THE TIP OF THE BLADE
Ferro-Giant Omicroid
Saltire Vex, Pelagic Industrial World
Chalnath Expanse
‘Battle stations.’
Xedro Farren opened his eyes, his hands automatically checking the critical points of his bolt rifle. His augmented senses pierced the amber gloom of the Night Harrower’s hold.
The lieutenant’s battle-brothers sat in two lines around him, most of them as silent and still as crypt-statues. Some of them were looking around, taking stock just as he was, but the rest were evidently content to wait. The grinding growl of the Repulsor’s grav plate engines filled the tank’s interior, the racket so loud it almost drowned out the crashing boom of waves and the occasional roll of thunder from the storm outside.
‘Engagement range in eight minutes,’ came the clipped, disapproving tones of their superior, Zaeroph. The Chaplain was voxing through to the Harrower’s skull-like relay from the command echelon’s Thunderhawk, Sacred Mace. ‘Commend your souls to the Emperor and the Lion. Strike from a place bereft of doubt.’
‘Lieutenant,’ hissed Sergeant Moricani. ‘How do we commend our souls? Does it involve kneeling? Because I’m not sure I wish to be nose to nose with any of you armoured ogryns.’
Farren raised an eyebrow, cocking his head to one side. ‘We want to impress our Dark Angels brothers, Pietr. Not make them think that Terra and Mars raise only boors.’
‘Impress them?’ scoffed Vesleigh. ‘Primaris Space Marines are the closest gene-sons to the primarch. We have the true blood of the Lion in our veins.’
‘Have some respect,’ said Farren. ‘These Dark Angels have given everything in the defence of the Imperium for thousands of years.’
‘And what have you done in that time, Vesleigh?’ said Enrod. ‘Lain dormant in a stasis casket? Explain to me, how does that make you such a hero?’
‘Wait and see,’ mumbled Vesleigh, his heavy brows knitted together. ‘I have nothing to prove.’
‘Oh, on the contrary,’ said Moricani, looking thoughtfully at his plasma incinerator. ‘We have everything to prove. To them, we are new. We will be weighed and measured. It is likely that even this conversation is being monitored. You will already be marked as one to watch.’
At this, the Hellblaster sergeant leaned towards the servo-skull tethered via its spinal cables to the Repulsor’s rear. ‘As will I.’ Features underlit, Moricani made the sign of the Aquila with his face an exaggerated mask of sincerity.
‘Discipline, Pietr. Now is not the time,’ Farren ordered.
‘Where are we to strike again?’ asked Thrunn, the youngest of either combat squad despite being the largest. He looked at Farren, eyes wide in a face ringed with dense sideburns and a strap of a beard. No doubt the affectation was intended to make him look mature, but it always reminded Farren of a startled hive owl.
Farren checked the data-slate to his left. ‘The promethium rigs of Saltire Vex, specifically the structure known as Ferro-Giant Omicroid,’ he said. ‘There is evidence of xenos infestation there, and we are to expunge all sign of their presence.’
‘Excellent,’ said Enrod, his face creased and tight as if concentrating hard. ‘My kind of mission.’
Moricani snorted in disbelief, casting a glance at Farren in the hope of finding a similar reaction. Farren shot him a warning glance instead.
‘And exactly how many xenos have you killed, Enrod?’ asked Vesleigh.
Enrod shook his head. ‘More than you, no doubt.’
‘Really?’
Farren was about to intercede when the Repulsor’s interior lights increased to full. Its alarum chimes rang out. He stood up, bracing himself against the rolling, shivering progress of the anti-grav tank as it ground across the ocean’s surface.
The storm was becoming violent now. He could feel it in the way the Repulsor’s floor tilted and dipped every few seconds. Farren peered at the display slate, but with the wind and rain lashing outside, he could make out very little.
‘I’m going for a visual,’ said the lieutenant, donning his Mark X helm and putting the mag-clamps under his boots to half yield.
‘Good hunting, lieutenant,’ said Thrunn, his expression grave. ‘The Omnissiah watches over you.’
Farren hoped he was right. They were critically low on pertinent information here, and he didn’t like it at all.
‘This is not how we waged war on Mars, nor Terra,’ muttered Enrod, echoing Farren’s thoughts. ‘Even when things went wrong, we had more insight than this.’
‘Yet nonetheless, we will triumph,’ said Farren. ‘Or die in the attempt.’
‘Perhaps both,’ said Moricani, turning to Enrod with a smile. ‘I have often thought the lieutenant would make for a truly impressive corpse.’
Farren shook his head and tapped the egress rune under the Repulsor’s top hatch. He gave the bar beneath it a sharp quarter-turn with both hands. The automated systems took over to slide it open. Sleet slashed down into the tank’s interior as Farren jumped up to catch his arm over the lip of the open hatch. He hauled himself up, legs dangling, to look outside.
The vista that greeted him was one of cold and impressive grandeur. Ahead was a massive promethium rig, its six main pillars holding aloft a multi-layered structure that reached high into the sky.
Ferro-Giant Omicroid.
Colossal chimneys vented bursts of flame, each volcanic plume sending a vast wreath of steam into the night. Siphon cylinders stretched out, linked to the main rig by masses of pipes and cable. In the far distance, Farren could just make out other such structures on the horizon, each capped with several tiny tongues of fire.
The Repulsor bullied its way through the surf towards the megastructure in an elongated trough of brine. Its anti-grav suspensor engines pushed down so hard on the salt-rich water that the tank was surrounded by crashing black waves of its own making.
As the Harrower drew closer, Farren could see a force field shimmering over the promethium rig ahead, a huge aegis dome of blue dots that fizzed where the waves crashed through it.
A Stygies pattern macro-field, thought Farren. Though an advancing craft could pass through it with little more than a frisson of electrical energy irritating its machine-spirit, against bullets and las-beams it was as stalwart as four feet of hypersteel, for it was calibrated to let nothing with higher velocity than a raindrop penetrate its hemispherical field.
