Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot
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The story of what happens when it all goes horribly wrong for some Space Marine scouts. It's not exactly (OK, not remotely) high art but I enjoyed writing it in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along sort of way and have thus decided to share it with you; maybe there'll be more later. See what you think:
The tenement had been dilapidated even before the war. Now it shuddered to the percussive roar of the artillery battery that had been hastily assembled nearby. A rain of plaster dust spattered in a gritty trickle from the matte-black ballistic plate of the five figures as they stole along the passage, shotguns couched. Their enclosed recon helms, pale yellow visor plates above snout-like respirator units, scanned the corridor, scrawled with graffiti and reeking of damp and stale urine. The building's power had failed, and only the occasional shaft of sickly yellow mid-morning light stabbed into the gloom from apartment doorways that gaped like empty sockets.
The lead figure held up his clenched fist, signalling the group to come to an immediate halt. Though he could have simply voxed on the squad's standard closed channel, his men were coming to realise that he was something of a traditionalist. Often he would rebuke the soldiers under his command for over-reliance upon technology, stressing that in their role they had to prepare to fight on terms they would not be able to dictate.
Now he spoke, his voice soft over the to the squad's sealed vox channel. “They are close. Most likely through that door.” He nodded towards the end of the corridor, then turned, his yellow-tinged regarding the troops one by one. He settled on one of them. “Kang. Tell me how I know that.”
“You can smell them?” Kang answered. There was a high, incongruous snort of laughter over the vox from Kayfe, one of this comrades. He ignored it. “The olfactory sensors are picking something up. It's hard to tell among the ambient smells, but there's something else there, and it's been growing stronger for the last few metres.”
The sergeant, a dour man named Cothoza, stared at him. “My sensorium suite is deactivated,” he said flatly. “The datafeed is useful, but it can also be a distraction. No. It is simply the dust. The way it has been swept about – the patterns are too regular, too fluid. They have tried to hide their tracks.” Now came his favourite rebuke. “Remember the Chapter, and remember what we expect of you. Your wargear will aid you, but without knowledge it is useless.”
The Chapter in question was the Silent Council, the mysterious Space Marines of Argus, the Eye-World, so named for its reputation as a hub of of covert surveillance and data-gathering. The warriors of the Council had a reputation for ruthlessly efficient, needle-accurate strikes against the foe, studying everything from battlefield doctrine to the culture that had produced their enemies in order to find the weak link upon which to apply the decisive blow. As Listeners, members of the reconnaissance corps of the Tenth Company, the squad were trained daily to adapt and counter the enemy.
As the squad moved to flank the door Cothoza had indicated, Kang reflected that this mission seemed almost mundane. Some weeks previously, a militant cult of the Ruinous Powers had arisen in some backwater city on the unremarkable planet of Graustein. The Listeners had made planetfall several kilometres beyond the city limits and moved upriver to make their way through the sewer system to their objective: an artillery battery that had been holding the Planetary Defence Forces at bay in their efforts to move into the outskirts. Having slipped into the city unnoticed by the PDF, their plan was to simply locate the battery and upload its location to the PDF command network before exiting the theatre unheeded, as was their wont.
Kang glanced at the floor. Cothoza had been right. The clumsiness of the enemy's attempt at subtlety was almost laughable. He killed the datafeed in his own helm, knowing that he would not need the extraneous info-runes obscuring his visor for what was coming.
The latest barrage ceased, and then the silence was broken by a mocking voice on the vox. It was Kayfe, the Listener whose laughter had interrupted Kang earlier. His personality was frankly obnoxious, but he was an expert close-quarters fighter.“I've been waiting for this. The though of putting down some traitor scum was all that kept me sane when I was wading through that-”.
“Shut up.” Cothoza had spoken, and Kayfe fell silent. Idle chatter was something else Cothoza disapproved of.
Through a series of hand signals, Cothoza signalled that the squad should prepare for a breaching assault. He directed Kayfe to stand in the corridor, facing the door. Perfectly still, Cothoza and Kang waited on either side of the threshold, each accompanied by one of the other two Listeners, Lambert and Nikos. They stood for almost two full minutes, unmoving, and then the shelling resumed.
