Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3) Page 5

  The use of feeders on contested worlds was a disturbing development indeed. The war with the extinction fleet had been one marked with monotony, and anytime something occurred to alter that routine it represented a setback for the forces of humanity.

  In a way, thought Sharif, as a cold knot formed in his stomach, the Einherjar war effort relied upon the predictable grind of trench warfare and ship to ship combat along established battlefronts.

  The garm adapt.

  Marines overcome.

  It was even in their phrasing, this idea that it was the garm who came up with new ways of pressing the fight and the role of the Einherjar to counter them. Always on the defense, always the reactionary force, and only in the rarest of occasions the aggressor.

  Being part of Task Force Grendel several years ago had felt, at least initially, like a positive change in the war to Sharif. It was only after the loss of Ajax on Tankrid that he'd realized it was only more of the same. They had been hunting monsters indeed, and that had felt like a proactive series of conflict actions at the time, and yet in truth, they were yet still simply responding to moves made by the garm.

  The war had changed yet again, thought the marine as he and his comrades primed their weapons, the pulse rifles snarling to life as the men who held them made similar noises in the backs of their throats.

  Sharif considered the events on Rakka and was forced to acknowledge, once more, that the Einherjar remained a reactionary force.

  The grains in the hold of what had come to be called a 'hoard ship' by the marines, had proven impossible to gene-test, so warped had they become by their exposure to open air and their partial digestive conversion by the organs of the garm vessel. It was the process of elimination that had brought them into Triticum's orbit, using what they had scraped off of Jarl Mahora's ruined armor, and only the counter-attack by the spine frigates that had confirmed command's suspicions.

  The garm were raiding planets for biomass.

  Some of the marines, many in fact, professed to think that this indicated that the extinction fleet was starving, finally having burned itself out in battle against the defiant warriors of humanity.

  Sharif wished he shared such optimism, as he felt in the deepest parts of him that this was the prelude to something much worse. They were not starving at all, he thought, as the multiple transports carrying Hydra Company swooped past the first line of feeders, but instead were preparing themselves. The Hive Mind was gathering strength, building fleets of new ships and breeding armies to fill them.

  "Watch your crossfire. Weapons free!" came the voice of Mahora through the company channel, positioned as he was in one of the other transports even now speeding towards their intended target.

  Harlow and Yoshi lost no time in unleashing hell with their chain-fires as the transports passed close by feeder organisms on both sides of the ship. The gigantic cephalopod-looking creatures possessed a degree of chitinous body armor, though at this range there was little their natural protections could do against the onslaught of the mounted Einherjar weapons. The ship shuddered as a feeder exploded just behind them, Harlow's fusillade having torn through the thing's bio-armor and igniting several of the creature's air bladders.

  It must have been a glorious sight from the perspective of the flight of Ravens who soared above the transports. Witnessing the trail of destruction left in the wake of the ships as they passed through the rows of feeders that had been on their way to the hoard ship. It was the hoard ship that was the true target. So far, no capture had been made, and command was adamant that a specimen be seized. Thus far they'd either been destroyed in orbit by Einherjar warships or escaped with holds full of rich biomass. The one on Rakka had been destroyed when the onboard fuel pods were dissolved by the nightmarishly effective acids in their own vast digestive tracts.

  So far, the feeders were moving in the same direction and had been sighted by recon teams many miles distant in the other direction. They were moving in a circular pattern, and logic held that at the center of that circle would be at least one hoard ship. Priority one was preventing the ship from escaping orbit with what was assumed would be many tons of biomass that would be used to fuel the garm war machine. As a secondary objective Hydra Company was tasked with capturing as much data about the ship as possible.

