[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  Each day that Stromm and his men had stayed by the shattered drop-ship, desperately and futilely trying to raise anyone, anyone at all, on their vox-casters, more and more orks had started to show up. They had been drawn to the site by the spectacular trail of fire and black smoke that the falling drop-ship had painted across the sky in a descent that had been visible for a hundred kilometres in every direction.

  Stromm regretted entrenching his forces.

  I should have moved us out into the desert, he thought, away from the crashsite. I should have got everyone away from here.

  Even as he thought this, however, he rejected it. Hindsight was a fine thing, but he had made the best choice he could with the information he’d had. Moving off would have left his infantry companies vulnerable. There weren’t enough vehicles left intact after the crash to carry everyone. And there were the wounded to think about, too. He had no idea of their exact coordinates, either. No one did. Where the bloody hell was the rest of Exolon?

  His hellpistol clicked, another cell spent. On reflex, he hit the power-pack release, let the magazine fall to the ground, tore a fresh one from a pouch on his belt, slammed it home and resumed firing. His first shot left a smoking black hole where one monster’s ugly face had been. That he could now see the damage his shots were causing was not a good sign.

  “Sir,” said Kassel urgently, “you need to think about falling back to the inner defences. We’re losing key sections of the outer perimeter.”

  Stromm nodded and, still facing and firing at the enemy, began walking slowly backwards in the direction of the wrecked hull.

  “Give the order,” he told Kassel. “I want all our lads falling back to secondary positions at once.”

  He chose his targets carefully, firing always at the biggest and darkest-skinned orks. He knew from long years of experience that they were the toughest and most ruthless. Their hides were harder than sun-baked leather, criss-crossed with battle-scars and signs of crude surgery.

  They were veteran killers, relentless, blood-mad savages, and it was they who led the charge.

  Throne, but the bastards are ugly, thought Stromm. What kind of universe tolerates such horrors?

  It was easy to see why mankind sought the orks’ absolute extermination. They were the stuff of nightmares, these greenskins, and they would never stop fighting, never stop killing until there was nothing left to kill. They seemed to wage war for fun, to revel in motiveless slaughter. Or was slaughter motive enough for them? Even now, as they pressed forward, eager to butcher his men, Stromm saw them laughing insanely, as if the whole matter of agony and death in combat was a great game. No, mutual tolerance had never been an option. From the moment the two species had met, the galaxy had set them against each other.

  The orks raced closer through the churning dust, and Stromm saw their hideous faces rendered in increasingly sharp detail. He could make out the glint of savage madness in each beady red eye. Each face was a bestial mask. Their noses were small and flat, often pierced with the bones of some luckless animal or with rings or bars of metal. Their mouths were huge and slack, gaping wide and dripping with thick strands of blood-tinged saliva. Those jaws were large enough, in some cases, to close over a grown man’s head, and each was crammed full of short, jutting, knife-like teeth dominated by two long, curving tusks that thrust upwards from the lower mandible.

  Few things Stromm had ever gazed upon engendered such a feeling of loathing and disgust. The ork race seemed tailor-made to strike fear into the human heart, tapping an ancient vein of primal fear shared by all. It was as if the least worthy traits of his own species had been twisted and magnified a thousand times, and given monstrously powerful bodies with which to wage their bloody and incessant war on Man.

  Where had such abominations come from?

  Stromm’s order to fall back to secondary positions had filtered down to the rank-and-file, and he saw men leap from sandy foxholes and sprint back towards him. Many left it too late. He shouted in frustration as he watched them cut down by sprays of ork stubber-fire. It was a brutal and bloody sight. The large-bore weapons made a real mess of their victims, barking as loud as any bolter, throwing massive metal slugs out in every direction. The orks barely bothered to aim, spraying fire left and right without a thought for accuracy or wasted ammunition. It was only the sheer volume of fire that took such a deadly toll. As the Cadians raced back to the inner defences, many fell screaming, great ragged holes punched into their backs, exit wounds the size of watermelons exploding from their chests and stomachs. Others, more fortunate only in that they suffered less, were struck in the back of the head. Even good, solid Cadian Mark VIII helmets couldn’t protect them. Their skulls practically exploded with the impact of the heavy ork slugs, and their headless bodies stumbled and fell, gushing crimson on the sand.