The energy dome’s readouts on Farren’s autosenses were spiking so hard he doubted even a shot from the Harrower’s twin las-talon could penetrate it. To run such a massive shield generator for any length of time required an immense amount of power, enough Terra-watts to run a hive city. But if the Primaris Marines’ data-slate briefing was true, power was not something the ferro-giants had in short supply.
Pushing his helm’s scryer autosenses to maximum, Farren saw explosions of light amidst the tangled iron platforms of the megastructure. He saw a body falling with limbs flailing into the sea, then another.
There was no time to waste. The xenos attack was in full flow.
Farren opened a vox-channel to Gsar, the Repulsor’s pilot. ‘Maximum speed, if she will take it. Avoid the biggest waves, and ride out the others.’
‘Acknowledged, lieutenant,’ came the reply. ‘We’ll be there soon enough. I know what I’m doing.’
‘You have not failed me yet.’
Two other Repulsors flanked the Harrower. Together they bore the entirety of Strike Force Blacksword’s contingent of Primaris Marines. Their insignia was emblazoned on the dark green hulls of each grav-tank, each numeral and icon displayed in pride of place along with the winged blade symbol of the First Legion.
On the right was the Heaven’s Troth, Repulsor of Squad Orenst. The twin onslaught cannon in its cupola was drawing a bead on the rig looming ahead. It gunned forward as if to overtake – a blatant breach of spearhead protocol, and one typical of Dendon Orenst’s belligerent nature. Farren made a mental note to address it, his jaw clenching in irritation.
On Farren’s left was the transport of Squad Parvell, known as the Dire Tidings. The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed as he made out the sergeant’s bald pate glinting orange in the promethium fires. He too was taking a visual from the cupola. After the Noctan Glitchwar – a violent disaster that was supposed to be a regulation dune-hunt for a tribe of malfunctioning servitors – Galus Parvell had forsaken his helm whenever he could, despite Farren’s explicit instructions he wear it in all battlefield conditions. Today was another infraction – since Farren’s adherence to protocol had once cost them half their squad, there had been quite a few.
This far from Mars’ cloying grip, Farren told himself, a little rebellion was understandable. He knew better than to dampen the fire of a Space Marine ready for the kill.
Introspections aside, the lieutenant could not help but feel a swell of pride at the sight of the Primaris spearhead. He cursed himself for having any doubt about the battle to come, or the shadows of the past. There was nothing the Dark Angels could not accomplish. No foe they could not overcome through the pinpoint application of the Omnissiah’s firepower.
The Primaris Marines themselves were the pinnacle of Mars’ geneto-military machine, and each of their Repulsor transports was a miracle of Father Cawl’s mastery of the technological. The stoic angles of the Harrower’s construction echoed Arkhan Land’s iconic Raider design. Some amongst the Primaris Marines said that Archmagos Cawl had improved even upon that legendary engine of war, hard as it was to believe.
A spray of spume slapped Farren’s helm as Gsar pushed through a tall crest of seawater. The lieutenant rode it out, knowing that even a tidal wave would be hard put to neutralise the transport. When on land, the tank was able to traverse the most rugged terrain at speed, leaving a trail of crushed rock behind it as its engines fought against the local gravity and won. Crossing a storm-wracked ocean was well within the Repulsor’s capabilities. That versatility alone made it invaluable for the fast-striking forces of the Adeptus Astartes, and especially for the Dark Angels.
‘How’s it looking, lieutenant?’ came Gsar’s voice over the vox.
‘Hostile,’ replied Farren. ‘But promising.’
The Primaris spearhead was not alone. In the middle distance were the Land Speeders of the Ravenwing, the onyx-hulled skimmers carving through the air like groups of raptors on the wing. Behind them came a cloud of murky darkness, and inside that was the haunting, gloom-bringing relic of technology that Farren’s helm display recognised as the Halo of Hidden Saints. Similar in construction to the other skimmers but far more arcane in function, the Darkshroud speeder carried a stone-carved statue atop it, barely visible at this distance. A relic of long-lost Caliban, that monument to the past was so thick with age and mystery its aura was like a cloud of ink spreading in water.
‘All present and correct then, Farren?’ shouted Moricani from the Harrower’s interior. ‘You are letting in the cold air.’
‘Then endure it, Sergeant Moricani,’ said Farren, smiling despite himself. ‘This is a view worth remembering.’
High above the Darkshroud soared two squadrons of compact but powerful jetfighters – Nephilim, Farren recalled, each pair escorting a priceless Dark Talon with its signature chin-mounted rift cannon glowing strangely in the gloom. Close behind the aerial hunters came two massive Thunderhawk gunships, their forest green livery appearing almost black in the night. Inside their cavernous holds were squads from the Dark Angels of the Third Company, each battle-brother a tried and tested warrior with years of experience in the crucible of war.
Farren felt a brief flicker of apprehension at the sight. The Primaris Marines of his command – though well trained before their incarceration in their cryo-caskets – had fought ten to fifteen large-scale battles in total. The vast majority of those had been in test conditions on Mars, and only a few of them had been lucky enough to fight on Terra. To fight in a true battle for the Imperium’s cause, and to do so beside a strike force of veteran Dark Angels – the First of the Emperor’s Legions – would be an honour indeed.
Farren had no intention of wasting the opportunity.
As the strike force closed in on the promethium rig, it split into three elements, with the squadrons of Land Speeders arcing around to the left flank even as their aerial wing took the right. The Primaris Marines continued to make a beeline for their target, aiming for the nearest of the gigantic cylinders that formed the legs of the promethium rig.
‘Squads Farren, Orenst and Parvell, Third Company,’ intoned Chaplain Zaeroph over the magna-vox. ‘Stay the course on full ahead. You have the honour of the frontal assault. Root out the xenos. Send their corpses as ash into the sea.’
‘Aye, Chaplain,’ replied Farren. ‘We will win glory for the Chapter, for Terra, and for Mars.’
‘Speak not of Mars,’ said Zaeroph, his voice a low growl. ‘I need no reminder of your divided loyalties. Just do your damned duty.’
Farren felt Moricani’s eyes on the back of his neck. This time, he turned and met his friend’s gaze, giving the smallest of shrugs before turning back.
