Series I - Von Guyen
Episode III - Sacrifice
With their Chapter Master wounded, the White Knights are pulling back towards the basilica they have made their headquarters. In the meantime, a vanguard of Tau tanks are advancing on their thirty-man garrison at the spaceport on Fastunhive's top level. Third Captain Jarfur has discovered this much but a xeno jammer has rendered him unable to radio a warning to them. Gyrus, an Astarte under Jarfur's command, has taken matters into his own hands. He has disobeyed a direct order and set off for the spaceport to alert his fellows to the Tau force.
Burning buildings and flickering tracers lit the night sky above Fastunhive. The city's top level was an absolute ruin, strewn with wreckage and craters from punishing orbital bombardments. Here and there, giant holes had been torn through it to the floor below. Ulis' two moons, Maximus and Minimus, bathed everything in a ghostly white glow.
A squad of Tau moved stealthily through the gloom. They were Pathfinders, scouts who advanced ahead of the main force to measure the enemy presence. Unlike their fellow warriors they wore no suits of armour, just orange fatigues with helmets and sparse plating for protection. They were intended to pad across the battlefield undetected. Communications snapped back and forth between them as they took up positions in a damaged hab-block overlooking Fastunhive's main spaceport.
In the giant clearing before them was a wide array of landing pads, taxiways and cavernous hangars. The whole place was lit with giant floodlights and White Knights could be seen patrolling the perimeter in groups of three or four.
Far below them, in what was left of the street outside, Arin Sarox was running again. The Knight's Second Company had drawn the noose around the basilica where their wounded Chapter Master lay, but they had been in vain; there was no sign of von Guyen, nor any Tau to speak of. Every alien in the area seemed to have disappeared. That false sense of security had persisted as they'd loaded Arin and a group of other refugees onto a truck and sent it off in the direction of the spaceport, which they assured him was safe. Except, of course, it wasn't.
Waiting by the giant elevator that had brought the truck up to Fastunhive's top level was a vanguard force of Tau tanks. They hovered on cushions of blistering air and fired bolts of the purest blue that scythed through buildings and armour alike.
Arin didn't know if he was the only one to make it out alive. He didn't particularly care. There was only one thought in his mind: he was home.
The hab block rose above him, a dark shape in the gloom. His hab block. He knew this place so well that it didn't cross his mind to check for threats before advancing. That was what made it such a surprise to find a Tau Pathfinder posted in the lobby, pulse carbine already up and aiming at him.
"I surrender," he said.
It issued some command in a language he didn't recognise.
"What do you want me to do?" Arin asked, as he raised his hands.
Before it could give a reply, the wall behind it began to shift and move.
The Tau turned, in as much shock as Arin was, as a hulking, armoured figure emerged from the ferrocrete, as if it was being birthed from some grey cocoon. A huge gauntlet closed around the alien's thin neck and crushed the life from it with a thought.
The body slumped limply to the floor.
Silence fell.
"Oh, Emperor," Arin gasped.
The Space Marine thumped across the lobby and stood before him.
He looked up at its featureless eye-slits.
"How long have you been waiting there?" was the first question that came to his mind.
"Long enough," the Marine replied. He reached up to his helmet and removed it, revealing green eyes, short hair and a high forehead. "I am Gyrus. What are you doing here?"
"I live in this block," Arin replied. "And I'm Arin."
"You cannot be here," Gyrus told him. "Leave."
"But I have nowhere else to go," Arin said.
Gyrus pointed upwards at the ceiling.
"A group of foul xenos is setting up a command post a few floors above us," he explained. "Unless you want to incur their wrath, I suggest you do as I say."
Arin's face paled.
"Do you mean . . ." he said, with a nervous glance at the body on the floor. "Do the others already know we're here?"
Gyrus shook his head.
"No," he said, to Arin's immense relief. "I took out their watchman before he could send a distress signal. But they will be investigating his absence before long."
"Please," Arin said, "I need your help. All I want is to go home."
"Your home is currently a forward operating base for the Tau," Gyrus said.
"Can you clear them out?" Arin asked, desperately.
Gyrus nodded.
"That is what I came here to do," he said, and slid his helmet back into place. He unclasped his auspex from down by his belt and handed it to Arin.
"I'll wait for your call," Arin promised.
"It will not be long," Gyrus said.
He stepped into the elevator and ordered it up. It shook and began to move, climbing the shaft as a snail's pace. Gyrus knew he was placing himself in danger, even if the Tau above didn't know he was coming, and braced himself for combat with a silent prayer to the Emperor. Interacting with his armour's life support mechanisms using his mind, he flooded his veins with stimulants and adrenaline to make himself ready.
The doors swung open.
In half a second he had identified his targets: two Tau by the doorway and one in the corridor. His bolter rose and he left off a couple of sharp, well-placed shots, one for each of them. By the time the bodies had begun to fall, he had smacked the third around the face with the butt of his gun and shattered its skull. There was no time to catch his breath. His plan would only work if he moved too fast for the Pathfinder team to call for reinforcements. That meant keeping them all engaged with him instead of their radios.
