03 - Savage Scars Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  Savage Scars

  Rogue Trader - 03

  Andy Hoare

  (An Undead Edit v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  “In the year of Our Emperor 742.M41, the most glorious forces of the Imperium launched a crusade of conquest into the Lithesh Sector, to regain control of those worlds so long estranged from the Rule of Terra by warp storm activity and the raids of the pernicious eldar. But woe, for it was discovered that far worse a fate had befallen those benighted worlds. A previously unknown xenos species called the tau had infiltrated and undermined the proper governance of a string of worlds along the edge of the celestial anomaly known as the Damocles Gulf. Foremost amongst those to have discovered this duplicity was the rogue trader Lucian Gerrit, patriarch of the Clan Arcadius.

  The Imperium could not, would not, stand by as more worlds fell from the fold. The firebrand preacher Cardinal Esau Gurney of Brimlock preached a full crusade against the tau, holding that the Gulf must be breached, the tau home world located and the entire species exterminated.

  The call to arms rang out across the sector and beyond, and was answered. The Space Marines of the Iron Hands, White Scars, Ultramarines and Scythes of the Emperor heeded that call, as did a dozen planetary governors who raised new regiments for the Imperial Guard to prosecute the Damocles Gulf Crusade. The rogue trader Lucian answered the call too, his Warrant of Trade earning him a place on the crusade’s command council.

  But so too did the figure of Inquisitor Grand, and the council soon split into two factions—those centred around Grand and Gurney, who desired only the complete destruction of the xenos tau, and those allied to the rogue trader, who sought in various degrees honour, glory or profit, but not dishonourable slaughter.

  The first battles were fought on the nearside of the Damocles Gulf, and saw the world of Sy’l’kell conquered with relative ease and a tau fleet bested at Hydass. But already the council was being torn asunder by internecine rivalries and Gerrit’s daughter Brielle appeared to assault the inquisitor, for reasons unknown, and flee. She was assumed dead thereafter, much to her father’s despair, though he still had his son Korvane to stand by him.

  Having purged the world of Viss’el, the crusade pierced the Damocles Gulf, and fell upon the world of Pra’yen with the righteous fury of the faithful. But disaster almost befell the Emperor’s warriors there, for it proved that the tau were a far greater threat than any had imagined. The tau were not some minor race residing on but a single world, but were possessed of an entire stellar realm.

  As the crusade pressed in to capture the capital world of the Dal’yth system, Dal’yth Prime, more tau forces closed in. The fate of the Damocles Gulf Crusade would come to rest in the hands of three individuals—the White Scars Veteran Sergeant Sarik, the rogue trader Lucian Gerrit, and his daughter Brielle, who had fallen by her own hubris into the hands of the tau water caste envoy called Aura.

  Mustering its forces, the crusade prepared for “Operation Pluto”—the Dal’yth Prime landings. All would depend on those landings, and the actions of but three very different individuals.”

  —Extract from preface of The Truth

  of the Damocles Gulf Crusade

  (unpublished, author unknown)

  Chapter One

  Deep within the dense stellar cluster that was the crucible and the cradle of the alien species known as the tau, the frigate Nomad was a dark shadow against the roiling blue nebulae permeating the entire region. The cluster seethed with anomalous energies not witnessed anywhere else in the galaxy, a phenomenon that the most learned of Navigator-seers and astro-cognoscenti had entirely failed to explicate. The stars here were young and the very fabric of space somehow charged with raw potential, and the same appeared to be true of the species that had evolved here. The tau had developed from primitive nomads to a heretically advanced, space-faring empire within a handful of millennia. The tau’s very existence was now a threat to the Imperium’s rule in the area, and the Damocles Gulf Crusade had been set in motion to restore order and adherence to the rule of the God-Emperor of Mankind.

  But Veteran Sergeant Sarik cared little for inexplicable nebulae or esoteric stellar phenomena. He didn’t even care a great deal about the tau or any other alien species, so long as they adhered to the one, defining principle by which he himself led his life. That principle was honour, and to Sarik, everything else was secondary.

  Sarik was standing on the bridge of the Nomad, the lambent nebulae washing his weather-beaten, honour-scarred face and causing his folded eyes to glow with ice-blue luminescence. His polished white armour glinted in the light of alien suns. Sarik was the master of his vessel, a one-and-a-half-kilometre-long Nova-class frigate bearing the white and red livery of the White Scars Chapter of the Space Marines, but truth be told, he held little love for the role. He yearned to fight on solid ground, to engage his foe not in ship-to-ship combat at a thousand kilometres but in the brutal, face-to-face savagery of close-quarters melee.