‘At least you remembered to call the Dark Angels a Chapter, rather than a Legion, this time,’ said Moricani. ‘After millennia of lying around in stasis, I have a feeling the terms we learned as aspirants on Mars are not necessarily correct.’
‘Easily baited, that Zaeroph,’ said Vesleigh. ‘They do not like it when we call the Emperor the Omnissiah, these ones. And especially not him.’
‘Don’t bait him too much,’ said Farren grimly as he climbed back into the Repulsor’s transport bay. ‘You might receive a power maul to the back of the head.’
‘Crozius Arcanum,’ said Moricani, gesturing extravagantly. ‘I believe it translates from High Gothic as “holy stick”.’
‘It means “arcane cross” in Low Gothic as you well know, Sergeant Moricani,’ said Gsar over the interior vox.
‘Enough,’ said Farren. ‘Moricani, brief your team. Ready firing solutions. Gsar, track and take down anything larger than an unaugmented human on approach.’
‘Acknowledged,’ said the Repulsor’s pilot. ‘Patching through battlefield schematics now.’
The Repulsor’s sensor array, remote-linked to Farren’s Mark X armour, filled his inbuilt relays with the STC data of the ferro-giant rig up ahead. Sturdy yet relatively cheap to build, the colossal rig was one of thousands of such megastructures across the planet. Its auto-defences were at high alert. The servitor-crewed heavy stubbers mounted upon the corners of its platforms scanned for targets as the waves crashed against its thick, rivet-studded supports.
Farren heard the muffled crump of distant explosions, and saw bursts of illumination from inside the rig. He zoomed in on the defence nests. Odd, he thought. It was clearly under attack, but none of its gun emplacements were firing.
‘The xenos are well inside it already,’ said Farren. ‘They have bypassed its outer defences. We will have to make ingress.’
‘Oh well,’ said Moricani. ‘A close-range firefight it is then. How unfortunate.’
‘For them,’ said Enrod.
The Repulsor shook hard, toppling Farren back into his seat with a clang. Every interior display fuzzed with static.
‘We’ve been hit,’ said Thrunn.
‘Thank you for pointing that out, Thrunn,’ said Farren. ‘Gsar, how bad is it?’
There was no reply. The interior comms crackled with static. Farren was glad to see Gsar’s name-rune still green on his helm display, but the internal link had been cut.
Another impact, rocking the Repulsor to the side.
‘Omnissiah’s wounds,’ swore Farren. ‘That’s an energy weapon. We’re going to have to risk another direct visual.’
‘Get out there,’ said Moricani. ‘Maybe a stray tidal wave will cool your hunger to show off.’
‘A jibe about taking unnecessary risks from a Hellblaster?’
Moricani guffawed. ‘A solid hit at last, lieutenant.’
Farren was already moving, opening the hatch atop the Repulsor once more and poking his head out. Rain lashed his helm, his autosenses picking through the gloom to the rig beyond.
The ferro-giant loomed high now, all but blotting out the horizon. Gsar was opening fire with the pintle-mounted gatling cannon, its rotary barrels blurring as it stitched bullets into the second storey of the promethium rig.
Where they struck home, something shimmered – something that looked bulkier than a Space Marine, but bulbous, with one arm little more than an elongated weapon system.
‘Contact,’ barked Farren. Gsar panned the stream of bullets across, catching another xenos warsuit and sending it rebounding from a girder behind it to topple into the sea.
‘These ones match a known anatomy,’ said Farren, ducking back into the Repulsor as his autosenses fed a blurt of xenological data to his helm. ‘They are a xenos breed known as t’au.’
‘A physically feeble race made formidable by their blasphemous warsuit technology,’ said Moricani. ‘Native to the Eastern Fringe, I believe. The Ultramarines, Scar Lords, White Scars and Hammers of Dorn faced them in the Damocles Crusade.’
‘That’s them,’ said Farren. ‘The minor warsuits that Gsar just cut down were well armed, but I think the energy hits we took were from something much larger. Prepare yourselves for heavy firepower.’
‘Let’s see who carries the heaviest,’ said Moricani, hefting his long-barrelled incinerator. ‘Phobossian is the great leveller, even against giants.’
‘He is indeed, though he has a temper,’ nodded Farren. ‘I promise you can take down one of the big ones, Moricani, when we find them.’
‘Gladly.’
‘There is a pontoon beyond those siphon cylinders, with an ingress point to the lower levels,’ said Farren, motioning for his squad to get to their feet. ‘Prepare to disembark in three.’
The Repulsor pushed its trough of water underneath the rig, flanked by its fellows. It pulled in close to the dock. Side hatches clunked open as Gsar adjusted its grav-push to make level with the iron pontoon.
One by one Squad Farren disembarked onto the swaying, brine-slicked metal platform. The mag-clamps on their boots kept them steady. Farren climbed out of the Repulsor’s gunnery hatch, leaping up to grab hold of the pipes overhead with his bolt rifle clamped to his hip. He pulled himself up in one easy movement as the rest of his squad climbed up the stanchion ladder to the first storey in good order. He was first to gain the walkway, hauling himself onto the level above before unclamping his rifle and scanning his immediate environment along its barrel.
‘Clear,’ he said. ‘Moricani, get your men up here. Parvell, Orenst, cover the rear.’
‘Already en route, glorious leader,’ came Moricani’s reply. ‘Nice entry technique.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Orenst. ‘This mission of extermination. Are there civilians aboard the rig?’
‘There are,’ said Farren. ‘It goes without saying we should spare who we can. Still, collateral damage may occur. That is the price of war.’
‘Rather a clean death than a lifetime spent in slavery to filthy xenos,’ said Enrod.
‘Fine words,’ replied Farren.
The main body of the promethium rig had been built to endure the elements. Farren knew enough about material tolerances to know the main gantries would bear their weight easily enough. He was not so sure about the auxiliary structures and ersatz repairs on its outskirts, however. They would have to tread carefully if the battle took them out there. Even a Primaris Marine would struggle if pitched into the crashing waters below.
‘To the west!’ shouted Vesleigh, ‘Target–’
Thick trails of light whipped across Farren’s field of vision. He dived backwards on instinct, grabbing an iron pillar with his free hand and swinging around it to put the iron strut between him and the enemy marksman. He heard energy discharge sizzle on the other side of the stanchion.
