[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  Lenck’s shirt had been tied around his narrow waist while he rested, but now he pulled it up, shrugging into the sleeves and buttoning it over his chest. His dog tags clinked together as he did so. “I taught them a new game while we were still in the Empyrean, sir. S’called… er… Ship-shape. Yeah, that’s the one. Isn’t that right, lads? It’s a good game is Ship-shape. I’ll admit, though, sergeant, it does look a lot like Heretic to the untrained eye. I can understand you figuring one for the other.”

  Wulfe glared. “Really, Lenck? Because I could have sworn I heard Riesmann say something about the heretic having to pay up. But let’s just say I believe you. What do you have to say about this!” For the second time, he raised the dubious lho-stick.

  “Ah, now that one’s not down to me, sergeant,” said Lenck amiably. “No. That there was given to us by one of Colonel Stromm’s lot. I thought there was something funny about it, to be honest. Didn’t I say so, lads? Not like a bloody footslogger to go sharing his sticks with us tankers, is it, sergeant? Suspicious bit of generosity, that. I told them not to smoke it, but it wasn’t an order or anything.”

  “And did this mysterious footslogger give you his name? Or any more of his smokes? Well?”

  Lenck shook his head, unblinking, never breaking eye contact with his squadron leader. “Just the one, sergeant. Honest. Look, you can have it if you want. Not my business if you like a little smoke now and then.”

  He watched Wulfe’s face change colour and knew he was stepping dangerously close to the line, but he had to know how far he could push things now that this man, who clearly hated him, owed him his life.

  Wulfe dropped the lho-stick and ground it into the sand with his boot.

  Private Riesmann winced miserably.

  Wulfe stepped in close to Lenck and, in hushed tones, said, “You thought about it, didn’t you, corporal? Earlier today?”

  “Thought about what, sergeant?” Lenck replied innocently.

  “Don’t play the fool. I saw it in your eyes after you killed that ork. Thought about putting a few rounds in me, didn’t you? Dangerous weapons, heavy stubbers. They kick like an auroch. Not hard for a few rounds to go wide in the heat of battle. Who knows? The others might have believed you.”

  Lenck blinked, feigning a look of horror. Matching his voice to the low level of the sergeant’s, he said, “You’re off your damned nut, Wulfe. I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve had it in for me since the day I joined this regiment. Damned if I know why. An inferiority complex, maybe? The only thing I shot today was orks, a lot of them. But, if you want to tell me what your bloody problem is, I’m all ears. If not…”

  Wulfe stepped back, fists clenched, and Lenck readied himself to dodge a punch, but the growling sergeant didn’t swing. Instead, he said one word. “Dunst.”

  “What?” asked Lenck.

  “Does the name Dunst mean anything to you, corporal? Victor Dunst.”

  The sergeant was clearly expecting some kind of reaction, but the name meant absolutely nothing to Lenck. He shrugged and said, “Should it?”

  Wulfe stared back. After a moment, the cold rage in his eyes seemed to dim, and he said, “No, I suppose not. Throne, Dunst would be twice your age by now.”

  Lenck stared back. This bastard has a screw loose, he thought. Rattling around inside a tank for so long has damaged the man’s brain. He’s no better than that idiot loader of his.

  “I’ll forget what I saw here just this once,” said Wulfe, “because of what happened today. But now we’re square. Got it? You and your men had better shape the hell up, Lenck. Maybe life was a bit more relaxed in the frakking reserves, but let me tell you something about Gossefried’s Gunheads. We do our duty. We work for our chops. Start toeing the line or, Throne help me, I’ll make it my personal mission to help you regret it.”

  The sergeant kept his eyes locked with Lenck’s, as if daring him to say something smart, but, if Wulfe had been hoping to see fear in them, he was out of luck. Lenck stared back with a barely suppressed grin. “You’re an example to us all, sergeant. Gentlemen,” he called to his crew. “Thank the sergeant for putting you straight and saving you from the potential dangerous of suspicious gifts and unsanctioned card games.”

  As one and without any trace of sincerity, Lenck’s crew shouted, “Thank you, Sergeant Wulfe!”