  Turning his back on the lancet-paned forward viewing portal, Sarik strode the length of the bridge, reading in every step the deep throb of the plasma drives as they propelled the Nomad through the void at full speed. The air was heavy with the smoky scent of the purifying unguents used to bless the vessel, its machine systems and the crew that tended her. The scent reminded Sarik of the cold, windswept plains of home, the world of Chogoris, for the Techmarines of the White Scars worked into the incense the resin of the rockrose gathered from the uplands of the north. Dozens of sounds filled the bridge, from the chattering of the cogitation banks and logic engines to the muted conversation of the bridge-serfs as they coordinated dozens of secondary operations, none of which were of immediate concern to the master of a vessel crewed by several thousand souls.

  One of the bridge-serfs was a man called Loccum, a veteran with the rank of conversi, an appointment that honoured him with the right to address his Adeptus Astartes masters directly. Unlike many Adeptus Astartes, however, Sarik eschewed the aloofness so often displayed by the superhuman Space Marines, and while he might not converse with his crew or others as peers, he nonetheless valued their skills and their opinion
s.

  Loccum glanced up as Sarik approached, and reported, “Pathfinder squadron is approaching segment delta-nine, brother-sergeant.” The man was permanently connected to the frigate’s machine-systems by a complex web of mind impulse link cables, and every fragment of visible skin was a matrix of Chogoran tribal tattoos. “In-loading remote telemetry now.”

  “Shunt it through, please, Loccum,” Sarik replied, frowning as he focussed on the icons tracking their way across the glowing blue screen of his command lectern. Machine chatter blurted out of the bridge phono-casters, a harsh sound that grated on Sarik’s nerves whenever he heard it. He was reminded again how much he yearned for the howl of wind in his ears and the feel of a clean breeze on his face. The machine noise cut out as suddenly as it had appeared, a series of figures and icons resolving on the lectern’s screen.

  “Damn,” Sarik cursed, as he took in the full import of the lines of data scrolling across the lectern. A semi-circular form appeared at the edge of the screen, representing the enemy-held planet towards which the pathfinders were probing. In between the squadron and that planet three new returns blinked ominously. The Imperial Navy pathfinder squadron ranging ahead of the Nomad were the elite of the crusade’s scout forces, the master of each vessel a man Sarik knew personally. He would not see them blunder into an alien trap, not while he could influence matters.

  “Confirmed,” said Loccum. “Three capital-scale defence platforms.”

  “Initiate tight-beam communion,” ordered Sarik. “We have to warn them.”

  Loccum hesitated, causing Sarik to look up in response to his silence. “Well?”

  “Brother-sergeant,” the bridge-serf replied. “Orders from fleet.”

  “I am aware of fleet’s orders, conversi,” Sarik said, using the serf’s rank title to remind him of his status. “If we must risk detection, so be it.”

  Loccum bowed deeply in response to Sarik’s order, and turned to a nearby vox terminal. The data script that was being fed back to the Nomad before being relayed to the bulk of the fleet continued to scroll across the lectern. The three icons that represented the alien defence platforms indicated that they were deployed in a relatively tight cluster, approximately 100,000 kilometres from the world they protected. Sarik’s lip curled as he recalled the last time the fleet had faced one of those platforms. Then, it had been just one platform, but so heavily armed it had inflicted a fearsome toll on the Damocles Gulf Crusade fleet. Men had died by the thousand, screaming silently into the void as their vessels had burned around them, a death that Sarik considered an unsuitable one for such brave servants of the Imperium.

  That station had finally been destroyed when Sarik himself had led a boarding action, consisting of a composite force of Space Marines drawn from the White Scars, Ultramarines and Scythes of the Emperor Chapters. The Space Marines had destroyed that platform’s power plant, sending it burning like a meteor through the atmosphere of the world the alien tau knew as Pra’yen.

  Sarik glanced up at the conversi, who noted his attention and replied, “Seventy per cent, brother-sergeant.”

  Grunting, Sarik resumed his study of the lectern’s screen. He was looking for any sign of tau vessels, praying that the pathfinders would not be drawn into an ambush. The scout vessels were built for speed and stealth, and would stand little chance if they were engaged. The fleet had already faced a sizeable tau force as it had pushed into the system, and communications intercepts indicated that more were incoming.

  A group of augur returns resolved out of the background noise, some distance ahead of the scouts.

  “Tight-beam communion established,” announced the conversi. “On main terminal now.”

  “Nova-zero-leader,” said Sarik, using the pathfinder squadron leader’s call sign. “This is Nomad. I read multiple contacts inbound on your trajectory. Report status.”

  “Received, Nomad,” replied the comms officer aboard the lead pathfinder, his voice clipped and metallic over the heavily shielded vox-link. “Conducting passive augur reading of the platforms. Will relay to you when complete, over.”

  The icons on the lectern blinked as the tau vessels rapidly closed on the pathfinder squadron. “Enemy vessels have you in their sights, Nova leader,” Sarik growled. “You don’t have time for a full reading.”

  There was a pause, before the pathfinder replied, “We know that, Nomad, over.”

  Sarik scowled and his grip on the edge of the lectern tightened as his frustration mounted. Inside, he honoured the pathfinders for their dedication to their duty, but he saw no reason for them to throw their lives away. “They’ll be on you before you can complete the reading, you know that.”