In one smooth motion, the lieutenant crouched and calibrated his rifle for single round, maximum range. He leaned out, took the shot, then leaned back in to narrow his profile.
There was a distant boom, and a weird shriek that could only have been the scream of an alien.
‘Centre mass shot,’ said Vesleigh. ‘First blood to the lieutenant.’
‘Why didn’t we see it?’ said Thrunn.
‘Camouflage field,’ said Farren. ‘The t’au specialise in them, cowards that they are. Stick to the outskirts for now, and watch for areas where the air is distorted, or the raindrops don’t make it to the ground.’
‘Acknowledged,’ came the reply.
There was a dull clang from above, and the whirr of an alien weapon system powering up. Moricani was already there beneath it, letting fly a blinding burst of plasma. The searing orb burst through the iron grillwork above him, burning into something half-hidden in a blaze of energy. Two more plasma blasts came from those of Moricani’s squad who had already made the climb, blasting apart a large section of the gantry overhead.
A bulky form fell down towards them amongst a scattering of mangled, red-hot metal. Moricani and his squadmates had to dodge sidelong to avoid the xenos warsuit crashing into them. It hit the gantry hard with a dull clang.
Farren cast around for more movement, finding nothing, before taking a closer look at his would-be assassin. There was something vaguely insectile about the xenos thing’s hooded carapace. Crackling light played across the warsuit as its chameleon field attempted to reassert itself, the system still active despite the gaping hole that had been burned through its undersection.
Visible under the warsuit’s smooth exoskeleton was a gangly blue-grey body, its innards cauterised around a black wound. The vile thing twitched, and the stench of burning alien flesh rose up to filter into Farren’s nostrils.
‘That is truly foul,’ said Enrod. ‘It must be slain in the Emperor’s name.’ He lowered the muzzle of his autorifle and put a bolt through the hole Moricani had opened. The projectile detonated a split second later, splattering both squads with alien blood and sending shards of alloy pinging from their power armour.
‘So you bathe us in it?’ said Moricani, wiping a gobbet of alien flesh from his helm’s eye. ‘Any more of this filth gets on my gun, and its machine-spirit would be well within its rights to malfunction. I would not be surprised if it took my arm off out of spite.’
‘Enough,’ said Farren. ‘Let us complete a perimeter run. This one’s kin will not be slow to respond, but the largest will struggle to get far inside.’
‘They got through the force field easily enough,’ said Enrod.
‘Stealthers,’ said Farren, shrugging by way of answer. ‘And not the kind that wear foliage as their camouflage. This should be good hunting.’ He set off at a loose run, autorifle held close at his shoulder.
As Farren darted from one bulkhead to another, there was movement over the ocean. He dived headlong for cover, some instinct telling him to leap forward instead of ducking low. The gantry behind him exploded into flame and scorched metal silhouettes, twisting girders blackening in a sudden conflagration of light. A whole section of flooring tumbled away into the cool waters beneath.
‘Heavy xenos warsuits have a bead,’ voxed Farren, checking his sight was still aligned. ‘All squads hold position behind the bulkheads.’
Bright blurs of plasma sizzled past from deep inside the rig, each round small, but potent enough to kill. The lieutenant grimaced. If he moved into the open, he would be caught in a crossfire between the t’au stealthers and whatever xenotech monstrosity had just taken out the gantry he had been crossing moments ago.
‘Oaths and blood,’ said Farren under his breath, drawing up the schematics of the STC rig on the interior of his helm. ‘This won’t be easy without support.’ In truth, he would rather die than ask his brothers in the Dark Angels for help. The Primaris Marines had a reputation to win.
Another volley of plasma crackled past. The heavy iron grilles through which the firepower was coming were thick enough to bar his path to the alien stealthers, but the t’au within were clearly marksmen. They were skilled enough to thread their shots through the diamond-shaped gaps wherever the Primaris Marines appeared. Squads Farren and Moricani were caught between entrenched xenos infantry and whatever chameleonic warsuit was out there over the waves, all but invisible near the siphon cylinders.
There was still a way to close with the stealthers, and get further inside to a position of relative safety. There had to be.
Farren leaned out and loosed off a quick triple burst along the trajectory of the last few plasma bolts, threading the shots through the diamond gaps with ease. The explosions of his bolts were gratifyingly loud.
A twenty-foot gap still yawned between Farren and his battle-brothers, but his suppressing fire had likely bought them a moment to regroup. He stowed his rifle, crouched and leaped directly upwards, making the jump to grab hold of the thick pipes beneath the next gantry. Pulling himself up, he mag-clamped the tips of his boots to the underside of the painted ironwork.
‘Cover me!’ he shouted to his squad. ‘Bolter muzzles into the gaps. Opportune fire only. Squad Moricani, cross and flank!’
‘Aye, lieutenant,’ came Moricani’s reply. ‘Already on course.’
The sergeant’s second, Lenkatz, was the first to leap across the missing section of the gantry. He cleared the gap with a hand’s span to spare. The other Hellblasters were quick to follow, with Thrunn striding forwards close to the diamond grille and loosing shots whenever he saw movement within the rig. A volley of plasma seared in, but the big warrior ducked back at the last moment.
By the time Moricani’s whole squad had cleared the gap, Farren had climbed along the underside of the ceiling gantry, using a solid grip and the tips of his mag-plate boots to make his way to the steaming hole left where the Hellblasters had cored the iron structure above. Thankfully, the stealthers below had not reacted to him; they were too busy exchanging opportunistic fire with his Space Marine brothers.
Up on this level, another corridor, perpendicular to the gantry below, led further into the rig. This time there was no diamond-gapped wall to bar his path. Farren reached up into the hole. Pulling himself over the lip, he yanked himself through, using the momentum of his swing to get one knee over the still-glowing edges.
The gantry screeched in protest, the distorted metal giving under his weight. Farren’s eyes went wide as he froze in place.