Three more of them were waiting for him in the living room, aiming at him over an upturned couch. Bolts of plasma ricocheted off his armour.
He fired his bolter again, shredding them with a volley of explosive rounds.
Their screams of agony echoed in his ears.
Two more came in from the kitchen.
The first had readied its weapon and sent a plasma bolt towards him. Its energy was absorbed by his armour and it dissolved harmlessly.
With the drone of motors and tiny servos, he smashed its head against the wall and threw the second backwards, across the kitchen and into the table.
It crumpled, along with the table, and both collapsed onto the floor.
There was a noise behind him.
His armour sensed it at precisely the same time he did. The nerve signals from his brain to move his muscles were intercepted and translated by the electromagnetic weave laid across his skin. Power levels spiked, represented on his heads-up display by climbing bars, and machinery whirred into life, moving the suit around his limbs in time with them. To him, he was wearing nothing at all.
To the Tau raising its rifle to fire, one and a half tonnes of adamantium plating as thick as its arm turned faster than it could ever hope to.
Gyrus fired a single round.
The Tau dropped, its head split open.
He sighed as he holstered the bolter. It was times like those that reminded him how he'd made it into the Third Company. If his plans had been correct, the alien he'd thrown into the kitchen table should still have been alive.
Sure enough, the sound of coughing reached his ears.
He walked over to it, laid his hands on his shoulders and lifted it up into the air so its helmet was level with his glowing eye-slits.
It struggled and twisted vainly.
"You have been blocking communications with our force at the spaceport," he said. "And I do not like that. Where's the jammer?"
"You will never find it," it spat, in broken Gothic. "It's safe."
"Surrounded by your tanks, no doubt," Gyrus said. "When will they arrive?"
"Soon," it said, relishing the thought. "Too soon for your friends."
Gyrus looked past it, out of the window. He saw the brightly lit spaceport and the patrolling groups of White Knights. With a snarl he drew his bolter and put a shot into the xenos' helmet, then threw the body away before the explosive bullet could detonate. Blue blood splattered over the walls, running down to the floor in long lines. He used his mind to open a radio channel.
"Arin," he said. "It is safe."
"Right," came the hesitant voice on the other end. "I'll come up."
Arin entered the apartment to find Gyrus waiting in the living room. His helmet and his bolter rested on a chest of drawers by the wall. He was cleaning his tactical knife meticulously.
"Here," Arin said, handing his auspex back.
Gyrus took it.
"Thank you," he returned, curtly. He kept glancing through the window.
"What's wrong?" Arin said, seeing the spaceport. "It looks safe to me."
"There is a Tau force moving in to secure it," Gyrus said. "They will be here before long. My Company Captain thought killing von Guyen would stop them, but I know better. These xenos may be resisting their destiny, but they are not stupid about it. They will never stop unless it benefits them."
"But if they're on their way," Arin said, piecing the story together, "Surely you weren't sent here alone to stop them? I mean, you're . . ." He looked around at the bodies scattered throughout the apartment. "You're very good, but you couldn't hope to fight tanks."
"One or two, maybe," Gyrus boasted, then nodded his agreement. "You are right, though. I am not here on orders. Captain Jarfur and I had a disagreement."
"I didn't know Space Marines could do that," Arin admitted.
Gyrus gave a wry chuckle.
"We are not so unlike you," he said. "Some of us are petty and unfocused. Jarfur tried to warn the Astartes at the spaceport but the Tau jammed our signals, so I set off on my own."
"That's very heroic," Arin said.
"I do not know," Gyrus said. "There is probably punishment at the end of it."
"But you're trying to save lives," Arin pointed out.
Gyrus shrugged.
"Orders are orders," he replied. "But I am doing what I believe to be right."
He slid his cleaned knife back into its sheath and put his helmet back on. His bolter was stored in a large holster down by his waist. With heavy footsteps he crossed to the door.
Arin looked around, his shoulders falling.
"I live here," he said, again. "Or at least, I used to. A couple of floors up, actually. I had a wife and a . . ." His voice wavered. "And a son."
Gyrus turned back.
"What happened to them?" he said.
"I don't know," Arin said. "They were on the first evacuation wave, before the Tau hit."
Gyrus smiled inside his helmet.
"That wave made it out safely," he said. "We were told as much in our briefing."
Arin's eyes widened.
"Oh, thank you," he said. "Thank you so much for that."
Gyrus surveyed the wrecked apartment.
"Everything has meaning," he said. "Even those things that hurt us. In the creed of the Adeptus Sororitas, it is written that we serve the Emperor with our faith and devotion, and with faith there must also sometimes come sacrifice. I always took a lot from that quote."
Arin nodded slowly to himself.
"You're right," he said. "I'll be okay."
"You will," Gyrus said. "Whatever happens."
He walked out into the corridor.
Arin followed him and stuck his head round the door to see him stepping into the lift.
"So where are you going?" he called after him. "Back to your Company Captain, or . . ?"
Gyrus pressed the button on the console.
"Jarfur be damned," he said, as the doors slid closed. "I am going to save those men."