Sergeant Grodolkin walked beside him in silence, radiating intense anger over the deaths of good men. The sergeant was big and broad shouldered, and had lost an eye at some point in his past. It was difficult for Karif to imagine that this dangerous man was as respected for his beautiful paintings of the Emperor’s saints as for his combat prowess and solid, squad leadership abilities.
“Those men died bravely,” said Karif. “We’ll honour them at the proper time.”
Grodolkin didn’t respond.
The tunnels were dark, and still stank of sewage despite long years of disuse. Trooper Stavin walked on Karif’s left, carrying a promethium lamp in one hand and his lasgun in the other. The orange glow of the lamp threw dancing shadows on the curved black walls of the tunnel.
The heavy boots of Grodolkin’s squad, just six men left, caused echoes that raced ahead of them into the darkness. Karif cursed the noise, and hissed at them to step lightly. As they pressed forward, however, the sounds of battle overhead became louder and covered the noise of their passage. Tanks and artillery platforms could be heard booming and rumbling through the metres of rockcrete between the tunnel’s ceiling and the streets above.
“I hope the others are all right,” whispered a trooper behind Grodolkin.
“I’m more worried about us,” replied another in hushed tones. “They’ve got the White Boar with them. He’ll get them through. But I’ve never liked tunnels.”
Sergeant Grodolkin grunted and turned. “Shut the khek up, you two, or the commissar will execute you on the spot for poor discipline.”
Karif turned and scowled. “Listen to your sergeant. I’ll cut the head off any man that gives us away to the foe. Is that clear?”
“Rahzvod,” said one.
“What?”
“Rahzvod, sir,” he repeated. “It’s clear.”
The sound of metal clanking on stone echoed down the tunnel towards them. By reflex, every man dropped into a crouch with his lasgun raised. Nothing happened. After a moment, Karif ushered them cautiously forward. Soon, they could hear scratching and chittering sounds from up ahead.
“Douse that khekking lamp, trooper,” said Grodolkin.
Stavin hesitated only long enough for Karif to say, “Do it, Stavin.”
When the lamp was shuttered, it became clear that there was another light source ahead. At a bend in the tunnel just a hundred metres away, the stone walls glowed softly with a pulsing light that suggested a naked flame.
Karif didn’t dare speak out loud. Instead, he signalled the others to prepare for an engagement.
Remember your Anzion, Daridh, he told himself. Remember what you read in the man’s books. Orks can’t see in the dark any more than we can. The noise up ahead doesn’t sound like your average orks. They’re not sneaky or subtle, but it may be ork stealthers like those we encountered in Korris. What in the warp are they doing up there?
The Vostroyan squad numbered nine men, including Stavin, Sergeant Grodolkin and himself. Karif decided their best chance to minimise casualties lay in a full and sudden frontal assault, catching the enemy right in the middle of whatever business they were about.
Using hand-signed battle language, he communicated to Grodolkin and his men that he believed the sounds to be coming from ork saboteurs. With more gestures, he readied the men to rush forward as one, firing on the foe as soon as they were within sight.
The Vostroyans nodded their understanding and moved into assault formation under the direction of Sergeant Grodolkin. Stavin stayed beside his commissar. He put away his lamp and gripped his lasgun tight in both hands. His bayonet was fixed securely under the weapon’s long barrel.
Karif’s heart quickened and adrenaline coursed through him, lending extra power and speed to his limbs. His laspistol and chainsword felt reassuringly weighty in his hands.
Who knows how many there are, he thought? Or what we’re walking into? The men are ready. There’s no point speculating. We attack!
He gave the signal to charge. Squad Grodolkin surged forward along the bend in the tunnel, holding formation as they ran. Before them, a great mob of gretchin, scores of them, spun at the sudden noise, freezing for a moment in absolute surprise.
Squad Grodolkin opened fire immediately. Lasguns cracked with uncommon sharpness in the enclosed confines of the sewers. Beams slashed out, cutting green bodies into smoking pieces. The echoes in the tunnel made it seem as if thousands of Vostroyans were attacking at once.
