Scions of the Emperor Page 5

  'We cannot dig in. They will neutralise the defence laser network before it is finished. Need I remind you of Lord Perturabo's orders? We must deal with them quickly. If we allow the attack on station nine to proceed, we will have the White Scars exactly where we need them,' said Xyrokles. 'Captain Tar-Julsk.' He addressed the only captain who had not spoken. Tar-Julsk was thoughtful, and had spent the whole edification examining the data Xyrokles presented.

  'My lord Warsmith?'

  'You will prepare a convoy of materials to repair the four damaged sites.'

  'I thought we weren't repairing the sites?' said Phideark.

  'We are not. Not yet. I only want it to look like we are, because that's what they will be expecting us to do.'

  'My lord, doing what he expects us to do will lead to defeat!' protested Garazhk.

  'Wrong,' said Xyrokles. 'I have not finished. If I hear more objections, I will be looking for a new seventh captain.'

  Garazhk shut up.

  'I see your strategy,' said Tar-Julsk. He leaned forwards. The light of the cartolith danced in his eyes.

  'Explain to the others,' said Xyrokles.

  'I gather the convoy here, in the safety of the canyons leading up to the peaks.' He pointed to a maze of canyons the Iron Warriors had been using as a way up the mountains. 'I will take a full complement of guards, double the amount doctrine demands, in fact. We will reveal ourselves while the enemy are attacking station nine. They will identify me as a target of opportunity and strike, even though they will be weakened, low on ammunition and fuel, because I will be too tempting to ignore. You will counter-attack. They will be pinned into place and destroyed.'

  'That is almost correct,' said Xyrokles. 'We will ambush them, but allow them the opportunity to withdraw. We will then hit them repeatedly with attacks here, here and here.' Xyrokles traced a line through the unforgiving mountainous terrain. 'They will be caught here.' He stabbed his armoured fingers down on a wide plateau. 'Our fighters will cut off their retreat. Melias will be lying in wait with his armoured century. They will be surrounded on all sides, and we shall obliterate them.'

  'Risky,' said Tar-Julsk. 'Melias must get into position without being seen.'

  'I can do it,' said Melias with a shrug. 'If they're engaged at station nine, they won't be looking.'

  'They will withdraw,' Xyrokles gloated. 'That is their habit in the face of unfavourable odds. They will take the bait, unwittingly run into larger forces and withdraw again. We will direct their every move, until they are trapped.'

  Tar-Julsk nodded. 'A good plan.'

  Garazhk was relieved. 'So I will not face a full attack for long.'

  'Can we be sure they will take this route into the mountains?' asked Herakt.

  'It is a steep valley, limited opportunity for our fighter craft to take them, plenty of terrain for them to lose our ground forces in. What would you do in their position?' said Tar-Julsk.

  'Our armour is the key to this fight. If we get them to face Melias, our problem will cease to be,' said Xyrokles. 'You have your orders. Let us rid ourselves of this irritant.'

  * * *

  Ishigu swept around the defence laser construction site. There were three dozen similar stations set around the planet's equatorial mountain chain, where they could target ships arriving at Epsilon-Garmon's Mandeville point. Epsilon-Garmon was a small orange star, its system tiny and of little strategic value, but the Khan, and evidently the Iron Warriors, thought Lord Guilliman's Legion might come that way.

  Weapons fire chased his brotherhood across the planet's dusty sky. Sharp bursts of Chogorian battle talk kept the swarming flights of jetbikes in formation as they swept and dived over the site. Boltgun fire from the bikes drove back the enemy, while Storm Eagles and Thunderhawks ran bombing runs. Floury clouds of rock dust burst from the ground with each missile hit. Fire flashed in the clouds. The Iron Warriors were tenacious foes. Ishigu's brotherhood would have to land to finish them off.

  'Khan,' his bond-brother Hesegai voxed him. 'Their response times are getting quicker. We have enemy interceptors en route to our position.'

  Ishigu roared around in a banking curve over the battlefield. The mission was not finished, but it would have to do. 'Enemy work site is heavily damaged. Withdraw.'

