[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

by Dan Abnett

  “What about civilians?” asked Hark.

  “I haven’t brought any, have you?”

  The men laughed.

  “Bhavnager is a clear and open target. I’ll say it now so there’s no mistake about it. We prosecute this town with maximum prejudice. Even if there are civilians, there are no civilians. Understood?”

  The officers assented quickly. Gaunt ignored Curth’s dark look.

  “Kleopas, you have command of the main charge. I’ll bring the Ghosts in behind you. Rawne? Sirus? You have the side thrust. Varl? I want you to play watchdog with a platoon on the road. Stay behind the Hydras and cover the transport and supply train. Bring them in only when we signal the town as secure. Go word is ‘Slaydo’. Support advance is ‘Oktar’. Retreat command is ‘Dercius’. Vox channel is beta-kappa-alpha. Secondary is kappa-beta-beta. Any questions?”

  There were none. With under two hours of daylight left, sunset burning off the mountains and rain on the wind, the honour guard fell upon Bhavnager.

  LeGuin’s Grey Venger, and the company’s other Destroyer, the name Death Jester painted in crimson on its plating skirts, went in first along the highway, cleaning off the outer perimeter. Between them, they made eight kills, all Infardi MBTs covering the fruit groves on the road.

  Mkoll led a scout platoon in with them. They rode on the Destroyers’ hulls until they reached the treecover and then scattered into the spinneys. The Ghosts rolled forward in a wave alongside the hunting tank killers, locating and cutting the observation posts of the enemy signal line by stealth.

  Venger and Jester bellied down at the edge of the trees overlooking Bhavnager as the main assault force swooped in past them, the Heart of Destruction leading the way. The ground shook, and mechanical thunder rolled through the still air. Troops dismounted in full strength from the trucks behind them, and then the transporters retreated to waymark 00.60, where Varl and his unit guarded the Chimeras, Trojans and tankers.

  The word was given and the word was “Slaydo”. Under Kleopas, twelve battle machines charged towards Bhavnager from the south, eleven Conquerors and the company’s single Executioner, an ancient plasma tank nicknamed Strife.

  By then, the enemy had seen the smoke and flash of the Destroyer kills in the woods and had launched out in force. Thirty-two AT70 Reavers, all painted gloss lime, plus seven model N20 halftracks mounting 70-mil anti-tank cannons. Major Kleopas considered ruefully that this was considerably more than Captain Sims’ estimate of “at least” ten Reavers and five self-propelled guns. This was going to be a major engagement. A chance to snatch glory from the din of battle. A chance to find death. The sort of choice the Pardus were bred to make.

  Despite the appalling odds, Kleopas grinned to himself.

  The Imperial Hydras, dug-in and locked out sprayed their drizzle of rapid fire over the town from the tree-line. Two thousand Ghosts fanned out over the open approach in the wake of Kleopas’ charging armoured cavalry. Already, small arms fire was cracking at them from the town edge.

  The tank fight began in earnest Kleopas’ squadron was formed in a trailing V with the Heart of Destruction at the tip. They had the slight advantage of incline in the cleared ground between the fruit groves and the town edge and were making better than thirty kph. The enemy mass, in no ordered formation, churned up the slope to meet them, kicking rock chips and dry soil out behind them as their tracks dug in. They played out in a long, uneven line.

  In the command seat of the Heart, Kleopas checked the readings of his auspex, glowing pale yellow in the half-light of the locked down turret against the eyeball view through his prismatic up-scope. He used his good right eye for this, not his augmetic implant, an affectation his crew often joked about. Kleopas then adjusted his padded leather headset and flicked down the wire stalk of the voice mic.

  “Lay on and fire at will.”

  The Conqueror phalanx began to fire A dozen main weapons blasting and then blasting again. Bright balls of gas-flame flashed from their muzzles and discharge smoke streamed back from their muzzle brakes, fuming in long white trails of slipstream over their hulls. Three AT70s sustained direct hits and vanished in flurries of metal and fire Two more were crippled and foundered, beginning to burn. A halftrack lurched lengthways as a round from the Conqueror Man of Steel punched through its crew bay and shredded it like a mess tin hit by a las-shot.