  These hoard ships were making planetfall without showing up on conventional and orbital sensor sweeps, and as usual, the All-Father's army would find itself responding to a raid already in progress. Untold numbers of hoard ships and their violent broods had managed to successfully raid planets positions just behind or near the battlefront. The Einherjar warships needed desperately to develop a way to pinpoint the landing zones of these ships, or the marines would continue to find themselves on standby, waiting until enough damage had been done to the local flora and fauna for visual confirmation. The Einherjar were stretched thin as it was, and the UHC was only now beginning to pull its weight by providing ships and soldiers to patrol behind the battlefront for garm raiding parties.

  Harlow let out a savage growl as he strafed the exposed underbelly of a feeder that had been attempting to turn itself away from the deadly guns. The beast's body detonated and painted the aft of the transport in gore and slimy globules of grain from its harvester sacs. Sharif knew they were lucky to have found the garm so quickly, and thankfully, the transports and troops were on standby for launch. Even if the garm had taken notice of the transports as soon as they dropped into atmosphere, the ship would be struggling to make good its escape, and there were rockets mounted on the transports to ground the hoard ship should it manage to launch before the marine elements were able to strike.

  "Visual on the hoard ships," came the voice of a Raven pilot across the company channel, "Confirm two. Repeat, confirm two."

  "Do they look like they went hull down or are they prepping for launch?" asked Mahora, and Sharif found himself recalling the blistering combat on Heorot when Hydra Company and many other marines assaulted a hive ship that had gone hull down. That was tanker slang that the marines had picked up from spending time with the men of Armor One. When a tank went 'hull down' that meant it was deploying support beams and preparing itself for a static defensive action.

  When the Raven pilot responded that both were hull down, Sharif knew they were in for a fight. He imagined the vessel exteriors to be bristling with anti-air weaponry and the interiors to be roiling with ground swarms ready to launch themselves at the attackers.

  Jarl Mahora attempted to respond, though his voice was lost in a wash of static, and Sharif realized that they'd finally entered the outside edge of the area that could be controlled by the alpha garm's stealth emissions. Had the Ravens wanted to call down orbital strikes they could have, but the strikes would have had to be so vast and complete, a scorched earth approach, that no vessel capture would have been possible, not to mention the friendly fire casualties.

  This was something that would have to be done, gun to claw, by the marines.

  "ETA two minutes!" announced the pilot to every marine in the transport, having switched to the peer-to-peer coms now that they were inside the enemy's psychic field. By the gods, even thinking in such terms made Sharif's brain hurt.

  The marine leader counted off sixty seconds, and as he was moving into the second minute the enemy anti-air weapons began firing. Then again, thought the marine, the transport shaking from dozens of micro-impacts as a spine projectile burst apart in mid-air near them, showering the armored vessel with bio-splinters, garm weapons didn't fire so much as they spat, vomited, or launched.

  Both Harlow and Yoshi pulled in their chain-fires so that they weren't as exposed, though soon enough both weapon systems would need to be used to engage the enemy. It was another harrowing thirty seconds of punishing garm anti-air fire before the deployment lights flashed, and the marines began preparing themselves for a rapid-deployment.

  Sharif did one last sight check on his men, then clenched and unclenched his fist in anticipat
ion. He knew that at any moment the transport could take a direct hit from the anti-air batteries, and it was a testament to the pilot's skill that he was able to bob and weave the transport while still moving forward, successfully avoiding the most obvious spore clouds and spine bursts.

  The transport began descending as the two chain-fires opened back up, Yoshi having found his range and raining deadly salvos down upon the stalkers that were converging on the sight.

  Suddenly, there was a loud thump and Sharif felt his whole body being battered by a concussive force. He instinctively closed his eyes. As they fluttered open once more, he saw that the interior of the transport was thick with the green fog of spore ordinance. It was either an extremely lucky hit, or one of supreme skill on the part of whatever garm organism or series of non-sentient gunnery cells had made the shot. The spore cluster had come in on Yoshi's side and detonated right next to the gunner with enough force that he was nowhere to be seen, and Sharif could only assume that he'd been torn from his seat and hurled into open air.

