by Guy Haley
‘Get that transport out of my way!’ shouted Bannick from the cupola.
‘You! Move that Chimera to the side!’ shouted Meggen from the gunner’s hatch.
‘We’re doing our best, sir! It’s stuck.’
‘You want this road clear, then we need to get to that ridge!’ said Bannick, who was in very poor humour. He was soaked, the enormous raindrops of Geratomro having battered their way past the protection of his clothes. A warm, unpleasant mist rose from the line of march. The evening stank of promethium exhaust, fouled mud and wet, unwashed men. The peacekeepers blew whistles and waved lit batons, guiding a squadron of Chimeras off the road and parting the men. These tracked vehicles fared well, but the hauler resolutely refused to move. Massive tyres spun round, spraying men with mud. The hauler lifted forwards a few feet, then sank up to its axles.
‘Emperor’s teeth!’ shouted Bannick in frustration.
‘Try the other side, sir!’ shouted a peacekeeper. ‘Drive over the road and go past that way.’
‘Aye to that,’ said Bannick. He pressed his vox pick-up to his mouth. ‘Shoam, ninety degrees right. Watch out for the men, they’re everywhere.’
There was a note of petulance to Cortein’s Honour’s engines as it turned laboriously to face the road. Peacekeepers shouted and blew their whistles. Men trudged wearily through the trees lining the way to clear a space.
‘Shoam! Forwards.’
The Baneblade rumbled like a displeased god and shoved its way onto the road. Tree trunks cracked into splinters as it crushed them under its massive hull.
Four distant bangs sounded. Light flashed in the sky over the ridge.
‘Incoming! Incoming!’ Shouting men fled in all directions, tripping over one another as they scattered and threw themselves into the mud.
Screaming shells hurtled downwards. The first raised a spout of filthy water a hundred feet high ninety yards south of the road, but the next was closer. Meggen ducked below and slammed his hatch. Bannick was about to follow him when he saw men lying in the ruined ground, sheltering from the shells right in the path of the tank.
‘Get out of the way! Move! Move! Shoam, three degrees left. Men on the ground, men on the ground!’
The soldiers who had their wits about them rolled out of the way.
‘Move!’ screamed Bannick. ‘We’ll crush you!’
Too late, a man looked up, right into Bannick’s eyes.
‘Move!’
The tank rolled right over him.
‘I... I... Shoam, Throne curse you! More care!’
‘I cannot see, bossman. The rain is thick,’ voxed Shoam back, coolly factual, unworried by the man’s death.
‘Move!’ yelled Bannick at others. These heeded him, and scuttled out of the path of the tank, heads down.
On the ridge, the guns fired again.
Shells banged into the ground, blasting the infantry. One screamed down dead on the cab of the hauler tractor. The vehicle exploded, lifted four feet off the ground and slammed back to earth. Bannick reeled from the shock wave. Mud and flesh slapped down all over the tank. Shrapnel pinged from his raised turret, and he dropped into an instinctive crouch.
More shells fell further down the road, bringing forth mushrooms of fire where they impacted vehicles. Then they were silent. Bannick stood.
The column had been hit hard. Craters smoked all around them. The peacekeepers were dead. Pale flesh was luminous in dark mud in the last light of the day. Men were shouting and screaming in pain, but the way was clear.
‘Sir, if we stop we can drag that hauler off the road,’ said Epperaliant.
‘No. We can’t do anything here. Forwards, Shoam. The best service we can provide these men is to take out those guns.’
To protect the line of Magor,
So we swear.
To be the guardians of Geratomro,
So we swear.
To forbear no enemy to live,
So we swear.
To hold the Emperor dearer than life,
So we swear.
Chapter Thirteen
The Yellow Guard
HILL SEVEN-BETA, RASTOR TERRITORY
GERATOMRO
087198.M41
Full dark waited for them at the hill. Their masked headlights fell suddenly on filthy Paragonians cowering in foxholes filling with cold water. An officer came out to meet them. Bannick ordered the Baneblade to a halt and poked his head out into the downpour.
