Imperial Glory

by Richard Williams

  Carson mentally urged him on. The sooner he arrived to hold the rim, the sooner Carson could redeploy to assault his company’s objective: Acorn. The sooner they could launch their assault, the fewer orks they would have to deal with and the faster Carson could capture it. The faster Carson could capture Acorn, the more time he would have to pursue his other, personal, objective.

  Roussell finally approached the crest. He looked less than content, and it was not merely physical exertion or the sight of the Voorjer woman standing a few paces away from Carson that was souring his mood. The colonel was taking no chances with the dogmatic major and had attached himself to Roussell’s personal squad for the assault upon Bitterleaf.

  Roussell could not object – it was supposed to be an honour after all – but all of the officer corps recognised it for what it was. A slap in the face. An indictment of his failure to lead during the raid the night before. A removal from the decision-making process.

  In a way, this was exactly what Roussell had wished for; no matter what transpired in the battle, no liability would be placed upon him. The heroics of his early career would survive untarnished by any reversal in this final battle, and if he survived, his place in the colour-guard was secure. However, Carson could see that there was just enough pride left in Roussell for him to resent his relegation.

  The only resentment that Carson had felt as the colonel announced that particular deployment this morning was that he’d had to hide his elation. Where the colonels went, so too did their commissars. Later on, Carson wanted no one to recall any reaction from him at the opportunity the colonel had given him to kill Reeve.

  ‘Major,’ Carson announced briskly over the renewed sound of las-fire from his men.

  Roussell halted, out of breath and unable to speak as his men moved past him and into position. He glowered at the second lieutenant standing in front of him, hands clasped calmly behind his back.

  ‘I transfer defence of this position to you, sir, as per the execution of the colonel’s battle-plan,’ Carson said, throwing in a salute to annoy him further. ‘The crest is yours.’

  Roussell opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he said was lost beneath another booming shot from the tank’s battle cannon. Carson smiled thinly at Roussell’s frustration and then he and Van Am turned sharply away. He saw that the ork attack had been broken again. That was the shortest yet; obviously they had decided that a frontal assault was not for them. Carson could see the growing mass of orks still amongst the settlement buildings stretching to either side as their instincts told them to strike the flanks. And on one of those flanks stood Acorn. Now it was to be a race.

  ‘Company!’ he called. ‘Advance Quick! On me!’

  Stanhope’s sweating had nothing to do with terror now, it was pure exertion. All his strength was focused on keeping his legs pumping. Right foot down, push up, left foot down, push up. Up, up, up. That was the only direction that mattered. He had already tightened the strap on his sword belt to stop it flapping at his waist as he ran. Now he shouldered his gun so he could lean forwards and scrabble at the earth with his hands as well.

  The men around him were doing the same. They all knew that speed was paramount. Less experienced men would have needed to be bellowed at and whipped by their sergeants to get them to make such an assault. These, however, were veterans; their sergeants could save their breath. For all the bellyaching and trouble such veterans gave on- and off-duty, when it came to a battle, when the margin between life and death was a split second hesitation or the wavering of a centimetre, their caution for their own safety was as scant as a body’s concern at losing a few cells. The unit, the platoon, the company, was everything, and the unit was safest if it reached the summit of Acorn first. And so the troopers all ran as hard as they could. And Stanhope was amongst them.

  The battle cannon fired again behind them. Stanhope was too busy to duck, but the shells were fired high anyway, as high as they possibly could be to avoid hitting the climbing troopers. They struck the topmost battlements, blowing apart a wall segment of sharpened stakes and toppling one of the xenos icon-towers. A shower of dirt and debris covered the leading infantry. That was too close, Stanhope decided; that should be their last shot.

  He pushed on up, gaining a lead on the other troopers. A broken stake-wall was in his path. Rather than losing ground by trying to go around, he pulled himself up through the hole the battle cannon had made, past the corpses of the orks that had taken cover behind it. The tanks had reduced the defences on the nearest face of Acorn to splinters, but their fire could not reach over the curve of the slope. Once they reached the flat top of Acorn, it would be the men who’d have to push through the ork defenders, take the fort and hold it.

  The top of Acorn was only a few metres away now and Stanhope broke his step to pull out his fell-cutter. He realised that he had come to the head of the attack; he would be the first one over the top. For a second, his mind went back to a very different battlefield, one where he had given the orders, yet others had had to pay the price. But this was not Cawnpore, and here no one had been foolish enough to look for his orders again. This would be an appropriate way to finally end it.

  He took the final few steps and an ork warrior erupted from the hidden ground above, bellowing in his face. Stanhope had no breath to reply in kind. Instead, his strength fed his fell-cutter. It swung to meet the ork’s cudgel, blocked it, and sliced right through. Stanhope instinctively jerked away as the severed end of the ork’s weapon flew past his ear. Irritated, the ork punched out, its fist still holding the stub of its cudgel.