  To the last man, thought Stromm, gritting his teeth, firing back until another cell was spent. We’ll die here, but we’ll fight the bastards to the last bloody man. Damn you deViers! I hope you get your bloody glory.

  “Artillery,” someone shouted over the vox. “Ork artillery coming in from the north. Get down!”

  Stromm heard a nerve-rattling whistle on the air, growing to a shriek.

  Closer. Closer. Damn it, that’s going to hit right on top…

  Both he and Kassel threw themselves to the ground. Great plumes of sand and dust spurted into the air between the Cadians and the orks, and the air shook with a deafening boom. Stromm found himself still breathing. No fatalities. It was a ranging shot, but the next would bring death down on the shrinking Cadian force.

  “That’s them bringing up the big guns, sir,” shouted Kassel as he scrambled to his feet.

  “You don’t say, Hans!” barked Stromm. “Tell those spacer runts in the las-turrets that I want focused fire on that artillery. Those Navy dogs are the only ones with a clear line of sight. Do it, man!”

  Kassel plucked the mouthpiece of his back-mounted vox-caster from the clip on his belt, barked out the colonel’s orders in a clear, authoritative voice and waited for confirmation. He needn’t have bothered. The turret-gunners atop the crumpled drop-ship were already traversing their turrets to zero in on several massive ork machines — self-propelled guns that were emerging from a dust cloud about fifteen hundred metres away. The SPGs had short, fat barrels that sacrificed accuracy for a higher explosive payload. Their construction appeared so slapdash they looked as likely to blow themselves apart as to flatten their enemies. By rights, they shouldn’t have worked at all, but, as ever with greenskin machines, their performance defied their appearance. With great coughs of flame and ground-shaking booms, they launched another deadly salvo, this time aimed squarely at the las-turrets that had begun to open fire on them.

  Most of the heavy artillery shells went wide of the mark, whining straight past the wreck and exploding in the sand on the far side. Most, but not all. Two struck the hull, packed with so much explosive that, between them, they ripped the super structure apart. The pressure wave that sped out from the twin blasts pulverised the turrets and the men inside them.

  Stromm stood gaping for a split second at the terrible destruction, and then shielded his head as a shower of burning debris cascaded towards him. By the Emperor’s grace, neither he nor Kassel were struck, but a young trooper on the right fell without screaming, his head caved in by a turnip-sized chunk of heavy armaplas.

  “Try to raise them,” Stromm yelled at Kassel, already knowing in his heart that it was futile. Kassel tried. Nothing.

  “Again, Hans. We can’t lose them now. If they can’t knock out those SPGs we won’t last another minute!”

  “Nothing,” said Kassel. He tried a third time with the same result. “They’re gone, sir.”

  “For Throne’s sake! The next bloody salvo will do for us. Can’t we get any of our heavy weapons on them? What about our mortar teams? They’re all we have left that doesn’t need line of sight.”

  Kassel immediately tried to raise t
he mortar teams on the vox, but there was no reply, just hissing static and the sure knowledge that more men had died.

  “Sir, we need to get you away from here. Those green-skin gun-crews won’t take long to reload. We should get you into one of the Chimeras. The Kasrkin might be able to open a corridor.”

  “If you suggest that to me ever again, Hans, I’ll pistol-whip you. Do you hear me? You should know better by now. I’ve never run from a field of battle in my life.”

  “I… Sorry, sir.”

  “Sod your apologies, man. Just keep shooting. We’ll make a proper accounting of ourselves before the end. Get the word out. The Fighting 98th makes its last stand for the honour of Cadia!”

  “The Fighting 98th forever, sir!” said Kassel, thrusting out his chest. Determination replaced the fear in his eyes. If they were to die, it would be as only Cadian men could die, strong and true, and unrelenting to the very last. The Emperor would welcome their souls to his glorious hall. Their places at his table would be assured.

