The explosion lit up the night sky hard to port. Makda saw it immediately, and banked hard.
‘You’re off course,’ warned Fionash.
‘Oh yes,’ said Makda, feeding the Valkyrie’s engines every last scrap of power he could find.
The Kelemak Queen screamed over the last remaining tracts of the Gorgas, careering past a long strand of smouldering machinery. The perimeter wall of the hive raced towards them. It curved high up into the air – two hundred metres tall and dwarfed only by the colossal spires beyond it. The parapets were alive with las-fire and bolter crashes – the night was lit up with them – and every passing second saw another Valkyrie go down in flames, flailing and rolling into the devastation of the Gorgas wastes.
‘Jekkil squadron, following squadrons, lock to me,’ shouted Makda over the open comm.
Ahead of him, directly where the Valkyrie was heading, a defence tower was collapsing in a riot of breaking masonry. Ferrocrete bulged outwards, broken open by huge orange explosions within.
Its destruction opened up a narrow corridor between the curtains of incoming fire. Small-bore projectile weapons still shot through the night, but the space overlooked by the toppling tower was free of the worst of the devastating barrages.
‘Here it comes!’ cried Fionash, sounding almost hysterical. ‘Here it comes!’
Makda yanked the controls hard, pulling the Valkyrie up from its ground-hugging attack run. The gunship swung up sharply, just above the parapet level, roaring along on a booming cloud of engine exhaust. Heavy incoming fire whistled past it, only barely missing the wings. Other surviving gunships followed Makda’s lead, sweeping up in his wake at full tilt, their turbines whining and shedding long curls of smoke.
‘Fionash!’ shouted Makda. ‘Coordinates!’
The Kelemak Queen shot up above the walls, just beyond where the defence tower was crumbling into a heap of broken masonry. The bulk of the hostile fire abruptly gave out as the gunship broke the perimeter. Makda slammed on the air-brakes and prepared to activate the VTOL lifters.
‘Down now!’ cried Fionash, sending a marked schematic to Makda’s sensor array. ‘You’ll overshoot!’
Once over the wall-top, a vast panorama of the hive cluster opened up in front of them. A gigantic hive spire towered over them to their left, part of a binary cluster. Other spires stood further off, wreathed in underlit clouds of smog and ash. The biggest of them, only part-visible past the outer ring of hab-blocks, had virulent streaks of purple light leaking from the highest pinnacle. Shardenus Prime was more than a city – it was miniature world, self-contained and immense.
Directly below them was the parapet level of the walls – a long, flat strip running along the top of the immense barrier, over thirty metres wide and studded with gun-points and elevator access hatches. Flak from smaller batteries flared up at them, strafing the gunship and knocking chunks out of its armour plate.
‘Taking her down,’ said Makda, cutting out forward momentum and switching to the VTOL drives. The gunship rocked on its axis as the wing-mounted thrusters blasted into life.
By then more Valkyries had broken through and were dropping low over the parapet. A single Vulture flew with them, strafing the anti-aircraft positions dotted along the top of the walls. The noise of its heavy bolter was audible even over the massed roar and boom of the defensive batteries maintaining their volleys out into the expanse of the Gorgas.
‘Prepped to deploy,’ reported Fionash, her voice still shaky. ‘Five… four…’
The gunship lowered itself over the flat parapet like a ghoul descending over its prey. With thirty metres to go Makda pulled a lever to open the rear ramp.
‘You’re in,’ he announced over the crew-bay comm. ‘Now give them hell.’
He held the Valkyrie in a shaky hover at twenty-five metres, ignoring the flak bursts going off all around him. Some of the heavy fixed artillery further along the walls was beginning to be brought round, ready to pick off the gunships that had broken through the perimeter. The air was still full of tracer fire, broken by the heavy shadows of more Valkyries thundering overhead.
