The cavalry chasing the stragglers now found themselves being assailed by rocks, clubs and spears hurled by the ork line. Carson saw a single horse stumble and toss its rider. The rest of his squadron instantly broke off their pursuit and circled back, protecting their fellow with fire from their pistols while he remounted, before they all withdrew together. It was a tiny victory for the orks, but it was enough to provoke bellows of mocking hoots and chanting directed at the horsemen’s fast-retreating backs.
‘Finally, Brooce,’ Arbulaster commented, standing in the open hatch of the Salamander, ‘the orks are showin’ a bit of backbone.’
‘About time, colonel.’
‘Damn right. Not going to do them any good, though,’ he chuckled. ‘Soon as Ledbetter gets himself out of there, our ill-tuned Drum will have a field day.’ Arbulaster adjusted the focus on his monocular a fraction. ‘Vox the captain. Tell him to pick his targets. Break ’em as quick as he can, hammer straight through. We’re not stopping for a few orks today.’
‘Bloody idiots,’ Mouse exclaimed. ‘Don’t they clock what those tank cannon are gonna do to ’em?’
‘Not if they’ve never seen tanks before,’ Blanks said.
‘They’re gonna get murdered,’ Mouse said, with no small degree of relish at the prospect of a swift, crushing victory that he would not even have to fight in. Now the armoured company had gone forwards, the light companies had taken its place in the vanguard. Second platoon had an excellent view of the tanks churning over the moss-covered ground towards the orks on the slope, but Blanks had noticed something wrong.
‘Look at that!’ Blanks pointed. ‘The cavalry!’
Arbulaster had seen it as well. Ledbetter was not leading the cavalry back, they were reforming to charge.
‘Blessed Marguerite! Is every single one of my officers mad?’ He whipped the monocular away and grasped his vox-officer. ‘Get me Captain Ledbetter now!’
The vox-officer tried. ‘Sir, there’s no reply, sir. Maybe it’s the interference…’
‘My copper-bottomed arse, it is. I can see him from here! Get him! Get anyone to stop that charge!’
But the vox-officer of Ledbetter’s command squad did not respond. Arbulaster could only watch, half-incoherent with rage, half-gripped with the irrational fear that these orks, after killing the cavalry, would somehow drive the rest of the column back and be the end of him.
Ledbetter’s cavalry were going to die. The slope began gently but then skewed upwards. No horse would be able to climb it straight; the charge would founder and then the ork mobs would jump down amongst them and tear them apart. Yet none of this seemed to deter the steady lines of grey and gold horsemen on their steeds. They spurred their mounts quickly from the trot to the canter to the gallop with little delay, their explosive lances held firmly upright, ready to let their points drop at the last moment. They hit the base of the slope and began to climb, the horses slowing despite their riders’ urging. The line of orks now had no fear for they too instinctively saw how the attack would stall. But then another rider entered the scene, and his mount was far more formidable.
‘Don’t you ever! Don’t you ever!’ Drum called, hunched down on the back of his metal monster, as its thundering engine powered it forwards and it slewed into the path of the charge. For a moment, Drum’s crazy stunt worked and the horsemen began to slow. But then the cavalry’s bugle sounded again and booted heels dug into horses’ flanks. Ledbetter’s veterans knew how to deal with an unexpected obstacle in their path. The cavalry ranks split, going left and right to flow around the tank before them. Their orders were clear, they knew this might be their last chance at glory, and they were not stopping for anything.
Drum sprang to his feet on the tank’s hull, his cape flowing in the wind and kicked the turret twice.
‘Sing for me, my beauty. Sing!’ he shouted and his battle cannon fired at the cavalry’s front rank.
The shell was aimed short, but that barely lessened the impact. The case of the shell exploded in the face of the horsemen and, in an instant, three of them, man and horse together, were little more than bloodied ruins that tumbled and somersaulted to the ground. The mounts of those either side stumbled and fell, tossing their riders, already dying from the overheated shell fragments that had struck them.
