by Dan Abnett
“Gak!” Soric coughed. “Gak this!”
“Support fire! Support fire needed now!” Commissar Hark, crouching nearby, snarled into his vox. “Support to grid two-six, five-nine! Respond!”
“Ask it for help, chief,” Vivvo yelled over the gunfire. “For gale’s sake!”
“Ask what?” Soric replied, ducking down.
“The thing in your pocket!” Vivvo bawled.
“The what?”
“The thing, chief! The thing that knows!”
“What thing?” asked Hark, looking round at them.
“The kid’s just being funny,” Soric said.
“Trooper Vivvo?”
“I… I was just being funny, commissar, sir…” stammered Vivvo, realising the implications of his words. He was loyal to Soric above all things.
Another salvo rained in.
Soric scurried away head down. Once he was behind a door frame, and out of Hark’s sight, he scooped the twitching message shell out of his pocket and opened it.
Kazel has the angle, but he can’t see it. Tell him to go for the window. He’ll know.
What about the rest, Agun? She’s going to die and her blood will be on your hands.
“Shut up!” Soric yelled aloud, tearing the paper into scraps. He got on the micro-bead link.
“Kazel? Go for the window. Go for the window.”
“Chief?”
“Go for the gakking window, Kazel!”
Up in a fourth storey room, Kazel turned and fired his tread fether out of the window. It was a hasty, automatic response to Soric’s command. The back-blast, contained in the room, almost killed him.
The rocket spat out of the window, deflected sideways off a lamp-bracket and dropped down, entering one of the stalk-tanks through the roof hatch.
As it died, it went into death throes, destroying its companion with insensible, random weapon-pod bursts.
“Shit…” said Kazel, looking down out of the window, his ears still ringing. “Did I do that?”
As his Ghosts engaged, Gaunt conceded he had to hand it to Biagi. Biagi had drawn up GAR 3 — Ground Assault Response 3 — and it was on the money. Rather than wasting time attempting to hold badly provisioned outer streets, Biagi’s plan had identified and described the various junctions and street-meets where ambush and defence would work most effectively. It was pragmatic in that it gave ground to an invading enemy until good advantage could be had in defence, but it was thorough. Biagi had analysed every street — not by slate-chart but by eye, by methodical observation — and worked out the strengths and weaknesses. He had read the city well. The Ghosts’ initial successes were as much down to Biagi’s tactical intelligence as they were the Tanith battle skills.
Gaunt carried GAR 3 on him in a data-slate file, encrypted in case the device fell into enemy hands. Each time he read it adjusting the fluid disposition of his force, he admired Biagi’s work. He regretted the fact that the next time he and the marshal met up, it would no doubt be to clash. It was inevitable. Biagi had yet to find out that Gaunt had deployed flamers.
Even with GAR 3, it was down to the wire. The battle for the Masonae district had become focused on Latinate Road and Mason Yard, with minor skirmishes along Principal HI and the atmosphere processor in Tesk Hill Square.
Gaunt waved Beltayn over and got on the vox, moving Daur’s platoon and three PDF sections right up Principal HI to a sub-access lane that let out into the east side of Mason Yard. Within fifteen minutes, Daur’s force had the enemy’s Mason Yard action in flank assault.
Gaunt’s own trick to complement GAR 3, based on years of experience, was to keep his forces tightly engaged with the leading edge of the enemy advance The invasive force was like an arm reaching blindly around an obstacle Every time it came forward, the Ghosts grabbed it by the fingers and severed it at the wrist. By staying close to that leading edge, they discouraged air-cover attacks. The Locust pilots, even on low passes, even with the aid of smoke canisters and ident transponders, could not differentiate between friend or foe in the narrow, clustered streets.
Just before noon, stymied across a nine-block front, the invaders pulled back sharply and tried to redirect along Principal HI itself. They led off this new phase with an armour charge — nine AT70s and four stalk-tanks, advancing at cruise speed behind a pair of AT83 Brigand-pattern giants. Corbec and Domor had their platoons in cover in a side-street off the Principal highway, and heard the revving turbines and clattering tracks before anyone else.