  The clouds of attack craft and skimmers flew apart, hurtling away from the battle in every direction. Each of the defence laser construction sites were located high up the faces of the mountains, and Ishigu sped down near-vertical slopes away from the enemy. One by one his brotherhood fell back into flight with him.

  'Casualties,' Ishigu demanded.

  His sergeants reported their losses. Three dead for certain, one more jetbike downed, though the rider's suit signum was still active and moving away from the battlefield.

  'Log Kin-Ha's position. We will retrieve him at nightfall,' he said.

  They dipped into steep valleys. Enemy strike fighters blazed overhead, their auspexes unable to get a lock on the speeding assault brotherhood hidden in the canyons beneath them.

  'They do not see us. Split up into your extraction groupings and make for camp,' Ishigu said. Quick blurts of vox chatter acknowledged his order, and he was about to respond to them when a flashing mark on his helm cartolith caught his attention. 'Hold that last,' he said. Data screed ran quickly down his faceplate. 'I have new orders. A convoy attempting the ascent from the lowlands. They were waiting for us to be invested in attack before making a run for it.'

  'Who knew the Iron Warriors could be so cunning?' said Hesegai. 'Do we engage?'

  Ishigu checked the fuel gauges of his forty-strong attack force. 'Engage,' he said.

  Hesegai sang a snatch of hunting song. 'I am enjoying this little war!' he whooped.

  The convoy ground slowly up the mountain pass. The core of it was fifteen heavy haulers, dragging trailers laden with newly made construction equipment to replace what the White Scars had destroyed. Sixteen Rhinos and light tanks escorted them. None of the vehicles enjoyed the terrain, and they dragged themselves metre by painful metre through the primary slot canyon. Tar-Julsk's force was an expensive lure; the machinery had taken a great deal of effort to construct and would be lost in the battle.

  The Iron Warriors had been obliged to build their own road into the mountains, but the White Scars had bombed it several times, and the going was slow. The chances were Tar-Julsk's luring force would take heavy casualties, but he bore the risk stoically. That was the Legion way.

  Tar-Julsk detected the White Scars as soon as they burst out of a side canyon three kilometres to his rear.

  'They have risen to the bait,' he voxed. 'Convoy haulage elements, begin your escape. Squads seven to twelve, hang back and engage.'

  Engines roared so loudly in the canyon that they penetrated the armour of Tar-Julsk's command Spartan. The smell of overheated drive plates filled the crew compartment from the haulers struggling ahead.

  Seconds later, screaming jets echoed up the canyon. Gunfire sounded from the rearguard of Whirlwinds and Sicarans. A moment later the While Sears were among them, their jetbikes screaming, bolters banging. The whooshing roar of melta weaponry came neat as Land Speeders followed the faster bikes. An explosion rocked Tar-Julsk's Land Raider.

  Comms chatter from his men was calm in his vox-bead.

  'Hauler six destroyed.'

  'They are fast, I cannot target them.'

  'Enemy elements regrouping for second attack run.'

  Tar-Julsk's face set. 'Iron Within, Iron Without,' he muttered to himself.

  Ishigu flew over the convoy. The Iron Warriors behaved true to form: their tanks covering the rear, chasing the jetbikes with gunfire as they raced by, looped around and flew back, while the haulers attempted to escape forwards.

  'We have them,' Hesegai laughed. 'They are trapped!'

  A second hauler exploded, the tractor unit lifted up so violently it upset its trailer, spilling the crane it carried onto the rough road.

  'Squad Screaming
Hawk, target the foremost hauler,' Ishigu commanded. 'Block the pass. Stop their escape.'

  'As you command, khan,' Screaming Hawk's sergeant voxed back. Scimitar jetbikes accelerated past Ishigu, protecting a Proteus-class Land Speeder at the centre of their tight grouping. Ishigu watched them jink past the fire of the Whirlwind tanks. Missiles burned past them, evaded at the last possible moment. The targeting systems could not regain locks in time, and the missiles slammed into the cliffs, bringing down noisy rockfalls onto the pass.

  'They do our job for us,' Hisegai said.

  Screaming Hawk swooped on its target, strafing the lead convoy elements with mass-reactives. But before the meltaguns of the Land Speeder could do their work, a second barrage of missiles came down from above, fired from the canyon lip.

