[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  Come on, Beans, thought Wulfe. Concentrate, boy.

  “Metzger,” said Wulfe, “drop to third.”

  “You’ve got it, sarge,” said the driver.

  “Adjust your shot, Beans,” Wulfe told the gunner. “Up a little. A little more. We’re closer now. You ready?”

  “I have the shot,” said Beans.

  “Take it!” said Wulfe.

  There was a deep boom and a rush of pungent smoke. Last Rites II reared up on her treads with the power of the recoil, and then hit the sand again with a rough bounce. The main gun’s breech slid back and dumped the spent shell casing in the brass catcher on the floor.

  Wulfe held on tight, eyes scanning the wall through his vision blocks. The massive gun-port Beans had been aiming for erupted in bright red flame and black smoke.

  Debris exploded outwards. Whooping and cheering filled the compartment.

  “That’s more like it!” shouted Wulfe. “Metzger, back up to fifth, now!”

  The engine roared. The base of the wall was no more than a kilometre away. The other companies were already slowing to blast every last gun-port they could see. Fire and smoke poured from the wall’s gun-ports and towers. Leman Russ Conquerors and Demolishers from the 8th and 9th Companies were lobbing shells up onto the parapets, too, desperate to take out the artillery pieces before they could shred the infantry vehicles that would follow in the wake of the tanks.

  Black smoke billowed up into the sky from all directions. Angry fires blazed all around.

  From the corner of his eye, Wulfe saw a light blinking on his vox-board. He hit the toggle. It was van Droi.

  “Company leader to all tanks. We’ve been ordered to peel right. It doesn’t look like the orks are coming out of their own accord after all. Colonel Vinnemann is about to kick their door in.”

  “Metzger,” said Wulfe, “take us right, parallel with the wall. Angel of the Apocalypse is moving up.”

  Vinnemann’s massive Shadowsword had so far enjoyed the cover of the dust clouds kicked up by the other machines as it rolled forward, moving into position to attack point alpha.

  One shot, thought Vinnemann. We’ll have one shot at this. We absolutely must force a breach.

  Over the vox, he head Major General Bergen say, “Are you in position, colonel?”

  “A few more seconds, sir,” Vinnemann replied. Then his driver reported over the intercom that they had position. The gunner confirmed line-of-sight. Vinnemann voxed back to Bergen. “In position now, sir. Readying to fire.”

  “We’re counting on you, Kochatkis,” said Bergen.

  Vinnemann heard Bergen notify all units on the divisional command channel, “Division to all armour, be advised. Angel of the Apocalypse is about to fire. I repeat, Angel is about to fire.”

  On the tank’s intercom, Vinnemann told Schwartz, his engineer, “Switch all power to main gun. Tell me when she’s charged.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Vamburg,” said Vinnemann, addressing his gunner. “Full blast, full duration. Let’s turn that gate to vapour.”

  “No worries, sir. Ready to light it up.”

  “Capacitors full, sir!” reported Schwartz.

  “Right, Vamburg,” said Vinnemann. “You heard him. Do it!”

  “Brace for firing!” shouted the gunner.

  A hum filled the air inside the tank, like thousands of voices joined in a single tone that rose until it drowned out all else. A charge passed through Vinnemann’s twisted body as he felt the space around him vibrate. The pain he usually felt melted away for a moment as the tone rose higher and higher. Then, suddenly, the whole bulk of the Shadowsword shook as if it had been kicked by a giant. Blazing white light burst from her cannon, lancing straight across the battlefield, striking the massive ork gate dead centre.

  The air shook with a massive thunderous crack. The iron gate glowed blindingly bright for an instant, and then seemed to vanish completely just as if it had never been there at all. The armoured wall all around it glowed white, then yellow, then orange and red. Gobs of molten metal began to rain down on the ground. Seconds later, the armour-plating had cooled again and solidified. It looked like melted wax.

  The wall was breached. The 18th Army Group had its passage, but the battle was just beginning. Beyond the hole, ork structures burned, damaged by the destructive energy that spilled through from the Shadowsword’s powerful blast.

  Vinnemann surveyed the results of his crew’s efforts and opened a vox-link to Major General Bergen. “Objective achieved, sir. Point alpha is open. The wall has been breached. But we must secure it at once.”