As the screams of dying xenos filled the air, the gretchin snapped out of their shock and launched into a retaliatory action. But it was too late. Scores of them fell howling as las-bolts carved deep black wounds in their flesh. It was a massacre. The gretchin had been so intent on their task that they were utterly unprepared to defend themselves.
In the light of the gretchin torches, Karif realised with a start just what their task had been.
“Stop firing!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Hold your fire, Throne damn it!”
Stavin must have seen it too, because he joined the commissar, his high voice cutting through the noise as he yelled: “Hold your fire!”
The surviving gretchin, of which there were just over twenty, began firing back. They hefted their heavy pistols with two hands and loosed shots off towards Grodolkin’s men. But the Vostroyans saw the reason for the commissar’s order. They saw for themselves how close they’d come to disaster. There, fixed to the ceiling overhead, was a mass of ork explosives. Long fuses dangled all the way to the floor, waiting to be fixed to the timing device that lay in the middle of a ring of fresh, green corpses.
A single stray shot, thought Karif, and we’d be dead already.
“Bayonets,” yelled Sergeant Grodolkin. “Engage at close quarters.”
The gretchin fired again and again as the Vostroyans rushed forward, but the weight of their pistols made it difficult for them to aim properly. Even so, given the volume of fire they loosed at the charging men, it was inevitable that some shots would find their marks. The Vostroyans’ cherished carapace armour saved their lives, absorbing most of the impacts from those shots, even at close range.
Only two of Grodolkin’s men went down in the hail of bullets. Karif was right behind one of them when it happened. The luckless man was thrown backwards, lifted clear off his feet with his head demolished. Before the responsible gretchin could reload, both Karif and Stavin raced forward, closing the distance at a sprint. Stavin pierced the creature’s belly with a thrust of his bayonet, but the gretchin lashed out with its long arms at the same time. Fingernails like talons cut deep red gashes in the adjutant’s left cheek.
As Stavin reeled from the blow, Karif swept his chainsword up and lopped off one of the creature’s arms. He immediately followed with a savage kick to its bleeding belly. The kick was a blur, launched with a speed and technique developed over long years of daily training on Terrax. The gretchin was blasted backwards, howling pitifully until its skull cracked against the tunnel wall behind it.
As it slumped unconscious to the tunnel floor, Karif turned to his adjutant. The young trooper was shaking with anger and adrenaline. “Finish it off, Stavin. No mercy for the Emperor’s foes. Kill it.”
Stavin stepped forward wordlessly and ran his bayonet through the unconscious creature again and again, driven by rage and shock, fear and pain.
That’s the stuff, Stavin, thought Karif. Mercy has no place in a soldier’s arsenal. I told you back in Nhalich, remember? The graveyards are full of merciful men.
High-pitched alien screams filled the tunnel as Grodolkin’s troopers exterminated the last of the gretchin. The stunted greenskins were no match for Vostroyan Firstborn in hand-to-hand combat.
“Damn, but that was a close thing, commissar,” said Sergeant Grodolkin, stepping up to Karif’s side. The big sergeant noticed that Stavin was still ramming his blade into the lifeless xenos corpse. “That’s enough, trooper. It’s dead. Save your energy for the next one you meet.”
Stavin stepped back, his chest rising and falling with deep breaths.
“If a single las-bolt had struck the explosives, sergeant,” said Karif with a gesture at the bomb clusters on the ceiling, “we’d have met a very noisy and, in my opinion, early death.”
“Why here?” wondered Grodolkin.
“I suspect we’re very near our destination, sergeant. We must try to find an exit hatch nearby. There must be a ladder leading to a manhole cover. I can hear the rushing waters of the Solenne, so the bridge can’t be far. The gretchin were trying to bring down the road.”
Grodolkin nodded. “Meaning we might just be behind Vostroyan lines?”
“More likely, we’re right under them.”
As if to confirm this, the tunnel shook with a mighty boom. Karif said, “The orks must be closing on the bridge even as we speak, sergeant. We’ve got to get a move on.”
Another blast shook the tunnel. One of Grodolkin’s troopers shouted for his sergeant’s attention. Karif and Stavin followed Grodolkin over to the trooper and discovered that the man had found a series of steel rungs set into the stone wall. At the top of the ladder there was a manhole cover, their way out of the sewers.
