Stone splinters ripped through the bodies of the men who remained on the walls, tearing them to bloody rags, but Tedeski knew that he couldn't leave the walls totally unmanned for fear that an escalade was underway. There was every chance he was consigning these men to die, and the guilt of their deaths tasted like ashes in his mouth.
Suddenly, he set off towards the walls, climbing the dusty, fragment-strewn steps that led from the courtyard to the parapet.
'Sir?' shouted Poulsen, 'Where are you going?'
'To stand on the walls with my men,' snapped the irascible major.
Years of ingrained obedience kicked in and, without thinking, Poulsen trotted up the steps after Tedeski before his conscious brain truly understood what he was doing.
A ragged cheer greeted Tedeski's arrival as he marched to the head of the bastion, defiantly facing the enemy guns. The parapet here was cracked and sagging, several metres of rockcrete missing from its length, and Tedeski had a clear view of the scene below.
The two batteries were wreathed in clouds of thick grey smoke, which was periodically pierced by flashes of fire. Screaming projectiles slashed through the air as a soldier unnecessarily shouted, 'Incoming!'
The shells slammed into the base of the wall below Tedeski, blasting chunks of rock high into the air and enveloping him in a drifting bank of smoke. Tedeski didn't flinch and when the cloud cleared, merely dusted off his uniform jacket with his one hand.
As the noise of the explosion faded, Tedeski shouted, 'The enemy must have bad fevers. Do you hear them cough? Perhaps we should offer them some sweet wine!'
Laughter and cheering swelled from the throats of Battalion A of the Jouran Dragoons, their courage bolstered by their commander's words and bravery.
Another nerve-stretching hour of shelling followed which Major Gunnar Tedeski endured with his men in determined silence.
As dusk turned the sky the colour of congealed blood, Tedeski turned to Poulsen, and took his aide-de-camp's data-slate with a shaking hand.
With an effort of will to keep his voice from breaking, he said, 'Order the guns below to deploy and shell those batteries out of existence.'
FORRIX PICKED HIS way across the cratered plain as quickly as his bulky suit of Terminator armour would allow him, followed by thirty of his hand-picked warriors. Like him, they had dulled the lustre of their Terminator armour with red dust from the plains, and under the fury of the bombardment would hopefully escape detection by the soldiers above them.
He knew they did not have much time. The commander of the garrison above would know by now how devastating die artillery of the Iron Warriors was, and that unless he destroyed it quickly, his fortress was lost. It followed that he would now deploy his hidden guns and this was just what Forrix wanted. Honsou waited in the forward parallel with forty of his warriors and nearly six thousand human soldiers spread along the extent of the trench.
The timing would need to be precise. Too early and the Imperials would seal the tunnels leading to the guns; too late and his artillery would be bombed out of existence.
Forrix stalked through the cratered wasteland and secreted himself less than fifty metres from the entrance to the concealed artillery pits. His veteran warriors filed into position alongside him and waited, the noise of the shelling swallowing the thump of their heavy footfalls.
They did not have long to wait. A sliver of light and rumbling of heavy rolling stock grinding along rails announced that the guns were indeed moving into position.
'Honsou,' hissed Forrix, rising to his feet and charging towards the guns, 'go now!'
HONSOU SNARLED IN anticipation as he heard Forrix's words echo within his helm and kicked down the sandbagged barricade that led from the forward parallel onto the plain. He sprinted forward, the Iron Warriors fanning out behind him as they raced across the uneven ground towards the base of the steep, rocky slope. Behind him thousands of red-clad soldiers climbed from the trench and the guns continued to fire, pounding the walls to breach the central bastion.
The augmented fibre bundle muscles of their armour powered the Iron Warriors upwards, leaving the human soldiers floundering in their wake, stumbling around in the strobing, shell-lit twilight.
He and his warriors would be first to reach the fortress. This type of action had once been known as a Forlorn Hope, because the first men into the breach would invariably be the first men to die. It was the duty of the Hope to draw the enemy fire as the remainder of the force closed with the fortress. The men of the Hope would storm the breach and buy time with their lives for the following troops to push through. Hundreds of men might be sacrificed in this way simply to get a handful through the breach.
