hang on that single bridge being taken intact, and without delay. Without
that happening, nineteen regiments of Imperial Guard would be forced to bridge
the river individually, an operation that could not possibly be completed in the
face of enemy opposition and within the brief window before Inquisitor Grand
carried out his threat of enacting Exterminatus upon Dal’yth Prime.

Sarik’s grip tightened on the cupola’s pintle-mounted storm bolter as he
tracked the weapon left and right to test its action. The terrain grew denser as
the Space Marine column neared the river, and Sarik trained his weapon on every
potential hiding place he passed in case enemy spotters were concealed within.

Where were they? Sarik raised his magnoculars to his eyes and tracked across
the ruins up ahead as best he could with the Rhino bucking and shaking as it
ground forwards. Smoking ruins filled the viewfinder, and fresh craters were
visible across the road leading towards the bridge. Still, no enemy troops were
to be seen.

Had they fallen back in the face of the crusade’s advance? The tau had
displayed such an ability at the tactical level, when individual squads would
pull back and re-deploy with well drilled precision and often-deadly effect. But
for the tau to enact the same doctrine at the operational level was not
something the crusade had anticipated.

“Two fifty, sergeant,” the driver reported.

Sarik’s Rhino was now passing through the outer limits of the wrecked
settlement, the scorched, dome-shaped structures clustered near the river.

“Slow down to combat speed,” Sarik ordered, before he opened the command
channel. “I want all Predators and support units forward, now.”

Sarik’s driver steered the Rhino to the left of the road, its tracks grinding
over a low wall and crushing it to a powdery residue. Three Predator battle
tanks prowled past, one belonging to the White Scars and two to the
Ultramarines. Their turret-mounted autocannons and sponson-mounted heavy bolters
tracked back and forth, while the tanks’ commanders rode high in their cupolas
in order to spot any enemy that might lurk in the ruins armed with short-ranged
but devastating tank-busting weapons.

As soon as the three Predators had ground past, three Rhinos followed close
behind, two of the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter and one of the Black Templars.
Each of these would shadow one of the battle tanks, ready to deploy the squads
it carried to counter-attack any enemy infantry that approached through the
cover of the ruins.

As the column pressed forwards, the bridge over River 992 came into view. It
was an impressive structure, a hundred metres across and twenty wide. It was by
far the largest bridge across the river, and far larger and sturdier than
anything the Imperial Guard’s combat engineer units could have erected even had
there been time to do so. The bridge was pristine white, unmarked by the
devastation that been unleashed on the buildings of Erinia Beta. Even a single
stray artillery round or rocket could have rendered the bridge unusable, but the
bridge was perfectly intact.

But that in itself raised further questions. The reason the Space Marines
were ranging ahead of the main crusade army was to ensure that the tau did not
have time to destroy the bridge should they fall back. Clearly, the tau had
gone, but why then had they not undermined the bridge?