‘Are you in charge here?’ He had to shout. The guns on the crest were booming repetitively, the hilltop flashing with their discharge in the rain. The pop of detonating shells sounded from the distant road.
‘I am,’ shouted the man back. ‘Captain Kenrick. I am very glad to see you. Perhaps you can resolve this little situation for me, and we can get on with finishing this war?’
‘Come up, sir!’ called Bannick. ‘Get out of the rain for a moment.’
The captain nodded and clambered up the Baneblade’s access ladder. Bannick took the man’s freezing hand and hauled him up onto the turret. Seconds later, they were by Bannick’s chartdesk.
‘Throne,’ said the captain, shivering heavily. ‘It’s warm in here. I don’t want to get back out.’
‘Trust me, it’s too hot most of the time. What have we got here then?’
The captain pulled out a data-slate from his satchel and keyed it to transmit to Bannick’s chartdesk. Bannick moved aside the map Captain Santelligen had given him. A hololith of the area sprang into being from the desk.
‘Right,’ said Kenrick. ‘We’ve designated this hill as seven-beta. It looks solitary, but past here the land bunches up and there are a series of shallow valleys with higher ridges beyond, then the moors. Just here is the Drava – doesn’t look like much, but it becomes a sizeable river within twenty miles of its source. We think this is the last enemy concentration in this sector. At least, I hope they’re concentrated here and nowhere else, because taking this one hill has been the Emperor’s own task. There’s a trench complex atop it. From it, their artillery battery has clear sights over the road to the west. As you can hear, they’ve started their bombardment in earnest. My men are stuck here, here and here.’ The captain pointed out troughs round the bottom of the ridge, which was wrinkled by numerous rills and scarps along its flanks. ‘Within minimum distance of their big guns, but we’re suffering from small arms and man-portable heavy fire.’
‘Where did you try the assault before?’
‘There, and there,’ said the captain, pointing out two smoother portions of slope that led up to the hill crest. ‘This one to the south is five hundred yards from here. The other lies opposite, to the north. The cliffs give out in both places, so the hill is a bit of a saddle, and these approaches are almost as good as roads. Both times, we went in simultaneously on two fronts. The rest of the ridge is too steep to run up easily. Everywhere else it is fronted with escarpments like these.’ He poked the hololith with his finger. ‘So they know that too, right? There are heavy bolter and autocannon emplacements covering all angles on both approaches, lascannons and missile launchers too. All teams, I think, not armour mounted. But these men, they’re Yellow Guard, fanatics.’
‘Yes. We ran across some of them earlier today.’
‘The Geratomran militia melts like cheese on the griddle, if they don’t just surrender. The Yellow Guard are something else. Huratal’s elite, the match of anyone we have, and they’re dug in well. This is a permanent position. Whoever planned it knew their strategy.’
‘Santelligen told me they have some sort of potent anti-tank here.’
‘I was coming to that. There is at least one self-propelled piece up there, mounting an energy beam weapon. I’ve not seen the like before, but I checked my Tactica Imperium.’ He tapped the screen of his slate. ‘I think, and I’m sorry to tell you this, that they have a D
estroyer, or something very like one.’
‘Where did they get that?’ said Bannick. Destroyers were tank hunters based on the Leman Russ chassis: no turret, but a single, mighty laser cannon mounted directly into the hull. Few forge worlds had the knowledge to produce the cannon; they were relics.
‘Throne knows, but they have one. It’s horrible. Cored the Leman Russes with one shot apiece, those it didn’t blast to fragments.’
‘And that covers the two approaches?’
‘It did last time. They’ve got it set up at the top where it can redeploy to shoot down both slopes. There’s not a clear line of sight from any one position, but they’re pretty quick with it. Crew’s good.’
Bannick studied the map a moment. ‘Then we can’t go directly up either of these ways.’
‘Not even in this?’
‘This is a big tank, sir, but a Destroyer’s made for punching through any amount of plasteel.’