Storming a breach was always a bloody affair, because the enemy knew exactly where the attack would be coming from, though Honsou hoped the constant bombardment from the batteries would keep the Imperial defenders' heads down.
He clambered swiftly up the jagged rocks, each powerful thrust of his thighs pushing him closer to the top. As the noise of shell impacts intensified, he looked up into the darkening sky, seeing the broken top of the ramparts and a huge tear ripped in the side of the bastion. Tonnes of rabble spilled down its flanks and provided a ready-made ramp to the defenders above.
'Battery guns, cease fire,' ordered Honsou as he cleared the top of the slope.
Shouts of alarm echoed from the top of the walls and a handful of las-blasts stabbed towards him, but they were poorly aimed and flew high.
Honsou muttered the Iron Warriors' catechism of battle: ''Iron within, iron without'' as his men pulled themselves onto the ground before Tor Christo and charged with him towards the breach.
FORRIX SWEPT HIS power glove through the chest of a man wearing a gunner's reinforced flak vest, his upper body exploding in blood and bone. Roaring reaper cannon fire ripped through the Imperial gunners and soldiers, spraying the flanks of their artillery with blood.
'Protect the guns!' screamed a junior officer before Forrix tore his head off.
Fools. Did they really think the guns were their target, that the Iron Warriors did not already have a surfeit of guns?
Their attack had hit without warning and the first Imperial troops had died without knowing what had killed them. Their guards tried to fight back, but within seconds had realised the fight was hopeless and fled before Forrix and his Terminators. But the old veteran was not about to let his prey escape him so easily. Three of his warriors levelled their reaper cannons, the barrels studded with spikes, and unleashed a deadly hail of shots that felled men by the dozen.
Forrix lumbered forward, ignoring the Imperial guns and charging as fast as he could towards the wide doors in the mountainside. Already the alarm had been raised and they were rumbling closed, but too slowly. Forrix and his retinue burst through into the space beyond.
A volley of las-fire greeted them, hissing harmlessly from the thick armour of the Terminators. Scores of Guardsmen were spread through the cavernous chamber, but Forrix ignored the bright flashes of weapons fire as he searched for the door mechanism. Thick rails ran across the rockcrete floor from three enormous bays and ordnance magazines, each with cranes and pulley chains filling the space above them.
He could see stairs ahead leading upwards carved through the rock. The majority of the cavern's defenders were gathered at their base behind hurriedly constructed barricades of crates and barrels. Another group was clustered behind a pair of giant bulldozers, firing from behind their yellow bulk at the invaders. Guessing the controls for the door were housed here, Forrix charged forwards through the hail of shots, his armour easily deflecting the defenders' pitiful fire. He and his Terminators fired their combi-bolters across the flanks of the bulldozers, explosive shells killing a dozen soldiers and ricocheting from the dozers' flanks with flaring detonations.
More Terminators headed for the soldiers guarding the stairs as Forrix rounded the forward edge of the closest bulldozer and hosed the men there with bolter fire. Grenades burst harm
lessly around the Terminators as one man dived aside and swung a heavy rifle with a ribbed barrel towards Forrix.
A white-hot beam of plasma energy slammed into his chest, instantly obliterating the blasted iconography there and searing through layers of ceramite armour. Forrix felt the heat of the plasma scorch his skin and he staggered under the force of the impact. His Terminator armour had been forged on the Anvil of Holades on Olympia itself and its ancient spirit was as corrupt as he, and not yet willing to fall. Forrix recovered his balance and punched his power fist through the plasma gunner's chest in a shower of bone splinters, lifting the impaled body from the ground and hurling it through the air in a bloody arc.
Bursts of bolter fire and disembowelling sweeps of lightning claws silenced the resistance. Forrix strode to the access door controls on the far wall and wrenched the release lever into the ''open'' position. The doors screeched, the mechanisms protesting as their motors suddenly reversed and began to rumble open again. Forrix backed away and put three bolts through the control mechanism.
Satisfied the gun bay doors would not be closing any time soon, Forrix rounded the blood-splattered bulldozer, watching as his warriors with reaper cannons began slaughtering the remaining defenders of the cavern in controlled bursts of gunfire.
