03 - Savage Scars (33 page)

When the arcane sensors of the Novamarines Dreadnought detected the presence
of tau stealthers working their way around to what they assumed was a weak
point, Sarik ordered the column’s land speeder squadron forwards from the
holding pattern the flyers had been engaged in overhead. The five two-man craft
descended on the invisible enemy like predatory razorwings swooping on a
defenceless prey, unleashing a solid wall of fire from their assault cannons and
heavy bolters. As the smoke cleared and the land speeders climbed back on
screaming jets, the now visible remains of at least twenty enemy stealth suits
could be seen, scattered across a wide area. The flank of the structure the
stealthers had been sneaking around was splattered by great arcs of purple
blood.

But the Space Marines were surrounded until the Imperial Guard caught up with
them, and casualties were inevitable. The hated tau battle suits carried a
fearsome range of weaponry, from rapid-firing burst weapons similar to the
Dreadnought’s assault cannon, to short-ranged but devastating fusion blasters
designed to cut through vehicle armour as if it were not even there. Some
carried flame projectors, but these were short-ranged and of limited use against
the Space Marines’ ceramite power armour, while others used longer-ranged
missile systems to fire warheads fully capable of slaying a Space Marine or
cracking open a tank with every shot.

The Dreadnought attracted a heavy weight of enemy fire, leading Sarik to the
conclusion that the tau had never seen its like and were concentrating upon it
out of fear and awe. The mighty war machine shrugged off missile after missile
and its intricately engraved sarcophagus was reduced to a mass of smoking scars
by round after round of energy weapon fire. Every time a missile exploded
against its armour, the iron beast would stride through the smoke to return
fire, earning cheers of adoration from Space Marines of every Chapter, not just
its own.

Then the Dreadnought shuddered, swaying back and forth for a moment. With a
crash like a granite column toppling, it struck the ground, sending up a plume
of pulverised resin roadway. The Dreadnought was down, but Sarik mouthed a
prayer of thanks that it appeared still intact.

“Overhead!” Brother Qaja yelled, and Sarik looked up to see a line of the
heavy battle suits arrayed on the highest walkway. They were the same type the
Space Marines had encountered at Hill 3003, their three-metre-long,
shoulder-mounted main weapons angled almost straight down towards the Space
Marines.

This time, Sarik knew there were no Imperial Navy Thunderbolts on station,
and no 1,000 kilogram bombs to be dropped on the heavy battle suits.

“Land speeders,” Sarik ordered. “Work your way around the heavy suits, but do
not get too close.”

As the pilots acknowledged Sarik’s order, he opened the channel to the
commanders of the Whirlwinds positioned in the centre of the laager. “How many
Hunter missiles do you have?”

There was a pause as the commanders shared load-out manifests, then the
answer came back, “Twenty-eight Hunter missiles, brother-sergeant. But if you
mean to use them against—”

“Duly noted,” Sarik interjected. Each of the Whirlwind missile tanks carried
a load of anti-air missiles called Hunters, in addition to their regular,
anti-personnel ordnance. The Hunters were effective against air targets, but
whether or not they would be any use against the heavy battle suits was unknown.
There was only one way to find out, and no alternative.

Another of the hyper-velocity projectiles hammered down from above, striking
an Iron Hands Predator battle tank square in the commander’s hatch. The tank was
buttoned up, its commander ensconced within, but the shot penetrated easily. The
projectile turned to superheated plasma as it impacted on the armoured hatch,
and the jet went straight through the commander, the tank’s innards and out
through its belly armour. The entire tank seemed to be pushed down as if by an
invisible fist, as far as its suspension would allow. Then it sprang back up as
its systems reversed the impact, but not before something deep inside detonated.
There was a sharp explosion and a fountain of crackling flames erupted from the
top hatch. Another three seconds later, the entire tank exploded, shunting
sideways the Rhinos on either side, killing three Space Marines outright, and
slamming a dozen more to the hard ground as the blast wave overtook them.