The cavalry’s horses were desensitised to the sounds of war, but nothing could have kept them calm in the face of such a thunderclap and they broke their gallop, whinnied and reared in alarm at the carnage, the men upon them no less stunned at what had happened. Even those horsemen distant from where the cannon had struck gaped in astonishment, then outrage, and pulled their horses up.
The cavalry’s charge was over, the lancers wheeled away to the side or halted in shock. Unmoved at the destruction he had caused, Drum braced himself on his tank’s turret as it turned upon the orks above him, delightedly hooting at the spectacle he had given them. They did not realise that that was just a taste of what was about to happen to them. Drum saw the rest of his command move into line beside him, drawing into close range. He gave the signal and his tank rocked savagely as it and the other nine war engines of the armoured company fired. He did not wait to see the results. Instead, he thumbed the control for the vox-amps upon his hull and called out:
‘On! On! On!’
The armoured company struck the base of the hill and their tanks appeared to rear up like giant metal mounts in order to climb. The orks’ javelins and other thrown weapons clattered harmlessly off their thick armour. As soon as the tanks’ front ends landed, their battle cannon fired. At such short range, they could barely miss and huge chunks were blown out of the ork warband. As the cannons fired, the heavy bolters mounted in the tanks’ hulls opened up as well, firing explosive bolts at the crumbling ork line. Surprised by these strange weapons, the orks followed their instincts and charged at the tanks and struck them with their clubs and cleavers. The tank drivers barely noticed the slight loss of grip as the ork warriors tripped or were caught beneath their tracks.
Their victory was already, literally, crushing. But as the tanks moved up, the legendary orkish endurance kicked in. Those who appeared dead or crumpled into the earth began to pick themselves up and try to jump on the tanks from behind. The only force who could take the crater, as well, was the infantry. Carson’s company was the closest and they hurried to keep in contact with the tanks. For all the destruction caused, the survivors were maddened nearly to a frenzy, and so Carson’s men had to take them down hard.
‘On! On! On!’ Carson shouted to his men as they stumbled up towards the crater rim. He fired his pistol at one of the ork warriors clinging onto the outside of a Leman Russ and trying to batter its way through the armour of its hull with a heavy stone. His shot hit the creature in its side, but it ignored it, entirely focused on the slight dent it was making in the tank’s side. Carson paused for a split second to aim and then incinerated the side of its head with his next shot. He cursed silently at his slip; he could not afford to be distracted now, here, in the middle of the fight. He had to get his men through this first and then he could deal with Reeve.
‘Stay in close, you dogs!’ Red lambasted the men again. His face was more crimson than ever, having to both shout and run, but he had to keep up with the charging tank beside them. The whole company did. It was the only way this haphazard assault would succeed.
Carson fired a shot, killed another enemy, then spun his pistol back into his holster. In battle, he tried to keep his hands free as much as he could. It was an old habit, one he had picked up after Red had dragged him from that foxhole on Torrans in his very first battle. He was fast enough that, if he needed his gun, it would be in his grasp in an instant; but if he kept hold of it he thought like a trooper again, worried only for his own position, concerned only for his next shot. Without it, he could see the whole battle. Without it, he thought like an officer. He had been a third lieutenant ba
ck on Torrans, Red a regular sergeant. He could never have believed they would survive this long.
Stanhope clambered up the slope, sweating like a pig. It was not the exertion, it was far worse. He instinctively touched the hollowed out hilt of his sword. He had discovered it was empty that morning. He was out. He had thought back, trying to sift the real memories from the haze of the previous night, but he only checked it when he used it, and using it blotted out the memories before. That was the point of it after all, to dull the mind and live solely in the present.
He struggled to piece it together. It had been after Carson had collapsed, he remembered that, and he remembered the explanation as well. He remembered his hand going to the hilt then… Had there only been one left then? Had he taken more in those final few hours of the night? The tiny pocket in the lining of his jacket was empty as well, as was the cut in his cuffs. How could he have taken them all?
Whatever the cause was, he was stuck with the outcome. It had been long enough since any regiment had allowed him into full battle, and now he was going in completely cold. The sweating was not even the physical withdrawal; it was far too soon for that. It was just the knowledge that he would be without until they returned to Dova. Forget the battle, that knowledge alone terrified him enough.