“Outstanding,” said Karif. “Sergeant, order your men to carefully dismantle the gretchin explosives. We don’t want any accidents after all we’ve achieved down here.”
“Aye, commissar,” said Grodolkin. He turned and began barking orders to his men.
“As for me,” said Karif, “I could do with a bit of fresh air.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Day 688
East Grazzen — 15:37hrs, -22°C
The sky above was dark and heavy as Fifth Company charged straight towards the greenskin horde. The churning black clouds matched the moment well. Sebastev bore little real hope that they’d make it through. Mere men, even soldiers as brave and skilful as the men of this company, couldn’t hope to survive for long in close combat against enemies as powerful and savage as the Venomhead orks.
Colonel Kabanov had ordered the men into a fighting wedge with heavy weapons spread evenly along the line. Sebastev placed himself near his colonel with Lieutenant Kuritsin at his side. Father Olov was nearby, as was Lieutenant Maro. The other officers placed themselves by the surviving men of their own platoons. Leading the thirty-nine troopers that remained, the officers of Fifth Company charged up the street with weapons blazing, eager to fell as many of the enemy as they could before the two sides crashed together.
The orks ran, too, roaring and laughing as they hefted their blades into the air. They loved nothing more than a bloody battle at close quarters. This was a fight on their terms. For Fifth Company, there were simply no alternatives. If the Emperor was with them, there would be an opening somewhere. Some of them had to make it through. Trooper Aronov ran just a few metres off to Sebastev’s right. The rebel prisoner was slung across the big scout’s shoulder, hanging limp. Aronov had immediately knocked him unconscious rather than wrestle him forward during the fight. The prisoner was a terrible burden on Aronov. His fighting would be seriously hampered. Still, Sebastev was sure he’d made the right choice. If anyone could get Brammon Gusseff across the ork line, it would be the big scout.
“Vostroya!” shouted Colonel Kabanov as he charged, firing at the closest orks with his powerful antique hellpistol. Adrenaline and desperation had overcome his ill health, at least for the moment. His every blazing shot sent another smoking ork corpse down under the feet of its fellows, but there were just too many. Ten kills, twenty, thirty, it seemed to make little real difference to the wall of green bodies.
“For Vostroya!” yelled the men, pouring fire ahead of them as the distance closed. The buildings on either side of the street lit up with the intensity of the Vostroyan las-fire. The air echoed with cracks, and became thick with the smell of scorched ork flesh. Troopers Mitko and Pankratov, both of whom wielded plasma guns, loosed devastating rounds that were almost too bright to look at. The orks were packed so close that every blast of superheated plasma obliterated dozens of them.
Troopers Kovo, Grishna and Tzunikov sent burning streams of promethium out towards the enemy, scorching scores of them to death and forcing the others back. But the press of bodies was so tight that the greenskins had nowhere to go. In those first few seconds of the battle, the toll taken by the flamers was gratifyingly heavy.
Fifth Company had already lost most of their heavy bolters on the journey. Only a single man armed with such a weapon remained among them. Trooper Kashr strafed the orks with deadly explosive shells, killing scores of them as he ran forward. The weapon’s rate of fire was incredible but, all too quickly, his ammunition was spent. He dropped the heavy gun to the ground and pulled his sidearm from its holster, drawing his knife at the same time.
A part of Sebastev’s mind processed all of these details, assessing where best to place his own shots, and where the ork line was thinning, if at all. His bolt pistol barked again and again, and thick ork skulls detonated with sprays of blood, brain matter and bone fragments. But it was Sebastev’s power sabre, gripped tightly in his right hand, that he knew would do the most damage.
As orks and men crashed together with bone crunching force, Sebastev launched himself into a sweeping series of strokes from the twenty-third form of the ossbohk-vyar. The Vostroyan combat art had taught him to target his enemy’s extremities first, removing their offensive capabilities at the first opportunity. The orks that came towards him swinging their crude weapons quickly lost their hands. They fought on, attempting to kick out at him, or batter him with the bleeding stumps of their wrists. That was the nature of orks. They seldom fell from anything but a lethal strike to the brain or to certain vital organs, but by stripping them of their weapons, he rendered them far less of an immediate threat. Disarmed in this way, the orks in question could be dispatched far more easily, though they were still frustratingly tough.
