by Guy Haley
Back on the command deck Bannick paused a moment to listen more closely to the chatter of the deck crew. Orders were going to and fro for the landers to prepare for final checks. No signs of imminent departure forthcoming, Bannick climbed up the ladder to the turret.
Though large, much of the turret was taken up by the breech block of the massive main cannon. First Gunner Meggen sat to the right of it. The ladder came up in such a way that Bannick’s nose brushed metal slick with condensation and grease as he clambered inside. The shell lift was set right behind the breech, the top lumpy with auto-loading mechanisms. Meggen’s seat was hemmed in by two racks, one for more shells and another for spent casings. To the rear was a viewing cupola, another seat crammed into its base – Bannick’s secondary command post. Despite all the mass of machinery around him, Meggen had the most space of any of them.
‘Hey, Bannick,’ said Meggen. ‘Bored?’
‘I don’t like waiting,’ said Bannick. ‘You?’
‘Just fine as wine, Colaron,’ said Meggen. He and Bannick had become closer since Agritha, and the honoured lieutenant did not pick him up on addressing him by his given name. ‘We’re in a metal box, inside another metal box, in a third metal box, waiting to be dropped into a firefight. What more could I possibly wish for?’ He caught Bannick’s expression. ‘Don’t worry, won’t be long,’ he said.
‘That’s a relief.’
‘Then again, the longest I’ve had to wait for deployment like this was forty-eight hours,’ said Meggen. ‘So don’t get your hopes up. My arse was fit to burst, I needed to go so bad.’
‘How’s the wound?’ asked Bannick. On Meggen’s shoulder was a livid purple scar, the veins around it traced out in a dark red – the legacy of their engagement with eldar on Agritha.
Meggen rotated his shoulder. ‘It’s all right. Damn thing only hurts when I’m cold or trying to sleep sometimes. First don’t matter much in here, it’s always hot, but the other I could do without.’
‘Well, I’ll–’
‘Don’t say you’ll do what you can. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ve had every sawbones on this transport poking at me. There’s nothing they can do, and seeing as all you can do is ask them, there’s nothing you can do either. Nothing they give me works so well as this. I’d kill for a bottle of decent gleece, but we live on, eh?’
A sharp noise burst in Bannick’s ear. Vox override brought the voice of the ship’s deckmaster. ‘All troops prepare for deployment. All troops prepare for deployment.’
From outside, the muffled wail of a klaxon sang. The low conversation of the crew in the tank ceased. A tense hush fell. A metallic bang sounded. Bannick felt Cortein’s Honour’s machine-spirit stir in expectation.
Meggen glanced up at the hatch above him.
‘Looks like we’re going in. Good luck, sir. Let’s hope we don’t get shot down before we land.’
Bannick slid down the turret well ladder with his feet either side of the rails. He nimbly slipped around Epperaliant into the press of his instruments and back into his chair. Without his vox-piece to remind him that an outside world existed, he might have succumbed to claustrophobia. Cortein’s Honour was enclosing at the best of times, but it seemed ten times worse while the tank was held in the lander. Box in a box in a box. Meggen had that right.
‘Are we ready, men?’ he asked. A chorus of ‘Aye, sirs’ responded. Epperaliant had finished praying and was on the vox, communicating with his opposite numbers aboard the Seventh Paragonian Super-Heavy Tank Company’s second Baneblade, command Hellhammer and Shadowsword.
‘I’ve the honoured captain on the horn, sir,’ said Epperaliant.
‘Patch him through to the internal hailers. He’ll want to speak to the men.’
Hannick always addressed his tankers before combat. He often didn’t say much, and that was as good for morale as the fact he spoke at all, but the effect was rather spoilt by a fit of hacking coughing that went on for ten seconds before he began.
‘Damn Kalidar!’ he spat. ‘Get a breathful of that place, it never leaves you.’ The men laughed dutifully. ‘Are we all ready?’
‘Marteken ready. Artemen Ultrus prepared for combat,’ said the commander of the company’s other Baneblade.
‘Us too, captain,’ said Hurnigen of the Shadowsword, Lux Imperator.
