V2 Chapter 123: We Fight for Every Star That Belongs to Humanity.
The first thing Corbec saw when he caught sight of Stroud was a bald head catching the firelight.
The head came charging out of a dense stand of nalwood, its owner in heavy force-feedback power armour with several scorched leaves hanging from one shoulder. He was running and cursing at the soldiers behind him at the same time, the lasgun in his hand still radiating residual heat.
The things he was saying about Tanith people made Rawne's face go dark almost immediately. He opened his mouth to shout back. Corbec put a hand on his shoulder and pressed his voice back down.
Rawne turned and looked at him with visible displeasure.
Corbec did not explain. He simply looked once at the force-feedback armour on Stroud, then looked at the Imperial soldiers behind him who were already spreading into position at speed.
These people had just come out of a disorganised forest at a run. Their lines had reformed quickly. That kind of execution and discipline was its own evidence.
Corbec still had questions.
What was that red light in the darkness? And what was that force that had pressed down into his body?
More and more Imperial soldiers were following the sound of the Tanith pipes to the temporary rally point.
Gaunt's order came through quickly. All assembled forces were to stand down for twenty minutes, redistribute ammunition, evacuate the wounded, and then begin the next sweep.
Stroud did not stop moving.
He stood beside a fallen nalwood and directed the Fourth Infantry Regiment in sorting and reorganising the soldiers who had just come in. Several Tanith soldiers blew brief pipe notes and let the sound drift deliberately into the forest.
Before long, another cluster of Chaos traitors came following the sound.
They pushed out of the fire and smoke and were knocked down by lasfire from both flanks. Stroud did not even fire himself. He just raised his hand and pointed in two directions, and the Fourth Regiment and the Tanith soldiers completed the pincer without further instruction.
Corbec watched the red shapes fall and finally could not stop himself.
"What is that red light?" He asked. "And that force we felt earlier—why did it hit us?"
Stroud blinked.
He turned and looked at Corbec, then at Rawne and Larkin. Then he raised a hand and scratched his bare scalp, and his expression became somewhat difficult to read.
"Honestly, I've never actually thought about it."
Rawne gave a cold sound of contempt.
Stroud looked at him immediately. "What are you laughing at? I'm not a Ministorum priest. You see a red light, you shoot at it. You feel like you're not afraid any more, you keep moving. That is the Commissar's power. That is enough."
Corbec's brow came together. "That's it?"
"That's it. What else do you want?" Stroud gave a perfectly confident nod. "We've always worked this way."
At that moment, Finn walked over from nearby.
The mechanical eye in his right socket caught the firelight briefly. The long-las in his hands had a fresh energy cell seated. In the short engagement just finished, he had barely changed position at all, yet the count of enemies he had taken down exceeded what several entire squads could have managed.
Larkin's gaze had not left him since he appeared.
Finn looked at Corbec, was quiet for a moment, and made the sign of the Aquila across his chest.
"It is a miracle." He said.
Corbec watched him.
Finn's voice was level, but it carried considerably more weight than Stroud's.
"A miracle of humanity. A miracle of the Emperor. Humanity has been wandering in darkness and confusion for too long. Humanity needs the Emperor—not the other way around."
He looked toward the forest still burning in the distance.
"All of us lose our way too easily, become weak too easily, forget too easily what we are supposed to be doing. So we need a little light. Something that lets us see the enemy, lets us hear the orders, lets us hold the line when we are supposed to hold it."
"There you go, your explanation." Stroud shrugged and walked away with his lasgun. He knew perfectly well what was coming next.
But Corbec lowered his voice and continued. "All of this comes from your Commissar?"
Finn's mechanical eye turned to him.
He did not answer with words. But the silence said everything.
Another point of red light moved through the distant treeline. Finn raised the long-las, not using any conventional scope, and the barrel settled on that shadow in the trees without any visible adjustment.
"See it. Shoot it." Finn said. "That is how we answer a miracle."
The shot went off.
The red light went down.
Rawne muttered something under his breath nearby.
But he did not continue.
Because he had seen the red light as well. He had felt the force press down and held his weapon steady through it. It irritated him that he could not dismiss it, and he also could not deny that it had kept a great many people alive.