One by one, the men in the crew-bay jumped from the open hatch. Makda saw Aikino go first, kicking away from the Valkyrie and plummeting rapidly. His grav-chute kicked in only a couple of metres from the wall-top, cushioning him before he hit it. The others followed, plunging down onto the parapet like stones. Once the last one had exited, Makda fed more power to the thrusters and pushed the Valkyrie back up higher. As he did so, he swung the ship’s nose back round, ready for the perilous journey back out over the Gorgas.
‘Mission accomplished,’ said Fionash, sounding breathy but slightly less panicked than she had done earlier.
All across the breach in the defences, gunships were breaking in and unloading their troops along the parapet, hovering on labouring engines and waiting for the signal to turn around and head back.
‘Don’t relax yet,’ warned Makda, preparing to ignite the forward thrusters again. ‘We’re still in a whole heap of–’
The rocket hit them from below, punching up out of the shadows and cutting clean through his left wing. Immediately the Valkyrie banked sharply, and the engines broke into a screaming whine.
‘No!’ screamed Fionash. ‘No! No! No!’
The Kelemak Queen swung round madly, spinning on its axis like a gyrocopter. The tail-fin hit the inside edge of the wall and sent the carrier spinning over itself and falling fast on to the wasteland beyond. Makda hauled the controls back, wrestling with the column and trying to generate more lift. He saw the smog-streaked horizon race up towards him horrifyingly fast.
‘Bail!’ he roared, watching powerlessly as the chemical-fogged wasteland on the other side of the walls swam up closer. ‘Get o–’
At the last moment, Makda found a burst of extra power, and the ship lurched forwards, hitting a transit tube and ricocheting clear. It corkscrewed twice on its ventral axis, picking up momentum as it went. When it finally collided with the leading edge of the Melamar Primus spire it drove a deep rent through layers of rockcrete, carving open protective armour plates and exposing two levels of a hab-complex to the corrosive elements.
The shell of its fuselage burst into flame – a brief flash of sun-white brilliance – before the remnants collapsed into a shower of flailing debris.
Its wreckage shot through the flaming air, just a tiny part of the colossal pyrotechnic display unleashed by the incoming airborne assault, before falling gently to the earth like ash-rain.
Aikino’s grav-chute gave out just before he hit the parapet, and he slammed down hard. He recovered his poise quickly and let the anti-grav motors idle, using the mild push to help right himself.
The rest of his squad came down around him, cutting out their chutes and brandishing lasguns.
‘We’re out of position,’ said Aikino over the comm, glancing down at his locator. ‘Give me a moment.’
He looked up, trying to get his bearings. His platoon had come down onto the parapet as planned, but a long way south of their planned location. On the far side of the wall – a long, long way down – was a wide expanse of semi-derelict buildings boiling with a yellow-green fog of pollutants. Beyond that lay the hive spires themselves, rising high into the firelit clouds of smog.
The sky was a riot of colour, picked out by las-discharge and solid munitions explosions. Valkyries hung in the sky all along the walls, dozens of them, dropping their contingents of troops even as they were rocked by incoming fire. The few Vultures that had managed to penetrate the perimeter circled the dropsites, hammering back at the defensive gun-points with salvos from their nose-mounted heavy bolters.
The walls stretched off into the distance, running north-south. Most sections were still studded with active defences, with the only major breach being the one they’d just flown through. A destroyed gunnery tower listed badl
y just a few hundred metres away, leaking flame and smoke, but all the others were still active.
‘That’s our target,’ he said, pointing out the next operative defence tower, north of the one that had been destroyed to allow their entry. ‘We need to widen that flight corridor.’
He started to run across the roof. His men fell in behind him. Aikino switched his vox to a brigade-wide channel.
‘All Harakoni on wall sections,’ he ordered. ‘Assault tower to north of breach. Let’s take it down.’
