Another alarm started. The other two Hydras opened up, the twelve light trails seeming almost to bend as the automatic targeting sensors traced something flying towards them hard and low and fast.
‘Enemy fliers,’ Yastin called out.
Vetter nodded. He was counting down to zero hour.
A fireball curved off towards the south and impacted in a dull orange blast, hazy through the smoke of war. Vetter lifted his chainsword, thumbed the stud to set the teeth spinning for a moment.
‘Make ready!’ he shouted.
The gun crews reacted with swift, effective, practised movements. Vetter had come from the 340th Regiment, but the two had been merged so long it was hard to remember which of the old crews was from which unit. The months of fighting had thinned their ranks drastically, but the new recruits were shaping up well.
Vetter held his arm aloft as another alarm sounded and this time the Hydras swung round to the south-east. Soon all their twenty anti-air platforms were engaged, fluid lines of tracer fire tracking the enemy.
‘Make ready!’ Vetter ordered.
He counted down the seconds.
Eight, seven, he counted as a long metallic neck of brass and wires appeared from the gloom before them, soot trailing from its nostrils like a dragon of old.
Between the counts of seven and five, the helldrake’s sinuous body emerged. It had wings of steel, and when its snout opened, it gave a scream like tearing sheet metal.
Four! There was a ripple of movement as the gun crews stood to, signalling they were ready.
The vox officer, Dresk, was standing next to him. Vetter didn’t even wait for the question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’re ready!’
Three.
Dresk turned to pass on the message.
Two.
Vetter allowed himself a deep breath in that tasted of ash and battle and smoke and death, put the whistle to his lips and raised an arm.
One.
The guns fired on time, four hundred Basilisks roaring as one.
It took five seconds before the next salvo rang out. Breeches were opened, cleared and re-armed, slammed shut, and fired again.
Not bad, Vetter thought, but his men could do better.
By the sixth round, his crews were warming up. The barrage became a constant roar of thunder and smoke and recoiling Earthshaker barrels. Inch by inch, gun crews adjusted the barrels, forcing the barrage forward at the pace a Leman Russ could drive. Suddenly Vetter remembered the flying daemon engine that had been beating towards his lines. He looked about and saw nothing.
Had it passed overhead? he thought, and looked up, where it had last been seen, flapping into the face of the guns.
Bits of metal were falling from the sky like feathers.
Three
Myrak Salient
In the shattered bunkers of Kasr Kraf, the South Polar Orbital Arrays, the island kasr of the Caducades Archipelago – all across Cadia, where defenders still lived and fought, Guardsmen sat waiting by their vox-units, their faces tense, their eyes downcast, as they ran through the upcoming assault, and their part within it.
At zero hour the vox-units crackled to life and Creed’s voice ground out.
‘The fight back has begun…’ he told them. ‘Have faith. Have courage. Have no mercy upon our foes.’
Then whistles blew. The order was given. It was do or die.
Decimated regiments that had been fighting for months had been thrown together according to availability, logic and chance. Infantry were paired with tank brigades; drop-troops with armoured fist squads; scout regiments with artillery companies. The few massive line-busting Baneblades and their ilk were pulled together into squadrons and companies.
There had been heated arguments and fights as regiments with proud and individual distinctions were merged with young regiments that lacked a long pedigree.
The lieutenant of the Cadian 3rd, who were one of the founding regiments of the Cadian Gate, had refused to serve under the command of a colonel of the Cadian 4002nd Rifles – a unit that was itself an amalgamation of three other regiments, one of which had been decimated by the Commissariat after it had broken in the battle for Gestal Heights, in the Scarus Sector.
A major of the Cadian 99th Lancers had resigned his commission rather than serve under the command of an infantry officer. He led his roughrider squad in the first charge on the Nexus Gate, had two mounts shot from under him, and was last seen leading the survivors up the ramparts towards the enemy.
But Cadian units followed the same professional codes of conduct and war. They all faced the same enemy.
Unknown to the enemy and the Cadians alike, Creed’s hidden army were making their way out of the safety of the Salvation outposts. The scale of the counter-attack was vast.