  Wulfe’s gaze didn’t shift. “And you, corporal?” he asked.

  “Me, sergeant?” said Lenck, overplaying the innocent. “I was asleep on the tank. I wasn’t playing cards, and I’ve never smoked a lho-stick in my life, laced or otherwise. That’s the Emperor’s own truth, I swear.”

  Wulfe sneered, but he apparently had nothing more to say. He turned and stalked off, fists still clenched at his side.

  Lenck watched the sergeant’s back receding for a moment, wondering who in the warp this Victor Dunst was, and thinking that it might be useful to find out.

  He drew a lho-stick from the breast pocket of his shirt and flipped it into the air, catching it between his lips. Then he pulled a lighter from another pocket, lit the end of his smoke, and drew in a deep, pungent lungful.

  “Have a nice day, Sergeant Arsehole,” he said and turned to join the next hand of cards.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The low clouds overhead flickered like broken lamps, such was the intensity of the fighting outside the walls of Karavassa.

  “Watch those gullies to the south-east,” yelled Bergen into the tiny microphone of his vox-bead. “Don’t let them flank those armour companies on the right!”

  Basilisk mobile artillery pieces boomed all around his Chimera APC, vomiting clouds of black smoke into the air with every ear-splitting shot. Through his field glasses, the major general watched great spouts of fire and sand burst upwards wherever the massive shells struck. Currently, they were wreaking terrible destruction on the ork foot soldiers.

  The 10th Armoured Division had reached the rocky hills around the former Imperial outpost an hour after dawn. It was the eleventh day since planetfall, and Bergen’s forces were running two whole days behind General deViers’ demanding mission schedule. The conditions on Golgotha were beyond frustrating. Hour after hour, his forces had been forced to interrupt their journey eastward to facilitate repairs. The damned dust was playing havoc with the Imperial machines. It wasn’t doing the men much good either. Dozens were sick. Bergen had developed a scratchy cough himself, and his spit was tinged with red.

  When 10th Division had left Hadron base six days ago, the major general had been unsettled by the last-minute addition of Tech-Adept Armadron among their number. To his knowledge, no one in the 18th Army Group had petitioned the Adeptus Mechanicus for such an honour. Bergen took it as another indicator of the hidden agenda he was convinced they were following. So far, nothing Armadron had said in their limited conversations had managed to convince him otherwise. The tech-priest insisted that his superior had ordered him to accompany Bergen’s division purely out of concern for their success. Groxshit. The Machine Cult had manoeuvred Imperial forces here, and sooner or later, Bergen intended to find out why. Even so, Bergen had cause to be glad of Armadron’s attendance. Despite his unsettling presence, the tech-adept had proved to be a particular asset. He was a member of the priesthood’s technicus arm and, working closely with senior enginseer Aurien, he had done much to keep the tank columns moving. Without his tireless efforts and expertise, Bergen doubted his division would have made it here for many more days yet. That would really have given old deViers something to rage about.

  Despite being fraught with problems, the journey here was still the easy part. Now that they had engaged the orks — whole regiments rushing forward to clash with them as they poured from the outpost’s towering iron gates — the damned dust was proving just as problematic in battle as it had been on the move. Since the fighting had begun, a number of Colonel Vinnemann’s tanks had been forced to fight from static positions, immobilised early in the assault by engine stalls. The fines penetrated ev
erything. If the brave crews of the Atlas recovery tanks hadn’t risked enemy fire to pull those tanks out, the crews would have died where they sat.

  Squinting through his magnoculars, Bergen saw greenskin reinforcements pushing and jostling in their eagerness to join the fray.

  “Get some fire on the main gates,” he voxed to his artillery commander. “Hit them while they’re bunched up. But don’t damage the superstructure! Remember, we need to take the outpost intact.”