As Colonel Kabanov’s fighting wedge bit deep into the ork line, the colonel called out for his men to change formation, to form a tight circle with their backs to the centre.
With the orks closing around them, the Vostroyans arranged themselves into a bristling wall of bayonets and power sabres. They fired las-bolt after las-bolt into the faces of the orks that pressed forward, but they were truly surrounded, and in the most desperate fight of their lives.
The manhole cover was frozen shut. It may as well have been welded shut given the incredible hold the ice had on it. Even the powerful figure of Sergeant Grodolkin couldn’t push it off, though he slammed his armoured shoulder against it again and again. After a moment, Commissar Karif called the man back down to the bottom of the ladder.
“Is there a flamer in your squad, sergeant?”
“There was, commissar,” said Grodolkin with obvious remorse, “but he stayed behind to cover our escape.”
“Well, I suppose there are a few other options available to us. The one that immediately springs to mind would be lasguns.”
“Lasguns, commissar?”
“They won’t damage the manhole cover itself, but if we fire enough las-bolts at its underside, I think they should provide more than enough heat to melt the ice that’s fixing it in place, don’t you?”
“Easy enough to find out,” said Grodolkin. He called three of his men forward and ordered them to stand at the bottom of the ladder, firing vertically at the disk of black metal above their heads. After a moment, Karif called for them to stop.
“That ought to do it,” he said as he gripped the first of the rungs and hauled himself up towards the exit. At the top of the ladder, he reached out a gloved hand and checked the temperature of the cover’s underside. It was still warm, but no longer scalding hot. He braced his shoulder against it and pushed.
As the cover lifted, the pale light of the winter afternoon washed over him. The cold wind rushed past him and down into the tunnel. With his head above ground again, his left ear immediately filled with a stream of vox-chatter. There were repo
rts of Leman Russ tanks being crippled by ork anti-vehicle squads. Platoons across the city were desperately trying to fall back towards the bridge, but the orks had already cut them off in many places. Some of the vox-traffic consisted of little more than screams that cut off sharply.
Karif pushed one more time and heaved the heavy manhole cover from his back. As he pulled himself out of the hole, he listened hard for any mention of Fifth Company. To his incredible relief, he managed to catch the voice of Colonel Kabanov ordering his men to fight hard for the glory of Vostroya and the Imperium.
They’re still alive, he thought. There’s still time to help them.
“Quickly,” he called down to Grodolkin’s squad. “Follow me up.”
Something very sharp and cold slid into position by his jugular. Karif suppressed his reflex to turn.
“Who the khek are you?” asked a harsh voice from behind him. The owner of the voice kept the edge of his blade pressed tight to Karif’s neck.
“I am Commissar Daridh Ahl Karif of the Emperor’s own Commissariat. I’m attached to the Vostroyan Sixty-Eighth Infantry Regiment’s Fifth Company. And, while I applaud you for both your vigilance and your suspicious nature, if you don’t get that bloody bayonet away from my neck, I’ll use it in your execution. Is that understood, trooper?”
The blade withdrew from his neck immediately.
“That’s better,” said Karif as he stood and turned. “Now move back while my men exit the tunnel. And get someone in charge over here now. I’ll need to speak to him at once.”
Good men fell screaming behind Kabanov and the sound filled him with rage, adding speed and power to the strokes of his sword. His hellpistol was empty and there was no time to reload. For every ork that went down, another stepped forward swinging wildly with club or blade. Instead, Kabanov focused on his sword craft, letting his power sabre become an extension of his body and his will. The ground at his feet was slick with freezing blood, slippery with greenskin viscera. The footing was bad, but Kabanov had spent his whole life training for fights such as this. As old as he was, he still retained some of the balance and agility that had made him a regimental combat champion so many years ago. The orks weren’t quite as graceful. One slipped on the entrails of its fellows and dropped to one knee. Kabanov lunged forward in a flash and plunged the point of his power sabre into the creature’s brain.
[Imperial Guard 03] - Rebel Winter Page 22