On the far-flung continent of Cadia Tertius, servitors loaded squadrons of Thunderbolts and Marauder destroyers with Hellstrike missiles. Hidden launch-bay doors opened, and squadron after squadron soared out, to clear the skies of Cadia.
On the plains of Cadia Primus, infantry regiments lined up at the underground armouries as quartermasters unloaded hellguns and lasrifles, flamers, grenade launchers, demolition charges, heavy bolters, autocannons and lascannons with well-oiled tripods. The speeches of Creed rang out over the vox-relays and the fury of the warriors, who had chafed at their isolation, became as cold and merciless as a freshly whetted blade.
It took some rifle regiments two days to make the climb to the sally points. Under the hills of Cadia Secundus, armoured units were brought up from the depths by vast lift halls that carried a whole squadron of tanks at a time. The closer to the surface they came, the stronger the scent of ash and burning. Then, at last, they stood before the closed sally ports and the tramp of boots came to a halt.
For some of the troops waiting at the doors, it was hours of standing. Others arrived only moments before the scheduled opening of the Salvation gates. Generals, majors, colonels, lieutenants and sergeants all made their speeches – some long and erudite, others short and curse-filled and to the point.
Across Cadia Primus and Secundus, millions of elite Cadian Shock Troopers gripped their guns tighter, ground their teeth, cursed the enemies of the Imperium of Man and readied themselves for war.
That morning Cadia fought back.
In the trenches of the Myrak Salient, whistles blew and whole platoons moved up over the top into a hail of heavy stubbers and bolters. Armoured fist squads, loaded into their Chimeras, charged across no-man’s-land in columns five wide, their turret-mounted autocannons and multi-lasers tracking for targets. Tank regiments with honour rolls that stretched back eight thousand years moved out, battle cannons smoking. Airborne units lifted off, packed into Valkyries that flew low to the ground, side gunners scanning for targets.
For some unlucky regiments the time arrived, the codes were tapped into the locking panels, and nothing happened. The earth had been so transformed by orbital bombardment that the doors of their bunkers would not open, and the units realised that they were trapped.
But most who charged out on Cadia Primus found a land devastated by war. The land they knew was now an unfamiliar maze of craters. Proud cities were burned and empty shells. Vast tank graveyards showed where battles had raged on the surface and the land had been turned black, as if a wildfire had crossed the entire planet and scorched everything in its path.
Each unit had coordinates to head to, objectives to seize, but for many of them the battles had already been lost, the kasr they were meant to be relieving already plundered.
‘There has been a wildfire,’ General Justus declared to his men. ‘It is the Arch-heretic. It is Abaddon. He is responsible. It is him we hate. And all who follow him.’
On the burning plains of Cadia Primus, many units found themselves surrounded by Iron Warriors. The lead tanks of the Cadian 652nd Armoured Brig
ade suddenly erupted in flame, and as the rest of the company tried to move around them, they were also taken out with well-aimed lascannon shots. The column ground to a halt as tank commanders made desperate attempts to move the burning wrecks out of the way, while more and more of the column was torn apart by an enemy they could not see.
A few tank commanders attempted to fire back, but it was a hopeless task, and soon Iron Warriors ran amok through the parked columns until the whole bunker was a roiling mess of fumes and fire.
As the scale of slaughter on Cadia Primus grew in horror and violence, foul sorceries were unleashed and the bounds that held the immaterium back began to weaken. Amid the black and smoke, lurid and impossible shapes appeared. Red packs of vicious, horned monsters tore tanks apart with their claws and unholy swords. Vast winged shapes loomed up, with battle-axes the size of a Sentinel, snarling and gnashing and howling for blood. Men were struck dumb with terror. The immense daemons crushed tanks with a single blow of their axes, or a stamp of their red, hoofed feet. Although they were millions strong, the forces of Cadia found themselves outnumbered and overpowered. But despite everything, they resisted with all their strength.
Proud regiments, who had carried victory across the Imperium of Man, each found a hill or a mound, planted their banners in the burned earth, firing and bayoneting at the waves of heretics, inch by inch being slowly overwhelmed like an atoll being swallowed up by a rising sea.
The continent of Cadia Secundus had been hit less hard than those to the north, and here the forces of Cadia had fared better. There were many places such as Bastion 8 where command and control retained a firm grip. The defenders charged out, and many of them shared the same experience as Lars when he led his tank column forward.