Twenty minutes later, several combat groups had successfully consolidated.
Gaunt received the orders from Duvette. The combined force, three Tanith regiments and three infantry regiments split from the original 112th, would proceed to clear the enemy's remaining landing sites.
Most of the enemy had been destroyed in the orbital strikes and the surface anti-aircraft fire. But several substantial groups had made it down intact. Those Chaos traitors were attempting to regroup, and if given enough time they would push toward Magna, Attica, and the surrounding settlements.
Gaunt completed the deployment quickly.
The Tanith people handled navigation, reconnaissance, and route-marking. The 112th Battle Group provided direct firepower and assault momentum. All movement was conducted at squad level to avoid being separated again by the shifting nalwood.
Corbec found himself moving with a mixed formation, and quickly saw how the units around him actually operated.
Their coordination was fast.
The moment a Tanith soldier identified a path that went around a shifting forest section, the 112th officer had already repositioned the fire points. The moment an enemy showed itself ahead, before the red light had fully appeared from behind a tree, las-beams were already converging on the position.
Corbec watched Anderson push into the enemy.
The big man in force-feedback armour swung the thunder hammer and broke open a path through sheer force. Chainswords and las-fire hit the armour and left nothing but scorch marks, and the next moment the enemy was knocked through the air by the hammer. But what Corbec found more interesting than the raw power was that Anderson never drove too far ahead. Every time he broke open an enemy line, the soldiers behind him immediately brought their fire forward and turned the gap into a stable advance.
Rawne, meanwhile, kept his eyes on Stroud, whom he had decided he disliked.
But he found quickly that Stroud had something about him in the forest. The man never stopped complaining, but every position he chose was oddly well-placed, and every route he used to draw the enemy forward was one that let the Tanith people find their shot.
In one brief exchange, Rawne and Stroud both read the enemy's flanking movement at almost exactly the same moment.
Rawne had not yet spoken when Stroud had already pointed.
"Over there. Three red marks. They've come around."
Rawne bit down on whatever he was about to say, took two Tanith soldiers, and moved to the other side. In less than half a minute, the three Chaos traitors were caught between Rawne's group and Stroud's, and all three went down.
When Rawne returned, Stroud showed his teeth at him.
"Whatever else I'd say, you people at least know what you're doing."
Rawne kept his face cold. "You haven't disappointed me either. Much."
Stroud blinked, then laughed and swore at him.
Larkin's attention had been almost entirely on Finn the entire time.
The sniper with the mechanical eye and prosthetic arm was too consistent. He barely adjusted his position, rarely changed his posture, and every shot he took went off as though he already knew where the enemy was going to appear before they appeared.
Larkin acknowledged, for the first time, that the other man's shooting was considerably beyond his own, even if the title of Tanith's best shot was one he had given himself and had not actually let anyone else verify.
What he found most puzzling was that Finn did not seem to use a conventional scope at all. He simply looked into the darkness with the mechanical eye and pulled the trigger, and something red fell in the distance.
Larkin held his long-las close and muttered: "What in the feth is that man doing with a rifle."
Finn heard it and did not respond. He simply seated a fresh energy cell and pointed toward a shadow among the trees.
"Heavy weapon. There."
Larkin looked instinctively.
An instant later Finn fired, and the las-beam went through the edge of the trunk. Larkin followed up without thinking, and the enemy heavy weapons operator who had staggered back half a step was knocked down.
Finn glanced at him.
"Good shot."
Larkin blinked, then muttered something low.
They kept moving.
When the combined formation passed through the area northwest of their position, where the enemy consolidation had been, every Tanith soldier slowed down without being told.
The scene that came into view was all wreckage and bodies.
Plasma residue had turned the ground to mud. Broken ceramite, shattered weapons, and burned standards lay scattered among the tree roots. The Catachan soldiers, who had not bothered with armour heavier than their standard gear, were moving through the area with combat knives, confirming whether anything was still breathing.
They looked less like soldiers clearing a battlefield.
They looked like hunters finishing a hunt.
What drew every eye was the thirteen tall figures in black power armour.
They stood at the edge of the firelight in silence. Only when the flames reached them did the Tanith soldiers get a clear view of the black plate's outline, and the blood still running down the armour in the heat.