  Bergen, in turn, voxed the rest of his forces. “Division Command to all units. Move up and secure the breach at all costs. I repeat, secure the breach at once.”

  Through his vision blocks, Vinnemann saw scores of tanks wheel around and race for the gap he had just made.

  “Schwartz,” he called over his intercom, “all power to the main drive. We’ve got to move.”

  Already, the ork artillery had started cutting a deadly path of dirt and fire towards Angel of the Apocalypse. More and more of the ork guns swivelled to focus on her.

  “Vamburg,” said Vinnemann. “Fine shot. But get some bloody smoke up, will you? Bekker, pull us straight back as soon as you can. We’re a sitting target out here.”

  “All power back to main drive, sir,” reported Schwartz. “Ready to move her on your say.”

  “Good man,” said Vinnemann. “You heard him, Bekker. Get us out of here.”

  A trio of heavy shells struck the earth just in front of the Angel’s hull, making a tight triple-beat of explosions. The blast waves rocked her on her suspension. Vinnemann heard pieces of rock raining down on the roof of the turret. “Damned close. The next lot will hit us for sure if we don’t get the hell out of here. Move it!”

  The mighty Shadowsword rumbled and shuddered as her giant drive sprockets started turning in reverse, but she weighed three hundred and eight tonnes. Accelerating from a dead stop wasn’t exactly effortless.

  As she started rumbling backwards, Vinnemann heard Bergen hailing him again on the vox.

  “Division to Armour Command. Can you hear me, Kochatkis?”

  “Go ahead, sir,” said Vinnemann.

  “You have to pull back faster. Ork fighter-bombers are inbound from the south. They’re coming in fast.”

  “From the south, sir?”

  “Affirmative,” replied Bergen. “Throne knows where the hell they launched from, but, judging by their angle of approach, they didn’t come from behind the wall.”

  “You think the orks have long-range comms, sir?” asked Vinnemann. “Could the orks on the wall have called in an airstrike from somewhere?”

  “If they have comms with that kind of range here on Golgotha,” said Bergen, “then they’re a damned sight better off than we are. And I’ll be asking the tech-priests why. But listen, Kochatkis, your crate is the biggest thing we’re fielding out there. Expect lots of unwelcome attention. I’m sending some of our Hydras forward in support of you. We’ve already lost one of the Vulcans. They weren’t designed for dogfighting. They can’t handle anything with that kind of airspeed.”

  “Understood, sir,” said Vinnemann. “We’re pulling back as fast as we can, but the anti-air cover would be much appreciated.”

  “The Hydras will be with you in a few minutes, Kochatkis,” said Bergen. “Inform me when they reach you.”

  “I will, sir. Armour Command out.”

  Bombers from the south, thought Vinnemann. Didn’t Stromm and van Droi report a great ork host moving in that direction?

  “Move in, move in,” shouted Wulfe over the intercom.

  Metzger gunned Last Rites II forward, and they passed the melted edges of the ork wall. The sight that greeted Wulfe was of a place in turmoil. Shoddy ork buildings were everywhere, each an ugly mishmash of rusting steel poles and sheets of corrugated metal all bolted together at odd angles, looped by barbed wire and pai
nted with bright glyphs of white on red. Greenskin foot soldiers were everywhere, crowded onto raised platforms or charging in great tides over the sandy ground, blazing away at the intruding tanks with everything they had.

  Most of the weapons they carried were heavy stubbers and flame-throwers, oversized cleavers and axes, none of them much good against fifteen centimetres of heavy armour, but Wulfe knew that far more dangerous weapons were available to the Golgothan orks. His eyes scanned the roaring mobs, frantically searching for signs of the thick, tube-like weapons that had brewed up Siemens’ tank. It was an impossible task. There were too many of them, and too much movement all around.

  Wulfe didn’t have time to make a count of how many tanks from the 81st had survived to pass the breach. He had some sense that the number might be around fifty, meaning that fully half of the regiment’s armour had been lost in getting this far. As he thought this, trails of bright flame streaked out from one of the tower-like constructions and struck a tank to his left. The tank exploded in a spectacular ball of orange flame.