There was no need for further signals. Kayfe charged, and though he had not fully completed his transformation into a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes his augmented physique simply bashed through the shoddy wooden door. Inhuman reflexes kicked in as he scanned the room and fired within a second of entering, dropping into a crouch.
They had surprised a group of cultists who had clearly been ignoring their sentry duty, three lounging around a small table while a fourth leaned against the far wall, an autorifle dangling by a shoulder strap. They reacted, seeming ridiculously sluggish, their eyes bloodshot behind masks and googles and the cloying smell of obscura smoke filling the air. Kayfe had fired at the leaning man, and the blast took him full in the midsection and hurled him back against the wall as he lurched forward, chunks of the thin plaster raining around him as he slithered down. Cothoza surged around him, his bolt pistol held in a two-handed grip, and fired off two shots that blew awful ragged holes in a pair who had risen from the table, one reaching for a holster while the other fumbled to bring a sub-machine gun to bear. Kang entered just in time to see Kayfe swivel and blast the fourth man backwards as he lunged for a revolver on the table. Still in his chair, he tipped over as if a hidden trapdoor had swallowed him, his feet knocking the table on to its side.
Nikos and Lambert, the last two to enter, kept their guns up and scanned the room. The only other exit to the room was a side door, and it flew open with a bang just as Kang was about to start towards it.
A shrieking, ragged figure burst into the room. With a surge of manic strength the screaming cultist barged Kang out of the way, slashing left and right with a dirty combat knife. As he stumbled back Kang saw the attacker in adrenaline-heightened detail, noticing in that instant his spittle-flecked mouth and the veins standing out on his neck – Kang guessed that he had just shot himself full of some kind of combat stimm. The attacker flew at Kayfe, flailing at his neck.
Suddenly, there were two quick booms and the berserker disappeared from the waist up in a burst of crimson, splashing the walls and ceiling. His disembodied legs thumped to the floor. Cothoza stepped forward, lowering his bolt pistol.
The barrage outside abruptly ended. The only sounds were the ever-present rattle of the dust trickling from above and blood dripping from the crimson starburst that now covered much of the ceiling. Cothoza turned briefly to Kang. “You were careless,” he said. He then regarded Kayfe. “And you were slow.” Nikos and Lambert earned no rebuke; Kang realised that he had been blocking their lines of fire, something that he felt sure he would also earn a reprimand for after this mission. Cothoza strode to the window.
Kang looked around, wafting aside obscura smoke in irritation. They were in a tiny bedsit, and the cultists had been eating a meal of looted canned foods in the meagre kitchen area. The other door led to a dingy bathroom outfitted with a cramped shower cubicle and unspeakable toilet; off to the side was a battered sofa facing a small broken vid-screen built into the wall. No personal effects hinted at whoever had once lived there and the cultists had scrawled vile runes upon the walls. Kang reflected that this uprising, a triviality for the Asartes, had irrevocably changed human lives. Indeed, he had just seen five abruptly end in the space of seven seconds.
He regarded the wretched dead. As Astartes, the spans of Kang and his comrades would be measured in centuries. For them, death in battle and natural causes were virtually synonymous. He considered that if these five traitors had had any inkling of just how fragile their lives were, they would never entertain such lunacy as following the path of Chaos. For to heed the false promises of the Archenemy was to make enemies of the Astartes, and to Kang that any mere human would risk such retribution seemed ludicrous.
He and Kayfe moved up to the window to stand alongside Cothoza. They were looking down into a shabby, overgrown patch of land. A row of captured Basilisk self-propelled guns sat on the grass, groups of soldiers in cobbled-together body armour daubed with sigils of Chaos clustered around them.
“We have a target,” said Cothoza. “Lambert, commence upload.”
Now came the culmination of the mission. Using a dataslate configured to access the PDF's encrypted channels, Lambert would transmit a data-packet containing the location of the battery along with additional topographical data showing confirmed and probable locations of enemy strongpoints the Listeners had tagged on their approach and relevant pict-captures and textual descriptions of troop strengths and armament. Hopefully it would be sufficient to turn the tide in the PDF's favour and end the battle quickly.