  'Enemy troops on the ground, coordinates—'

  A direct hit turned Screaming Hawk's sergeant into a ball of fire. A second jetbike exploded immediately after. Missiles rained down and cut up from the canyon floor, creating a crossfire that even the White Scars could not evade. Lascannon fire flickered up the canyon, and Ishigu's augurs rang urgent alarms.

  'Enemy aircraft coming from behind,' he voxed. 'This is a trap. Break off attack. Accelerate forwards, punch through, and regroup.'

  He depressed the accelerator on his bike, sending the Scimitar surging forwards. His men followed.

  'Fly on and out,' he commanded. But as soon as he spoke, more aircraft burned overhead, creating a ceiling that boxed the White Scars into the canyon. He craned his neck to follow their flightpaths. They circled like eagles, content to wait for the moment to strike.

  'Up the mountain, then,' Hesegai voxed.

  'Reading more troops ahead!' Ishigu voxed urgently. 'Bank left. Take canyon spur.' He sent a datasquirt highlighting a narrow defile to his warriors' displays. Still accelerating, they pulled up, sweeping about. Though they turned just before they came into the firing line of the men hiding up the canyon, one of his men strayed too far, and took a multi-laser volley from the position. The engine lit up with explosions, and the Space Marine fell on a tail of black smoke to his death.

  'Ride the storm, my brothers!' Ishigu commanded, opening his throttle to full.

  The canyon spur was very narrow. Rocks flashed by, some close enough to touch. The spur ran out a few kilometres ahead, breaking up into several short tributary formations that led up onto a plateau.

  'Reach the end, break by squad, gain the mountainside and escape. Designate point Cheng Shek as rendezvous.'

  The defile was too narrow for the enemy fighters to follow, and too overhung for them to fire effectively from above. The Iron Warriors didn't appear to have any skimmers to chase them with, but Ishigu was concerned nonetheless.

  'They're herding us,' Hesegai said.

  'They are,' Ishigu responded. 'It has been tried before. No one can catch the wind.'

  They raced up the defile, swerving around its sharp corners. It broadened out momentarily. A small lake, low in the dry season, blurred by. Five feeder valleys as crooked as arthritic fingers led off.

  'Split, split, split!' Ishigu ordered.

  The enemy were there too, guarding the entrances to the valleys, firing down on his men. The White Scars were exposed as they crossed the lake, and the aircraft joined their fire to that of the ground troops. Two more jetbikes went crashing down before the dwindling raiding party made it to the relative safety of the smaller canyons. These rose steeply, and Ishigu's grav-plates warbled in protest at the angle of the climb. Shadows crowded him. His shoulder pad rang, fountaining sparks as it brushed a volume in the rock. A millimetre more and he would have been torn from his saddle.

  Thundering more loudly than the sky gods of Chogoris, the Scimitar burst from the canyon onto the plateau. From the other chasms, black cracks in the ground no wider than a few metres, the rest of his force shot upwards and spread out, racing for their rendezvous.

  'Enemy tanks, dead ahead!' someone shouted, at the instant Ishigu's helm systems clamoured.

  Cresting the rise of the ridge at the end of the plateau came a full century of Iron Warrior armoured vehicles.

  Xyrokles watched from the safety of his personal Land Raider.

  'Annihilate them,' he voxed.

  Few things stirred his soul as much as an armoured century opening fire together. Twenty-five tanks raked the sky with laslight and bullets. The White Scars powered through it but such was the weight of the attack that they would all be killed before they reached safety again. Xyrokles estimated that the party represented the majority of the White Scar forces on Epsilon-Garmon II. Typical Chogorian raiding tactics, small forces sent out to cause maximum damage, hard to catch, but once caught, easily dealt with.

  'I have the measure of you!' he said to himself. 'Iron Within, Iron Without!'

  He was still congratulating himself on the success of his plan when the Land Raider next to his exploded violently. He instinctively searched the skies for more aerial contacts, but there were none. It was not until another tank died in a flaming ball of shrapnel that he scanned the ground.