He got nearly halfway towards it before the first resistance emerged. The big guns were still aimed outwards, hurling massive amounts of las-fire, rockets and heavy bolter rounds at the incoming Valkyries, but the thick walls were well-garrisoned and stocked with extensive anti-infantry gun-points. As the Harakoni troops closed in on the tower, grey-uniformed soldiers swarmed out to meet them, emerging from hatches in the parapet floor and hunkering down behind bulkheads and strongpoints. The entire width of the parapet was soon engulfed in a firestorm of las-beams from all directions, punctuated by the bounce and crack of hurled frag grenades.
Aikino skidded to a halt behind the cover of a low ferrocrete wall – a minor surface feature on the otherwise flat roof of the walls. He primed a grenade, took a breath, then threw it over the top. He waited for the sound of the detonation then broke from cover again. As he ran, other Warhawks joined him, charging straight at the enemy and firing in disciplined volleys.
‘For Harakon!’ roared Aikino, feeling adrenaline pumping through his body and relishing the rush of combat at last.
For Harakon! came the massed cry of the Warhawks, tearing into battle alongside him in a wave of fury.
Chapter Seven
‘We have a breach,’ announced Gropis, sounding more nervous than pleased.
Nethata gripped the edge of the tactical display table, watching the myriad shifting points of light suspended over its surface. Everything was in motion, overlapping with plotted attack vectors and support lines. Watching the carnage, he felt no satisfaction at all; the attack was barely hours old but was already unravelling.
‘So I see,’ he said, watching the location marker blink on the walls just below the Melamar Secundus spire.
The first wave of Valkyrie attack carriers had gone in. Nearly all the troop carriers had been destroyed, either on their long attack runs or during their attempt to return to base after dropping their contingent of men. The reserve wings were already committed, hurtling straight into the line of fire and taking just as heavy casualties. Tactical feeds estimated up to a thousand Harakoni Warhawks had been deposited along the parapets – enough to attract the attention of the hive cluster’s garrisons, but not enough to sustain a position for any length of time.
‘How long before the Galamoth are in range?’ he asked.
‘They are, lord. Barrages have begun.
‘And the ground troops?’
‘Almost.’
Nethata balled his fists, as if to strike the table in front of him. Space Marines would have been able to punch holes in the perimeter far more effectively than mortal drop troops. They were tougher, faster, cannier, and they didn’t panic.
‘Tell the ground commanders to abandon caution,’ said Nethata. ‘I don’t care what their casualties are – they must close on the breach and commence the assault.’
Orm Vilese, the commander of the Ferik main battle divisions, raised his bald, milk-white head from the tactical pict screens.
‘The Warhawks are pinned back,’ he said. ‘Until the walls are secured, a ground assault would be a massacre.’
Nethata whirled around, almost losing control. Before he could reply, another voice interjected.
‘We are committed now, my lord Vilese,’ said Heriat, entering the room silently, dipping his head under the metal door frame. ‘It would be an act of cowardice to withdraw.’
The presence of the Commissar-General had its usual effect on the regular officers – to a man, they stiffened a fraction, instantly looking warier. All of them, Nethata included, knew the powers of the Commissariat during combat operations.
‘Quite right, Commissar-General,’ said Nethata. ‘We cannot withdraw. Tell the Ferik units to pick up the pace, or I am sure Heriat here will be pleased to deliver the orders in person.’
Vilese nodded brusquely, stifling his objections, and turned to carry out the instruction. Silently, with a few furtive glances at Heriat, the rest of the command staff moved to enact the Lord General’s will.
Nethata looked at Heriat. He didn’t bother to hide the enormous frustration he felt.
‘One tower,’ he said bitterly. ‘One. We placed a lot of trust in your agent.’
Heriat looked calmly over at the tactical display, and the green light from the table reflected from his pupils.
‘Trust in the Emperor’s will,’ he said.
Nethata looked at his friend’s face for a moment, irritated by the man’s certainty. It was ever thus – he would drive himself into a state of inner rage, working without pause to orchestrate every aspect of the campaign, while Heriat, the man charged with maintaining discipline in the face of the onslaught, remained serene.
There were times that Nethata envied that capacity, and times when he hated it.