It made everything harder. The slope was steeper, his lasgun heavier, the fabric of his uniform rougher against his skin. The air bit harder in his lungs, and when he blinked the lids scraped over his eyes.
He crested the hill and before him there lay the rok. He had seen the images that Zdzisław had provided for them at the cost of his love and his life, but plans and layouts were nothing in comparison to the sight before him.
The crater, which appeared a mere pockmark upon the surface of Tswaing from above, swept in a smooth curve a kilometre either side of the impact point. At the centre itself, the orks had dug down. Driven by Emperor only knew what impulse, they had excavated a massive pit, until, digging deeper and deeper, they had reached the rok that had failed to brake in time. The dirt they shifted had been dropped in a heap of spoil. That first heap had mounted higher and higher, and, as they had tunnelled deeper, they were forced to shift the spoil to four more mounds, one roughly in each direction of the compass.
The top of each mound had been made into a rudimentary fortress. They were littered with collections of crude log walls and xenos icon-towers. There was little to distinguish between them, but Stanhope found his mind automatically supplying the objective codes that the colonel had assigned with his usual inimitable style: Chard and Drumhead, the two furthest forts on the far side of the crater; Bitterleaf, the largest spoil-heap right on the edge of the pit; Endive behind it, overlooking Bitterleaf’s right, and the closest and smallest, to Bitterleaf’s left, appropriately labelled Acorn. It was there that his company would attack.
That morning, while the beards cleared the final stretch of road and the men sat idle, chatting over tanna, Stanhope had been one of the senior officers who had stuffed themselves into the cramped compartment of the command Salamander to hear Arbulaster’s plan of attack.
The fortifications on top of the spoil-heaps were the key to the rok, he had said. If the 11th could take them and hold them, then Rosa’s artillery could call down its barrages on any part of the crater with pinpoint accuracy. Conversely, if they were not taken, the regiment would have to fight its way through the cluttered dirt paths of the ork settlement with its flanks constantly endangered. The spoil-forts had to be taken, sooner or later, and in his mind there was never any doubt that it must be sooner. He knew that by the time they crossed the fungus jungle they would have only half a day to defeat the rok’s defenders so utterly as to make counter-attack impossible. If they did not, then the regiment would have to endure yet another night assault, and this one with the regiment right in the enemy’s heart.
Arbulaster’s plan, therefore, was straightforward, fast and brutal. It was in the best traditions of the Brimlock Dragoons, or at least that was what Ledbetter had announced as the details were unveiled.
Noon was long past, but the sun was still high in the sky. Not that the orks inhabiting the crater knew what the sun was. None of them had ever even seen it. All they knew was that the thick cloud permanently over their heads sometimes filled with a grey light and sometimes didn’t. Theirs had been a chaotic morning. The warboss had led away two thousand of their warriors the day before to kill this new group of pink-skinned aliens who were marching towards their domain. The warboss had yet to return, though some of the warriors had reappeared. The warboss’s second had had them brought to him, and they told him of the attack, of the sudden burning light that had sprung from the aliens’ walls, the scramble over the ditch that blocked their path and the death they found there, and finally the fire from the sky that had erupted all around them.
The warboss’s second was confused; the aliens still lived and the warboss had not returned. This was not victory. Defeat was not something that he understood. The Stone Smashas did not suffer defeat; defeat was what they inflicted on the other ork tribes that eked out a primitive existence beyond the crater. The Stone Smashas knew only victory, which was why it was they who controlled the crater and the riches they had unearthed from the pit.
Given a day, the baser instincts of the warboss’s second would have reasserted themselves. He would have realised that while a single ork still lived there could be no defeat, only a continuation of the fight. He would have realised that the warboss was dead, killed in the first Valkyrie attack upon the cannon, and would smack the heads of his challengers together, take control of the Stone Smashas and lead them against the aliens once more. Given a day. That day, however, was a luxury that Arbulaster did not allow.