  The elderly Pardus Executioner tank Strife, commanded by Lieutenant Pauk, was slower on its treads than the dashing Conquerors, and trailed at the end of the left-hand file. Its stubby, outsized plasma cannon razed a gleaming red spear of destruction down the slope and explosively sheared the turret off an AT70 in a splash of shrapnel and spraying oil.

  The enemy mass began firing back uphill with resolved fury. The main weapons of the AT70s were longer and slimmer than the hefty muzzles of the Imperial Conquerors. Their blasts made higher, shrieking roars and sparked star-shaped gas-burns from the flash-retarders at the ends of their barrels. Shells rained down across the Imperial charge.

  LeGuin had been right. Examples of old, sub-Imperial standard technology, the Reavers lacked any auspex guidance or laser rangefinding. It was also clear they had no gyro stabilisers. Once the Conqueror guns were aimed, they damn well stayed aim-locked thanks to inertial dampers, no matter how much bouncing and lurching the tank was experiencing. That meant the Conquerors could shoot and move simultaneously without any appreciable loss of target lock. The AT70s fired by eye and any movement or jarring required immediate aim revision.

  In the Heart of Destruction, Kleopas smiled contentedly. The enemy was chucking hundreds of kilos of munitions up the slope at them, but most of it was going wide or overshooting. They were not designed for efficient mobile shooting. If their supremo had only had the good sense to stop his armour dead and fire on the Imperial charge from stationary locks, he would have been ahead on points by now.

  Even so, more by luck than judgement, the enemy scored hits. The Conqueror known as Mighty Smiter was hit simultaneously by two rounds from different adversaries, exploded and slewed to an ugly halt, greasy black smoke pouring out of the hatches. Drum Roll, another Conqueror, under the command of Captain Hancot, was hit in the starboard tread section and lost its tracks in a shower of sparks and steel fragments. It lurched and came to a stop, but continued to fire.

  Captain Endre Woll made his second kill of the day and his crew let out a cheer. Woll was a tank ace, adored by the Pardus regiment, and Situs’ chief rival. Under the stencil reading Old Strontium on the side of his steed was a line of sixty-one kill marks. Sirus and the Wrath of Pardua claimed sixty-nine. Electric servos swung Old Strontium’s turret basket around and Woll executed a perfect kill on a veering AT70. The noise in the Conqueror turret was immense, despite the sound-lagging and the crew’s ear-protectors. When it fired, the breech of the main gun hurtled back into the turret space with one hundred and ninety tonnes of recoil force The novice loaders and gun layers at Pardus boot camp quickly trained themselves to be alert and nimble. As the breech slammed back, a battered metal slide funnelled the red-hot spent shell case into the cartridge hopper and the loader swung round with a fresh shell from the water-jacketted magazine thumping it into place with the ball of his palm. The layer consulted the rangefinder and the crosswind sensor, and obeyed Woll’s auspex-guided instructions. Woll always kept one eye on the target reticule displayed on his up-scope. Like all good soldiers, he only trusted tech data so far. Target at 11:34!” Woll instructed.

  “11:34 aye!” the layer repeated, jerking the recoil brake. The gun roared.

  Another Reaver was reduced to a rapidly expanding ball of fire and scrap.

  The Pardus armour men were trained for mobile cut and thrust. The Conquerors’ time-honoured torsion-bar suspension systems and high power to weight ratio meant they were more nimble than most of the adversaries they encountered, whether super-heavy monsters or lacklustre mediums like the ones the Infardi were fielding. That meant the Conquerors were perfect
cavalry tanks, built to fight on the move, to charge, to out-manoeuvre and overwhelm the foe.

  But there came a crucial moment in any armour-cav charge where the decision had to be made to halt, break or break through. Kleopas knew that moment was at hand. The dream intention of any armour charge was to utterly crush the target formation. But the Infardi outnumbered them three to one, and more tanks were massing at the edge of the town. Kleopas cursed… the Infardi had mustered in division strength at Bhavnager. The major had to keep revising Sirus’ original estimate up and up. Forget about major engagement, this was becoming historic.

  The Conquerors were about to meet the enemy head-on. Kleopas had three choices: stop dead and fight it out standing, break through the enemy line and turn to finish the job, or separate and pincer.

