"Care not for the messes you make afar from the Imperium. For the outer darkness is vast and no calamity cannot be escaped in its breadth. Therefore, if madness is needed, madness you shall make. If famine is needed, then let hunger reign. The worlds of outsiders are yours to destroy." –The fourth Great Truth of the Way of the Predator
Battle was coming soon. News had spread through the Dakuwaqa fast. Brothers all across the war shoal prepared for war in their own way.
Sergeant Teketik ducked and weaved from sergeant Balor's axe to roars of approval from the massed brothers. Both sergeants were bare the waist and fought with edgeless weapons. Balor's skin was losing its colour, turning gently towards the old grey that marked the purest of the brotherhood from amongst its savage ranks. Teketik, like many others his age, was so thickly dressed in tattoos that the colour of his skin was hard to tell. His face was a pair of open jaws and his rippling muscles were curling glyphs and predatory shadows. Tyberos thought humanity ended with pink and brown. But the diverse tones of human skin he had seen in the war shoal had shown him how ignorant he was of even basic truths on mankind.
Tyberos stepped away from the edge of the Beast Chamber the sparring sergeants were using. He a bit of mature pride when he noticed the young scouts and newly inducted battle brothers in the crowd that watched the duel. Young faces, unscarred faces, faces without a dot of the old grey. Tyberos should be with his companions from the 10th. But practice was more important. The spirits would bless him for his concentration.
Tyberos stood with his breath calm as he flexed his big arms. It had been easy to get used to his new body. It had been as easy as forgetting about a scar one of the servitors had given him during the Abyssal Labour. Tyberos recited the prayer of activation to show he was ready. No fire drills today, they were too frustrating. His knife-work needed practice.
"Squid!" Tyberos commanded. He felt daring. It was prohibited to activate the shock function within four days of combat action, Tyberos decided there was no point to practicing here without some risk. "Shock function," he said, just loud enough so the older space marines would not hear.
From the iron walls of the long chamber shot whipping metal tentacles, each tipped with a sparking head. Tyberos' combat knife sliced up and knocked a tentacle away before it could strike him. The tentacle shot back into the wall. In a stomp of his heavy foot, Tyberos pinned a second tentacle down and crouched by it, in time to avoid a third tentacle. Tyberos raised his knife to cut.
"Jaguar!" It was Milan. The chuckling scout cart-wheeled in beside Tyberos, a thick combat knife in hand. The two young space marines stood back to back as more tentacles shot from the walls while grasping metal maws came from the walls to strike at their feet. From the corner of his eye, Tyberos could see more scouts hurrying to join.
"Rat!" That was Kiesn's favourite. He seemed to enjoy easy victories more than hard ones. Each new scout shouted out another wave of obstacles.
"Hawk!"
"Snake!"
"I would have preferred fewer reinforcements," Tyberos said when Aetheus joined him. The two battered away a metal bear. Tyberos saw a tentacle heading for Aetheus' back and knocked it away.
"It looked like so much fun," Aetheus replied. "What has not been called? And why is the shock function on?"
"Ask the Emperor," said Kiesn, "this is hard."
"Not hard enough," Tyberos sneered as he held a metal arm steady an beat off more of the Beast Chamber's attacks with his knife. "Crocodile!" He grinned when Kiesn was jerked off his feet by a low-lying pair of metal jaws.
Around him, other scouts were dropping to the stunning shocks the teeth and claws delivered. The apothecary would be annoyed for sure.
"Watch out!"
"There's a claw!"
"Tyber!" Aetheus warned.
"I see it!" Tyberos threw a metal hand into the metal tentacle about to shock him. There were only three scouts left out of twenty. Milan looked like he was about to be overcome.
"Too much?" Aetheus asked. He could not get the next word out. A metal claw shocked him from behind. Tyberos snatched up someone else's knife and made sure he kept turning and moving to negate his opponents' numbers. Two blades now.
"Deactivate!" roared captain Azahar. Tyberos stood alone in the middle of a circle of paralyzed scouts. As the metal horrors of the Beast Chamber fell back into the doors in the iron wall, the burly captain crossed his arms. Tyberos could see the chamber had emptied.
"Captain," Tyberos kneeled down. Though he had the body of a scout, he was still a little boy in many ways.
"If I was a spirit I would curse you to die, stripling," Azahar's huge fist clenched. "Scout. Tell me the third rule of the Beast Chamber."
"Do not practice with the shock function on within four days of combat," Tyberos admitted. He noticed with dismay how his whole squad lay among the paralyzed. "I apologize, captain." He wished now he could have let his guard down and get a debilitating jolt so he would not have to face Azahar alone.
"So why was it on?"
"I am without excuse." A painful blow struck Tyberos' face to one side.
"Make penance and be sure you are ready for tomorrow's drop. If you can handle it. Pray your squad is revived in time or I am sending you to battle on your own." Azahar snarled as his eyes turned downward. Tyberos acknowledged it. "What? Do you want the spirits to tell you what to do? Stand up and get out." Tyberos nodded and scampered off. Penance prayers? Tyberos would try to find a way to keep from having to do them, feeling the spirits didn't need to hear him apologize for this little mess. If he had to go alone, he would go alone.