The captain sagged. ‘But when the rest of your company–’
‘Not coming, we’re it. I told you, we ran into Yellow Guard this morning. Look, we can attack, but we’ll have to take a different approach. If we start here,’ he said, his finger disturbing the hololith at the edge of the nearest of the previous assault vectors, ‘we can lob a few shells into them, stir them up a bit and get them anticipating an attack from that direction. We’ll be vulnerable – they’ll know we’re here soon enough because we’re pretty damn hard to miss. As soon as that Destroyer has a bead on us they’ll start firing, so we’ll get off two, maybe three rounds before we’ll have to retreat behind this slope. Then we’ll move from there to here, below where the cliffs are tallest at the western edge, here over the Drava Valley. Their weapon won’t be able to draw a line on us there. You commence your assault here,’ he said, pointing at the southern slope, ‘while we drive up to the foot of the crags, then around the other side. We attack from the rear. We’ll have cover along here for most of the way. If we can catch the Destroyer before it gets us, we can take out the rest of their anti-tank teams, then we’ll be among them, and the havoc we’ll cause will see this all over quickly.’
‘The Russes couldn’t do that. They said the slope was too steep.’
‘It was, for them. Their centre of gravity’s too high. If they turned on that slope or swung their turrets about too quickly, they would have toppled. Our mass is held a lot lower, we’re broader and I have the best driver in this army group. We’ll not have the same problem.’
‘How long will it take you to make the ascent and go around?’
‘On this ground, ten or twelve minutes.’
‘Twelve minutes is a long time to leave my men in a las-storm.’
‘Take cover by the wrecks of your APCs – it’s better than nothing. But we need a diversion. On our own, we can put out as much firepower as a platoon. If we allow them to concentrate all their fire on us in one place, then we’ll all be knocked out and you’ll be left sat here in the mud.’
‘I’m going lose a lot of men.’
‘I know,’ said Bannick. He hated the coldness that came into his voice. ‘But it’s better than delaying the conclusion of this war. That artillery hasn’t stopped firing since we left the road, and it is crammed with men. There can be no advance in this sector until the guns are silenced. Who knows how much ammunition they have up there? And believe me, sir, the greatest risk will be ours.’
The captain looked at his data-slate. He pulled out a stylus, made a few marks on the screen and frowned at them.
‘I suppose you’re right. Give us half an hour to get organised. We need to get this done before they figure out you’re down here.’
‘Thirty minutes then.’
Whistles signalled the mortars to open up, and they peppered the hillside with explosions. With a roar of ‘For Paragon!’ the men of the 477th ran forwards. In response, flares blasted up from the top of the hill, lighting up the hillside with a hard glare. Las-bolts and heavy bolter rounds blasted out from hidden positions, raking the lead elements of the Paragonians. Men dropped. Those caught by bolt-rounds exploded.
Epperaliant examined the augur feeds of the tank. ‘I’ve got them – fifteen positions, here, here and here.’
‘Forwards!’ shouted Bannick from the cupola. ‘Fire on the move. Meggen, get as many rounds off as you can. Epperaliant, transmit targeting data.’
‘Aye, sir!’ shouted Meggen from beneath his feet. Epperaliant’s more muted reply came via vox.
Shoam rammed both sticks forwards, and Cortein’s Honour burst through the small wood it had been sheltering behind, crushing those trees that hadn’t already been shattered by battle, and rose up and over a neck of land protruding from the hill. Bannick put his magnoculars to his eyes. The top of the ridge blazed with weapons fire as thick as the rain. Kenrick’s men were running up the shallowest slope, making for the burned-out hulks of a dozen armoured personnel carriers littering the approach.
‘Main gun has sight and ready!’ shouted Meggen.
‘Forty degree right. Target that concentration of fire dead centre.’
Fire and white gases spurted from the exhaust vents on the main cannon’s muzzle. The shell streaked across the sky, its subsidiary rocket flaring. A ball of fire and a resounding boom marked its detonation. The fire coming down at Kenrick’s men slackened.
