Animals burst from the jungle, wailing creatures disturbed from their homes and fleeing what was coming after. Lasguns flashed down the column as edgy troopers fired, incinerating the refugees even as they scuttled.
The thunder grew deafening and Roussell glanced behind him, to the jungle on the north side of the track, which appeared identical to the jungle to the south. Not a single gun was pointing in that direction and with the echo from the trees, the sound of the thunder bounced at him from every side.
‘God-Emperor,’ he muttered to himself, ‘let Colquhoun be right.’
Colquhoun was.
‘Blessed Marguerite, what are those?’ Roussell gasped as the jungle on the south side exploded with creatures. His sergeants did not concern themselves with such questions, only the response.
‘FIRE!’
Readied or not, every man brought his weapon up and pulled the trigger. Hundreds of las-shots burned into their raging, wild-eyed attackers, burning the foremost. Those behind stumbled over the blackened corpses, but continued rolling towards the firing Guardsmen; living, angry balls of teeth and claws.
They were not orks. This was not a charge. It was a stampede.
A thousand, two thousand, squig-beasts were being driven into the column, bursting from the shadow of the jungle only a few dozen metres away. Some racing, some bounding, all maddened, tearing into anything that stood in their way. The Brimlock firing discipline collapsed at once, the shouts of sergeants lost beneath the bellowing of the squig-beasts.
Ingoldsby’s company, ahead of Colquhoun and Fergus, was caught mid-step, hastening to reach the fighting at the head of the column. The men were taken completely by surprise. The closest whirled to face the new threat too late and the squig-beasts leapt upon them, biting through limbs and tearing through the flesh of those that fell with the wicked claws upon their feet. Those men on the far side of the column could only hear guttural snorts, rips and the screams of their fellows. Their sergeants instinctively shouted to hold, but there were no mere words that could make them stand. They stumbled back and then broke and ran into the cover of the jungle to the north, the squig-beasts trumpeting with relief as the human barrier before them disintegrated.
Fergus and Colquhoun’s men fared better, firing a blinding rain of light. Every man fired as quickly as he could, but in their desperation the rigorous routines that had been drilled into them began to fade, and shots began to be snatched too early, before guns had fully recycled. Inhibitors installed years before by Brimlock gunsmiths prevented early discharges and frustrated troopers had to grab at their triggers a second time to fire. Those who had stripped their inhibitors out could fire as fast as their finger could grip, but their rapid shots singed the squig-beasts’ flesh instead of bringing them down.
Troopers tried throwing grenades: some short-timed them and so they detonated as they landed, blowing chunks from the squig-beasts; others, in their hurry, did not bother and a few grenades struck the raging squigs and bounced back, cutting down creature and Guardsman alike. The luckless Private Schafe tossed his grenade at the squig leaping high over the bayonet wall to devour him. The grenade flew into the squig’s gaping mouth which then closed over his head, teeth chomping down on his torso, before detonating, killing the unfortunate trooper and covering his comrades nearby in a shower of their mixed internals.
Everywhere Roussell looked, the line was starting to buckle. The squig-beasts were dying in their hundreds, but those behind were hemmed in by others either side and so could only continue to throw themselves forwards. Even as they were struck, their bodies smashed into the Guardsmen, crushing some, distracting others, causing gaps in the fields of fire that the next wave could then pour through. Ingoldsby’s company had disappeared entirely from view. Fergus and Colquhoun’s men were scrabbling, keeping the squigs away at the points of their bayonets. Colquhoun was trying to clear his flank on his own with great sweeps of his halberd knocking the squig-beasts off to the side.
The vox in Roussell’s ear was a cacophony of unintelligible orders, oaths and screams. He tried to contact Brooce for instruction, but it was useless. His company faced collapse; the sheer pressure of the stampede smashing against it would break it. He would lose his company and he had no orders to protect him. One way or another it was the end of him. But then somewhere inside, the young officer who, ten years before, had dragged his isolated company for months through the horrors of the mud-valleys of Mespots to earn his place in the colour-guard emerged.