All the better to practice his thrusts on live targets.
Tyberos walked with his squad through the hangar in the shadow of the thousands of bone fetishes that hung from the ceiling like white moss. The oldest, most frail of them dated back to the time of Nokhang the first Carcharodon, himself. Each one represented a battle. Grinning skulls, shark teeth, used bolter shells and shrunken heads hung from them. Tyberos didn't notice them anymore. He had worked in here enough, helping the techmarines.
Around them, full Carcharodon brothers were embarking into one of the looming, tall shapes in the dark: drop pods, a score of them, in powerful rows like the pillars of a temple. Black eyes stared from their white faces set into their grey helmets. The whole of a suit of Carcharodon power armour was grey beneath the neck, giving to a deep, dark grey at the shoulder. Their power armour were all antiquated patterns. Most of them had armoured studs covering a whole shoulder or the top of a helmet. Others still wore grill-like faceplates with armour that showed off its rivets. It was said by those old grey brothers who had fought in the Imperium that most brother chapters did not boast so many working examples of the armour that the Carcharodons outfitted their companies with. The chapter's emblem, a curling white shark, stared from every brother. The full brothers wore ritual glyphs to illustrate the type of man each suit held. Tyberos was still learning all the meanings, but he could pick out the most common ones when he saw them.
"Hail chaplain," spoke scout sergeant Jilab from the front of the squad. Qalkip nodded his head in acknowledgment and continued oiling his chainaxe.
The scouts walked by a line of servitors that carried boxes of shells towards a line of large, ugly shadows that waited alongside the drop pods. Through the breaks in the pods, Tyberos made out jagged meat hooks hanging from the side of armour plate. They were the chapter's tanks. The meat hooks were sometimes used to carry prisoners back to the fleet.
"Hail captain," Jilab saluted a normal-looking battle brother with slightly more tattoos on his armour. One look at the bones hanging from the man's bolter and Tyberos recognized captain Leonivich the Pale Maw, the most senior Carcharodon in the whole of war shoal Pale Maw.
They walked past an assault squad that were practicing their slashes with chainswords whirring in unison and came before the grey thunderhawk they were going down in.
Tyberos had looked forward to this, his first combat action. Its trivial nature did not make it feel less momentous to him. He squeezed the handle of his trusted combat knife and thought proudly of how he would use it. He did not handle his flamer so roughly. It was a short-tempered machine that would not thank him if he did. The squad hurried aboard and the thunderhawk closed its maw.
The planet outside had no name, so the Carcharodons referred to it as "Prey World 3X156," but the brothers called it "Chitin Badlands." It lay in the east of the Isenor sector, beyond Imperial space. The xenos of Chitin Badlands were an unclassified semi-humanoid race of some sentience. Command referred to them as the bow scorpions. Tyberos' rough impression of them was a large insect with an upright torso section and grasping claws. Command reported their society was primitive, though their first cities were rising out of their hot world. In the name of supremacy, the bow scorpions were to die. Yesterday, five Carcharodon warships had bombed all bow scorpion settlements out of existence. Survivors were now to be killed. This feeding would not be glorious, but neither was scrubbing filtration systems, yet they both had to be done.
The thunderhawk shook. Kiesn whispered something and Aetheus hushed him. Outside, the noise of the engines picked up. A heavy shudder, and they had lifted off, speeding to Tyberos' first battle.
In the year between his initiation into the 10th company and now, Tyberos had sobered to reality and abandoned his daydreams of hunting down and killing the villains of the Horus Heresy that still lived. His daily training schedule left him no time to think. Now improving his appalling marksmanship rating was more important than shooting a chaos lord to death. No more boyish fantasies, he was a grown man now. He had work to do.
"One minute to planetfall!" shouted scout sergeant Jilab from the front of the thunderhawk. "Secure masks!" Tyberos did a last minute check of his rebreather mask. "Vox check!"
"Kiesn, reporting," intoned the short scout beside Jilab.
"Aobwen, reporting," said the scout behind him, clutching his bolter.
"Milan, reporting."
"Assar, reporting."
"Aetheus, reporting." Tyberos hadn't stood close to his oldest companion in the chapter on purpose. Anyone else in Jilab's squad would have been fine, Tyberos knew them all from training. But as Tyberos spoke his name into the squad's vox channel, he wondered if Jilab was taking notice. Tyberos was not afraid and keeping close to familiar company. But that didn't mean Jilab wouldn't suspect something.
The thunderhawk's mouth opened. Light glaring from the sand outside flooded in. The scouts rushed forth into the silent emptiness beyond.
Within moments, the thunderhawk was rising up into the barren tan sky. Squad Jilab hugged down into the rocky desert landscape, forming a circle, weapons ready just as they had practiced together.