  The outer defences were swarming with xenos, all jostling for a chance to revel in the slaughter of Stromm’s men. They pushed and shoved each other for better position, desperate to claim more kills than their fellows. They were so frantic with battle-lust that savage brawls began to break out here and there among their ranks. Stromm saw one of the beasts — spike-helmed and heavily armoured, its dark skin textured like burned steak — turn to a marginally smaller monstrosity on its right and begin wrestling with it, trying to prise a large axe from its grasp. The smaller ork resisted until the larger rammed the point of a huge, rust-pitted knife right into its belly and unzipped it from sternum to crotch. Thick blood poured out, followed by a tumble of looping intestines that glistened pink as they slid out onto the sand. Then, with the newly won axe in hand, the big one bellowed a battle cry and continued its advance, eager to enter close-quarters combat where it could engage in bloody slaughter.

  It took six men firing lasguns at close range to put that bastard down.

  By Terra, thought Stromm, they’re insane! Death means nothing to them. Whether we have men like Yarrick or not — whether we had a thousand Yarricks, a million even — how can humanity hope to hold back the savage tide?

  In Stromm’s earpiece, the vox-chatter from his surviving platoon leaders had degenerated into a cacophony of panicked shouts. The gap was closing ever further. Once the fighting went hand-to-hand, it would be over for the Cadians. Nothing could save them then.

  “We’re losing the inner defences. The bolter-nests are being overrun!”

  “What do we do? Fall back to the drop-ship? They’re hammering it with artillery!”

  “I need heavy weapons support on our right flank, warp damn it! Get me mortars. Get me a heavy bolter. Anything!”

  Stromm heard the words as if from a great distance. A strange and unexpected sense of calm had descended on him. All around, the air was churning with noise and heat, whining bullets and cracking las-fire, but, in his mind, everything was supremely clear. The end of his lifelong duty to the Emperor was at hand.

  One more time, he allowed his thoughts to return to his family up there on The Incandescent, and said a silent prayer to the Emperor:

  May my wife remember me proudly, and may our son’s achievements exceed my own. To the Emperor’s side, I commend the souls of my men, and I ask Saint Josmane to be our guide.

  “Hans,” he said, “the regimental banner.”

  “It’s here, sir.”

  “Then unfurl it, soldier, and give it to me.”

  “At once, sir,” said Kassel, and leapt to the task.

  Stromm holstered his smoking hellpistol and accepted the heavy banner from his adjutant. Gripping its haft with both hands, he stepped forward, calling to his men as he waved it majestically in the hot, dusty afternoon air.

  “Rally to me, Cadians,” he shouted over the din of battle. “Rally to me, troopers! No more falling back. Here and now, we make our stand!”

  The banner was a striking icon of gold and red. The pillared symbol of the Cadian gate dominated its centre and, on either side of it, the image of a grinning skull held a single stalk of wheat between its teeth. The wheat-stalk symbolised the regiment’s glorious victory at Ruzarch Fields during the infamous Battle of Vogen nearly half a century before. Had the regiment survived General deViers’ Golgothan expedition, another symbol of honour would have been added: a stylised cloud and lightning bolt.

  The men close enough to hear his voice turned to see their colonel standing there, the banner snapping and fluttering as he waved it over his head. He looked like an image from a propaganda poster, and their spirits burned with fresh pride. Stromm could see it as he looked into their eyes. He saw the fires of determination surging there, the will to die fighting.

  “Honour and glory!” shouted a sergeant off to the right.

  “Honour and glory!” bellowed his squad.

  Something changed in the air, building up like a massive electrical charge. Even the wounded seemed suddenly whole again, though their bodies still bled. They turned from the sight of their colonel and his banner, raised lasgun stocks to armoured shoulders, and met the orks with renewed ferocity, determined to dispatch as many of the slavering beasts as possible before they were overcome for good.

  Push through your pain, Stromm willed them. Just a bit further, a bit longer so we know the Emperor’s eyes are on us.

  Only a few hundred metres, now, until the orks were in among them. Mere moments until the fighting became hand-to-hand. At that range, the greenskins’ massive physiologies would allow them to rip through the Cadians like wet paper. Only the mighty Kasrkin storm troopers, of which Stromm had started with a single company and now had less than three full platoons, had any chance in close quarters, and, even then, not much of one.