“Treads! Treads! On the highway!” Corbec voxed urgently. The Ghosts had to stay low. As they spurred on, the enemy AFVs were raking the sides of the wide boulevard with their pintle-mounts and coaxial cannons. Gaunt had pretty much anticipated this push. Domor’s squad had already laced the Principal with tube-charges, the detonation of which took out one AT70 and slowed the entire charge right down as the AT83s lowered their dozer blades and began to clear the way.
Slowed down was good enough for Gaunt. His next signal brought three life company Vanquishers out of hiding in the warehouses beside Mason Yard. The Wild One, the Demands With Menaces and the Access Denied, all Gryphonne FV-pattern Leman Russ battle tanks with the trademark long guns.
Hurling specialist AT shells, the three Imperial tanks got down to business, their first three or four salvoes turning the Blood Pact’s well-ordered chase advance into a bloody riot. The Wild One crippled one of the big AT83s with its first shot and killed it with its second. The AT83 Brigands, larger than their more primitive cousins the 70s, were, on paper, the Urdeshi forge world’s equivalent of the Leman Russ. They had auspex guidance, weapon stabilisers and torsion bar suspension. They were the Blood Pact’s best battle machines, not counting the very few ancient super-heavies they had inherited from defeated Guard units.
But there was just something about the Leman Russ. Its pedigree and reputation was second to none. When a Vanquisher or Conqueror appeared, the very sight of it filled Imperial hearts with pride and enemy hearts with fear. This, Corbec thought as he watched the engagement from a sheltered doorway, seemed to be the case now. Apparently numbed at the sight of three Vanquishers powering up in formation, the remaining 83 began to reverse hard. So hard, it ran into and over a stalk-tank, splintering its comparatively fragile frame.
An AT70 blew out under fire from the Demands With Menaces, and two more were rendered into scrap by the Wild One. One of the stalk-tanks strutted forward past the burning carcass of the first Brigand, its metal hooves chipping at the rockcrete roadway, and trained its weapon pods on the Access Denied. Twin double-pulse lasers flickered and chattered, and blast flashes blossomed across the Vanquisher’s upper hull and turret. The Access Denied, seemingly oblivious, rolled forward, trailing smoke from burning ablative plates and scorched paintwork, and fired a single shell that disintegrated the stalk-tank’s body segment so completely the port and starboard limb structures collapsed outwards, bisected.
An AT70 lobbed a shell at the Wild One that tore away its sponson and part of its track skirt. Another hit the Demands With Menaces on the turret destroying its vox-mast, pintle mount and laser range-finder, and killing the assistant gunner with explosive spalling.
Wounded but not down, the Demands With Menaces plunged forward, laying its guns at the Reaver responsible. Corbec saw the top-hatch pop and the commander emerge, oblivious to the danger, to verify aim with a handscope now his range-finder was junked.
He knew his job. The Demands rolled to a halt and jolted hard as it fired, jerking plumes of accumulated white dust off its surfaces and hull grooves like sifted flour. The sound of the hypervelocity AT shell was just a crisp, flat clap in the augmented air. The AT70 made a much fuller and more satisfying sound as it exploded.
“Sir!” Corbec looked away from the show the life company tankers were putting on, and glanced at Domor.
“What’s up, Shoggy?”
Domor pointed, looking across the street into the shadowed alleys that came up through a hab compoun
d onto the highway. Corbec glimpsed movement behind the roadway’s rockcrete revetment.
Enemy infantry. Fanning forward under the cover of the tank duel.
No, more than that. There were two or maybe three fire-teams over there, lugging tube launchers and long-stemmed rocket grenade bulbs.
They were going for the Vanquishers while they were occupied.
“Smart eyes, Shoggy,” Corbec called, stating the fething obvious. “Five men… with me now!” he added, not caring who responded but knowing at least five would. Milo, Nehn, Bonin, Chiria and Guthrie were the first up, scrambling after him, heads down.
Corbec followed the enemy’s example, and moved back down the side of the Principal behind the high revetment. He came to a break about fifteen metres south of the Wild One’s rumbling hindquarters, and dropped down, adjusting his micro-bead.