As the slaughter continued, the Guardsmen broke and ran for the steps. Those not quick enough to reach the cover of the stairs were shredded by the Iron Warriors' firepower, their screams drowned in the deafening roar of the cannons. Any not killed in the initial bursts were soon torn apart as the shells destroyed their barricade in an instant. Within seconds the entire defence was gone, only chewed up crates and mangled corpses remaining.
A single, terrified soldier suddenly broke from cover, sprinting for the stairs. Three cannons tracked him as he ran, but Forrix said, 'No, this one is mine.'
Forrix let the man get within a hair's breadth of safety before he fired his weapon.
Shells tore great chunks from the wall behind his victim, shattering several control panels.
As fast as the soldier had run, it was not fast enough. A single shell clipped his thigh as he twisted out of the line of fire, instantly shearing his leg from his body just below the hip.
He landed in a bloody bundle, shrieking in agony as he saw the ragged stump of his leg, its remains hanging by gory threads. Forrix smiled and marched across the rockcrete floor, stepping across the wide rail tracks to stand above the man. He was hyperventilating and staring in horror at his ruined leg.
'The hydraulic shock will drag the blood from your heart in a few seconds,' said Forrix, his voice distorted by his armour's vox-unit. The man glanced up, uncomprehending, his eyes glazing over as death drew near.
'You are lucky,' said Forrix. 'You will die before the Warsmith ascends. Thank your Emperor for that.'
The sound of battle faded and the cavern was theirs. Terminators hurried past him, eager to continue the killing.
He opened a channel to the remainder of his company.
'The lower level of the fort is ours. Send the rest of the men.'
Forrix lifted his eyes from the dying soldier and climbed the stairs to where two Terminators were attacking a wide set of steel doors, driving their powerful chainsaw-equipped fists into the junction of the doors.
Molten sparks filled the tunnel, spilling down the steps onto the waiting Terminators.
HONSOU SCRAMBLED UP the jagged piles of debris and loose rubble cascading down the breach in his wake. Twisted reinforcement bars jutted from smashed blocks of rockcrete like tendons, and dust fogged the air. Bright stabs of las-fire from above pierced the smoke in huge numbers, melting rock and hissing against armour. A bolt stuck his shoulder guard, staggering him, but he pressed on. A grenade burst at his feet, deadly fragments ringing from his armour and embedding themselves in his leg greaves.
He could see the enemy had cast down a barrier of rusted abatis, sharpened iron girders, crudely welded together to form waist-high obstacles to their charge. Honsou knew that the longer they were under fire, the less likely they were to be able to scale the breach. This was the point at which many assaults came to end, broken by obstacles and shredded by the defenders' fire.
For this attack to have any chance of success at all they had to mount the breach in one leap to overwhelm the defenders lining the parapet. Honsou tripped as the rocks slid out from beneath his feet, narrowly avoiding being obliterated by a shot from a lascannon. He pushed himself angrily to his feet and cursed as he saw three black-steel tubes bound together with packing tape clatter down the slope of the breach.
Honsou threw himself flat onto the rocks as the demolition charge exploded. The Shockwave dislodged whole swathes of rubble and he felt himself sliding back down the breach, his auto-senses kicking in to protect him from the deafening and blinding detonation. Two Iron Warriors were snatched away in the blast, their armour ripped open by the force of the demo charge. Honsou rolled upright, his armour smoking from the explosion and clawed his way back up the breach.
More shots riddled the shattered breach, vitrifying the rock and pitting the ground with bullet impacts. Honsou felt powerful impacts from a heavy bolter slam into his armour. Pain blossomed up his left arm as one shell found its mark in the gap between his vambrace and elbow guard. Fire from the bastion to the north delivered murderous flanking fire into his men. The sheer amount of enemy firepower was now telling. Honsou saw another Iron Warrior fall, his armour pierced by a smoking hole punched in his breastplate.
More grenades bounced down the breach. Honsou pushed upwards, reaching for the abatis and pulling himself forward. The grey flanks of the wall stretched high above him. The only way in was through this six metre wide breach the guns had blasted, and the sliver of red sky he could see through it was a beacon to him.