Inch by careful inch, he gradually climbed up and through, his fingers gripping through the metal grille to pull himself to safety. His armour’s damage readout set a low-grade alert rune flaring, but he dismissed it, mouthing a silent apology to its machine-spirit.
As he got to his feet and ran along the second storey gantry further into the rig, Farren saw the muzzle flash of a t’au plasma weapon on the level below. The telltale explosions of bolt rounds boomed as Thrunn and Enrod returned fire. Farren could see two shimmering forms directly below him ducking into cover, their motion and heat signatures all but invisible to his Mark X armour’s sub-auspex reader.
Grimacing at the breach of protocol, he took off his helm, mag-clamping it to his waist. Now he could see them as strange silhouettes, patchy ripples of non-colour below him. Xenotech witchery, and reason enough to kill them without a second thought.
The xenos warsuits fired another volley, the flashes of light clinching their position. Farren drew his broad-bladed power sword from its scabbard with a strange reluctance; it was the first time he had done so in battlefield conditions. He depressed its activation rune and cut away the metal of the gantry to leave a semicircle the size of his helm. The blessed blade sliced through the thick iron bars as if they were no more than hempen rope.
There was a thin shriek as he pulled the metal up and away with his other hand. Below, one of the t’au looked up sharply. The creature raised its gun, drawing a bead.
Farren’s grenade was already primed and dropping. The deadly cylinder spun as it dropped towards the two t’au stealthers, then detonated a second before it hit the ground. The warsuits were flung sideways, chameleon fields haywire. One of them became fully visible as a heavy-set warsuit torn open from shoulder to hip.
Farren took aim through the hole and put a bolt right in the wound. A split second later, the warsuit’s detonation sent pieces of armour flying amidst an explosion of gore.
The lieutenant moved the barrel of his gun swiftly to the other stealther, placing a shot right in the back of the neck. It hit at just the right angle to punch through the armour’s weak spot, blowing clear the warsuit’s head in a blossom of fire.
‘Blessed be the Maker,’ said Farren softly as he chambered another clip.
Below him, his squads were already running to the site, panning their own bolt rifles left and right. Enrod’s voice rang out.
‘Farren, target behind!’
The lieutenant ducked on instinct, turning in a pivoting crouch. Four finger-sized bolts of plasma sizzled a hand’s breadth overhead, burning through the triangular stanchion behind him in a cloud of acrid-smelling steam.
Farren brought his rifle in tight and shot the only part of the corridor wide enough to house a t’au warsuit. He silently prayed to the Omnissiah his ballistics theory was sound.
His supposition was proved right when a bolt cracked against something nigh invisible, the ensuing detonation revealing another ochre warsuit as it toppled onto its back.
Farren ran. Another two warsuits emerged from the corridor behind the first, camo fields flickering as rain pelted down from a loading shaft above them. They sent volleys of plasma sizzling in, forcing Farren’s squadmates into cover.
Glancing up, Farren saw a dangling, spider-legged winch lift linked by chains and pulleys to the stanchions three storeys up. The apparatus was typically Mechanicus in design, its main body in the shape of a stylised cranium. Farren calibrated for a moment before shooting at the heavy chains that held it aloft, one bolt following another.
Impacting upon one of the chains, the master-crafted weapon’s ammunition exploded with force enough to tear its links apart. The entire apparatus swung down at a crazy angle, its sword-sharp appendages screeching across the gantry in a shower of sparks.
The t’au warsuits below raised their weapons. Presumably taking it for some giant Imperial servo-skull, they poured shots into it.
A heartbeat later they were consumed in fire as Moricani’s Hellblasters sent a diagonal volley of their own through the gantry. The plasma volley took the first stealther right in the midsection, blasting through him in a shower of glowing gobbets.
The second was consumed from head to toe in white fire when Lenkatz’s ball of superheated gas clipped the cover it skulked behind. Xenos remains toppled to the gantry in a clatter of alloy and high-tech plasteks.
Farren ran forward to crouch between the two stealthers. He looked for signs of life, even replacing his helm to scan their bio-rhythms, but his micro-scryers found nothing.
The stench filtering through the lieutenant’s helm was awful, the scent of burning electrics mingling with that of cooked xenos meat. The gaping hole in the abdomen of the nearest warsuit had revealed a mass of cauterised innards; it had burned right through the alien in places. The molten armour around it had exposed much of the pilot within. It was a greyish wretch of a thing, its remains fragile and small to Farren’s eyes.
With its dying act, the alien had clawed at the air in vain hope of seizing a second’s more existence. Its hand was four-fingered, clumsy and stubby in proportion, compared to that of a human. No wonder the t’au felt the need to go to war in such heavy armour if their physiques were so pitifully underdeveloped.
‘My thanks, Squad Moricani,’ said Farren. ‘You completed the trap without my needing to say a word.’
‘A pleasure, brother,’ said Moricani, eyes panning for the next target.
‘Chaplain Zaeroph,’ said Farren, engaging his helm’s magna-vox. ‘All Primaris squads have embarked and engaged the enemy successfully. No losses.’
There was no reply.
‘Chaplain Zaeroph, this is Lieutenant Farren. We’re going further in.’
Only static came in response.
‘Squads Parvell and Orenst, you’re clear,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Get inside, as deep as you can. That high yield warsuit is still out there, I believe.’
‘Acknowledged,’ said Parvell, his name-rune flashing in affirmation.
‘And if I get a visual on that bald skull of yours without a helm, Parvell, you’ll feel the flat of my blade.’
‘You can try, lieutenant,’ said Parvell, the wry grin in his voice audible even over the crackling distortion of the vox.
Raised voices filtered down from the gantry above. They spoke in Low Gothic – human in tone, though Farren could not quite make out their words. The speech had the intonation of a fierce argument, getting louder by the moment. Farren spiked his audio feed to maximum and looked straight at the source.
‘You’ll only make it worse!’ shouted a hoarse voice. ‘They are the Takers, fool! They are attacking us as we speak!’
‘Then they are doing so for a sound reason!’ came the bellowed reply. ‘For the Greater Good!’
‘There are civilians up there,’ said Farren. ‘Watch your aim.’