A chunk of blazing armour scythed through the air, forcing Sarik to throw
himself aside as it passed less than a metre overhead. The projectile was as
dangerous as any weapon. It carried on, striking a Black Templars Space Marine
from behind and severing both of his legs at the knees. The warrior collapsed to
the ground, but even as Sarik watched, retrieved his bolter and continued firing
into the mass of enemy battle suits his squad was defending against.

“Whirlwinds!” Sarik bellowed as he pulled himself to his feet. Those heavy
suits needed to be shut down, right now. “Target the suits with Hunters, full
spread, now!”

The twin launcher boxes atop each Whirlwind whined as they traversed,
elevating almost to their maximum angle. The augur dishes between the boxes
tracked their targets, pinpointing coordinates and calculating trajectories. The
war spirits in each missile tank communed silently as the firing solutions were
communicated and the shots plotted. Then the missiles fired, one after another,
until all twenty-eight were streaking upwards on hissing contrails.

The missiles banked and climbed, the machine-spirit in each warhead homing in
on its designated target. The heavy battle suits saw their peril as the missiles
rose in a wide spread, climbing towards, and then past, the walkway. Sarik saw
the battle suits tracking the missiles as they reached their maximum ceiling,
some of the tau taking a step backwards on the narrow, rail-less walkway.

Then the missiles dived directly downwards, and slammed into the line of
heavy battle suits. As each impacted against its target it unleashed a blinding
white burst of light and the suits disappeared in a devastating line of
explosions that sent fragments of burned armour shooting off in all directions.
The staccato
crump
of the explosions came a second after impact, and
rolled out across the artificial valleys of the alien city.

“Land speeders,” Sarik said into the vox-net. “Close and engage any
survivors, now!”

As the grav-attack flyers banked high and dived down upon the smoking
walkway, Sarik turned his attentions back to the tau attacking the laager, just
in time to see a trio of battle suits closing from the east. A Devastator squad
of the Scythes of the Emperor unleashed a fusillade of heavy bolter fire at the
fast-moving suits, but the enemy came on regardless, seeking to close the range.

Then Sarik saw why the enemy were prepared to brave the storm of
mass-reactive bolt-rounds. All three of them were carrying twinned weapons that
Sarik had learned were the tau’s equivalent of meltaguns, fusion effect blasters
capable of reducing an armoured vehicle to slag in a single shot.

If the battle suits got close enough, they could open a breach in the laager.
Sarik would not let that happen.

“Squad!” Sarik called to his battle-brothers. “With me!”

Sarik limbered his boltgun and drew his chainsword, gunning it to screaming
life as he charged towards the Devastators and the Razorback armoured fighting
vehicle they were using as a makeshift fortification. The twin lascannon turret
on the back of the vehicle spat a double lance of searing white light towards
the enemy, striking the lead battle suits full in the torso. But amazingly, the
blast, which was amongst the most powerful armour-piercing weapons in the
column’s arsenal, did not penetrate. At the last possible moment, a bubble of
blue energy sprang into being, and the lascannon blasts were absorbed.

As Sarik reached the Devastator squad, he bellowed “Weapons down! Chainswords
and pistols!”

The Devastators obeyed without question, disengaging quick-release weapons
couplings and discarding their bulky heavy bolters. Each Devastator carried a
bolt pistol as a personal sidearm, for just such a necessity. As the Scythes
raised their pistols, Sarik charged past, vaulting over the glacis of the
Razorback and pounding towards the battle suits with a feral snarl on his lips.

The nearest of the battle suits raised its twinned fusion blasters towards
Sarik as he charged in towards it. The pilot hesitated, the suit actually taking
a step backwards. The tau might be inexperienced in the realities of a galaxy at
war, but they were fast learners, that much was clear. They were quickly
learning to keep the Space Marines at arm’s length, though doing so was easier
said than done.

The berserk fury descended on Sarik again as he closed the last few metres.
The fusion blasters powered up, nucleonic energies pulsating through their vents
as they prepared to fire. The blasters zeroed in on Sarik, and he dived forwards
as they fired. As he struck the ground, the twinned blasts turned the air above
him into a roaring inferno. The heat caused the skin on the back of his head to
blister and cook, and the hair of his topknot to melt and sizzle. So immense
were the tightly contained energies that he could feel their effects even
through his power armour, the war spirit within flooding his system with combat
drugs to negate any pain that might otherwise have slowed him down.