  “We have our orders, Nomad. Fleet has to know of those platforms,” the comms officer insisted. “Whatever it costs.”

  Sarik forced himself to calm before responding. “Nova leader, I honour your courage.” He did not say such a thing lightly, and many Adeptus Astartes would never have considered saying it at all. “But if you do not take immediate evasive action, fleet will never hear your report. You’ll be dead.”

  “We can’t simply—” the officer replied, but Sarik cut him off. “Listen to me, Nova leader, and we’ll get fleet their reading and share a victory horn together later. This is what I want you to do…”

  As the Nomad had ploughed onwards towards the pathfinder squadron’s position, Sarik had monitored the vox-channels. The elite crews of the scout vessels had accepted his plan, and were enacting it with supreme skill and courage. Even as the tau vessels closed, all but one of the scouts had veered off on a new heading, on Sarik’s order, drawing the aliens away.

  Only one pathfinder vessel now remained on station.

  “Nova leader,” Sarik said, aware of how isolated the scout crew must be feeling. “Status, please?”

  “Preliminary readings compiling now, Nomad,” replied the comms officer of Nova leader. “Initial cogitation suggests all three defence platforms are of a different configuration to those we have previously faced, over.”

  Sarik’s mind raced as he considered what devious new combination of offensive and defensive alien technology might await the fleet as it closed on the platforms. The tau had proved able to adapt rapidly, their forces displaying a wide range of unpredictable technologies. “Different?” he said. “How?”

  “Unclear at this stage, Nomad—” the scout replied. Before he could complete his transmission, the channel burst with a sudden scream of feedback. Sarik knew from previous fights with the alien tau what such vox interference often foreshadowed. Yet another of their abominable weapons systems.

  “Conversi Yosef,” Sarik addressed the tech-serf manning a station nearby. “Source?”

  “Enemy contact, brother-sergeant,” the crewman replied. “Augur spirits sing of a homopolar energy surge analogous to mass driver weaponry previously encountered.”

  Sarik had no idea what that meant, his gorge rising at the prospect of losing even a single fellow warrior of the Emperor to these aliens. Yosef’s words spoke of the technological heresy of the tau, but they were as impenetrable and repellent as a sorcerer’s hex to Sarik. “Meaning?”

  “The xenos are opening fire, sir.”

  “At?”

  “At the scouts, sir.”

  A moment later, a bright blue pulse illuminated the scene beyond the bridge’s armoured viewing port. Bitter experience had taught Sarik just how lethal the aliens’ weapons could be, and he braced himself against the sturdy lectern, even though he doubted the shot was aimed at the Nomad.

  He was correct. Although the distance was far too great to see any detail of the attackers, the glowing readout on the lectern told him all he needed to know. The blurred return that was the group of enemy vessels was resolving into five separate icons as the scouts’ augurs got a better fix on them. One of those icons, the vessel that had just fired, blinked as a line of cogitation data scrolled rapidly beside it. The machine script described just how alien the vessels were, thei
r manoeuvring characteristics, displacement and weapons systems so different from the Imperium’s warships and Sarik’s anger rose at the thought of techno-heresy of the tau.

  The vox-channel came to life as the comms officers of each of the scout vessels reported in. Sarik breathed a sigh of relief that none had sustained any major damage. Nova-zero-three had been the target of the attack, and had suffered a temporary failure in flight control as the shot had passed dangerously close. The scout vessel’s tech-adept was even now tending to the outraged machine-spirits and nursing his systems back to life.

  “They’re going for it,” Sarik growled, as the icons representing the enemy ships changed course to power after the bulk of the pathfinder squadron. Nova leader still appeared mightily vulnerable, but at least the enemy were being drawn away. “Helm,” said Sarik. “Take us in.”

  Helmsman Kuro, a bridge-serf who had served aboard the Nomad for three decades and whose voidsmanship was nigh legendary, hauled on his mighty brass control yokes, setting the vessel to come around to the new heading.

  “Intercept at seven zero delta by five nine sigma,” Sarik snapped, before addressing Conversi Loccum. “Do we have resolution yet?”

  “In-loading now, brother-sergeant,” the serf replied, his face underlit by his readout and his eyes flicking impossibly fast as he rapidly scanned the reams of cogitation script passing across its glowing surface. “Enemy vessels appear to be pickets, sir. Light displacement only.”

  “Thank the primarch,” Sarik breathed. While the alien vessels might prove superior to the pathfinders, they would hardly be a match for the Nomad. That left the three defence platforms to face. Sarik determined to worry about those later. Right now, his attention was focussed on closing the trap without the loss of any Imperial lives.

  Even as Sarik watched the icons swarming across the lectern screen, another bright blue pulse illuminated the bridge. Silence followed, during which Sarik fixed his gaze on the icons representing the pathfinder vessels. Far from machine phosphorescence, each was a crew of dozens of brave men and women.