"Milan, auspex?" Jilab's voice was as dry as the baking sand and it was made even drier by the vox. Everything would be said over the vox from here until extraction. Tyberos trained his flamer on the tall rocks around them. This garden of craggy outcroppings and rock mounds made it impossible to see more than a few meters. Yet this was the best drop zone they could find that was close enough to the bombed-out xenos city. They would have to squeeze and crawl their way to it.
"Open water," replied Milan, rolling his bolter back up. So there were no life forms for at least three kilometers? Fine. Perhaps the life signs they had been sent to investigate were false positives, ghosts of the dying city. How could a primitive xenos culture survive the orbital bombing they had just received?
It was a slow, careful trek to the site of the murdered city. Footsteps were careful and no corner was turned recklessly. Jilab's sniper rifle never lowered. Everyone except Tyberos formed fire teams, their bolters raised. Tyberos kept by Jilab, his flamer unlit. Their journey took so long, Tyberos had some time to let his thoughts wander.
'45 percent below average marksmanship,' Tyberos thought as he perched beside Jilab while everyone else moved out, like birds on wing, while Tyberos remained in the nest.
The bow scorpion city was now a messy pattern of overlapping craters that lay in the center of a clearing in the maze of baby canyons. Searching the desolation, Tyberos tried to find some sign of buildings amongst the ruin. These creatures made their buildings from crude masonry quarried from the stone around them. The bombing had obviously blasted the rocks back to their sources. Tyberos saw no shape of a city in the yawning space before him. A younger, less disciplined version of Tyberos would have groaned out loud and remarked on their wasted time. Tyberos the scout said nothing and looked to Jilab for orders. Milan spoke first.
"Hit, hit," Milan reported. "Below us, tunnels, a spiderweb of them. Contacts one hundred plus."
"Nearest tunnel?" Jilab asked.
"We're right on one," Milan paused. "Something about the minerals is confusing the reading. It keeps blinking in and out. It would explain why the fleet didn't read it."
"Confirmed," Jilab said. "Milan, report back for orders."
Moments later they were carrying out their orders. A breaching charge broke a wound open in the ground. At that signal, Tyberos slid through the cloud of dust the charge had created and slammed the ignition on his flamer. A jet of flame shot from the barrel into the little hole. Alien shrieks replied, just as Milan's reading had promised him.
"Scattering," Milan reported. So the bow scorpions were fleeing? Civilians then. Or cowards.
"Squad, in. Combat blades. Assar, take point. Tyberos, support."
Jumping after Assar, Tyberos landed among a carpet of crisped bow scorpions. His first kills as a true Carcharodon. He did not feel the significance of the moment amongst the hurry.
The Carcharodons pursued the fleeing aliens down both sides of the tunnels, their blades punching through chitin to release floods of amber blood. Tyberos stood, flamer raised. His job was to cover his squad mate's escape if they had to withdraw.
The next few hours were an eternity of cramped tunnels, alien screams and voxed orders. Tyberos never let his flamer lower. A many times he was ordered to clear out a section of tunnel. Tyberos lost count of the number of shots his flamer took. A few times, a xenos warrior would appear to shoot an arrow or fling a spear at them. Bolter rounds finished them.
"Squad, clear the chamber ahead. Tyberos, support."
"Hostiles in the tunnel. Bolters. Tyberos, support our rear."
"Combat blades, clear the connecting tunnel. Tyberos, support."
"In war, everyone is a combatant. Therefore, treat everyone in a conflict thusly." –The fifth and final Great Truth of the Way of the Predator
"The bombs can't get everything," Aetheus lamented as the scouts sat under the night sky. The ugliness of the day was past them, their mission was successful, the xenos were dead and a thunderhawk would extract them once one was available. Lying under the protection of a miniature canyon wall, the scouts were gorging on bow scorpion flesh, which had proved to be edible.
"How is that a shame?" Aobwen asked, shearing away a chitin shell.
"Even with the ships of our war shoal, we still have to set foot on this place. These xenos throwbacks should not take us any time. We are the Imperium, they are less than nothing. And we have to confront them hand-to-hand," Aetheus mumbled. "Not how I imagined my first combat action."
"The spirits will send us to something better," promised Kiesn. Assar and Milan nodded.
"I do not believe in the spirits," Aetheus muttered under his breath.
"It is better than my first time in the chapter colours," Jilab said, "an extermination action against sentient machines that did not fight back. I did not kill any warriors. But what of today? How many warrior bow scorpions did you slay Aetheus?"
"Four hundred," Aetheus replied.
"Warrior bow scorpions, I said."
"Thirteen," the younger scout corrected. The circle replied with their own tallies, one by one. The number was never lower than five. All fell quiet when it came to Tyberos.
"I was supporting you," Tyberos admitted. "I killed no warriors." A few of the others made weak insults.
"It was his role, not his courage," Aetheus defended. "In the way we deployed, you know he needed to cover our rear. And killing a bow scorpion barbarian is no accomplishment."
"Perhaps," Jilab confessed.