A moment later, the telltale crack of autoguns rang out. Farren looked up, spying dark silhouettes through the grate of the storey above. There was another shot, closely followed by a flash of light. A scream pierced the din of the storm.
‘T’au weaponry,’ said Farren. ‘There are more xenos on the next storey, opening fire upon the riggers.’
‘Then let us get up there now!’ cried Enrod. ‘Show these alien scum how it feels to be outclassed by superior firepower.’
Farren called up the rig’s schematic within his helm once more, examining the standard template construct’s architectural data. ‘Yes. There is a stairway network to the right. Orenst, Parvell, consolidate this level. Watch the exterior for that heavy warsuit. Its stealth tech will almost certainly be better than that of its smaller comrades. Look for a shimmer in the rain.’
‘Aye, lieutenant.’
‘Acknowledged.’
Motioning for his squad to move out, Farren ran for the stairway at the end of the passage. He took the ridged stairs three at a time, canting his shoulders diagonally so he could fit his broad pauldrons through the top of the stairs before bursting out from the top with his rifle raised. He swept the barrel left and right to check the shadowed areas, and his gaze settled on a pair of riggers crouched low on the passageway, their wide eyes white in the gloom.
‘Don’t come no further!’ shouted the smaller of the two, his long hair slicked over a pallid face. He was holding a long-barrelled rifle of unknown design, its wide rectangular shape unmistakably alien. ‘Your fight ain’t with us!’
The second rigger snarled. His expression was angry, savage almost, but fear clouded his eyes. He raised his own weapon, a blunt xenos carbine with a second rectangular barrel beneath the first. ‘They’re here to kill us, Gransen!’
Farren strode towards them, rifle held in a controlled firing grip as he reset the bolt in its barrel to be non-reactive on impact.
Time seemed to slow as the rigger’s trigger finger began to clench.
Farren took the shot. His target squeezed off a streaking blur of plasma, but Farren had already read its trajectory from the barrel’s angle, and darted left. The plasma streaked past him just as Farren’s bolt struck home. With a wet thump, the human’s shoulder came apart. Blood squirted high as the figure tumbled, insensate with shock, to the ground.
The rigger’s compatriot screamed. Farren lowered his rifle and strode purposefully towards him.
‘Leave this one alive, brothers, he–’
The human was hit under the chin by a pinpoint shot from behind Farren. The impact alone was so hard it almost took his head off. Then the bolt exploded, sending fragments of skull and brain pattering from the stanchions behind and to the right.
‘Apologies, lieutenant,’ said Enrod, half-emerging from the top of the stairs. ‘I already had the shot.’
‘You will pay for that, Enrod,’ said Farren coldly. ‘I explicitly said to leave him. You disobeyed my orders, brother. Censure is the–’
The sound of gunfire in the middle distance snatched away his words, shortly followed by the gruff thump of an explosion.
‘You think this is the optimal time for a lecture?’ said Enrod.
Farren turned away, feeling bitterness in his throat. ‘Vesleigh, cover us.’
Vesleigh took position at the end of the gantry as Thrunn pushed past, roughly elbowing Enrod aside as he approached Farren’s position. ‘Civilians are using xenos tech, lieutenant.’
‘It looks that way. One of them took a shot with one of these plasma weapons, but the other held his fire. He clearly wanted to parley.’
‘Perhaps they disabled a couple of the xenos riflemen themselves, and grabbed their weapons,’ said Enrod.
‘They looted their corpses,’ said Thrunn.
‘Almost certainly,’ said Enrod. ‘Thieves as well as blasphemers against the Omnissiah’s works.’ He kicked the cadaver of the smaller human, and a fresh spurt of blood drizzled from its wounds to leak down through the gantry to the level below.
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Farren. ‘The t’au are infamously adept at bribing the common populace to their side.’
He leaned over the nearest cadaver, pushing the carbine from its grip with his foot, and took a brief pict of the weapons tech. There was something odd about it, something even stranger than the weird lines and unbalanced design that he could not place. ‘Right now it matters not. We press on.’
The clang-clang-clang of hurrying footfalls came from a corridor running parallel to their position. Farren raised his rifle, then checked his sword in its scabbard out of completeness. More riggers; quite a few of them, by the sound of their steps, all wearing steel-reinforced work boots.
Farren motioned for his men to hug the wall. As one they moved to the side. The low hum of their Mark X armour was nothing to the crashing tumult of the storm. By keeping still in the lee of a ribbed munitorum crate, they made a passable attempt at stealth.
Farren watched as a group of five humans ran past at the end of the corridor, too intent on moving quickly to scan their surroundings. They were a motley collection, but every man and woman was sparse and muscular, clad in overalls and gauntleted jackets of heavy suede.
The last of them, a man with wild eyes and a scraggly black beard, looked down the corridor straight at Farren as he ran past.
He halted, staring in disbelief as his chest heaved hard.
‘No lethal force,’ said Farren across the vox. He held a hand up, a warding gesture. ‘We are hunting the xenos invaders!’ he called out. ‘We have no quarrel with–’
‘For the Greater Good!’
A sweat-slicked bear of a man, nearly as tall as Farren was in full battleplate, barrelled around the corner with a rigwrench in each hand. He screamed as he flung himself straight for Farren, but he was made slow by his own bulk, and too desperate to think beyond his all-out attack.
Farren stepped forward and swept away both of the rigger’s wrenches with a circle of his bolt rifle. The heavy tools clanged into the gantry just as Farren’s pauldron caught the big man under the chin, slamming his head back and knocking him out cold.
‘Ultrecht!’ shouted a woman clutching her belongings with one arm as she drew a makeshift throwing knife from her belt. ‘You will pay for that, Taker!’ At her side the straggle-bearded male sprang forward, a dagger in each hand and a strange light in his eyes.
Thrunn stepped forward to take the daggerman’s blades on his forearm with a spray of sparks. In one smooth motion, he backhanded the human so hard he was flung into a stanchion, collapsing unconscious a moment later. Moricani flung a grenade at the female just as she drew her knife back for a throw. It hit her in the forehead with such force she went down with a crash.
Farren’s heart leaped into his mouth for a moment as the grenade rolled away with a telltale tinkle of metal. He turned his shoulder with his head tucked in.