Just as with their fellows who’d been surprised in the fungal plain, the first warning many of the orks had was the rumble of Imperial engines. They stopped in the middle of their daily tasks and looked up to the crater rim and saw the outlines of the Brimlock tanks emerge over the crest.
For many armies, many species, that would have been the end. Their units were dispersed across the crater and beyond. Their leader was missing and no one had stepped in to replace him. They were surprised, unprepared, and under attack by metal beasts that none of them had ever encountered before. Some armies would have broken and run, others would have withdrawn to their last defences in confusion looking for their units, looking for their commanders, looking for some kind of instruction. Orks being orks, however, took hold of their weapons, looked to the largest warrior in their midst to lead them, and then followed their instincts: they charged.
Chapter Sixteen
Impact Crater, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 18
‘First rank, fire! Second rank, fire!’ The orders rolled out again, timed to perfection from long experience. Carson’s men held a tight line, each man no more than a pace away from his fellow beside him. Van Am and her Voorjer scouts did the same, tacking onto the end of the line and picking their shots in their own time. The orks had little to throw back at them and so there was no need to seek cover. The troopers knew it was far better to stay close to their comrades and concentrate their fire. The tank beside them thundered as it fired its main cannon. Down the slope, a knot of orks disappeared in a bloody cloud of spores kicked up by the shell’s explosion.
The cloud dispersed and the orks’ latest push against them dissipated. Carson was not yet concerned. This first wave of tiny, ragtag bands was little threat while his men held the crater rim. Each one would emerge from the edge of the settlement on the slope below, bellow, stomp and roar. Then they would try to climb up to reach their enemies and the Brimlock fire would send them tumbling back down again.
Gradually, though, the orks were learning. The small groups stopped trying to rush up the slope on their own. Instead they waited for more and more of their fellows to join them before beginning another attack. Each assault left ork bodies in the dirt
, yet each assault was stronger than the last. That was the way it always was with orks, Carson knew; if they did not win at once they simply wore you down, keeping you under continual pressure, exhausting ammunition, fuel and men. All you could do was pray that when their final assault came you still had the strength to withstand it.
The shouts and calls of the orks echoed up to the soldiers. More warriors had filtered in from the rest of the settlement and they were once more psyching themselves up to throw themselves headlong into the Brimlock guns. Then, from somewhere beside Carson, a single voice began to sing. For once it was not Captain Drum, rather it was Private Heal. He began to sing an ancient song of his home, from one of the far-flung continents of Brimlock. It told of war, of victory, of defiance and death; of ordinary men facing the extraordinary. Heal finished the first stanza and was about to launch into the second when another voice rose above his:
‘Private Heal! Shut your gob, you appalling shocker! We fight in silence until told otherwise. You understand me?’
‘Yes, colour!’
‘Shut it!’
The men of Brimlock needed no war-cries to scare the enemy; they needed no shouted oaths to bolster their courage. They were not animals or xenos filth. They fought as professionals, in disciplined silence, punctuated only by the crisp commands of their officers. When their wild and wailing foes charged they found themselves facing a grey line as still as death, and that shook them all the more.
As if in concurrence, another tank commander chanced a shot at long-distance into a cluster of orks, and their own belligerent hooting transformed into cries of alarm. It would delay them a few minutes more.
Carson looked behind him, down the slope they had climbed. Laid out below he could see the shape of the attack forming. On the column’s right, Brooce and Deverril’s companies were embarked in their Chimera transports and had turned sharply at the base of the crater. While the orks’ attention was focused on the troopers at the rim, these mechanised dragoon companies were flanked almost a quarter of the way around the crater’s circumference in order to strike for Endive, hoping to catch it undefended. In the centre, Arbulaster was massing three companies for the main attack on Bitterleaf. Fergus and Gomery’s companies were just breaking ranks to start their climb, clambering over the lines of dead orks that Drum’s tanks had crushed. Ahead of them, Arbulaster had given command of the main assault to Roussell, and Carson could see the distinctive, leonine major struggling up the slope at the head of his troops.
Imperial Glory Page 18