  His division had been unable to surprise the orks, but then, he hadn’t really expected to. The thick sandstone watchtowers of Karavassa had a commanding view from their seat on the basalt bluff up ahead. It wasn’t the towers that had raised the alarm first, however. His armour columns had been sighted when they were still about thirty kilometres out from the target. Ork bike patrols had been roaming the area, their powerful headlamps throwing broad cones of light out into the darkness. Some of these patrols had roared out from between high dunes and almost run into the leading Imperial machines. A sudden stutter of gunfire had lit the sands as both sides leapt into action. The bikes were noisy, oversized things with huge wheels and more growling exhaust pipes than they could possibly have needed, but they were certainly fast. Their riders had shown surprising sense for orks, quickly turning tail and racing back the way they had come to alert the rest of the horde. Vinnemann’s tanks had managed to take out most of them as they showed their backs, but a few had gotten away.

  As the division had closed on the occupied outpost, with the cloud-smothered sunrise lending the scene a hellish red glow, Bergen had looked out from his cupola to see a huge ork force: a horde of greenskin infantry, numbering in the thousands, supported by tanks, artillery, light armour, and a good number of those ridiculous lumbering contraptions that the orks so loved to build. These dreadnoughts looked like oversized red buckets on piston legs. Their wicked arms flailed to and fro, blades whirring, claws clashing, eager to begin the bloodshed. They were covered in other weapons, too: flamers, rocket launchers, heavy stubbers and anything else that could be bolted to them. They were utterly lethal to infantry, but they were no match for Imperial tanks. Vinnemann’s crews had already gunned down at least thirty of them at long range, turning them to burning scrap that rained down on the heads of the orks around them.

  “Infantry, keep up the advance!” Bergen commanded. “Colonel Vinnemann, have three of your companies move forward in support of the infantry on the left flank. Send the rest straight up the middle. We need to knock out their armour support to give our boys a fighting chance. We have to drive a wedge into them.”

  Bergen’s command Chimera, Pride of Caedus, had taken up position on a spur of rock just a few kilometres southwest of the outpost’s walls. Even sitting hull down, it was a risky place to perch. Had he been the defender instead of the attacker, he would have put some artillery on the spur, sure that the enemy commander would have chosen this spot from which to oversee his forces. Did such things occur to ork leaders? Bergen didn’t know, but his need for a good view of the battlefield overrode his concern.

  A series of rippling explosions north-east of his position caused him to turn. One of Marrenburg’s mechanised infantry companies, ten Chimeras each carrying a squad of hardened infantrymen, was trying to press forward in support of the troopers on foot. But a phalanx of ork tanks — looted Imperial machines from the last war, disfigured almost beyond recognition by the addition of spikes and strange armaments — had broken free from their engagement with a company of Vinnemann’s Leman Russ and were speeding towards the Chimeras with cannons blazing.

  Bergen saw two of the Chimeras struck head on, one of them hit so hard that it flipped onto its back. He saw the rear hatch open. Dizzy men began stumbling out, desperate to be away from the burning machine before its ammunition and fuel stores exploded. Most were injured. They fell. Their shaking legs wouldn’t carry them. They scrambled desperately to get up again.

  Too late. With a great boom and a mushrooming of fire and smoke, the Chimera lifted into the air. Only two of the troopers managed to escape the blast. Bergen cursed and turned his eyes from the sprawled, burning figures that hadn’t.

  The other Chimera was luckier. The cockpit was aflame, the driver certainly dead, but the hatch at the back had been thrown wide, and the soldiers within were pouring out, lasguns up and ready. Bergen knew those lasguns wouldn’t do a damned thing against the ork machines.

  He was about to vox Vinnemann for support when a trio of Leman Russ tanks crested a rise just north of the burning Chimeras. They traversed their turrets right, in unison, and blasted the ork tanks at mid-range. One of the ork machines was hit dead centre. The Russ’ armour-piercing round must have punctured the enemy tank’s magazine, because Bergen saw it explode spectacularly, the entire turret spinning into the air on a pillar of glaring orange flame.

  The other two ork machines were still closing on the no-longer-mechanised infantry. The soldiers fired on them in tight, ordered volleys, but it was futile. Las-bolts smacked harmlessly against thick red armour. A second later, however, the three Leman Russ fired again. The ork machines were struck hard, skidding sideways on their treads before halting. Greenskins started to bail out, some of them already howling as flames licked their leathery brown flesh. The Cadian infantrymen moved straight in, pouring las-fire onto the ork crews, cutting them down, blazing away on full charge until there was little left but smoking black hunks of meat.

