Striding over to the opposing wall, Sojack had a view of uneven rooftops and occasional towers all the way back to the massive black striated sheet enclosing the city. The Rysgahan defence troopers weren’t experienced soldiers, at least not by Elysian standards, so he looked for the most obvious launch point.
Within seconds, he spied the domes of helmets belonging to two crouched figures five hundred metres away and ten metres down, partially obscured behind a large ventilation duct on a narrow flat roof. With ammunition running low, Sojack knew he had to make the shot count, and he did; the grenade sailed into the air and dropped right on top of their position, the roof of the building collapsing in on itself in a cloud of dust and filth.
Back on the other side of the tower, Melnis was upright once again and swivelling his plasma gun on its bipod along the bridge. The smoke was clearing at the far end, revealing dozens of rebels moving between a wide clearing directly opposite the bridge’s entrance and the tall buildings. One structure in particular caught his eye and he grunted as he shifted position slightly to give him a partial view of a large metallic framework on a high rooftop one street behind, where suggestions of figures moved busily between a network of snaking cables.
‘Listen to the voice of reason! The mouth of Chaos will never be silenced!’
Melnis clenched his teeth in pain, aimed deliberately high and squeezed the trigger. Super-heated plasma arced upwards and over the chasm, the jet losing shape and form as it reached the structure but still destructive enough to blow up the parts he could see. The amplified voice abruptly stopped and Melnis barked a triumphant laugh; it was the transmitter.
Fire flickered out of his line of sight, and his day was made when a flaming rebel plunged from the rooftop to the avenue below. It was wishful thinking, but he very much hoped it was the ‘mouth’.
‘That shut you up.’
Zachariah shook his head with a faint smile. The sun was creeping higher over the huge volcanic walls now, the destruction far below bathed in the first good light of the day. Something glinted in the distance down the street formed by the buildings, and he brought his lasgun’s scope back up with a frown. At exactly the same time, Coarto’s voice crackled in his ear. It was a single, simple word, and absolutely the last thing he wanted hear:
Tanks.
The lead vehicle drifted into focus through the thinning smoke, partially obscured by a milling group of rebels running in a confused swarm. It was low and flat, with the suggestion of a turret on top – a battered and barely functioning Chimera, its armour dented and split. The turret array was clearly no threat, but its hull-mounted heavy flamer looked worryingly intact. It seemed to have difficulty traversing to the right, suggesting the left-hand tracks or the steering mechanism was damaged, and the snub muzzle of its primary weapon seemed to be fixed forwards. At the moment it couldn’t quite bring the heavy flamer to bear but the driver was clearly intent on rectifying this.
Directly behind was an equally decrepit Leman Russ, its main gun missing but the port sponson cannon tracking menacingly. Partially obscured by the Chimera’s laboured manoeuvres, it posed no real threat while the APC stayed forward, and Zachariah assumed it was at the back because it wasn’t as battleworthy as the carrier. Even so, if that managed to get into place, it could wreak havoc over the chasm and into their part of the city.
Flicking his attention back to Adullam and Beor, he could see them working furiously on either side of the bridge, several silver discs now lined across its width and joined by red fuse wire. Beor took an opportunity to look up at precisely the moment the Chimera managed to turn enough to open fire.
Three of the Guardsmen became instant screaming torches as the flamer’s lethal jet consumed them, parts of the bridge’s ornate sidings melting away with the tremendous heat. The remaining three threw themselves to the ground on the right while Coarto fell to one knee and fired his final volley towards the front of the vehicle, blasting the road surface directly in front of the APC and causing it to pitch violently downwards into the smoking hole.
With restricted movement, the heavy flamer couldn’t elevate enough to target the Elysians from its new position, but Zachariah could see from Adullam and Beor’s feverish movements that the demolition charges weren’t ready. They needed minutes, not seconds.
Ordering Melnis and Sojack to keep the bridge’s entrance as clear of rebels as possible, Zachariah rested his lasgun on the tower’s smashed ledge and regarded the straining, shaking vehicle carefully through his image intensifier.