This was taking too damn long! Already the human Chaos soldiery were clambering over the lip of the rocks below and he hadn't even fought his way into the mouth of the breach yet. Honsou gripped the rusted girders of the abatis in both hands, roaring as he ripped them from their position, sending them tumbling to the base of the breach, crushing half a dozen soldiers as they fell.
Another Iron Warrior climbed up to join him and the two of them went forwards, firing their bolt pistols as they climbed. Through the dust and smoke, Honsou could see shadowy forms at the jagged top of the breach and could hear screaming voices yelling him onwards. He shot into the smoke, hearing screams of pain as his bolts hit home.
He pushed forwards, gripping the stonework as the slope grew steeper. A shot punched into his breastplate, another grazed his head. Shots filled the air, flashes of las-fire vaporising the smoke as they slashed past him. The one remaining tower at the head of the bastion sprayed bullets across the breach, kicking up spurts of rock dust while grenades wreathed them in ringing detonations and spinning fragments. The warrior beside him fell, his helmet a molten ruin, but Honsou pushed on through it all, oblivious to the screams of dying men around him and the battle cries of the hundreds of soldiers that now clambered up the rocky slopes behind him.
The top of the breach was close now, he could make out individual forms through the smoke. He saw a Guardsman rigging another demolition charge and waited until the man stood up, ready to heave the explosives over the lip of the breach, before shooting him in the head. Blood sprayed from the stump of his neck and the man tumbled backwards, the primed demo charge falling from his dead fingers.
Honsou dropped flat as the rocks above him were swept clear of defenders by the massive explosion. Screams and desperate orders sounded from above. He leapt to his feet, drawing his sword and sprinting for all he was worth towards the billowing pillar of black smoke that wreathed the crest of the breach.
He collided with a pair of figures dressed in sky blue uniforms, and swept his sword across their chests, dropping them screaming to the ground. He could see more soldiers rushing to plug the sudden gap in their defence and shouted, 'Iron Warriors, with me!'
Bu
t Honsou was alone. He turned to face the nearest Guardsmen as they charged him. He killed the first men easily, but soon more and more clustered around him, entangling his blade with their bodies and restricting his movements with their corpses. He kicked out, spinning in a bloody arc as he clove his sword through his enemies. Shots and blades rang against his armour.
Where were the rest of his men?
He glanced down the sloping face of the breach. Below was a hell of lasers and bullets, enfilading fire from the flanking bastion ripping great holes in the ranks of the human soldiers as they struggled up the rocks. Hundreds had fallen, their bodies shredded by automatic weapons or burned by las-fire. The northern bastion had escaped relatively unscathed thus far. A few shells burst overhead, but the main shelling had been directed against this bastion, and the men assaulting it were now paying the price for that decision.
More enemies closed in around him as he shot, cut, stabbed, kicked and punched a red ruin through the defenders, roaring in triumph as the warriors of his company climbed onto the walls, sweeping left and right along the ramparts. Bolters fired again and again and men died in droves as the Iron Warriors took the ramparts of Kane bastion in blood and steel.
Silhouetted in the flames of the defenders' rout, Honsou leapt for the courtyard below, the stonework cracking under his weight. Enemy soldiers streamed towards the narrow neck of the bastion, Iron Warriors in hot pursuit. The momentum of the charge must not be lost. Despite this success, there were sure to be thousands more soldiers in the bastions either side of this one.
Honsou ran through the confusion of the battle, firing as he ran and cutting down those soldiers not quick enough to escape. At the neck of the bastion he saw the Imperial troopers were heading for a wide trench, crossed by a narrow bridge. Troops bottlenecked on the crossing despite the desperate shouts of officers for them not to. As Honsou watched, the bridge collapsed into the trench, crushing those unfortunate to be trapped beneath it. Some soldiers dropped into the trench, turning to fire on the Iron Warriors, but many more were streaming in panic to the main esplanade where a squat, round tower crouched at the base of the steep escarpment.
Iron Warriors - The Omnibus Page 16