  The fist struck the side of Stanhope’s helmet. The ork hadn’t been able to get its full weight behind it, but still it left his head ringing. He stepped back, found little purchase on the slope and nearly stumbled. His guard was down and the ork readied for its finishing blow. Then it yelped in pain. A trooper beside Stanhope had speared it with his bayonet. The ork grabbed for the gun, but the trooper had already withdrawn the weapon and was stabbing into the xenos’s face. The bayonet punched against the hard bone above the ork’s nose and was deflected to the side into the eye-socket. The point went through the ork’s red eye and into its brain beyond before the trooper pulled it out again.

  Stanhope saw the ork reel away, clutching its face. Someone shouted an order behind him and a well-aimed Voorjer bullet turned the other side of its face into a blackened mess. The trooper who had come to his rescue turned back to him.

  ‘Find your bloody feet, troop!’ Blanks shouted in his face. Stanhope already had and, hauling the ork corpse aside, surged on beside him.

  The volley from Van Am and her Voorjers, and Sergeant Booth and third platoon, had cleared away the orks lying in wait to spring upon the climbing Guardsmen. Behind Stanhope, second platoon was following in its path, while to his left Red was at the fore of first platoon, staving in the back of an injured ork’s head with ‘Old Contemptible’, as Carson’s pistols flashed in his hands, killing still more of the xenos.

  Stanhope looked only ahead of him. Through the struts of the icon-towers he saw the orks they had raced there boil up over the other side. Blanks paused, snap-shooting and slicing through the knee of one of them, and Stanhope took the lead again.

  Red was shouting something about forming a firing line, but it was too late for Stanhope. He was already charging. His body was protesting at further ill-treatment, but his mind demanded more and his muscles provided. He angled himself at the closest ork and raised the fell-cutter, still unbloodied, above his head. An ork at speed was as powerful as a bull, but in its inexperience it had expended its energy hurrying up the backside of Acorn and found it had little left to give.

  It drew back its cleaver, telegraphing its downward swing. Stanhope brought the fell-cutter down, not forwards but backwards, spinning it around like a windmill’s sails. He sidestepped the ork’s blow and brought the heavy blade up in an uppercut against its unde
fended belly. The ork arched its body back and Stanhope’s blade cut through air until it caught the underside of the ork’s chin and sliced its face in two. Stanhope shoulder-charged the flailing ork and knocked it to the ground.

  All around him, the lines of green and grey were colliding, the bellowing ork warriors swinging their weapons and the silent Brimlocks firing their rifles at point-blank range, before lunging in with their bayonets. Even though the Imperium had arms that could devastate continents, its victory here would once again be gained by its exhausted soldiers grappling toe to toe with its foes.

  Las-shots, bayonets and cleavers struck home, and as the orks fell so did men, as the luck of twenty-year veterans finally deserted them. The rest fought on, knowing flight to be more deadly than combat, clustering in small groups of men who were closer than brothers. Zezé impaled an ork with a thrust, but it just reached out, gripping the barrel, and ripped the blade clear. Repton came in alongside and plunged his own weapon into its now exposed armpit, holding it steady like a fish on a hook for one critical moment so that Heal’s shot blew straight through its head. While another warrior was distracted trying to grab the elusive Mouse, Forjaz kicked out its knee, stunned it with a second blow as it stumbled, and opened it up for Mouse to get the kill.

  Stanhope swung again at the warriors who opposed him; heavy, cutting swings that severed heads and limbs. The smallest tricks sufficed to mislead many of his tough, yet inexperienced opponents, and those who worked past his guard encountered Blanks by his side, striking throats, eyes and tendons, deadlier even with his small blade than Stanhope was with his sword.

  Suddenly, a volley of las-shots cut across the melee. First platoon was firing. Fragmentation grenades flew overhead, exploding amongst the orks. The surprised ork warriors reeled back for a few moments to counter this new threat.

  Stanhope thrust his sword down to finish off the ork at his feet and nearly collapsed. It had been less than a minute since he had crossed over the top of Acorn, yet already he felt the fury of the initial assault had dissipated. He caught himself before he fell and willed himself on, but this time his body refused, wasted from the apathy and abuse he had inflicted upon himself over the years.

  As his strength went, another part of his mind took hold. It was the officer he had suppressed for three years. The officer scolded him worse than Blanks had done. It ranted at him for leading such an unsupported charge. The excuse that he had not given anyone orders rang hollow in his head; he had led and they had followed. They were his responsibility whether he acknowledged it or not, and he’d had to be saved again. Red and first platoon were pushing forwards, Forjaz was trying to haul second platoon back to link up with them and form a single line that could repel the stream of the orks that were still climbing. That should be you, the officer in his mind berated him. It should be you pulling them back into order, dressing the line, detaching a force to flank…

  That thought caught in his head, and he was struck by a horrible suspicion. A suspicion confirmed when, beneath the sounds of the volley fire from first and now second platoons, he heard new sounds of combat from the right. He stumbled over and thumped against a log barricade for support. Booth and third platoon were not following directly behind; Carson had thought of everything. Instead, they were climbing around the summit of Acorn, aiming to strike at the vulnerable flank of climbing orks and prevent them reinforcing the top.