It was reversing out of the hole, tracks chewing on the crater’s shallow sides. The driver would be somewhere to the right, his head below the upper and lower section seam – precisely where a crack had developed at the corner of the viewing hatch, thanks to a number of popped rivets. Coarto’s crater had helped open it up a little more on impact, and with the APC not taking its full weight evenly across the lower section, it parted a few centimetres with the strain of movement.
Zachariah only had one chance at this before the Chimera got back to road level and the gap closed itself under the sheer weight of the turret above. He forced himself to relax; the stock and grip of the lasgun became an extension of his body and, thanks to the bipod, he was absolutely static, leaving him to concentrate on timing out the violent rocking motion of the vehicle. He took a breath.
Target moving backwards, forwards, swinging up. Elevation and range calculated. Best angle approaching, largest gap forming… now.
The shot darted through the impossibly small hole formed between the thick armour plates, slicing into the vehicle somewhere around the driver’s seat. An extraordinary shot, one of his best for months, but self-congratulation wasn’t in Zachariah’s nature.
Even if it had been, the dismay he now felt would have quickly quashed his triumph as the APC kept on moving backwards, eventually righting itself with a grinding crunch. Its squat form loomed menacingly for a few seconds, like a predator deciding which prey to devour first, and Zachariah flicked his scope around the Chimera, urgently looking for another weak spot.
Suddenly, the carrier shuddered violently and began to spin wildly around its centre, mercilessly swiping away rebels using its bulk for cover. Tossed in a wide arc, some bounced off the front armour of the Leman Russ while others sailed like thrown dolls into the chasm, their screams quickly fading in the warm morning air.
A final bellow from the Chimera’s engines sent the hulking machine lurching forwards into the embankment, ploughing through a dozen more hapless Rysgahans and crushing several others. A few were pushed straight through the crevasse’s raised wall and followed it down into the bottomless darkness.
Something registered in Zachariah’s brain – he’d missed a critical change. What was–
The air exploded out of Zachariah’s lungs as he hit the floor of the tower face-up. His ears sang and he found he couldn’t focus properly; then he felt huge hands pull him to his feet from behind. The world spun and he pulled off his helmet, trying to shake his vision back to normality.
Melnis was shouting at him but all he could hear was a high-pitched tone, and within seconds he realised what had happened – the Leman Russ had opened fire on them and hit the corner of the tower with its first shot. Sojack crouched to one side of the large ragged hole newly created in the wall, firing the last of his grenades over the chasm, but the tank was just out of range.
Leaning on Melnis, Zachariah retrieved his lasgun and staggered over to Sojack’s position as a second shell hurtled overhead, exploding a hundred metres behind. Melnis pig-headedly stood in the middle of the gaping hole and tried to hit the tank, but his previous repeated firing had left the plasma gun dangerously overheated and it shut down, leaving the huge man bellowing in frustration.
Zachariah grabbed hold of Melnis’s webbing and yanked him back out of the direct field of fire, throwing a warning look at the furious man as he stumbled
past.
Down below, Adullam and Beor frantically tried to finish wiring up the munitions while Coarto and the remaining three Guardsmen shuffled backwards towards them, firing sporadically, their ammunition nearly exhausted. The Rysgahans were readying their counter-attack on the bridge, which would surely come the second they had dispatched the three Elysians in the tower.
His head finally clearing, Zachariah rammed on his helmet, grabbed Sojack’s shoulder and pointed over to the roof’s trapdoor. ‘Get down there and give covering fire to the others. Keep out of sight as best you can and they might think we’ve been put out of action up here. I’m going to sort out that tank.’
With a nod, Sojack crawled over to the heavy wooden panel and heaved it open, allowing Melnis to squeeze his bulk into the opening before he, too, disappeared with a salute. Two seconds later, a shell hit the lower side of the tower, blasting a second hole in its heavy walls and collapsing the corner. The integrity of the building was failing and the Leman Russ crew now had Zachariah in their sights – one more shot to his position, possibly two, then they would turn on the others.
