Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3)

  Space Marine Apocalypse

  (Extinction Fleet Book 3)

  By Sean-Michael Argo

  Copyright 2017 by Sean-Michael Argo

  Edited by TL Bland

  www.severedpress.com

  Table of Contents

  1. Rakka

  2. They Feed

  3. Meat

  4. Ravagers

  5. Ghosts

  6. Monster Swamp

  7. Third Shift

  8. Steel and Fire

  9. Among the Ruins

  10. All is Mist

  11. Port Chirascuro

  12. Rival

  13. Armada

  14. Needle Ship 8

  15. Survival of the Fittest

  16. The Skull Throne

  17. Sleep Now in the Fire

  The Fray

  Once more into the fray

  Into the last good fight

  I'll ever know

  Live and die on this day

  Live and die on this day

  ‘The Fray' by Joe Carnahan

  RAKKA

  The Watchman shivered upon his throne, a tremor of discomfort that his mentor insisted was a good sign. It meant that the man had not yet divorced himself from his physical body.

  Such a thing was an occupational hazard for the elite minds that ascended to the formerly glorious and now much-maligned post of Watchman. The old Watchman had been killed on Heorot by an alpha garm being referred to, in both battle records and general infantry slang, as Grendel.

  Though much time had passed, the old one, and a sizeable group of other Einherjar had yet to rise from the body forge. Their gift of resurrection had been taken from them, their minds forever, it seemed, locked in the grasp of the alien psyche that dominated the vast swarms of the Extinction Fleet.

  The man's name had once been Seregi, though, in the early days of his training within the tiny cadre that was the Watchman's reserve corps, it had already begun to lose its meaning. Divorce from the ego was an important part of the mental conditioning that reservists endured, and that often began with discarding their names.

  When you were the Watchman, that was all you were.

  The old one had been the first, and the new man found that he had a tremendously difficult throne to fill.

  After the old one died on Heorot, the throne lay vacant for a long time. Skald commanders Thatcher, and Wallace after him had attempted to stand the watch as an emergency measure, but neither man, while great warriors in their own right, could do so with significant effectiveness.

  Just as it was with the Einherjar infantry, the selection process for the reserve corps eliminated all but the most promising individuals, and even they were often not up to the task.

  The vast network of cables that surrounded the Watchman like a cocoon were warm to the touch, as they moved energy and information through his throne and into the core systems of his Tower. The mobile war bunker was shaped like a sloping pyramid, the design lending itself towards deflecting incoming artillery. The weapon emplacements at the top of the structure gave the gunners a punishing angle of fire that would allow them to sweep attackers from the sheer face of the pyramid with ease. The bunker itself was elevated by a series of repulsor pads that enabled it to hover over the battlefield, drawn along by three heavily armored battle tanks that served not only as the primary locomotion for it but also the structure's first line of defense.

  The Watchman let a breath out slowly and re-focused his mind, having realized he'd caught himself drifting through details instead of the task at hand. He was new at this, the first of the reservists to achieve enough success in the simulations to be allowed the title and command.

  The skalds and jarls of the All-Father's army, along with the captains of their warships, had all done their best to lead the Einherjar military by a sort of loose committee, it was high time a lone voice rose above the chorus. He was green, but while this might be his first true battle, the years of grueling training were proving their worth.

  The battlescape lit up in the Watchman's eyes, the screen giving him a visual representation of what was happening on the planet’s surface and in orbit, though his subconscious was awash in cascading waves of data that poured in from infantry helmet feeds, tank cameras, orbital sensors, and artillery scanners. The human mind was not meant to comprehend such vast amounts of information, and yet that was the precise purpose of the Watchman. To process, analyze, and respond.

  In the weeks following the subterranean conflict on Tankrid, which was still shrouded in mystery, a tremendous garm force was flagged as en route to the front lines. The battle front consisted of vast swathes of contested space, but most sectors were caught in a bloody stalemate that was reminiscent of historical conventional warfare.

  Contested planets were graveyards, consisting of ruined cities and landscapes made barren by war and the vast appetites for resources held by the armies of both human and alien. The reinforced trench networks and battle bunkers of the All-Father snaked across the planet's surface even as the tunnels and burrows of the Hive Mind riddled the ground beneath. The advance of the Extinction Fleet had been halted along this parallel of space, infantry, and armored forces endlessly grinding against each other on these dead worlds while spacecraft skirmished in orbit above them.

  When the Extinction Fleet attacked en masse, at the height of the conflict on Heorot, the garm had expended much of their strength and were all but broken against the ramparts of humanity. The worst of the fighting was at the gates of Bifrost itself, which was consistent with conventional garm military strategy, to assault the strongest point in the enemy's defense. Upon breaking that the entire line was likely to fold. The Einherjar, of course, knew this, and though it came at a great cost, the army of the All-Father held the line.

  The Watchman keyed in a grid coordinate and his visual zoomed in on Hydra Company as the veteran warriors moved through the blasted shell of a vast city complex on their way to the impact site of a smaller vessel that had been shot down early in the orbital conflict.