  The success of Stanhope’s wild charge, however, had pushed the orks back too quickly. They too were skirting around the summit to try and surround the platoons on the top. Now one of those forces was about to slam straight into Booth and third platoon.

  Booth, a great moustachioed sergeant, with an attitude chiselled from the same block as Red, led from the front and so was the first one of third platoon to see the danger. He acted at once. He knew that, with his men undeployed, strung out in column, clutching to the slope behind him, they would come off worse once the orks got within reach. He abandoned his attack and ordered his men to climb up, straight up, to the comparative safety of the other platoons at the top. The orks saw their enemy break and run and climbed after them, only for their leader to reel back, flesh blackened from las-fire. The orks looked in the direction of the shots to see Sergeant Booth balanced coolly on the slope, lasgun in hand.

  ‘You greenskins keep your hands off my lads,’ he muttered and fired again as the orks turned their attention from the fleeing troopers and directed it solely at him.

  On top of Acorn, Stanhope pounded back to second platoon where the distinctive shape of an ogryn carrying an autocannon was crouching. ‘Gardner!’ he ordered. ‘Redeploy!’

  Gardner glanced at him, confused, but did not release the trigger.

  ‘Redeploy, corporal!’ Stanhope demanded. Gardner shook his head as though he couldn’t hear.

  ‘Hold the line!’ The shout came from Forjaz, who was striding over.

  Stanhope had no time to argue. The instant the autocannon burst finished he smacked Frn’k on the side of the head. ‘Trouble, we move! Quick march!’ Stanhope shouted.

  Frn’k, half-deafened by the fire over his head, felt the blow, made out the words and responded as his brother had trained him. Gardner yelped as Frn’k heaved him and the hot autocannon into the air, but the ogryn had already spotted Stanhope pointing where he should go.

  Gardner swore blue murder for the few seconds that he was carried along, but as soon as Frn’k deposited him where Stanhope had indicated he saw what the major wanted from him. The orks climbing after third platoon did not know what an autocannon was, but they learned quickly as Gardner sighted down the steep slope and pressed the trigger. The orks had no cover and nowhere to run, and Gardner blew them off the slope without hesitation, methodically cutting across them, adjusting his aim as he fired to catch them all.

  The men of third platoon raised a ragged cheer as they saw the carnage Gardner created and they climbed up to form behind him. All but a group of four of them, who started climbing down to recover Booth’s body.

  ‘Third platoon,’ Stanhope ordered. ‘Form on me!’

  ‘Third platoon,’ Carson countermanded, as he approached. ‘Form on me!’

  The troopers of third platoon knew who their true commander was and looked to Carson for orders.

  ‘Form line here! Fire in your own time! Push ’em back!’ Carson rattled out and third platoon obeyed. ‘Gardner! Redeploy!’ he continued, and Stanhope watched as, with first and second platoons advancing over the summit, Carson led third platoon to seize the far side of the top of Acorn and cast the orks down.

  Less than a minute after they had taken it, Gardner was pouring autocannon fire straight down the throats of the orks still trying to reinforce the annihilated defenders at the top. First and second platoons took up supporting positions, and Carson voxed and ran the company’s pennant up the side of an orkish icon-tower. The message went back. Acorn was taken. The main attack could begin.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The sounds of the regiment’s main column starting to move into the edges of the settlement towards Bitterleaf echoed up to Carson on Acorn, but he did not have time yet to focus on that battle. He’d seen Stanhope staring at him as well, but he didn’t have time for him either. Instead, he was on the vox, ordering his support weapons to be brought up and his wounded and dead taken down.

  Another benefit of attacking first was that the medicae were standing idle until your wounded came in. They got the best care they could out in a place such as this. A shame it wouldn’t be enough for Booth. Carson hadn’t been able to spare more than a glance at the body, but even from that he could see that Booth had not died easily. Blessed Marguerite, let Booth and the others he had lost in taking Acorn be the last he should ever lose. At least Booth had no family back at Dova that would need to be told. Carson wasn’t sure how he could face Forjaz’s wife and children if he died.

  He told hims
elf that they were not a factor in the decision he’d made. Why he was going to take Red with him and not Forjaz. He’d known Red the longest, had fought beside him more times than he could remember, he had a level of trust with Red that he didn’t share with any other under his command. Still, it made it damn convenient why Forjaz should be the one left behind.

  At that moment, the husband and father himself appeared and reported in.

  ‘All the men are digging in, sir. The Voorjer lot as well,’ he said. ‘The ’skins won’t shove us off.’

  ‘Good. Well done, sergeant. Now, you know what Red and I are about?’

  ‘Yes, sir. No problem with it at all, sir,’ Forjaz carried on, unbidden.

  ‘Thank you,’ Carson replied. ‘Command of the company is yours then until we return. If Rosa brings his mortars up here, make room for them, but if he tries to bring a Griffon tell him that it’ll have to be his men to shove it up here. Don’t take anyone off the defences. Especially not Gardner. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Don’t even let him out of your sight.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’ And he did. This wasn’t the first time they’d had to do this after all. ‘And what about the major, sir?’

  ‘What about him?’