Zachariah reached for a fresh power pack from his webbing, tapped it on his helmet to shake off any dirt it might have picked up in transit and slammed it home with a satisfying clunk. Taking a deep breath, he rolled onto his stomach, presenting as flat a profile as he could to the rebels – but breaking two golden rules of sniping by firing from a known and exposed position.
Time slowed. In his downward peripheral vision, Zachariah half-sensed, half-saw the shape of Melnis limping across the avenue towards the entrance of the bridge, pulling out his entirely non-regulation and, at this range at least, entirely useless shotgun from the open holster on his back. Sojack had ditched his grenade launcher and was already firing single shots from his lasgun at the chasm’s far bank, the brilliant flashes flickering in the corner of Zachariah’s eye. All this he was entirely aware of, but it didn’t distract him from his primary focus – the sponson-mounted gun on the mangled port side of the tank. The muzzle’s angle was pointing directly at Zachariah; they couldn’t miss.
Zachariah smiled.
Hold breath. Wait. Exhale. Squeeze.
The lasgun threw a brilliant high-energy beam straight down the centre of the cannon’s muzzle, meeting the nose of the shell as it started its way out of the cannon. Without realising it, they had given Zachariah an absolute gift, the kind of shot he would hear others tell stories about achieving over too many drinks at a bar, and he smiled as the tank left the ground on the left-hand side. It flipped on its side, smoke hissing out of its cracked shell, and when the magazine ignited, the vehicle spectacularly erupted. Rysgahans were flattened on three sides, the remaining windows in nearby buildings blew out and shrapnel hurtled in every direction.
If the devastation wreaked by his single shot was good in itself, the utter shock and confusion on the rebels’ faces as they picked themselves up off the ground was even better. He’d bought Adullam and Beor the time they needed, and they were already using it.
‘Unbelievable, Zach! Unbelievable! We’re done – ten-second fuse starting now. Adullam out.’
Coarto took the lead in front of the three remaining Guardsmen, followed by the heavily panting Beor and Adullam, as Melnis and Sojack gave covering fire. A couple of Rysgahans ventured onto the bridge, clearly forced to try to disarm the charges squatting in a ragged line, but it was too late – the middle of the bridge was torn apart in a tremendous explosion, making Zachariah duck behind the remains of the tower’s roof to avoid the shower of iron fragments and stone thrown into the air. While he was spared the ignominy of being directly caught in his own successful detonation, the blast was clearly too much for the tower’s severely weakened structure, which began to collapse around and below him.
He dived through the open trapdoor. Huge chunks of masonry bounced off his helmet and armoured shoulder pads as he half-ran, half-fell down the disintegrating stairs. Entire blocks of stone plunged down the stairwell’s open centre and, with a deafening crash, a wall fell out into the street below.
Zachariah knew he wasn’t going to make it to the ground floor and so threw himself out of the gaping hole, landing awkwardly on a pile of rubble that had fallen after the Leman Russ’s first shell. Luckily, his sturdy high-ankled drop-boots took much of the twisting strain and the padded sections of his jumpsuit cushioned his untidy fall onto the avenue just as Melnis limped over, supported by Sojack.
Shots still arced overhead but, with a second rumbling explosion filling the air around the unseen bend of the chasm, the Rysgahans must have known the game was up.
Two bridges destroyed, one under Elysian control. They had nowhere left to run.
The quarters assigned to Zachariah and his squad on the Obliteration were cramped, spartan and noisy, but the showers worked and they were only a short walk from the mess hall – more than what they needed. Sitting on the edge of his peeling metal bunk, Zachariah worked on his lasgun’s sight mounting, gently coaxing it back into shape with a pair of pliers after his hasty exit from the crumbling tower. Sojack and Coarto could be heard laughing from the adjoining wash cubicle, their voices echoing around the low ceiling of the six-berth billet. Ignoring the tall tales of impossible deeds, Adullam lay on his bedroll opposite Zachariah’s position, staring at nothing in particular.
Beor lumbered into the room from the corridor outside, reading a fresh mission update from the briefing room three decks above, his laboured breathing pushing his barrel chest out to the limits of his extra-large tunic.
‘Only took an hour to get the shield down after the second bridge blew. The rebels surrendered after two.’