‘Company! Form on your section!’ He threw the order into the maelstrom. Nothing happened. He stomped down his line, hauling the men of the back row into tighter groups, who in turn hauled in close the men in the rows in front of them. A straight line was not strong enough to withstand the force of the enemy’s blow. Instead, he pulled them into deeper pockets until finally the last remaining men of the front rank dived into them.
His line was gone. In its place were a half-dozen spurs with clear channels running between them. The company’s firing weakened with their frontage so diminished, but their shots pushed the rampaging squig-beasts away to the side. The squig-beasts in turn confronted by these clusters of steel or the dark jungle beyond, shoved mercilessly on by their fellows behind, chose to make for the jungle, and crushed into the channels.
The men in each cluster pushed away from the beasts charging through on either side, pressing a dozen men into the space previously occupied by four, kneeling, crouching, packed tight together, contorting themselves to have every blade pointed out. A stumbling squig-beast ran itself into the bayonets on the side of one cluster. The force of the blow transferred through to the other side of the cluster where Private Geoffries popped out of the cluster like a cork from a wine bottle and was trampled underfoot, still grasping onto his comrades trying to haul him back in. One cluster dissolved entirely when an unlucky shot caused a squig-beast to cannonball into the front of it, knocking the defending Guardsmen to one side, whilst the Guardsmen behind were too closely packed together to shift their weapons round to defend themselves in time.
Roussell hauled his slack frame on top of his Chimera; from there he had a chance to see and be seen by his men. The guards he had posted inside the vehicle to watch Carson had had the presence of mind to man the turret multi-laser and some of the embedded lasguns that bulged from the hull, and had turned the dozen metres between the vehicle and the jungle into a charnel house.
The noxious smell of incinerated squig-flesh struck him as he clambered forwards. The men in the clusters saw it too. The closest ones tried to edge their groups closer to get behind the protection of the tank’s hull; those further away stood no chance of running across as a single body and so lone troopers looked for gaps in the stampede and dived from cluster to cluster, ever closer to the Chimera, like children leaping across stepping stones.
Behind him, Roussell saw that Gomery’s men were in a desperate plight. As for Gomery himself, it appeared his mind had finally snapped. He had not even drawn his gun. Instead he was shrilling away, blowing his officer’s whistle as though calling foul on the whole attack.
It was nearly done, however. Roussell looked out to the south and saw that the shadows of the squig-beasts coming through the trees were thinning. He might live, he realised, and he grasped at the hope. He fired his pistol somewhere into the mass, the sound of the discharge lost beneath the hiss of burning air from the Chimera’s las-fire beneath him.
In the corner of his eye, he noticed a shadow amongst the squig-beasts, a dark green shape running on all fours in their midst. He blinked and the shadow uncoiled into an ork warrior, which impaled its arm on the bayonets to sweep them aside and leapt into a cluster, punching, kicking and biting the trapped men.
They were everywhere, Roussell realised. The gaps amongst the squig-beasts were not empty spaces, they were filled by the ork savages who had started the stampede and driven the beasts straight at the
Brimlock column. The squig-beasts were just to soften them up; now the true attack was beginning.
The orks were knuckling along at speed, keeping low on all fours. The men in their clusters had a mere split-second to fire before they were set upon. It wasn’t enough. The orks shrugged off the snatched shots, grappled with the Guardsmen for their lasguns and brought bone-breaking blows down upon them with clubs, cudgels and rocks.
Well, damn them all, Roussell decided. An ork leapt onto the Chimera’s roof. It turned and grimaced at him and he shot it through the head. Another with a stone hammer smacked the Chimera’s lasguns from their sockets. A third mounted the front of the tank and tried to shove a rock into the barrel of the multi-laser only to lose its hand to the scorching red beam.
Roussell brought his pistol up to shoot it, but was punched from his feet by a blow beneath his abdomen. He tried to step back and regain his balance, but his legs refused to obey him. He fell onto his back, his pistol gone, and looked down his body to where a javelin had buried itself. Blessed Mother Marguerite, he thought, that’s agony. He tried to say the same, but the words wouldn’t form. He tried to reach out with his hands and pull the javelin free but his arms felt as though they were imprisoned in ice.