‘Aye aye, sir. Ready for drop,’ said Bannick.
‘Good. In three minutes, or less, probably less, our company will be shot from the relative comfort of these fine Imperial Navy vessels right into the heart of battle. For those of you who have not done a combat drop before, it’s exhilarating. I expect every man to pull his weight,’ he said, and the crew of Cortein’s Honour mouthed the words along with him. Hannick was a good man, but had a set of stock phrases. ‘For all elements of society operating optimally in their proper place is the Paragonian way.’ And then he added, unexpectedly, ‘I realise a lot of you are not from the planet which this regiment hails, but the same applies to you. May the Emperor watch over all. See you when we’ve taken the spaceport. Hannick out.’
The vox cut out. Clanks sounded outside, conveyed from somewhere in the giant landing craft through the metal of the Baneblade’s hull. Cortein’s Honour vibrated, taking on the thrum of the drop-craft’s engines as they spooled up to bear the immense strain of delivering such a large amount of mass to the bottom of a gravity well.
A new voice crackled over the internal vox. ‘Flight crew report we are cleared for launch. All crews, prepare for drop. Marking on fifteen. Three, two, one, fifteen. Mark.’
A third voice sounded in the room, taking up the countdown. ‘Fourteen,’ it intoned, with all the interest of a man set to counting a mountain of beans.
‘Vox-sets up and on,’ said Epperaliant, scooting up and down his long desk on the rails that held his chair.
‘Sound off, crew,’ said Bannick. ‘Affirm restraints fixed.’
‘Aye aye,’ said Meggen.
‘Tighter than they need to be,’ said Vaskigen.
‘Yes, sir!’ said Gollph.
‘Affirmative, bossman,’ said Shoam.
‘We’re in correctly, sir,’ said Leonates, tugging at his and Huwar Lo Ganlick’s harnesses.
‘Bindings set,’ said Kolios. Both he and Epperaliant were now engaged in a complicated series of tasks, ensuring that their part of the datanet linking the four behemoths of the Seventh would survive the drop. Peak operational performance was demanded by Astra Militarum diktat. Bannick would settle for being able to talk to their commanding officer and get every other word. The engine noise outside built.
‘Restraints tight and cosy,’ said Bannick, checking his belts for the sixth time. It wouldn’t do to arrive in battle dead from a sloppily fastened seat belt.
‘Six,’ continued the dull voice. ‘Five.’
Better a dull deck crew than a staff of hotheads, thought Bannick.
The tank shook. Equipment rattled in its webbing. A quiet alarm beeped. Kolios shut it off.
‘By the Throneworld,’ said Ganlick. His smile was false, a brave face for his comrades.
‘The shaking will become significantly worse,’ said Kolios. Ganlick blanched. Most of them, Bannick included, had never performed a combat drop. To descend the turbulent ladder of a planet’s gravity into the teeth of enemy fire was a costly exercise in men and machines. They were all scared.
‘Don’t listen to him, Huw,’ said Meggen. ‘Hold on tight.’
Klaxons blared outside, signalling the opening of the great docking bay doors and the disengagement of the integrity fields on the flight deck apertures. The atmosphere was vented into the void, and the clamour of the klaxon became muted, travelling only through direct material contact.
‘Four, three.’
The engines howled. Bannick felt suddenly light as the grav-plating in the embarkation deck was disengaged.
‘Two. One. Countdown complete. The Emperor protects.’
‘He better be basdacking watching today,’ grumbled Meggen.
The tank shifted in its own restraints as the giant landing craft lifted off and blasted out into the cold depths of space.
Creaks and rumbles, the groans of tortured metal fighting mass, velocity and pressure, the grumble of engines pushing them off fast from the assault fleet – these were the only signs of their traversal through the void. Bannick was blind to the outside, at the mercy of the Navy crews piloting the lander. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the company, he couldn’t see anything beyond the dark hold. Men prayed again, more fervently this time than before. He hated this feeling of powerlessness. On the battlefield the peril was orders of magnitude greater, but he could respond, he could formulate plans. If there were to be disasters they were his to deal with. Here he was nothing, a lump of meat to be conveyed in an expensive sealed can. If the pilots made an error, there was nothing he could do. Death by mistake was prevalent in the Imperial Guard. The Departmento Munitorum’s only virtue was unbending rigidity, but orders could be worked around, solutions figured out. At no other time but landing did Bannick feel what he truly was – one fighting man among trillions, a resource to be expended. To the adepts, his loss during transit was of no more consequence than the wastage incurred by a spoiled tin of fruit.