  The old one had foreseen something in this group of marines, something that had drawn him away from his post at the battle front. He had gone with Hydra and the others to Heorot, chasing a lone hive ship, and he had died there.

  The Watchman felt something scratching against his psyche, an insistence that whatever thread of destiny the old one had found was still active. The Watchman was a soldier of stratagems and cold calculations, not one who stood for the narrative strategy nonsense that had plagued the ranks of the All-Father's army in the days without a man such as him at the throne, and yet here he was. Like the old one he'd felt a pull, something instinctual almost, that had caused him to leave his position of security aboard the Bifrost and to join the warriors in the field.

  The Tower lumbered forward, moving in a wide circle around the shattered city, the tanks keeping the pyramid well away from the urban environment. It was easier to move out here in the barren wasteland of the planet Rakka, where the Raven air support and the potency of the escort tanks would be most effective and see most any threats coming. The Watchman observed as Hydra Company picked their way through the ruins, executing any wounded garm that yet remained.

  Rakka had once been a thriving prime planet, one that had found a way to balance the industrial productivity of urban sprawl with the natural bounty of agriculture and tourism. In other words, it was a world rich with biomass and therefore had been a key target for the Extinction Fleet. The Einherjar had stopped the garm advance here, but the planet had been turned into a wasteland in the process. The grinding stalemate had held here for years and the Hive M
ind had seen fit to dispatch a sizeable force to Rakka in the wake of events on Tankrid.

  The Watchman had met that challenge, and with mighty warships like Bright Lance and Reaper's Lantern the spine frigates of the enemy were reduced to twisted wreckage, spewing ichor into the cold void of space. The Rakka garrison was reinforced with fresh marines and they repelled the furious assaults of garm ground forces. It was the usual blunt strategy of the Extinction Fleet, though directing that raw force against Rakka and not the Bifrost had drawn the Watchman's eye.

  It was no coincidence that he had dispatched Hydra Company to Rakka. They'd already suffered thirty percent casualties, but he pushed them forward still. The garm swarms had broken against the trench network, failing to even seize the first parallel before the might of the Einherjar cut them down.

  Jarl Mahora was a relentless commander, and the Watchmen had known the vengeance-driven jarl would whip his men into a killing frenzy when the enemy filled their sights. Hydra Company had suffered much on Heorot and worse since, yet they continuously beat the odds. The Watchman scoffed at the narrative strategy in public, in his most private moments he felt a spark of something that other men might call belief.

  If the Hive Mind saw fit to make a play for Rakka, then the Watchman would place Hydra Company directly in their path.

  He wondered if perhaps this was a test of his own doubts, as he observed Hydra Company killing its way through the city. If there was something to find on Rakka, or some trap laid by the Hive Mind and destiny was indeed a force that moved through reality as powerfully as physics, then Hydra Company would be right in the middle of it.

  In truth, the Watchman simply expected Hydra Company to advance until they were either dead or victorious. He was confident that Jarl Mahora's emotions would prevent him from wondering why his unit was being pushed so hard by command. Once the marines of Hydra were all slain, and without incident beyond the normal conditions of combat, he would be able to lay the narrative stratagem to rest in his mind.

  The army of the All-Father was vast indeed, yet at every turn of events and upending of expectation, Hydra Company was in the middle of it. They had become a radical anomaly, no longer involved in the stalemate, but appearing to be part of something larger, where battles mattered more than the simple grind of attrition that held the Extinction Fleet at bay.

  That itself was taken by many as evidence of the narrative strategy having some merit. He intended to break that pattern today, finally putting to rest the false hope of the legions vast and the tiny doubts of his own mind.

  New data began to flood his awareness, and he toggled his visuals to the grid coordinates in question. Armor One had successfully swept in behind the landing zone for the primary cluster of brood ships and was in the process of pulverizing them.

  The Watchman swiftly sent orders to several nearby Raven flights, commanding them to provide air support to the tank division while rerouting several marine companies to march double time in that direction. The powerful guns of Armor One were already pulping the thick hides of the brood ships. Since the enemy vessels had disgorged most of their infantry cargo in the failed assault on the trench network there was little to offer in the way of defense. They were, after all, barely more than empty shells now that they'd performed their task, though preventing them from returning was worth the ammunition.

  Every scrap of biomass that could be denied the garm was a victory measured in ounces, thought the Watchman as he watched the carnage unfold. While the enemy was hideously efficient at recycling their dead, a lesson taken from them that had yielded the Einherjar in the first place, there was still a net caloric loss each time they were defeated. Given that the fleet had been denied any further expansion, the enemy was forced to subsist on the worlds already conquered, and what scraps they could scavenge from the war zone.

  As the Watchman was silently appreciating having tactically outmatched the numerically superior invasion force, an incoming transmission with alpha codes took his attention away from Armor One's grisly victory.

  "Raven Six, go ahead," said the Watchman, as he toggled his visuals over to the camera and scanner feeds coming from the one-man VTOL.

  "Hydra Company has engaged the enemy, but something is baffling their comms. I must be far enough out and above, that it's not affecting me," said the pilot crisply, and the Watchman could feel the tension in the man's voice. Raven Six was as much a veteran as any infantry man, and that gave the Watchman pause.