  A stand-up fight was a worst case option. It would allow the Reavers to play to their strengths. Breakthrough was psychologically strong, but it meant reversing the playing field, and the Pardus would then be fighting back up hill, risking their own infantry coming in behind.

  “Pincer three-four! Pincer now!” Kleopas instructed his squadron. The left-hand edge of the V formation carried on with Kleopas at the head, crashing past and between the Infardi machines. The right edge, under Woll, spread wide in a lateral line and slowed right down.

  Gearboxes and differentials grinding, the tanks of Kleopas’ wing rotated almost on a point, spraying up loose earth, and presented at the hindquarters of the enemy line. All Leman Russ pattern tanks, like the Conquerors, delivered deliriously low ground pressure through their track arrangement, and possessed fine regenerative steering. These almost balletic turns were a trademark move. Six more AT70s blew out as they were struck from the rear, and two more and a halftrack fell to Woll’s straggler line.

  The sloping field south of Bhavnager became a tank graveyard. Flames and debris covered the ground, and burning wrecks littered the incline. Huddles of Infardi crew, ejected from escape hatches, ran blindly for cover. Some of the Reavers, lurching on their old-style volute spring suspension, tried to come about to engage Kleopas’ line, and were blown apart from both sides. The front formation of the Infardi armour was overrun and slaughtered.

  But the day was nothing like won yet.

  The Man of Steel shuddered and lost its front end in a spurting fireball. From the edge of the town, an N20 halftrack, sensibly bedded down and unmoving, had hit it squarely with its anti-tank cannon.

  Kleopas blanched as he heard Captain Ridas screaming over the vox-net as fire swamped his turret basket. Moments later, the conqueror Pride of Memfis was destroyed by a traversing AT70. Plasma spitting out with searing brilliance, Lieutenant Pauk’s Strife evened the score.

  As Kleopas’ tanks hauled around on their regenerative steering again, Woll’s line came through the kill-field, crunching and rolling over enemy wrecks. Eighteen more AT70s were spread around the town’s southern limits and were bombarding steadily from standing. The shell deluge was apocalyptic. Woll counted nine Usurper-pattern self-propelled guns firing from positions behind the AT70 front. The boxy Usurpers carried howitzers, crude but efficient copies of Imperial Earthshakers, slanting forward out of their gun pulpits. Behind them came twelve more N20s, moving in a file down the marketplace road. It was going to get worse before it got better.

  “Line up, line up!” Gaunt cried, and his call was repeated down the infantry file from platoon leader to platoon leader. The Ghosts had formed in position at the edge of the tree-line, behind the four raiding Hydra batteries, and had been watching in awe and admiration for the last ten minutes as the tank fight boiled across the approach field below.

  “Men of Tanith, warriors of Verghast, now we do the Emperor’s duty! Advance! By file! Advance!”

  Starting to jog, and then to run, the massed force of Ghosts came down the field, through the blasted landscape, bayonets fixed.

  A few shells dropped amongst them. Glaring tracers spat overhead. The air was filthy with smoke. Kolea led the left-hand point of the advance, Sergeant Battels the right, with Gaunt somewhere between them.

  Gaunt allowed his designated assault leaders to move ahead, confident in their abilities, while he took time to pause and mm to yell encouragement and inspiration to the hundreds of troopers streaming down the slope. He brandished his power sword high so they could see it.

  Right then, he missed Brin Milo. Milo should be here, he thought, piping the Ghosts into battle. He yelled again, his voice almost hoarse.

  Commissar Hark was advancing with Baffels’ mob. His shouts and urgings lacked the rousing fire of Gaunt’s. He was new to them, he hadn’t shared what Gaunt had shared with them. Still he urged them on.

  “Destroyers signal their advance in our support,” Vox-officer Beltayn reported to Gaunt as they ran forward. Gaunt looked back to see the Grey Venger and the Death Jester rise up on their torsion springs and begin to prowl in at the heels of the infantry. It made a change to advance under armour, Gaunt thought. This was the Imperial Guard at its most efficient. This was inter-speciality co-operation. This was victorious assault.

  Ana Curth and the medical party pushed down in the wake of the charging Ghosts. The ground they were covering was ruined by the furious tank fight and stank of fuel and fyceline. Shells had torn it up, so that the chalky bed rock was ploughed up over the black topsoil in white curds and lumps. It looked to Curth as if the very entrails of the earth had been blown out and exposed. This was a dead landscape, and they would undoubtedly extend and enlarge it before they were finished with Bhavnager.