Hot in the tank. A box in a box in a box. A box in a box in a box. The phrase went round and round his head. He realised he was saying it under his breath.
The gravity of Geratomro tugged at Bannick’s mass, and he was pulled into his chair, uncomfortably at odds with the force of the lander’s acceleration.
The tank jiggled violently. Items strapped up on the walls rasped and rattled. Epperaliant swore as his caffeine mug, overlooked in the intense preparations for the landing, walked off the edge of his desk and bounced on the floor. The building howl of atmospheric re-entry growled at them, growing louder and louder, the roar of a hostile planet. Gollph shrieked in terror below. There were some things he had not assimilated yet, probably never would. Above, Meggen swore over and over again.
Now came the significant worsening Kolios had spoken of. The crew shook so hard their vision blurred. Bannick clamped his jaw shut to stop his teeth smashing into each other or biting his tongue. He wrapped his arms over his restraints to hug them closer to his body. He gripped the left strap with his left hand. His right hand sought out his medallions and clutched them tightly.
‘The Emperor protects, the Emperor protects,’ he said through his clenched teeth. He was not alone in repeating the mantra, but he may as well have been. Every noise was drowned by the deafening roar of air blasting against the landing craft. Metal shrieked and sang as they plunged down.
And then, a terrifying lurch. The ship pitched sideways to an alarming degree, bringing cries from the lips of every man aboard Cortein’s Honour, that ice-cold basdack Shoam included. Bannick tensed, terrified, awaiting a fiery death as the landing craft came apart. The ship levelled. Distant bangs were, perhaps, projectiles contacting the hull. Maybe one of the other craft had been hit. His own tactical analysis prior to the battle, crude though it was, suggested at least a twenty per cent loss among the landing craft.
He thanked the Emperor they lived.
They were flying forwards now, prow down, G-force pressing him painfully back as the landing craft raced to the surface and away from murderous ship-killing fire. A short hoot on a siren was the only warning they got that the craft was going to level out. Regulations called for Bannick to direct his crew to brace at that moment, but he had no inclination to do so, and he could not have opened his mouth if he had.
For a moment, he felt weightless again as the ship abruptly changed direction to fall bellyside down. Another roaring, a second beast come to fight the first. Retro jets blasted downwards, arresting the descent, he told himself. His restraints bit into his shoulders, his head filled with blood. They slowed rapidly. The terrible pressure on his body lessened. Another klaxon.
‘We’re down!’ he managed. But they were not. The signal came early, and the spine-shortening impact, when it came a half-second later, took them all by surprise. The ungentle kiss of Geratomro boomed through the ship, and suddenly they were still.
‘Sound off!’ called Bannick.
‘Turret ready!’ said Meggen.
‘Secondary weapons ready,’ said Kalligen.
‘Tertiary weapons team ready,’ said Leonates.
‘First and second loaders ready,’ said Vaskigen.
‘Reactor primed, online and ready for war, all praise the Omnissiah,’ said Tech-Aspirant Kolios. He began to chant as he and Epperaliant worked together to rouse the machine-spirit of Cortein’s Honour.
His efforts were unnecessary. The tank was eager for battle. The reactor rumbled throatily.
‘Reactor online. Visual systems activated. All signum codes inputted and weapons released,’ said Epperaliant, sliding up and down the rail before his long operations desk. ‘Weapons live, don’t shoot them in here.’
Leonates and Ganlick shared a grin as their twitch sticks jerked into life. Meggen muttered something uncouth about dropping his cheroots out of reach. Bannick heard them all through the vox. He heard the Savlar take a long draw on his nitrochem. Kalligen sounded pained. New noises took the place of the old. The drum beat of heavy fire rattled on the ship’s hull.