Lambert did not acknowledge.
A low chuckle made the three Listeners spin to face the entrance.
Nikos and Lambert stood flanking the door, unmoving. Between them stood a bizarre figure. It was humanoid, and its head was lowered, covered by a mane of silky white hair. It was bare to the waist, and whorls of sickly green luminescence seemed to crawl over its dark grey skin. Kang watched as if hypnotised as it raised its head, showing malicious yellow eyes and a cruelly grinning mouth filled with gleaming pointed teeth. But Kang's attention was mainly focused upon the slender blade that hung by its side.
“What naughty boys you've been,” it hissed. Then it flew straight at them.
Nikos and Lambert dropped, a horrifying amount of blood misting around them, the creature clearly having delivered the coup de grace before anyone had even noticed its presence. They had died as abruptly as the cultists, with perhaps less knowledge of how it had even happened.
Cothoza rapidly snapped off bolt rounds and Kayfe and Kang's shotguns filled the air with buckshot. But the blurred attacker was already seeming to shoot straight up, before diving from the ceiling in a fraction of a second, its blade describing a shimmering arc as it descended like a comet to crash into the three Listeners. It struck Cothoza's chestplate with both feet and he was launched back, abruptly disappearing through the window with a crash. Simultaneously, it grasped the faceplate of Kang's helm with its free hand and rammed him back into the wall with horrifying strength, and his gun fell as he reached up to try and grapple with the enemy. Yet his hands grasped only air, and he fell heavily on the body of one of the cultists. The shadow flowed around Kayfe as he fired, and drove the pommel of its sword into the side of his helm with enough force to knock it askew and send Kayfe spinning to the floor.
Kang's augmented reflexes took stock of the situation. At the edge of his peripheral vision he was aware of a few grenades at the dead cultist’s waist. He rose, tugging a grenade from the belt as he did so, and cannoned into the attacker as it it stood with its bare foot planted on Kayfe's chest, its blade poised to stab downward. Kang locked his arms round the creature's waist and bore it first into the wall, then spun so that it was between him and the bathroom door. He snapped his head forward and heard bone crack, then shoved the enemy back into the bathroom. It had already rallied and surged forward; he dashed towards it, met it with two swift but inelegant punches to the face that almost felled it and then, as it reeled, spent a precious second priming the grenade before letting it drop. He sprang back and slammed the door, then remembered that the foe still had its sword and whirled to the side, still placing as much weight as possible against the door handle, just as the blade erupted through the door. He flung himself down, away from the door. He rolled on to his back and saw the door fly open, and the creature stalked into the room. It cast about, saw him, and with a snarl raised its blade in a two handed-grip.
Then the grenade went off.
The assassin was obliterated, shredded, turned into a jumble of scarlet rags that rushed to slap wetly into the wall. Kang turned and saw Kayfe was at least stirring. He took hold of the other Listener's arm and hauled him up. Then, as his rush of adrenaline abated somewhat, he heard the rattle of autofire from below. A few rounds began to pepper the window frame of the room he was in.
“Squad!” Cothoza barked on the vox. “Mission compromised! Fall back to these coordinates!”
Kang reactivated his datafeed, and the info-runes detailing the fallback position swam into view. Tugging Kayfe by his arm, and taking a last glance at the crumpled forms of Lambert and Nikos, he made for the door.
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Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot
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As Kang dragged Kayfe into the corridor, the battered Listener suddenly became agitated. “The gene-seed...”
“We need the reductor for that. And the sergeant was carrying it.”
The Council had prepared the squad to take casualties. The need to prepare to counter changing circumstances was kept at the forefront of their minds constantly. The Chapter's Apothecary corps had solemnly presented Cothoza with the reductor, the tool that would extract the means to create new warriors, the gene-seed, from the bodies of the slain and had ensured that he was proficient in its use. Kang reflected that if they could not rendezvous with the sergeant in time, retrieval of the gene-seed could swiftly become an academic matter.
Even if they could reach him, he thought bitterly, that might still be the case. The cynicism of the sons of Argus had truly begun to take root in him.