Adullam stretched and yawned, pushing his feet off the edge of the bunk and regarding his filthy outspread toes.
‘I imagine the executions started shortly after. That group of commissars I passed looked like they were going to burst with excitement.’
Zachariah smiled to himself; the Commissariat had, indeed, turned up in force once the 158th had secured the situation, ready to dispense the Emperor’s justice – and rightly so. He’d be surprised if a single traitorous rebel survived the night. It would be swift and brutal, but entirely justified; it was a wonder that the Inquisition hadn’t taken an interest, yet.
Exactly what would happen to the civilian populace far down beneath the orbiting Obliteration was beyond him; the planet was still right in the path of the Chaos forces’ seemingly relentless advance through the Arx Gap, and there was no formalised militia or effective government for them to turn to. Mass evacuation was simply too problematic, as was leaving anything other than a token garrison for protection; but as all of those issues now fell to those of higher rank than him, he shrugged inwardly and turned to re-attaching the sight onto its newly repaired mounting.
Beor looked up from the report, his interest lost now their involvement was over. ‘Any word on Melnis? Are they going to whip the leg off? Imagine what a pain in the arse he’d be with an augmetic one!’
Zachariah had seen Melnis an hour previously in the over-crowded charnel house that passed as the Obliteration’s infirmary. It’d been a lucky escape; while the wound was deep and he’d lost quite a bit of blood, a centimetre to the left and he wouldn’t have got off the planet alive. Not that any of this made the hulking brute any happier; after he’d shouted at the third orderly to get him back on his feet and signed fit for duty, a passing doctor administered a tranq dosage large enough to drop a bull grox and he’d likely be asleep for the following week if they were lucky.
‘He’ll be fine after some rest. Whatever that is.’ Adullam arched his back, the muscles cracking as he regarded a blue-black bruise on his shin. Beor rested himself slowly onto his bunk in the far corner, sighing deeply.
‘Don’t know about you two, but I’m sick of it out here. I can’t wait to get back home. A nice bit of ship-to-ship with some Elysian pirates –
now that’s what I call…’
Zachariah was a master of self-control; he had the ability to slow down his pulse at will, reduce his breathing to a shallow whisper, remain completely still in the middle of an explosive maelstrom, but there was one, and only one, thing that punched through all of his defences like no other. Any newcomer to the squad would have thought Beor’s comment had gone unheard by the veteran sergeant, but Adullam knew his friend far too well to miss the signs of his anger. The knuckles on his right hand had blanched, blood suddenly restricted by the vice-like grip currently transferred to the screwdriver being used on his lasgun.
It was at that exact moment Beor realised he’d said the wrong thing and met Adullam’s fiery glance; even the singing stopped from Sojack and Coarto in the shower. Everyone knew you didn’t talk about back home to Zachariah.
‘Sarge, I–’
Beor’s apology died in his throat as the tall, rangy form of Captain Makarah, a young but very effective officer from Third Platoon, appeared in the doorway. His darting glance finally rested on Zachariah, who looked up to meet his gaze with a neutral face. Adullam shook his head; he honestly didn’t know how his sergeant did it.
‘Sergeant, we need you in the briefing room right now. There’s a very nasty situation developed on Ophel Minoris – we’re nearest, so it’s up to us to sort it out.’
Placing his lasgun carefully on his bed and replacing his screwdriver on his opened repair kit roll, Zachariah rose to his feet and zipped up his jumpsuit. Without a word, he followed the captain out into the narrow corridor and disappeared from view, leaving Adullam and Beor in silence.
Adullam snorted air through his nose and, reaching under his bunk, pulled out his own lasgun. Beor followed suit, and shortly the only sounds that could be heard echoing off the thick metal bulkheads were the clinks and clacks of parts being dismantled, checked and cleaned.
About The Authors
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The First Heretic for the Horus Heresy series. He has also written Betrayer and Aurelian for that series. His work in the Warhammer 40,000 universe includes Armageddon, The Emperor's Gift and the acclaimed Night Lords trilogy. He lives and works in Ireland, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 99