‘Prepare for disembarkation,’ the anonymous flight crew informed them. ‘You have two minutes before we’re away. If you ground pounders are not out of this craft by then, you can explain it to high command on the ship.’
‘Bring up the engine to full power. Engage drive units. Easy now,’ said Bannick.
The vox burst into life again and Hannick spoke.
‘Normal spread, two by two. Artemen Ultrus will take the left. Ostrakhan’s Rebirth close in behind. Bannick, lead out Lux Imperator on the right. We have our intelligence – let’s see what we’re dealing with before we do anything rash. Targets are those of opportunity. Anything from the defences that survived orbital bombardment. Clear the way to the spaceport for the Atraxians and Genthus Reclamation Force. The landing fields must be taken intact.’
‘Land ramp deploying,’ advised the ship’s crew, men Bannick had never seen and never would. ‘Retracting tank restraints.’ A series of clunks sounded as mechanical claws relaxed their grip. Pistons eased them back into the walls.
A tremendous boom came from outside. They all flinched.
‘Throne, they’ve got some heavy ordnance here,’ muttered the pilot. ‘Ramp down in three, two...’
‘Activate full sensorium. Give me eyes on the outside, Epperaliant,’ said Bannick.
A dark picture, punctuated only by running lights, took shape on the multiple screens around Bannick’s command station. The chartdesk built into the front of the console fizzed with the random motes of an undirected hololith. The ship moaned like an animal giving birth, giant pistons pumped on wheels by the ramp, and a thin sliver of blinding light filled Bannick’s screens and poured in through the cowled, armoured windows set around the command deck. It took a moment for the tank’s augur eyes to readjust and the screens to dim. Then the ramp was lowered, and the day’s battle took shape outside.
‘Ramp down, ramp down!’ shouted the flight crew, and immediately the lander’s engines began their rising song. ‘Away! Away!’
‘Go! Go! Go!’ bellowed Hannick.
‘Kolios, engage transmission! Shoam, get us into it!’ said Bannick. Fear was gone, anticipation of battle taking its place. He may very well not survive the coming fight, but he would not be at the mercy of others. Bannick was his own master again, and when one commanded a super-heavy tank, that meant something. Would there be cheering outside? Would the soldiers see the tanks roaring out of their lair and punch the air? Once, he would have be
lieved that, for that was the vision he had of life in service before he joined. He had seen too much suffering, had too much experience of the intense exhaustion war inflicted on men to believe it any more. He only hoped they could do some good.
The Savlar responded by revving the engine and sending the giant tank forwards, one clanking link at a time. Slowly at first, then with the implacability of an avalanche, Cortein’s Honour picked up speed and rolled from the belly of the heavy lander into a firestorm.
Battlegroup Geratomro, 398.M41
Astra Militarum
–>Battlegroup Geratomro [note, initial reclamation force. Much depleted. Reinforced]
Commanding officer General Jonatan Hern
415th Cadian (foot) [@18%]
754th Cadian (armoured) [@28%]
89th Cadian (support) [@76%]
Fourth Jupian Ironlords (foot) [note, low technological base, supplies inadequate. Petition #100003427328905, filed 976.M40, unresolved] [@17%]
36th Ogryn Auxilia [@63%]
First Drani New-Pledged (foot) [@56%]
Second Drani New-Pledged (rough riders) [@72%]
->->Battlegroup Kalidar
(cross ref. Dentares Wargroup of the Indranis Campaign sheet #71, Cc/ref Eldar attach. 391-394M41]
Commanding officer, Captain-General Iskhandrian [advised, Grand Captain Olgau. Cc/ref Atraxian command protocols, Sibellius’ Guide to Imperial Guard Regiments of Segmentum Tempestus]
23rd Paragon (foot) [@50%]
322nd Paragonian Armoured Veterans (armoured) [@29%]
62nd and 84th Mechanised Infantry/Infantry Paragonian (merged, Mech. Inf.) [@83%] Vet./Non-national officers (cross ref sheet#2066; Lost Regiments of the Dentares Suppression)