Several bodies lay nearby that clearly did not belong to ordinary mortals.
Chaos Astartes.
Corbec said nothing. Rawne said nothing.
Larkin murmured: "They've killed everything here already."
Many of the Tanith soldiers had the same thought at the same moment.
What kind of war existed out among the stars that needed warriors like these?
The answer came before long.
One enemy landing site was still fighting.
It had surviving heavy fire points: several autocannon positions and grenade launcher arrays dug in behind the wreckage of a crashed landing craft. The Chaos traitors had no fear of dying and were firing continuously from behind the burning metal, pinning the advance elements back behind the treeline.
The Tanith soldiers were completely suppressed.
One of them raised his head briefly and the tree trunk beside him was destroyed by a grenade round. He dropped back into the mud, face pale, both hands locked on his rifle.
Then a group of soldiers in thick grey greatcoats and respirator masks walked through.
Krieg.
No unnecessary words.
An officer raised a short blade, and the combat engineer squad immediately moved forward with demolition charges and melta-explosive. Enemy solid rounds and las-beams hit them. Two Krieg soldiers in the lead went down.
The ones behind them stepped over them and kept going.
More soldiers were destroyed, grey greatcoats catching fire. They continued forward anyway, holding their charges, moving toward the fire points. Death appeared to be a condition they had already accepted long before the order came.
Corbec watched this and did not know what to say.
Then a Krieg combat engineer dropped into the shadow beneath the wreckage and pressed the melta-charge against the autocannon's base.
The explosion took the heavy fire position with it.
The suppressing fire had a gap in it now.
The 112th pushed forward immediately, and the Tanith soldiers came out from both flanks. The Chaos traitors inside the landing site were quickly separated by the fire. The survivors who tried to fall back into the forest were caught by the Tanith people and the Catachan hunting teams who had already worked around behind them.
Corbec stood in front of the destroyed position and looked at the broken Krieg bodies lying in the mud of Tanith.
He finally let himself ask the question.
"What were they fighting for?" Corbec said quietly. "They're not Tanith people."
Rawne stood beside him and said nothing.
"For every star that belongs to the Imperium. For every citizen."
A familiar voice came from nearby.
Corbec turned. Commissar Gaunt was standing not far away with his bolt pistol in hand. The black uniform carried mud. His face was as composed as it always was.
"Commissar." Corbec said without thinking.
Gaunt looked toward the landing site still being cleared in the distance, then at the Krieg soldiers who had gone down.
"The Astra Militarum's duty is not only to protect the world where a soldier was born." He said. "The Imperium holds too many worlds. No single planet can survive on its own."
Corbec listened in silence.
Gaunt continued. "Today they died for Tanith. One day, Tanith soldiers will die for someone else's home."
Rawne raised his head and looked at Gaunt.
This time, he did not produce a contemptuous sound.
Gaunt's voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to every person near him.
"This is the Astra Militarum."
Corbec looked around.
The 112th soldiers were pulling their wounded back. The Krieg were reforming their lines. The Catachans had disappeared into the distant treeline. The Black Shield Astartes had already turned toward the next position. The Tanith soldiers stood among them all, still holding their weapons.
In this moment, for the first time, Corbec understood what they were going to be doing from now on.
They would leave Tanith. They would go to many worlds they had never seen.
Perhaps they would die there, and the people of those worlds would never know their names.
But tonight, people from many worlds they had never seen had bled for Tanith.
The fires in the distance were beginning to die down.
The clearance was still ongoing, but the enemy landing sites were going dark one by one. Before dawn, no new drop pods came down over Tanith, and the sound of guns from the orbital direction gradually thinned.
In the temporary command post, Duvette stood before the strategic display and watched the red markers disappear one by one.
The enemy fleet had lost the ability to continue its drops. The ground landing force had been cut into separate pockets. The Catachans and the Black Shields were still hunting the remaining hard points, and Gaunt was advancing with the three Tanith regiments and the 112th split regiments in a steady sweep.
The casualty numbers were still rising.
Duvette looked at those numbers for a long time, and finally let out a quiet breath.
This time, Tanith had held until dawn.