  “Shaped charges,” he yelled over the vox to any of the other tank commanders that might be listening. “They’ve got anti-tank weaponry!”

  The vox-chatter he heard back told him which tank had been hit.

  “Dark Majestic is down,” shouted someone. “Anti-tank fire from ten o’clock high.”

  Dark Majestic was a 3rd Company machine, one of Lieutenant Albrecht’s.

  “Beans,” called Wulfe over the intercom. “Traverse left. Ork tower. Three hundred metres. High-explosive.”

  Siegler heaved a shell into the main gun’s breech. “She’s lit.”

  Wulfe tapped Beans on the left shoulder, twice, a sign to fire at will.

  “Brace!” shouted the gunner.

  Last Rites II shook, coughing fire from her muzzle, and the ork tower disintegrated spectacularly. Bodies rained to the ground amid the storm of burning junk.

  “Eat that!” shouted Beans.

  “That’s a kill,” said Wulfe. “Nice shot, son. But don’t get cocky. Traverse right. Target ork tower, five hundred metres. High-ex. Fire at will.”

  Siegler slung another shell into place. As the traverse motors hummed, turning the main gun towards the specified target, Wulfe took the briefest second to check the rear. He saw the burning wrecks of Imperial tanks on all sides. Black bodies, too small to be orks, littered the ground, their clothes still on fire. He cursed.

  Most of the regiment’s tanks were still fighting desperately, however, holding back the seething tide of orks with booming volleys of explosive fire that killed countless hundreds with every passing moment.

  Thank the Throne, thought Wulfe, that most of the greenskin bastards only have blades and guns. With the exception of those carrying explosives, the ork infantry were largely powerless against the might of Imperial armour. Their wall-mounted cannon and artillery pieces were useless back here. The Cadian tanks were gradually pushing out from the breach, forming a wide semi-circular perimeter so that the infantry vehicles pouring in behind them had room to deploy. Wulfe saw halftracks, Chimeras and trucks skid to a halt behind him and start unloading men.

  The soldiers immediately added their fire to that of the tanks, and the death toll among the orks mounted faster and faster. Torrents of stubber and bolter fire blazed out from the Chimeras and halftracks, and the Cadians continued to gain ground.

  Keep it up, thought Wulfe. We’re beating them. By the Golden Throne, we’re beating them.

  Then he heard van Droi’s voice on the company command channel.

  Ork armour had been spotted approaching from the north along the inside of the wall. Wulfe turned his head in that direction and caught a glimpse of hulking black machines just as Siegler shouted, “She’s lit!”

  “Brace!” shouted Beans.

  The tank rocked and the turret basket filled with the sharp stink of propellant once again. Wulfe quickly checked and saw that Beans had made another direct hit. The tower collapsed sideways, spilling green bodies all around it.

  “Good work, soldier,” Wulfe told the gunner. “No time to rest, though. We’ve got enemy heavy armour coming in. Siegler, I want armour-piercing up the spout. Beans, traverse left.”

  Rumbling through the smoke, fire and dusty haze, three hulking metal monsters emerged. Wulfe gaped. The ork machines had been fashioned to look like some kind of carnivorous creature. Their insane alien creators had given them metal jaws with long steel tusks that clanged together as they gnashed. They were bristling with cannon and secondary armaments. Wulfe could only imagine the fear such machines might drive into infantrymen, but, to Last Rites II, the ork tanks were big fat targets, begging to be turned into burning scrap.

  Wulfe had every intention of obliging.

  His fellow tank commanders clearly had the same idea. As the monstrous ork armour closed, all three machines rumbling and spluttering their way along a wide avenue that ran parallel to the inside of the wall, the Leman Russ tanks loosed a stuttering volley of armour-piercing shells.

  Most of the shells struck home, and one of the ork machines stopped dead in its tracks. The greenskin crew began bailing out at speed, leaping from high hatches to land on the heads and shoulders of the ork infantry that surged around the treads of their machine. They weren’t quick enough. The magazine inside the tank detonated seconds later, and both the escaping crew and the orks on which they had dropped were roasted to death in a massive rush of red fire.

  Wulfe heard Captain Immrich broadcasting on the regimental channel.

  “Good kill, armour,” he said. “But the other two aren’t taking it very well.”