  “Armour Command to Division,” said a voice on the vox. “Armour to Division. Please respond.” It was Colonel Vinnemann.

  “I read you, Armour,” said Bergen. “Go ahead.”

  “I have a visual on enemy light vehicles breaking left to strafe our forward lines. Armour cannot engage. I repeat, armour cannot engage. We have hostile tanks front and right, and we’re taking heavy fire from artillery located inside the base.”

  Bergen cursed. “Understood, Armour. Leave it to me. Division out.”

  He panned his glasses right until he found the machines in question. There were ten of them: ork war-buggies bristling with heavy stubbers, rocket launchers and more. They were roaring straight towards the Cadian assault line. The men were exposed, busy trying to push the hordes of ork infantry back. They would be slaughtered under the concentrated fire of the buggies unless…

  “Division to Recon Two,” Bergen voxed. “Come in please.”

  “Recon Two reading you loud and clear, sir. Go ahead.”

  “Ork light armour advancing on our infantry at speed. Look to your two. Those lads need a little Sentinel support, wouldn’t you say?”

  The man on the other end of the vox was Captain Munzer. Bergen could picture the grin on the man’s scar-twisted face as he replied, “Sentinel’s moving to intercept, sir. We’ll light the bastards up. Enjoy the show.”

  Seconds later, Bergen saw Munzer’s bipedal machines lope out from behind a rocky hill to the left and open fire. Each of the Cadian Sentinels sported an autocannon, ideal for ripping right through their current targets. Ork bodies were torn apart in the deadly hail. Fuel tanks ignited and the speeding buggies flipped and spun, rolling end over end, spilling the xenos filth onboard.

  He couldn’t hear them, but Bergen could see the infantry cheering the Sentinel pilots. The cheers stopped dead when five of the Sentinels vanished suddenly in a great ball of flame. A row of ugly black machines had emerged from Karavassa to join the fray. More ork artillery! The surviving Sentinels immediately turned to identify their attackers, but the range was far too great to strike back. Over the vox, Bergen heard Captain Munzer ordering his walkers to scatter so they wouldn’t provide such an opportune target again.

  “Command to Armour,” voxed Bergen urgently, “be advised, we have additional ork artillery pushing out from the main gates. What’s your status?”

  My status, thought Colonel Kochatkis Vinnemann, is that my back is bloody killing me.

  He cursed his own stupidity. As he and his men had neared the outpos
t, completely preoccupied with the coming battle, he had neglected to take the vital medication that counteracted his body’s immune system. It had been years since the implant surgery, but his body still steadfastly refused to accept the augmetic spine. He needed large, regular doses of immunosuppressants and pain mediators in order to function at his best. But there wasn’t time to stop and take them now.

  “Division, we are still engaged with hostile tanks. Ninth company is down to half strength. Fourth and Fifth companies have taken multiple losses. We’re trying to push in, to flank the buggers on the right, sir, but the damned artillery… I’ll ask one more time, sir, will you not put some Basilisk fire down behind those walls? It would make one hell of a difference.”

  “That’s a negative, colonel,” Bergen answered with obvious regret. “The objective must be taken intact. We have enemy artillery fire from just outside the main gates. I need one of your companies to knock it out. I know you’re up against it, colonel. It’s damned messy out there. But do what you can.”

  By the blasted Eye, cursed Vinnemann. “Understood, Division. We’re on it. Armour, out.”

  He tapped a button on his headset, switching from vox to tank intercom.

  “Listen up,” he told his crew. “Our troops are hurting out there. Not just our tankers, but Marrenburg’s lot, Graves’ lot. So it looks like the Angel gets to enter the fray after all.”

  This announcement was met with resounding cheers from his crew. To some extent, Vinnemann’s tank, Angel of the Apocalypse, was a victim of her own superb design. She was a Shadowsword super-heavy tank, ancient and deadly, but her Volcano cannon, with its nine-metre barrel, had originally been designed for felling traitor Titans and the like. She was far too specialised to warrant being fielded in most conventional battles, including this one.

  Today, though, she would get to show what she could do.