The grey sky was blotted out as the ork missing a hand leaned over him, peering into his face. Then it stood, gripping the javelin to hold him steady, and his last sight was a heavy green foot slamming down upon him.
‘Hold! Hold, you milk-sops!’ Forjaz berated his men as another band of ork warriors with the distinctive red vertical strip down across one eye threw themselves at the company. Carson’s men, consigned to the rear, had escaped the brunt of the stampede. The orks coming after had not been so obliging.
‘Hold formation! Hold formation!’ They were huddled together, as were many of those still fighting up and down the trail, in three sides of a rough square. They had originally formed a line like the rest, but the orks had tried the end flank and so the men there had folded back. Then Rosa had been overwhelmed ahead of them and the warriors there attacked down the column, forcing the other side to fold in. Only Frn’k’s wild intervention had prevented the formation being shattered.
Stanhope was crouched in the front rank, gripping his lasgun as though it were his very existence. There was sweat pouring from every patch of his skin. His chest felt as though it was being squeezed in a vice. He had already retched up everything his stomach had held, so at least there was nothing more to come from there. His aim, at least, was still steady. He focused on the simple things; he saw an ork, he shot it, he saw another, he shot that. He just profusely hoped that the orks he was shooting were actually there.
Blanks, the bastard who had put him in this state, was crouched in the second rank right behind him. Stanhope got a knee in the back every time the barrel of his lasgun wavered off-target.
‘Hold! Hold!’ Forjaz called again.
‘How bloody long for?’ Blanks muttered too loudly.
Forjaz heard it and turned on the insubordination.
‘What did you say, private?’ he demanded. He only realised as the words were coming out of his mouth, that he had chosen exactly the wrong person.
‘I said, how bloody long for, sergeant!’ Blanks shouted and fired his lasgun again.
All conversation was then rendered impossible as Gardner, at the square’s corner, opened up with the autocannon again. He kept the burst short.
‘Running low! Only one can after this one’s finished!’ he reported.
Forjaz didn’t deserve this. Booth dead, Red gone, probably dead as well, Carson arrested. Why did fate decree that he had to be the one to preside over the company’s last stand? A half-dozen men were dead, the same number wounded but fighting on. The unfortunate Zezé had been hit by a javelin and was shaking, laid out at Forjaz’s feet. And Blanks wasn’t even finished yet.
‘We’ve got to move!’ he said.
Forjaz couldn’t ignore him. ‘We hold!’
The orks made another rush, hooting and waving their clubs above their heads. The troopers grouped their fire by priority targets, hitting each ork not with a single shot that they could shrug off, but with three or four at once. One of the orks endured the pain and reached Stanhope. The major jabbed forwards with his bayonet, sticking it hard into the ork’s torso, but the ork kept reaching forwards to smash Stanhope’s head in. From behind Stanhope, Blanks struck, his bayonet punching through the ork’s throat. Then he pulled back and fired a shot into its face that sent it reeling away.
Forjaz had hoped to get orders, but there was no vox chatter any more. There were no orders any more. It was every company for itself, but surely, if they could just hold out long enough, someone would come for them.
‘We’ve got to move!’ Blanks shouted again.
We’re not going anywhere; that’s what Forjaz meant to say. Instead, it came out as, ‘There’s nowhere to go!’
‘The fort!’ Blanks responded. ‘Fort Eliza! We can reach it!’
‘No, wait!’ Gardner interrupted. ‘Let’s get back. Get out of the jungle into the fungus. A Valkyrie can come in there.’
This was bad, Forjaz knew, he was losing his grip. Troopers were not supposed to discuss, they were supposed to obey.
‘Shut your traps!’ he bellowed, but Blanks ignored him.
‘A Valkyrie can drop into the fort as well,’ Blanks countered. ‘And it’s where everyone else will fall back to!’