As the blast dissipated, Sarik came up with his chainsword in both hands. He
was right in front of the battle suit, too close for it to bring its fusion
blasters to bear. He bellowed and brought his screaming blade directly upwards,
seeking to damage the vulnerable ball joint between leg and pelvis. But as the
chainsword swept in, the energy shield activated again, sheathing the battle
suit in pulsating blue energies for but a moment, and repulsing Sarik’s blade.

Sarik was pushed back by the forces unleashed by the energy shield. He ducked
to the left as the battle suit brought its fusion blaster to bear, and as he did
so he saw the first of the Devastators closing on another of the suits. Sarik
shouted a warning as the other suit raised its twin blasters, but his words were
drowned out by the furnace roar of the weapons discharging at close range.

The two blasts converged on the nearest Space Marine, turning his entire body
into a seething lava-orange mass. In an instant, his armour was reduced to slag,
great gobbets of liquefied ceramite blowing backwards and splattering across the
battle-brothers following close behind. In less than a second, the Devastator
was gone, nothing but a long smear of rapidly cooling, bubbling liquid marking
his passing.

Bolt pistol shots rang out at close range, successive blasts driving the
battle suits back one step at a time. Through his rage, Sarik saw that his
opponent’s jets were powering up, ready to leap into the air and re-deploy
nearby, so that he could fire from outside of Sarik’s reach. Sarik needed to
disable the battle suit so that he would have the time to drive his chainsword
through its armour, but the energy shield was making it impossible to find a
weak point.

Frustration and anger raging inside him, Sarik made a crude upwards thrust.
The energy shield sprang into being again, rebounding the attack, but this time,
Sarik saw that the energy was being projected from a small, disc-shaped device
mounted at his opponent’s shoulder.

Throwing caution to the wind, Sarik sprang forwards, grabbing hold of the
battle suit’s sensor unit head with one hand while he gunned his chainsword with
the other. Bracing himself, he set his armoured boots on the battle suit’s thigh
panels, and hauled himself forwards to grapple his foe, or otherwise embrace it
in a furious death grip. There was no way the pilot could have anticipated such
a reckless move, and the energy shield generator activated half a second too
late.

Sarik was inside the shield.

Hauling himself onto the battle suit’s upper torso, Sarik fought for balance
as his weight caused the pilot to all but lose control. The jets fired, but
encumbered by the combined weight of the Space Marine and his power armour, the
tau could only rise three metres. Sarik roared in utterly incoherent savagery,
and forced the sensor block backwards as if it were the head of a living enemy
and he was baring its throat to sever its jugular. He brought the chainsword
down, its teeth grinding into the armoured joint between head and torso, sending
a fountain of sparks arcing upwards into his face as if from an angle grinder.
The battle suit crashed back to the ground, the pilot barely able to keep it
upright under Sarik’s weight. It bent almost double, whether through a
deliberate attempt to throw Sarik off or simply as a desperate random reaction
the Space Marine could not tell.

The chainsword shrieked, then its monomolecular teeth were through the neck
joint’s armour and Sarik sheathed his weapon. Using both hands, he tore the head
from the torso, and threw it savagely to the ground.

Blinded, the pilot attempted to raise the suit’s fusion blaster arms towards
his tormentor. Sarik dodged back, his one hand grasping the wound in the torso
for purchase while the other alighted on the shield generator. He grabbed the
disc-shaped device and yanked it back with all his might at the exact moment
that the pilot tried desperately to fire his blaster at the Space Marine, at
perilously close range.

The heat blast turned the air to nuclear fire, half a metre from Sarik’s
face. He turned away, putting his left shoulder plate between his head and the
impossible heat. The livery of the entire left side of his armour blistered and
was scoured away in a second, leaving only the bare, dull metallic surface
beneath, charred and blackened by the fusion blast.

The fire died, but the weapon was cycling up for another burst. Pulling
himself up on top of the bucking battle suit, Sarik rolled over the upper
surface of the torso and reached downwards to grab the weapon’s barrels, one in
each hand.