  Alarms went off and the transport dove sharply, listing hard to the left. Sharif gripped his safety harness, as did many of the others when the transport bucked again from several close detonations of spine ordinance. Why the pilot was no longer taking evasive action was a mystery to the marines on board, until his voice roared across the peer-to-peer.

  "Meat!"

  The sounds of terrible violence over the coms gave Sharif the impression that the co-pilot was too busy fending off the ragman that had once been the pilot, and was going to be unable to safely bring the transport down. Sadly, that was not their only problem, as Sharif saw a marine tearing at his safety harness. He was screaming into his helmet, that much Sharif could see, though he appeared to have not figured out how to broadcast on his comms, which was a small miracle.

  "Silas! Ragman on the right!" shouted Sharif as he pointed at one of the former marines, "Spikes only!"

  Silas turned his head and then flinched back as he saw the nightmare seated next to him. The marine swiftly pulled out his trench spike, though the transport had gone into a flat spin, and the g-force made wielding it rather difficult.

  Sharif saw Rama working his pistol out of his holster and was about to shout that a miss could easily kill a fellow marine when armored fingers dug into the seams of his neck and shoulder plates.

  "Meat!" screeched the marine who used to be Ford as he dug his fingers painfully into the body glove just underneath Sharif's armor, seemingly intent on clawing the marine wherever he could.

  Sharif stifled a scream of horror, for despite all of the open-air roaring through the troop deployment bay, it was entirely possible that enough spore lingered for him to become a ragman himself. The marine lashed out with his fist and punched the ragman in the faceplate hard enough to crack it and snap the beast's head back. That bought Sharif a moment to rip his trench spike from its sheath and swing it haphazardly at the ragman. The gravitational force of the flat spin spoiled his aim, and the spike buried itself to the hilt in the enemy's bicep. Before Sharif could retract the spike and take another swipe his grip on the handle was torn away as the transport slammed into the dirt, the impact of it causing Sharif to blackout.

  He awoke seconds later, upside down with a gasp and immediately looked at the ragman next to him. The monster was in the process of wrenching the spike from where the point had embedded itself in the wall and with a feral snarl yanked the weapon free.

  Sharif tried to hit the emergency clasp on the safety harness, knowing better than to activate the rapid deployment lever on the chair, which would then forcefully expel him right into the ground, given the angle of the transport's impact. Before he could get his fingers around the clasp the ragman swung the spike wildly at Sharif's face.

  The only thing the marine could do was throw his left hand up and try to block the ragman’s swing. He grunted with pain as the spike pierced through the palm of his left hand. Sharif's right hand finally hit the clasp releasing him from his seat and he launched himself upright, turning and smashing his armored fist through the ragman's already cracked faceplate. The marine worked his fist like a piston and in seconds had pulped the ragman's skull inside its helmet with over a dozen vicious strikes. Only then did Sharif take a step back and turn to face the rest of the troop transport.

  Half his men were dead, including the pilots and presumably the gunner Yoshi, though the remaining seven men, including Rama, Silas, and Harlow, were in the process of getting out of their chairs and priming their pulse rifles. They had been lucky to survive the crash at all, much less walk away still at half strength. Sharif could see several blood streams oozing from the body of the ragman that had assaulted Silas and the sight of it reminded him of his own wounds. He'd have become a ragman by now if the spores had entered his system, so the marine counted himself lucky for the second time today.

  "Form up, marines, we're still in this fight," barked Sharif, using the hardest voice he could muster and doing his best to channel Jarl Mahora. The men sounded off and gathered near the lopsided left deployment hatch, which despite being partially buried in the rich soil of Triticum, still had enough room for the men to leave single file. If any of them were less than impressed with his orders, none showed it, and Sharif decided that was plenty.

  "Single file exit, pull security until we get topside, and then arrow on me."