“Shoggy, this is two, come back to me.”
“Two, clear.”
“Gonna rush across, mate. On a count of five—”
“Across the highway, chief?”
“Don’t interrupt a man in the grip of a suicidal urge, Shogs. The count will be five. Draw up your unit and the rest of mine and hose that far side. Don’t worry about hitting anything, just keep ’em ducking.”
“Understood is not quite the right word, but okay.”
“Good. Five, four, three, two—”
The rapidly assembled guns of twelve and two platoons started to rip and crackle, firing across the wide, sunlit roadway in front of the Imperial tanks. The las-rounds, and the solid slugs from the .50 teams, mottled the rockcrete revetment furiously until it looked like waxy cheese or the surface of a particularly unlucky moon.
Corbec started to run. The others went with him, Milo and Bonin overtaking him. They came up hard, backs to the outer side of the revetment and waited. Corbec checked his rifle’s load and then shot them all a wink.
“You want to live forever?” he asked.
They all nodded. Milo laughed.
“Then follow me.”
They were up in a second and round the revetment through the nearby gap, into the cool shadows of the highway’s far-side walkway.
The nearest Blood Pact fire-team was crouching down, locking an RPG into their tube. They looked up in surprise.
That was about all they had time for. The six Imperial las-guns killed them all so fast they didn’t even have time to rise. Bodies fell, crouched or squatting.
Ten metres behind them, the second ambush team had time to react. Las-fire chopped in the Ghosts’ direction and Guthrie fell over with a moaning curse.
Milo and China led the firefight, firing on auto. Milo shot the tube-gunner in the neck, and his ammo-man in the hand, shoulder and face. Chiria whooped as she aced the Pacter who had hit Guthrie, and wasted the man beside him.
The other two started to run for cover. Nehn crisped off a shot that hit one in the back of the head and dropped him flat on his face. Bonin got the other.
Corbec had knelt down beside Guthrie.
“You still with me, lad?”
“Yes… yes… feth, it hurts!”
A las-round had gone through Guthrie’s left thigh. It had cauterised itself, but he’d lost a good chunk of meat and it was so clean-through you could see daylight from the other side.
Corbec took out his field dressings and started to patch Guthrie’s leg, smacking a one-shot needle-vial of morphia into the flesh above his hip first.
“Colonel!” Corbec heard Milo cry out.
He started to turn. A las-round. In flight, at full velocity, passing so close beside his face that he felt its stinging heat He smelt the sheath of ozone fuming off it.
If he hadn’t turned his head at the sound of Milo’s warning, it would have hit him squarely between ear and eye. The round exploded harmlessly against the roadwall.
“Feth me…” Corbec gasped.
There was a third Blood Pact fire-team, and it had gone into cover when the first two were attacked.
They had the very positive advantage of decent cover. There were six of them, counting by the muzzle flashes from the shadowed doorways and arches down the walkway. Las-shots smashed into the ground and wall around the pinned Imperials. Chiria threw Nehn flat and most probably saved his life.
Bonin started to fire back from the hip. Milo grabbed Guthrie and began to haul him towards the nearest cover… ten metres back down the walkway.
Corbec knew they would all be dead in seconds.
He grabbed the fallen Blood Pact rocket tube off the deck, swung it end over end like a baton to get it across his shoulder pointing the right way and yelled, “Ease!”
Automatically, Nehn, Chiria, Bonin, Milo and even Guthrie, cried the same word aloud. The drilled answer-response meant their mouths would be open when the rocket fired, and therefore their eardrums wouldn’t burst under the savagely unequal pressure.
The bulbous rocket flared down the walkway, passing over Bonin so close it scorched the fabric of his jacket’s back. It entered the narrow angle of a doorway ten metres beyond and detonated. The flash was blinding, and the concussion wave brutal. Fragments of stone and pieces of enemy trooper flushed out in the firewash and pelted the inside face of the roadwall.
One surviving Blood Part trooper, caught by the edges of the blast, stumbled out into the walkway, tearing off his helmet and iron visor, screaming. Bonin had been knocked flat by the concussion, but Milo got up fast and aimed his lasgun.