‘Keep on going up, Shoam. Get ready to drive down the side of this ridge. Meggen, fire at will.’
The nose of the Baneblade climbed steeply. Bannick braced himself against the hatch ring and flicked his magnocular view to thermal imaging.
‘Epperaliant, do you see the enemy AT?’
‘Negative, sir,’ Epperaliant replied. ‘Augurs aren’t getting anything.’
The turret swung around to track the enemy weapons as the Baneblade drove up the steep slope. The cannon boomed again. Bannick’s magnocular screens were dazzled by the discharge and he lowered them from his eyes. Again a pillar of fire and earth rose from the summit of the hill. In the light of falling flares he saw movement up there, and put his glasses back to his eyes.
Thermal imaging revealed the blocky, turretless shape of a Destroyer. As a thermal image it was a confusing shape obscured by the glare of weapons, without definition, but there was no mistaking the powerful cannon protruding from its hull. This long snout swung slowly to point at them, and the tank’s body glowed white with the heat of working generators.
‘Shoam, down the other side! Now, now, now!’
The Baneblade lurched on the hillside, turning thirty degrees to the left and running down the far side of the ridge in the slope. Again Bannick’s magnoculars flared, this time from the discharge of the Destroyer cannon, so bright he winced. A beam of collimated light seared the sky feet over the turret of the Baneblade. It impacted half a mile away then snapped off, the site of its connection with the earth glowing red.
‘Missed! Keep low. Follow the downside of this ridge. Head for the crag. Meggen, there’s a change in contour one hundred yards ahead. We’ll have a shot at the top again. Take it. Secondary and tertiary weapons prepare to engage targets at will. Let’s make them keep their heads down, if nothing else.’
Shots came down from the low cliff at the top of the slope, solid shot cracking off the armour, bolt-rounds exploding, las-beams scorching the paint round him. The number of gunshots increased as men were redeployed to face the Baneblade. Bannick saw their crouched forms lit up by the flares, hurrying along trench lines reinforced with tree trunks between rockcrete firing positions like beetles fleeing a disturbed log.
‘Sir, come down. We’re getting close,’ urged Epperaliant.
A lascannon beam scored a glowing furrow in the side of Bannick’s cupola. ‘Negative, I’ve a better field of view up here.’
The forward heavy bolter turret came to life, tracking across a timber-and-earth revetment. Splinters of woo
d and clods of soil flew outwards. The trench behind flashed as bolts detonated. Firing from there ceased. The right-hand sponson opened up a second later to similar effect.
‘Leo, take over on the forward turret,’ said Kalligen. ‘Permission to engage with the demolisher, sir?’
‘Aye aye, fire at will,’ said Bannick.
‘Demolisher free!’ reported Epperaliant.
The deafening thwack-boom of the short-barrelled demolisher shook the tank. Fire blasted from the ring of exhaust ports around its muzzle, putting Bannick in mind of the fire-breathing draco of ancient legend. The shell slammed into the scarp, burying itself in the hillside before detonating and blasting rock outwards.
Now Bannick did duck into the turret, the hatch held over his head. Rocks rattled off the top of the tank.
‘Meggen,’ said Bannick. ‘We’re clearing the line in a couple of seconds.’
‘Positioning turret,’ said Meggen. ‘Preparing to fire.’
Bannick waited for a hail of heavy stubber bullets to pass, then stuck his head out of the hatch. The ridge in the hill they followed was dropping lower to the main body of the slope, bare stone breaking through the turf. Ahead, crags blocked themselves in onto the sky, periodically lit by discharges of las-fire and the wider flash of artillery. The ridge dropped. Bannick scanned for the Destroyer. There was no sign of it. Battle raged fiercely on the forward slope. Kenrick’s men were well sheltered in the wrecks of their transports. Mortar fire thumped down relentlessly on the enemy emplacements, thickening the pounding rain. He picked out a target.
‘Meggen, bunker, twelve degrees left.’
‘Got it, sir.’