‘Pin’s still in it,’ said Moricani with a shrug. ‘But it’s still a hard lump of metal.’ Farren could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Who says Primaris Marines can’t improvise.’
Bursting out from a rusted grille behind them came a pair of knife-wielding humans, a bald male and a scruffy blonde female. Vesleigh swung his bolt rifle sidelong to swipe the female back into a stanchion, leaning into the blow. She collided with force enough to slam her into unconsciousness.
Enrod swung a punch, hitting the male in the face. The blow caved in his features and cracked his head open against the stanchion. Purple-grey matter oozed from the ragged red splits along his scalp.
‘Omnissiah! I said no lethal force, Enrod!’
‘I honestly did not realise they would be so weak,’ said Enrod. ‘Laughable, really, that they should attack those sent to save them.’
‘Disobey me once more and you will never laugh again,’ said Farren, fighting down the urge to throttle his battle-brother then and there. ‘It is well for you that I have more pressing matters.’
The blonde female at Vesleigh’s feet suddenly rose as if hoisted by some unseen force, arms and legs dangling as she hung in midair. She gave a horrible snort of blood from her nose, eyes blazing blue and matted hair sticking out. Her mouth opened, the jaw stretching far, far too wide. A column of azure energy shot from her maw and slammed into Farren’s side, knocking him sprawling into the bald man’s corpse.
For a second, Farren was lost. The pain cascading across his body was fierce, even agonising, but it faded quickly as his system’s natural anaesthetic kicked in. His power armour flooded his bloodstream with stimms, and he vaulted upright, one hand clasped to his wounded side. The other brought his bolt rifle to bear for a kill-shot.
The creature that hung in the corridor, still levitating, had only a blood-jetting stump for a neck. Behind her, Thrunn placed her decapitated head against a stanchion, then wiped his combat knife clean upon the still-floating corpse.
‘Psyker,’ he said.
‘Well spotted, Thrunn,’ said Moricani. ‘Xedro, that was too close. Never underestimate the power of the mind, as Father Cawl used to say.’
‘I’m not sure this was what he meant,’ said Farren grimly, shouldering his rifle. ‘Thrunn, my thanks for the assist.’
‘Lethal force authorised now, is it?’ said Enrod.
Burning with frustration, Farren turned away and walked down the corridor through the bodies of the fallen riggers. The female with the throwing knife, knocked cold by Moricani’s grenade, had let spill her bundle of belongings to reveal a strange statue with too many limbs. Farren nudged the effigy out of the cloth wrapping with his toe, then took a quick pict from his helm lens for later assimilation.
The statue was a faceless, strange thing, somehow alien in its anatomy. It reeked of blasphemy against the Omnissiah. On a sudden impulse, he crushed it under his foot, kicking the remains through a hole in the gantry wall to tumble down into the amber-lit darkness.
Farren made his way onward through the rig, his battle-brothers scanning every corner and darkened crevice as they pressed further inside. In the depths of the megastructure they could still hear muffled explosions as the rest of the Dark Angels engaged.
‘We’ll link up with the First if we can,’ said Farren. ‘Once the fighting is over, Zaeroph will see to those heretics. They aren’t going anywhere.’
The Primaris Marines passed stacks of rust-flecked promethium drums and crane assemblies, hustled past blood-spattered walls and trod spent bullet casings flat against walkways as they passed. At one point, the gantry fell away to the right, exposing a long drop down to a docking platform below.
Farren furrowed his brow and engaged his helm’s picter once more for later study. In places the metal had been sheared through. The edges were still glowing, as if the rig had been carved by some vast, superheated blade.
‘Another energy weapon?’ said Moricani as he and his squad brought up the rear.
‘I honestly do not know,’ said Farren. ‘It could be xenotech, but by the angle and sweep of it… It looks almost as if it was fired at random.’
There was a sharp crack of weapons discharge from the north.
‘The other strike forces seem happy to engage without us,’ said Vesleigh. ‘You think they used us as a distraction?’
‘Our battle-brothers are concentrating on their duty, as should we,’ said Farren. ‘Watch the flanks, let’s link up with–’
‘There!’
A burning white ball of energy crackled through the sheets of rain. Farren dived hard to the left. The blast’s pressure wave caught him nonetheless, sending him tumbling over the rail towards the precipitous drop. He flung out a hand and caught a stanchion, his shoulder joint burning with sudden pain as it took the entirety of his weight.
Another deadly sphere burned through the air, forcing him to raise his legs a split second before the ball of energy shot underneath. He felt its heat along his thighs and back.
Servos whined inside his power armour as he swung out over nothing, then hoisted himself up to get both elbows over the gantry. Enrod extended a hand, but the lieutenant ignored it, pushing his bolt rifle away for a moment and hauling himself back onto the walkway. He grabbed his rifle once more before springing up to his full height.
‘Where is that thing?’ he shouted. ‘I want it dead.’
There was a shimmer in the rain, perhaps a hundred yards distant.
‘By the pontoons!’ shouted Enrod.
Farren shouldered his rifle and took a shot. A heartbeat later his squad followed suit, a dozen killing rounds searing through the rain.
The volley of bolts was met by tiny glowing motes, a storm of fireflies that flickered into life to collide with the self-propelled rounds. They detonated the projectiles well before they could strike their target. A chain of explosions flashed in the rain, and orange light caught the edges of the warsuit’s massive bulk.
The battle engine was far bigger than a Primaris Marine. Bigger even than a Redemptor Dreadnought, come to that, and yet it was rendered all but invisible by its camo field.
Farren cast around, looking for something to tip the balance. He spotted a stack of promethium drums, a common enough sight on such a rig. Their potential made his pulse race. He tapped his lenses to infra-red, and felt his hopes dampen. They were reading empty.
Another burst of plasma seared in. This time, Farren and his brothers were ready for it, and got clear just before the sphere obliterated the stanchions behind.
Sergeant Orenst and his squadmates had finally made the gantry, levelling their bolt rifles and sending a tight volley into the rain. Once more, a swarm of intercepting firefly-things appeared from nowhere to meet them. The bolts lit up the night once more, their wrath as futile as the rain itself.