  The other monstrosities brought all their cannon to bear on the Leman Russ machines closest to them and unleashed a ground-shaking fusillade of high-explosive shells. Two Imperial tanks — one a Conqueror, the other a Destroyer — erupted into fire almost simultaneously. The Destroyer’s onboard plasma-containment field lost integrity almost immediately. It exploded with a spectacular and lethal burst of energy that turned a dozen Cadian infantrymen nearby into piles of ash.

  Wulfe yelled out in protest as he watched. He heard Captain Immrich’s voice on the vox.

  “Armour down,” the man was yelling. “I want those bloody abominations taken out, now! That’s an order!”

  Wulfe wondered who the dead tank crews were. There hadn’t been any chance to read the names on their crates before they were brewed up. There would be time to find out after the battle, if he lived through it. For some men, the absence of friends would become brutally, painfully apparent after the fighting was done. Thinking of this, he looked around for Viess and Holtz. Were they still alive? Still fighting?

  They were. Old Smashbones was blasting away at a sturdy-looking ork tower on the far right. Steelhearted II was standing parallel with van Droi’s tank, its turret slowly turning to face the ork armour.

  Wulfe realised that his own crate had a clear line-of-sight on the right-hand target.

  “Beans,” he said, “target the one on the right. See that plate of armour just right of the main gun’s mantlet? The one with the glyph?”

  “The skull-looking thing?” said Beans. “Yeah, I see it.”

  “There’s a damned good chance that armour is protecting the gunner’s station. If we can put one through it…”

  Beans didn’t answer. He hit the traverse pedal, already busy lining up the main gun. Electric motors hummed as he adjusted elevation. He had to get it right. A miss might very well mean more Cadian deaths.

  “Lit,” said Siegler.

  Beans was just about to call out Brace! when the whole tank was suddenly shunted backwards about three metres. Wulfe shook his head, trying to lose the ringing sound in his ears. They had been hit right on the front armour, the glacis plate.

  “Damn,” spat Wulfe, simultaneously checking himself for injuries. “Metzger, you all right?”

  “More armour approaching from front-right, sarge,” reported the driver. “They look
like looted Leman Russ.”

  “Try to hit their treads with the lascannon,” ordered Wulfe. “Buy us some time.”

  The vox was filled with reports of the new machines’ approach. Beans was already reacquiring his original target. His crosshairs were quickly re-centred on the skull-glyph that decorated the multi-cannoned monster to the north.

  “I have it, sarge,” he said.

  “Take the shot,” said Wulfe.

  “Brace!” called Beans, and stamped on the floor trigger.

  The shot hit the ork machine exactly where it was supposed to, and Beans let out a whoop of joy, but there was no explosion, no sudden burst of flame, just a neat black hole the size of a grapefruit right in the centre of the skull-glyph’s forehead. The ork tank’s turret stopped moving. It stopped firing, too.

  “That’s a kill,” said Wulfe, slapping Beans on the back. Quickly, he turned his attention to the machines Metzger had reported. Bright spears of lascannon fire were blazing out from Last Rites II’s hull-mounted weapon. The Cadian tanks on either side had also turned their attention to the newcomers, while others blasted the last monster in the avenue to the north, reducing it to twisted, blazing metal.

  Wulfe was impressed. Beans was doing well. That last kill had been a fine shot. His men were functioning as a unit. This was the way it was supposed to be. Nothing else weighed on his mind but the heat of battle and the drive to win. No ghosts. No gangers. He felt less burdened than he had in a long time.

  One of the orks’ looted Leman Russ tanks soaked up a lascannon blast and lurched forward, coughing flame from its main gun. Dirt and smoke exploded into the air just a few metres to the right of Wulfe’s machine.

  “Gunner, traverse right,” Wulfe barked over the intercom. “Ork armour, eight hundred metres and closing. Armour-piercing. Fire at will!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Say again, Eagle Three,” said Bergen into the mouthpiece of his vox-set. “Say again.”

  “Eagle Three to Command,” said the sharp, high voice of the female pilot. “Eagles One, Two and Four are down. Where the hell is that Hydra support? I can’t outrun the damned ork jets. And I can’t keep them off the Angel on my own.”