  A dozen White Scars tank hunters were racing onto the battlefield, cutting across the armoured century's advance and firing as they came. The fleeing raiding force ceased their ragged rout, and flowed together. A second skimmer force lifted off from concealed positions up the mountain and split, half attacking the line of tanks, the rest speeding off to hunt down the corralling forces Xyrokles had placed in the canyons. A final chorus of chimes alerted him to White Scar interdiction fighters powering up and dropping from orbit onto the Iron Warriors atmospheric force.

  Within a few moments, it was over.

  The White Scars dragged Xyrokles from his burning tank and stripped him of his damaged armour, leaving him grimy-faced and clad in his tattered body suit, kneeling in disgrace with his hands bound behind his back.

  He seethed inside as the savage White Scars went over the battlefield, executing his men and reducing his vehicles to slag with fusion charges and phosphene bombs. Heat washed over him from the burning wrecks of his task force. His captors laughed with one another, jesting in their sawing, singsong barbarian's speech. A single warrior, his armour more heavily decorated with primitive markings than the rest, stood guard over him. Otherwise Xyrokles was ignored, and he ignored them in return.

  A heavier tread made him look up. He found himself staring into the face of Jaghatai Khan himself.

  Xyrokles fought back his unease at being in the presence of a primarch. Even now, after years fighting half of them as enemies, it was hard for him to overcome his awe of the Emperor's sons.

  'Your presence explains my defeat,' said Xyrokles. He sagged in his bonds. 'White Scars staging a tank assault. Concealed troops. Not true to type at all. I never had much of a chance.'

  'Did you not?' Jaghatai Khan squatted in front of the Iron Warrior. 'Look at me, Warsmith.'

  Xyrokles had no choice but to obey.

  'My men would have beaten you even if I were not here.'

  'I disagree,' said Xyrokles.

  The Khan was hiding something in his fist. He opened his hand, revealing Xyrokles' copies of his books.

  'You have studied my philosophies,' said the Khan. 'You think you understand me because you know my Legion's preference for lightning war. This is false understanding, Iron Warrior. You read the words, but did not fully comprehend. If you had, you would have anticipated my actions. All this was a simple game of opposites. You allowed yourself to be confident in the reading of my Legion, when all along my purpose was to make you fall prey to hubris. Your attempt to concentrate and misdirect my force was well chosen, but flawed from the outset, because you did not consider I could be here personally, or that my men might employ different strategies. You did not see my tanks because you did not look for them.' He smiled, a white flash in his tanned face 'I admit, I am a little impressed. It is unusual for your kind to be flexible in battle. Unfortunate for you that, in the war of storms, I am the stron
ger wind. Know that failure is not a sin. You fought well.'

  'Why are you telling me this?' Xyrokles asked. 'You have killed all my men. You will execute me in moments.'

  The Khan shrugged. 'Maybe my words will live on in your spirit when you are dead. Think on them in your next life. May they increase your wisdom, and profit you. I give them freely.'

  The Khan stood. His master-crafted power armour made barely a sound.

  Xyrokles began to laugh, a chuckle that turned into full-bellied humour, and ended in a bloody cough. He spat. Something was broken inside him. 'The next life? You should have followed the Warmaster.'

  'Why would I do that?' asked the Khan neutrally.

  'Don't demean yourself by playing ignorant, my lord. You know exactly what I mean. What you say does not conform with the Imperial truth.'

  'My father's truth is His truth. It is not my truth,' said the Khan. 'Every truth is a lie to someone. I am the son of the storm as much as I am the son of the Emperor. You are not the first to try to sway me, but if the thunder in my heart will not be tamed by my father, then it will not be tamed by my brother, either. I choose my own path.'

  Xyrokles shook his head. 'You're on the wrong side. The Emperor lied. He used us all.'

  'That is what you believe,' said the Khan. 'Rightness in a war is relative, as is truth. I choose to be loyal to the Emperor's ideal even if I do not believe in His truth. You are a traitor to all mankind.' He smiled again. 'In the end, I won, and you have lost, that is all that matters here. I thank you for the contest of wills.' The Khan dipped his head.

  'Pompous, double-talking wretch!' Xyrokles snarled. 'Why don't you go and…'

  Jaghatai Khan moved too quickly for the Warsmith to see. Xyrokles felt a firm grip on his head, a sharp twist, something part in his neck, and life was done with him.