‘Any communication from the Iron Hands?’ he asked, knowing the answer already but making a point by asking the question.
Heriat smiled thinly.
‘Do you want me to chase them?’
Nethata snorted, and turned back to the table. Even as he did so, locator markers from the Harakoni forces installed on the walls blinked out. The beachhead, imposed at such cost, was already being whittled down.
‘Get that support up faster,’ he growled, speaking to the entire chamber. ‘Throne of Earth, if we don’t get the Ferik into position within the half-hour, I’ll send you out to do the job for them.’
Aikino limped towards the gun-point, feeling blood run down the outside of his thigh.
‘Forward!’ he shouted, doing his best to rally his remaining men.
The battles across the parapet had become furious and bloody. Clusters of Warhawks fought on, though many were pinned back behind scanty cover. The grey-armoured defenders of Shardenus had poured from the access hatches like insects driven from some underground nest. They fought fanatically hard, as if something had been done to them to drive fear from their psyches.
Aikino saw over a dozen of them scamper between two low barricades just ahead of his position. Although superficially smooth, the surface of the parapet was pitted with trenches, bulkheads, pipework and other pieces of cover. It made assaulting across it a nightmare.
He reached a metre-high wall section and crouched down low against it, ignoring the burst of pain in his leg.
‘Air support,’ he rasped into the vox. ‘What have you got?’
Nothing but static came back over the link. The few Vultures still flying over the walls were fighting a desperate battle to maintain their positions. The air was criss-crossed with anti-aircraft munitions, and it made the whole sky flare up with a dull, angry light.
‘Anything?’ asked Gerran, his lieutenant. The man squatted beside him, his helmet dented from where a glancing las-beam had nearly taken his head clean off. Behind Gerran waited the rest of his platoon, plus a few stragglers from other units Aikino had picked up.
‘We have to get to that tower,’ said Aikino, squinting into the distance and gauging the distance between their position and the objective. ‘We get two of them down, and those gunships will have a clearer run.’
Gerran looked doubtfully out across the parapet. The tower was still two hundred metres away across a stretch of wall swarming with enemy troops.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘How?’
Aikino smiled grimly.
‘The usual,’ he replied, before switching his v
ox-channel to open. ‘All troops, coordinate assault on my mark. Homda and Lopert, flank around to the left. Anyone still fighting on the right flank, do what you can. Stand by.’
Aikino grabbed a frag grenade from his belt – his last one – and primed it for detonation.
Gerran did the same.
‘Sir?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Good luck.’
Aikino looked at him for a second, taken aback.
‘You too, lieutenant,’ he said, awkwardly.
Then he tensed, readying for the burst out from cover.
‘Mark!’ he shouted, hurling his grenade and sending it arcing high into the air.
All across the contested section of the parapet, grenades from other units soared out from clusters of cover. Set to short delays, some burst into clouds of fragment-ation before they’d even landed. The others skittered across the ground before exploding in chaotic whirls of shrapnel.
Aikino pushed himself to his feet and broke into a run. He felt his heart pumping. Out of the corner of his eye he saw other Warhawks doing the same, tearing over the broken terrain with abandon.
Las-beams flickered out, eerily silent amid the crash and thunder of the warfare around them. Defenders staggered out from their positions, their armour cracked or ripped away by the frag blasts. The Warhawks picked them off expertly, gaining ground rapidly.
Aikino reached the barricades he’d seen earlier. He ran at the gap between them before launching himself into a dive along the ground. He skidded, carried along by his momentum. He felt the heat of las-beams lancing just above his back.
Coming to a stop, he rolled to one side and opened fire. Cries and grunts of agony rose up from the troops in front of him, and half a dozen went down under the las-fire.
Then the rest of his unit arrived, pouring through the gap and opening fire with abandon. The defenders, outnumbered and reeling from the wave of grenades, fell back.
‘Keep going!’ roared Aikino, getting to his feet and starting up the charge again. ‘Cut them down!’
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