Cothoza's coordinates proved to be the lobby of the building, a shadowy atrium. They pelted on to the gallery that around the chamber and hurried down the stairs just as Cothoza burst through the entrance.
He was typically terse. “Five are dead. At least seventeen more are coming.”
With practiced grace they flowed into cover, converting the space between the entrance and the long-disused attendant's desk in the middle of the floor into a semicircular field of fire. Cothoza unslung his shotgun and took aim.
He sent a ping to Kang's sensorium readout. “Grenades.” Kang readied a frag grenade and saw Kayfe doing the same.
Two long seconds passed.
“Now.”
They hurled the explosives at the entrance as the first wave of cult militia surged into the lobby. One detonated on the floor; Kayfe's had been slightly behind and it went off in their faces, the combined blasts tearing through the first wave. The next attackers surged over their dying comrades and were met with a hail of shotgun fire. When Cothoza had emptied his magazine he switched to his bolt pistol and began dropping the now thinned horde with precise shots. A few seemed more cautious; they took up cover behind the steps of the building and burnt-out groundcars outside. The Listeners moved up to the doors and responded with three more grenades. Two militiamen who were not finished by this assault were driven from cover; they were dropped as they moved to new positions.
Cothoza reloaded and holstered his weapon. He was already moving back to the stairway.
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Back in the wrecked apartment, Cothoza stood, stashing the reductor and checking the refrigerated packs, emblazoned with the helix of the Apothecarion, that held the gene-seed. “Report,” he demanded.
Kayfe stepped forward. “Objective compromised. Xenos presence confirmed. Eldar. Mandrake sub-species.” Study of the alien races of the galaxy was an essential part of a Listener's schooling.
“Recommended actions?”
“Per Chapter doctrine, establish reason for xenos presence and formulate counter-operation. Primary objective to be postponed until this is done.”
Cothoza nodded. The PDF could be walking into a trap, and his squad had frankly been surprised. The dataslate had been cut clean through by the alien blade, and further smashed by the grenade blast that had destroyed the attacker.
There was nothing to add. They had already taken taken the ammunition and other supplies from the fallen. Cothoza headed for the door and the Listeners followed.
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Miles above the planet, a spindly void-yacht hung in the blackness, the shadowfields that writhed about it guarding it from the antique sensorium banks on the surface. In an opulent chamber at the heart of the vessel, Mistress Na'lekka caressed the intricate scry-glass, a delicate piece of bespoke technology, into life with fingers like the probing legs of a spindly alabaster insect.
The face of Schlathag, the leader of the Mandrake band, regarded her. Not for the first time, she flexed her hands, wanting to scar that insolent, sneering face with the vicious adamntium talons implanted beneath the skin. Her contempt for the band of alley-kin had never been concealed; nevertheless, they had been highly regarded by her late predecessor, Archon Kael'ryss of the Stained Claw Kabal. Following his untimely and violent downfall, all that was his had become hers, including the alliance with Schllathag's band. After dealing with their sly mockery and insufferable airs, she now regarded them as a distasteful but effective implement to be picked up and discarded. The Mandrake's latest report had only served to increase her impatience.
“And what of the Blade? Have you lost that, as well as one of your wretched brothers? Perhaps the mon-keigh brutes, in their fumbling ignorance, smashed that as thoroughly as they tore him apart?”
The Mandrake winced. “Of course not, most gracious mistress.” His mock obsequiousness grated as much as ever. “Even the insignificant leader of this joke they call a rebellion knows not of it. He still thinks that he gives us orders, and yet he can't even keep an eye on his own cannons. The Imperials, though amateurs they may be, silenced them in short order. And such crude manners...”
Na'lekka ran multiple possibilities for the future through her mind as Schlathag droned on. These new mon-keigh might yet prove an unwelcome distraction. She was under no illusion that the Chaos rabble, and their brutish leader, an over-inflated thug known as Thembler, would be no match for more hardened soldiers than these inexperienced and frightened PDF wretches. Had she not needed them to act as her distraction, she would have struck every one of them down on sight from sheer disgust. She could only see one way forward. These Mandrakes claimed to love the hunt; as the smile that had been a death sentence for hundreds crept across her bone-white face, she decided that she would give them what they wanted.
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