‘Thrunn,’ said Farren, motioning at the promethium drums some way back along the gantry. ‘Grab one of those barrels and hurl it out there.’ He ran some preliminary ballistics in his head.
‘I can get it some of the way, lieutenant, but–’
‘Do it!’
Thrunn’s name rune flashed in acknowledgement on Farren’s helm display as the young warrior pounded over to the stack of barrels, manhandling one from the top before dropping it with a clang and taking another.
‘They’re empty,’ he said.
‘They’ll still have the dregs, and traces of gas.’
‘It won’t reach the–’
‘It doesn’t need to! Just get one out there!’
Another ball of plasma hurtled towards them. This time Moricani and his team were ready, sending a volley of their own superheated energies from their plasma incinerators to blaze straight into the incoming shot. Farren heard Moricani laugh harshly as the air turned to spectacular inferno. His autosenses kicked in, dimming his lenses to keep him from being blinded entirely.
‘Now!’
Spinning around on the spot like a Medusan hammer thrower, Thrunn whirled the heavy iron drum before releasing it with a roar. Farren knelt and took a bead as it curved through the air towards the site of the stealther’s plasma discharge.
‘Maximum yield, brothers,’ said Moricani. ‘And make ready.’ Farren heard the telltale whine of the plasma guns reaching their highest output; a lethal risk in any situation, even for those as scrupulous in their maintenance rituals as the Hellblasters.
‘On my mark…’ said Farren. He mouthed a silent prayer to the Omnissiah, running his index finger along his gun’s barrel to calm its machine-spirit.
His bolt rifle bucked as he took the shot. It struck the promethium barrel dead centre, the armour-piercing bolt punching straight through.
With a deafening crack, the promethium vapour ignited and the barrel came apart in a puff of flame. Splintered wedges of metal burned in all directions. Once more the firefly countermeasures of the xenos stealther shot out, this time flitting to intercept the knives of shrapnel coming towards it. Illuminated by the flame of the detonation, the colossal warsuit had been made visible, a giant of smooth lines and glinting sensors.
‘Fire!’ said Farren.
The xenos-thing moved to evade, but with its countermeasures already launched it had no way to escape. The bolts fired by Farren and his brothers struck hard, each piercing shot punching through alien alloy to detonate with a loud boom. Smoking craters appeared in the machine’s hull.
A moment later, Squad Moricani’s blinding spheres of plasma energy struck the warsuit, burning away its front and melting its primary weapon limb to a drizzling, shapeless mass.
The machine, mortally stricken and with flame jetting from within its cockpit, toppled back from its perch into the heaving waves below.
Farren cast about himself, looking for signs of any xenos threat. The storm howled, but of the battle unfolding around the rig, he saw nothing.
‘And so it goes,’ said Moricani. ‘Score one for the Hellblasters.’
The lieutenant tapped his lenses through every spectrum available, scanning for t’au presence. Though he could not see him nearby, Parvell would no doubt have taken off his helm by now, trusting his own senses to scan for more stealthers. Yet even he remained silent.
‘Eastern quadrant neutralised, Chaplain,’ said Farren over the macro-vox. ‘Your orders?’
There was still no reply.
Baring his teeth in irritation, Farren made his way out onto a jutting girder. He pushed out until he felt the strain of the metal underneath him near its optimum tolerance. Part of the rig’s core armature, it was built to last. But after the blazing energies of their fight with the warsuit, he did not push his luck too far.
Something caught his eye to the far left, vanishing from sight.
Farren frowned, risking another step out on the stanchion. It shuddered under his feet, a warning from the primitive spirit of the rig itself.
He increased his mag-clamps to maximum as the wind howled around him, each new gust tugging and pushing at him as he took the best vantage point he could. Steeling himself, he raised his bolt rifle to his shoulder and readied to jump back if the stanchion gave way. It would not help the Primaris strike force’s already shaky command structure to see their lieutenant plunge down into the icy water.
Peering down the scryer-scope to the far left of their position, Farren made out a group of bone-armoured figures. Each was massive in bulk, and several were adorned with the tall feathered wing-pennants of the First’s elite. The squad had taken up a full-circle firing stance as it was lowered into the sea by a winch-platform on the western pontoon.
The Deathwing, fabled First Company of the Dark Angels, were seeking to engage beneath the waves.
Farren frowned, theories clustering in his head, as he watched them descend to the base of the pontoon and down into the surging waves. They were still standing in weapons-ready position as the crashing waters closed over them. Before long, all he could make out was their armour-lumens, dimly glowing in the sea. Then even those were gone.
The sound of explosions came from the west. Lashing flames curled around the stanchions from a clash happening just out of sight.
Then the macro-vox crackled, laced with a fizzle of static but still intelligible.
‘Primaris elements,’ came the voice of Chaplain Zaeroph. ‘You have done well. The xenos are in full retreat. Return to your transports and extract forthwith.’
‘Acknowledged,’ said Farren.
Another explosion sounded from the west, this time a muffled thump that sent up a plume of water.
Farren opened the macro-vox line again. ‘Forgive me, Chaplain Zaeroph, but it appears elements of our wider force are still engaged. Should we reinforce the Deathwing?’
‘Return to your transports and extract immediately!’ The Chaplain’s tone had a note of rage that took Farren aback.
‘Understood. Heading for rendezvous point now.’
The lieutenant heard indistinct voices over the vox, muffled ghosts that he could not discern. Then Zaeroph’s voice came through once more.
‘Farren, you are to attend us in the octagonal chamber at the rig’s pinnacle.’
‘Aye, Chaplain.’
‘Alone.’
‘Acknowledged.’
Farren motioned for his men to move out, but did not go with them. Moricani raised an eyebrow, but he waved his brother’s concern away. ‘Later, Pietr. I have a report to make.’
Within seconds, the Primaris Marines were retracing their steps. The lieutenant cast a glance over his shoulder as he left the gantry, staring back at the crashing waves where he had seen his Deathwing battle-brothers submerge.
Only the black depths, profound with unanswered questions, greeted his gaze.