He saw the naked face of the tormented, wounded Blood Part soldier. Hairless, pale, ear lobes and brows distended by the multiple piercings, the face brutally scarred from top to bottom with thick folds of rouched tissue. The blast had not done that. The Blood Part’s heinous initiation rituals had made those fearful, lifetime marks.
“Feth!” Milo gasped, and fired. The red-armoured figure buckled and fell. His screaming ceased.
“Colonel?” Chiria called anxiously, getting to her feet and pulling Nehn up after her.
Corbec was on his face on the walkway. His makeshift ploy with the launcher had ignored one crucial detail. The revetment had been right behind him when he fired and the huge exhaust kick of the tube had had nowhere to vent. The force had thrown Corbec forward five metres like a hammer blow. He’d made an even bigger balls-up of using a tread fether than Kazel had done a few hours before.
“Colm? Colm!” Bonin cried, running to him.
“Bruised and battered, Corbec rolled over on to his back, giggling-Teach me to be fething spontaneous,” he sniggered.
There was a loud explosion from the other side of the revetment wall. Dragging Corbec to his feet and leaving Nehn to finish Guthrie’s dressing, Milo, Bonin and China hurried to the nearest gap.
The Vanquisher Wild One was dead. It was hard to tell what had done the work. The remaining Reavers and the AT83 were throttling back down the Principal, the stalk-tanks clattering away behind them.
Emboldened by the sight of a Leman Russ burning, the Brigand stirred forward again, and hammered a shot at the Access Denied that crushed its front bracings and fore-hull plating. By now, the roadway was punctured in dozens of places by deep shell craters.
“Feth all that,” Corbec declared, still woozy, “load me up, somebody.” He had picked up the Blood Pact rocket launcher again.
“Come on, now I know how the fething thing works…”
Chiria ran to the fallen satchel of shell spares and came back with one. With some discussion, the four of them figured out how to slot it into place, lock it in, prime it and arm the launcher.
This time, Corbec checked there was plenty of venting room behind him. “Stand well back,” he told them. “I’ve heard that’s the smart move with these things.”
Bonin, Milo and Chiria backed right off, laughing despite the tension of the moment.
Corbec got down on one knee and rested the weight of the snout-heavy launcher on his right shoulder. The scope was an open sight, just a wire cross inside a metal bracket. He settled the c
entre of the sight against the junction between turret and hull on the AT83, then lowered this estimate by a few centimetres. Recent experience had taught him Blood Pact launchers pulled up like a fething bastard when fired.
“Ease!”
The RPG shot across the highway and hit the 83 in the side turret plates. The tank shook, but came no closer to death. It rapidly traversed its main gun towards Corbec’s position.
“Not good…” Corbec admitted, starting to run.
But the distraction had given the Demands a good shot at the 83’s throat. It fired, main-load AT, and took the big tread’s turret off with the precision of a ceremonial guillotine.
The Access and the Demands stood their ground now on the ruined highway, whipping shells at the rapidly retreating Reavers and stalk-tanks. A pall of fuel-oil burn smoke and fyceline discharge hung over the area.
“One, this is two,” Corbec voxed.
“Two, you’re clear.”
“The assault here is over, boss. We’ve turned them back and—”
Corbec broke off.
“Repeat, two. Repeat, two. Transmission interrupted.”
“Ibram? Corbec. I’m still here. Forget what I just said. The bastards just got serious.”
The reversing enemy tanks, now two hundred metres back down Principal III, were pulling over to the edges of the highway to allow something to pass. It came up monstrously fast too fast it seemed, for something so huge.
Access Denied and Demands With Menaces started to retreat rapidly, slamming into full reverse. A huge shell impact ripped the Demands apart catastrophically, spraying armour parts into the air on the hard tide of an expanding fireball.
Coming down the highway towards them was a Baneblade super-heavy war tank. All three hundred and sixteen tonnes of it were painted bright crimson, even the drive wheels and tracks, and foul symbols were inscribed along the massive hull.
Corbec dropped the empty launcher tube with a clatter. It had no purpose any more. This was an entirely different scale of feth.