  Rama nodded and ducked under the edge of the hatch as he exited. Sharif followed a moment later. As the others exited behind him the marine swept his pulse rifle across the immediate area. He decided he would count himself lucky a third time if the mission was a success, as Sharif saw that they were only a short sprint from the base of the hoard ship. Other transports would no doubt be braving the blasts of anti-air fire and deploying their marine cargo any moment now, but that could not be a concern for him. The battle at large was out of his control, beyond the scope of him and his remaining squad of rifles. All he could do was wield the men with him to the best of their ability, and hope that enough of the other Einherjar elements found individual success to constitute a victory. Though many of their fellows were on the ground around them and in the air above them, all that Sharif could afford to consider was the target set before them.

  "Frak the formation." snapped Sharif as he pointed to the base of the hoard ship. "Rush the ship! We get in under those guns and find an entrance. Harlow go bring your chain online and give them something to shoot at."

  No man among them said a word, only a series of nods and a blur of motion. Harlow rushed back inside the transport and within moments he had adjusted the mounting of the chain-fire so that he could straddle the upended deployment hatch and fire the weapon at the hoard ship. Sharif turned and started running, making sure to zig zag as he expected the enemy weapons to turn on them at any moment. They could all die charging across open ground, though he hoped that Harlow would make himself enough of a target that at least some of the marines, perhaps even himself, would survive the sprint and be inside the enemy's perimeter. He knew he'd just ordered men to their deaths, possibly also himself, but they'd jumped to it, and he would have to accept responsibility for whatever happened next. The burden of command, Sharif decided, was a heavy one indeed.

  As the six marines rounded the buried nose of the transport, Harlow's chain-fire started roaring and raked the side of the hoard ship, stitching a neat line of gory punctures across its hull. That certainly did the trick, thought Sharif as he sprinted across the barren ground, taking notice of how several enemy gun batteries turned towards the downed transport.

  Now that he was out in the open, Sharif could see more of the battle that was unfolding, and it appeared to be a costly one for both sides. Several transports circled the air above, swapping salvos of punishing fire with the defensive batteries of the hoard ship nearest the marine. Fires and smoke billowing up from the fields told him that at least a few others had been shot down. The other hoard ship, which was several hundred yards to the west of his pos
ition, was belching out a fetid yellow smoke, and he got the distinct impression that it was critically injured. Perhaps a transport crashed into it, or a pilot got trigger happy with the mounted rockets and could not resist the temptation to damage the ship before the marines could seize it. Regardless, from the reports made by those alive to witness the destruction of the hoard ship on Rakka, the yellow smoke was an indication that the fuel pods were breached and likely to immolate at any moment.

  As he and the marines ran, he noticed that the ground they crossed was entirely stripped of vegetation and he found himself wondering if the garm ate the dirt itself on worlds that they were able to conquer. There was more biomass to be had in the soil than anything they could quickly steal, though it was the raiding speed that was critical at this stage of whatever the Hive Mind's plan might be.

  In the general assembly briefings that were held once every month or so by command elements, any new intel that had been learned about the garm, or the unfolding greater war, were discussed with the marines. Long ago Sharif had learned about the giant wormlike creatures that dug the tunnels used by the swarms to combat the Einherjar trench lines on the perpetually contested worlds. It was theorized that such beasts, perhaps even much larger versions of them, were initially evolved to consume the dirt itself. The prevailing opinion among those predisposed to considering such things, like the skalds or other science officers, such as the forge man, Idris, was that the worms had been turned into weapons of war only after the Einherjar had rallied and turned the invasion into a stalemate.

  Incoming enemy fire snapped the marine's attention back to the battle at hand as a close-quarters burst of anti-air spine projectiles shredded one of his men. The man was instantly torn to pieces by a flurry of twelve and six-inch spines that sent him crashing to the ground. Silas was near the man when it went off, and though he continued on, the marine was limping badly from several embedded in his leg. Sharif turned from the sight and brought his pulse rifle instinctively to his shoulders as an orifice at the base of the ship opened.