  “Fix bayonets,” ordered Stromm. Kassel repeated the order over the vox. He might as well have said “get ready to die”. Against orks, it was essentially the same thing.

  The call was taken up by officers and sergeants all along the line as the gap shrank to forty metres, then thirty. Las-fire blazed out in a last, desperate bid to make a difference before the clash of blade on blade. Plenty of orks went down, struck in the face with lethal, short-range blasts. But, if this bought the Cadians any time at all, it was mere seconds.

  The ork artillery was rolling forward, too, unable to fire on the Cadians now that their own infantry had closed the gap. The greenskin gunnery crews, in the manner of all their race, were desperate to get closer to the centre of the murder, to stain their hands with the blood of dying men. For this, they kept their machines rolling in.

  Twenty metres from Stromm, a massive ork with a broken tusk hacked one trooper to the ground with its cleaver, shoved roughly past another, and raced directly forwards. It was coming straight for the colonel, attracted by the bright, snapping banner above his head. As it closed, it raised its massive stubber with a single hand and fired a burst that caught the colonel on the right shoulder. His tough armaplas body-armour was enough to deflect the shot, but the impact threw him from his feet. He landed on the red sand with a grunt. The force of the bullet’s impact had broken his arm, and the banner fell from his hands.

  Lieutenant Kassel moved in a blur, catching the banner as it fell, hoisting it high, desperate not to dishonour the regiment by allowing its sanctified cloth to touch the ground. He stabbed the base of the haft into the sand, braced it with one hand, and crouched by his colonel, yelling his name. “Are you alive, sir? Speak to me, colonel! Please!”

  Groaning in agony and clutching his shattered arm, Stromm rolled, and, with Kassel’s eager aid, struggled to his feet. He looked around to see men forming a defensive line around him, fighting back desperately with bayonets, pistols, sharpened entrenching tools — anything they had to hand — against the massive chipped axes and cleavers of the orks.

  “For Cadia!” Stromm roared, leaving Kassel with the banner and drawing his hellpistol again, this t
ime with his left hand.

  “For Cadia!” his men roared back.

  They fought with everything they had, but the air suddenly filled once again with the deafening boom of big guns. Stromm tensed, guessing the ork artillery crews had decided to fire after all, whether they killed their foul kin or not. He girded himself for the explosive blast that would bring an end to his life any second now.

  Any second…

  But it never came. There was no ear-splitting whistle overhead.

  “Armour!” cried one of his platoon leaders over the vox-net. “In Terra’s Holy Name!”

  “They’re fielding tanks, too?” asked another.

  “No,” snapped the first. “Not the blasted orks, man! Imperial tanks! Leman Russ battle tanks inbound from the west!”

  Stromm heard a second stutter of booming fire and this time, to his utter astonishment, a mob of orks pressing in on the left flank vanished, consumed by a great fountain of dirt and flame.

  “Their artillery!” voxed another platoon leader. “The ork SPGs are burning. All of them. Junked!”

  Another sharp stutter sounded from the west, announcing death for more of the foe. The horde was being blasted apart, knots of them disappearing in fountains of dust, raining back to earth as burnt and bloody pieces. Those that weren’t killed outright by the high-explosive shells were horribly maimed by flying shrapnel. They went down screaming and roaring as tank fire continued to scythe into their ranks.

  Even those orks engaged in close-quarters combat couldn’t help themselves. The sounds of cannon fire reached them through their battle-lust. For just a second, they turned their heads towards the source, and Stromm’s fighters pressed their momentary advantage, downing scores of them, forging a gap across which they could once more employ their lasrifles and surviving heavy weapons. The Kasrkin platoons took this opportunity to press in from the right, shifting closer to Colonel Stromm, the better to protect him and react faster to his needs.

  Through the space that had opened, Stromm could see the cause of his company’s unexpected respite. There, on the western flank, a great dust cloud rose, churning up from the desert floor. At its head, ten Cadian tanks charged forward in an assault wedge. Behind them, barely visible in their dusty wake, came a line of Heracles halftracks filled to the brim with men and supply crates. It looked like an entire armoured company. For a moment, Stromm thought he was dreaming.