  Lesp darted to the left as a Ghost went down. Another two fell to an overshot tank round immediately ahead and Chayker and Foskin ran forward.

  “Medic! Medic!” the scream rose from the massed confusion of manpower before her.

  “I have it!” Mtane called to her, scrambling over the broken ground to a Ghost who was hunched over a squealing, disembowelled friend.

  This is hell, Curth thought. It was her first taste of open war, of full-scale battle. She’d been through the urban horrors of Vervunhive, but had only ever read about the experience of pitched war in exposed territory. Battlefields. Now she understood what the term meant. It took a lot to shock Ana Curth, and death and injury wasn’t enough.

  What shocked her here was the raging, callous fury of the battle. The scale, the size, the gak-awful noise, the mass charge.

  The mass wounding. The randomness of pain and hurt. “Medic!”

  She pulled open her field kit, running forward between the plumes of fire kicked up by falling shells and heavy las-fire.

  Every time she thought she knew the horrors of war, it gleefully exposed new ones. She wondered how men like Gaunt could be even remotely sane after a life of this.

  “Medic!”

  “I’m here! Stay down, I’m here!”

  From waymark 07.07, the side thrust began their assault. They congregated a kilometre to the east of Bhavnager at an outlying farm. Even from this distance, the thunder of the main assault four kilometres away was shaking the ground.

  Rawne spat in the dust and picked up the lasrifle he had lent against the farmyard’s drybrick perimeter wall. “Time to go,” he said.

  Captain Sirus nodded and ran back towards his waiting tank, one of six Conquerors idling behind the abandoned farmstead.

  Feygor, Rawne’s adjutant, armed his lasgun and roused up the troops, close on three hundred Ghosts.

  The wind was up, and the sun setting. Gold light radiated from the bulbous stupa of the temple a kilometre away.

  Rawne adjusted his vox. “Three to Sirus. You see what I see?”

  “I see the eastern flank of Bhavnager. I see the temple.”

  “Good. If you’re ready… go!”

  The six Conquerors roared out of their holding position and charged across the open fields and meadows towards the eastern edge of the town. Behind them came the convoy’s eight remaining Salamanders. Rawne hopped up onto the running boards of one of the command Salamande
rs and rode it in, turning back to supervise the infantry group advancing behind him.

  The five Conquerors chasing Sirus’ Wrath of Pardua were named Say Your Prayers, Fancy Klara, Steel Storm, Lucky Bastard and Lion of Pardua, the latter the Wrath’s sister tank. Rocking over terrain humps and irrigation gullies, the Pardus machines began firing, their shots hammering at the looming temple and its precincts. Puffs of white smoke plumed from the distant hits silently.

  Almost immediately, four AT70 tanks appeared around the northern side of the temple Two spurred forward into the edges of the wet arable land, the others stopped dead and commenced shelling.

  The Fancy Klara, commanded by Lieutenant LeTaw, crippled one of the moving tanks with a beautiful long range shot that would have made Woll himself proud. But then, as it bounced up over a tilled field, a tungsten-cored tank round hit the Klara squarely, penetrating the turret mantle and puncturing down through the basket. LeTaw lost his right arm and his gunlayer was instantly liquidised. The incandescent shell pierced the water jackets of the Klara’s magazine and didn’t explode.

  The Conqueror swerved to a halt. LeTaw was numb with shock. He could barely pull aside his seat harness to look round. The interior of the turret was painted with a slick film of gore, the only remaining physical trace of his layer.

  The loader had fallen from his metal stool, and was curled foetally on the floor of the basket, drenched in blood.

  “Holy Emperor,” LeTaw murmured, looking down through the crisp-edged hole in the side of the magazine. Filthy water from the jackets dribbled out, diluting the blood on the floor. He could see sizzling fire inside the hole, the heat-shock residue of the impact.

  “Get out!” he cried.

  The loader looked blank, shocked out of his mind.

  “Get out!” LeTaw repeated, reaching for the escape hatch pull with an arm that was no longer there.

  Laughing at the macabre oddness of it, he swung around and reached up with his remaining hand. He heard the driver scrambling out through the forward hatch.