  "Stand by," said the Watchman as he toggled his visuals to where he'd last seen Hydra Company. Indeed, none of their troop locators were broadcasting, and where he thought they'd be standing was now a black hole of static. Something down there was scrambling all the scanners, even satellite sensors.

  "Raven Six, I want you to make a low pass," ordered the Watchman, "Even if the camera shorts, I need to see what I can."

  Raven Six acknowledged and the Watchman switched his visual feed to that of the pilot's on-board camera. The Ravens were small craft, little more than a flying cockpit with a mounted pulse rifle and a few low yield rockets, but their light weight and vertical take-off turbines made them exceptional for recon. Their aerial dexterity had also proven effective in dogfights against shriekers, though suicidal dives by the garm fliers kept the Ravens from being able to function much beyond recon and support roles. Air superiority was difficult to maintain when the enemy was more than happy to kill itself and ruin its own chances at superiority just to deny it to you.

  The Watchman took note of just how low Raven Six was flying and was impressed at the skill of the pilot in maneuvering through the tight and treacherous urban environment. He made a quick note to recommend him for flight trainer duty and then continued to observe. Raven Six streaked over a rubble-strewn street and soon the camera revealed what appeared to be a massive impact crater.

  All around it, the marines of Hydra Company were aiming their weapons at something inside the crater. It appeared that a great many of the troops were actually marching down into it.

  Seconds later Raven Six went dark as the unknown baffle killed the pilot's troop locator, comms, and camera feed.

  THEY FEED

  "Weapons free!" barked Jarl Mahora, punctuating his command by putting a bolt through the thorax of a gorehound before it could unleash its own horrific projectiles.

  On either side of him, marines opened up with their pulse rifles, and the swarms of garm that were boiling out from underground were met with deadly fire.

  The jarl kept marching forward, squeezing the trigger of his pulse rifle with speed and precision as he moved. Mahora could see that the impact of the garm vessel had unearthed a sickeningly vast network of tunnels, but because of the damage, he couldn't tell right away if they were active or abandoned. They were at least half a klick away from the first parallel of the Einherjar trench network, so these tunnels certainly would feed into the muster burrows that the attackers had used not an hour ago to launch their doomed assault.

  Cerberus Company was now clearing those burrows and tunnels, mopping up survivors and setting charge tubes that would detonate and bring the earth works down after the marines had made their exit.

  Mahora shouted with a mixture of fury and disgust as one of the giant garm digging grubs, the creatures that made the initial tunnels and burrows, emerged from the side wall of the crater. Whether it had been digging a new tunnel or simply attempting to escape the impact, he could not fathom. As its armored head punched out of the ground there was nothing to do but fight. The creature's body undulated powerfully, its many layers of muscle propelling it through the ground as it heaved itself out of the wall and down towards the bottom of the crater, right on top of the marines.

  The jarl watched as the massive creature's heavy body crushed two marines underneath its bulk and impaled another marine upon the many barbs that protruded from its armored head as it thrashed about.

  Mahora selected full auto on his pulse rifle and cut loose with it, unleash
ing bolt after bolt as he roared. Rama appeared at his side, one of the men who had once been part of the band of brothers that surrounded Ajax, and added his full auto fire to the jarls.

  The others of that doomed fraternity, Ford, Silas, and Sharif, were all corpses now, having died in the defense of the Einherjar trench positions, as had the blackout berserkers Boone and Yao, the two of them dead atop piles of slaughtered monsters. Who knew where Hart, the marine sniper turned skald, might be, or if the man was even on Rakka at all.

  Jarl Mahora might have been a highly respected commander and his voice held much weight in the All-Father's army, especially after his tour of duty as master of the Task Force Grendel marine element, but at the end of the day, he was still only the leader of a single infantry company.

  Better to lead from the front, growled Mahora in his own mind as he squeezed the trigger, he could kill more garm that way.

  Their combined salvos ripped into the unarmored flanks of the great beast. As the superheated rounds cooked its insides, the creature swelled then burst apart, showering garm and marine alike with heaps of smoldering meat and viscera.

  Mahora sprinted forward and slammed the haft of his rifle against the thorax of a ripper drone. Just before the deadly blades of the beast or its far superior strength could be employed, the jarl racked the slide of his rifle. The pent-up heat of the pulse rifle vented directly into the garm's face and burned most of its head to ashes in an instant.

  The jarl took a knee as two marines stepped up to cover him, their sustained single shots driving the garm defenders back. Mahora could see that he was kneeling upon the hull of a garm ship, as well as the deep rents in the vessel, likely caused by the weapons of Einherjar starships. He found himself wondering if the defenders they fought were denizens of the ship itself or the tattered remnants of those swarms that had failed to take the trench. Their comms were blacked out, he'd noticed that as soon as they reached the lip of the crater and was thankful he'd seen the Ravens above. Maybe this new Watchman had already dispatched a secondary force, which would make sense; after the fight for the trench and now the brutal close quarters struggle in the crater Hydra Company was already at half strength.