‘Everyone else who thinks of it!’ Gardner shot back.
Forjaz felt his authority slip away. ‘No one’s going anywhere!’ He tried to reassert himself, but the men knew that no one was coming to rescue them, and Blanks had a plan.
Blanks stood up all the way and faced Forjaz. Forjaz had a sudden flashback to the orks Blanks had so easily killed the night of the ork raid. ‘I don’t want to fight you, Forjaz,’ he said. ‘And you don’t want to fight with me.’
‘So what?’
‘So, we have an officer,’ he said, and he reached down and hauled Stanhope to his feet.
Now it all fit into place in Forjaz’s head, how close Blanks had made himself to Stanhope, how he’d looked out for him, got him eating out of the palm of his hand. He could never have done that with Carson, but as soon as Carson was out of the way…
Blanks smacked Stanhope around the head to try and shake him from his torpor. ‘What do we do, major? What are your orders? Stay or go?
‘What’s it to be?’ He went to smack him again, but as the lazy blow swept round, Stanhope’s hand came up and blocked it. He grabbed the hilt of his fell-cutter in his other hand and jabbed it in Blanks’s stomach. Blanks, for once off-guard, flailed for a moment to catch it.
‘Don’t ever strike me again,’ Stanhope told Blanks, and let the sword slide back into its sheath. Blanks nodded and Stanhope continued. ‘We go.’
Blanks nodded again, satisfied this time. ‘Right, to Eliza.’
‘Yes, to the fort,’ Stanhope agreed, ‘but first, up there,’ and he pointed up the trail to where the rest of the column was being massacred.
‘You’re mad,’ Blanks said, and finally he and Forjaz were in agreement. ‘You can’t save the whole regiment, major! You’ve got to save your men!’
‘Yes,’ Stanhope replied. ‘All of my men.’
Lieutenant Carson sat in the dark waiting for the end. His three guards had been firing the hull lasguns, but after they’d been smashed in, and the driver and turret-gunner bailed out into the carnage outside, his guards appeared disinclined to open the rear hatch and fight on. None of the orks had tried to open the rear hatch. It was perhaps because they couldn’t see anyone inside. Perhaps they didn’t even understand that people could be inside. Perhaps they thought a Chimera was just as much a single living being as they were. It didn’t really matter. They would figure it out soon enough.
That time appeared
to be at hand. There was a groan of metal as something monstrous tried to rip its way through the rear hatch. The guards scrambled for their weapons and held them ready. A peak of light appeared, a silhouette beyond, and one of them fired. There was a deep, inhuman shout of alarm and the silhouette jerked back.
‘Brimlock Eleventh, you idiots! Open up!’
One of the guards peered out of the hole and then quickly obeyed. Suddenly a half-dozen men poured into the back of the transport, grabbed the guards, took their weapons and threw them out onto the ground. They looked up to see the path to their Chimera lined with five Griffons, each one crammed to the brim with troopers.
One of the troopers grabbed the guard who had fired and lifted him up to his feet.
‘You’re damn lucky you missed!’ Gardner spat at him and then showed him Frn’k looming over them both. The guard quickly agreed.
Major Stanhope stepped into the rear compartment of the transport.
‘Lieutenant Carson,’ he said over the sound the las-fire from the troopers holding the orks at bay.
‘Under arrest,’ Carson said back.
‘From what I’ve seen, lieutenant, I believe that no longer applies. Now get up and jump on a Griffon, that’s an order.’
‘An order? From you?’ Carson replied. ‘How unusual. Such a shame I have to disobey it.’
Stanhope looked down at Carson in the gloom. He noted the uncomfortable pose, the odd positioning of his legs, the arms that hung like a dead weight.
‘It happened again?’ he asked
‘They didn’t need to restrain me to stop me escaping. My body took care of that all by itself.’
‘Very well,’ Stanhope said and turned away. He then handed his jacket to Blanks, returned, took a hold on the protesting Carson, heaved him up over his shoulders and carried him out into the light.
Imperial Glory Page 28