‘Contact!’ he voxed. His guns were loaded. His targeter was already winding the barrel round.
‘Tanks,’ Lars voxed to his unit. He was going to say ‘dozens’ but he could see that he was wrong. There were a hundred tanks, at least. More and more streaming up from the ground before him. ‘Holy Throne!’ he said. ‘Hold your fire. They’re Cadian!’
The two columns came together, lead tank to lead tank.
Lars shook his head in amazement. ‘Bendikt, is that you?’
From the Salvation outposts whole armies appeared, fresh and ready for battle.
The tide of war began to change, and across the continent, Cadian forces felt the sudden injection of fresh troops rock the heretic forces back, and many made swift progress.
At the Primus-Junction, the 79th Armoured Regiment crashed through a section of the line held by the Volscani Cataphracts, firing plasma guns from the back of the Chimera transports, killing the heretics in their thousands. The 992nd/328th/674th Scout Regiment had a combined force of over six hundred Sentinels armed with multi-lasers and autocannons, and fifty with lascannons. Under the cover of a short-range artillery barrage from the two hundred Medusas of the 1911th Artillery Regiment, the Scout Sentinels moved forward, led by the veteran Sentinel pilot Lieutenant Ester Vathe.
As they approached the trenches of the enemy, the phalanx of walkers accelerated into a loping run, heavily-armoured Sentinels screening the lighter units behind.
The Sentinels came under sustained enfilading fire from heavy bolters and lascannons, and lost over fifty walkers in a matter of minutes. For a moment it seemed that the charge would be thrown back, but then Ester Vathe charged the lines of the enemy, singing Imperial hymns. The massed Sentinel column hit the trenches and the fury of the Volscani foot soldiers.
There was a brief and furious fight as the Sentinels kicked and stomped their way through the foe. They would have stalled, until a sudden white light appeared in the sky and drove the enemy back.
Some claimed to have seen a bright human shape in the sky. Some saw Creed. Either way, the momentary shock it inflicted on the enemy allowed the heavy flamer-armed Sentinels to rush up and bathe the heretic trenches with burning promethium. Dark shapes leaped about in the torrent of burning, and then they fell, submerged and overcome with smoke and fumes, and the Sentinel drivers stamped on any that made it out. There was a furious battle of man and machine, and then, in less than half an hour, they were through, into open ground, wreaking a heavy cost on the supply trucks of the enemy and widening the hole in their line.
In some parts of the battlefront, command and control had been hit so many times by Black Legion terror squads that even the famous Cadian discipline was starting to creak under the pressure. The effectiveness of the attacks was haphazard and, sometimes, counter-productive.
The Cadian 987th/23rd tank regiment set off three hours too early. Their sixty-three Leman Russes and two Hydra flak tanks smashed through the heretic cultists along Sublime Ridge, and ploughed on through six miles of hastily thrown-up defences, Hellhounds scouting ahead and to either side, filling the trenches with burning promethium and allowing the main battle tanks to keep on rolling towards their objective, the heights to the north of Kasr Myrak. Their commander, a Cadian veteran of only thirty-five years, known as Bold Brasq, sighted an enemy tank formation coming towards them and destroyed it in a firefight that lasted less than two hours, leaving wrecks burning over fifteen miles of the Myrak foothills.
It seemed at first that the misstep would prove a bold and brilliant move, but their assault went too far, too fast, and it was not long before the enemy reacted and the tanks were set upon by a flock of metal carrion that covered the armour in flame and boiled the crews alive inside their vehicles.
The Hydra tanks put up a solid defence, but to no avail, and once one had been destroyed, the task before the other was too great. It was picked off by three of the creatures, which came at it from all sides, like carrion birds mobbing a wounded beast.
With their air defence destroyed the rest of the tank column was exposed and isolated. Bold Brasq’s Exterminator-pattern Leman Russ battle tank had been winged by a lucky missile strike and was making slow speed towards the shelter of a charcoal forest of bare stumps when it was set on by seven of the flying machines.
Brasq was manning the turret autocannons. As soon as they were in range he started to fire. Spent shells rattled off the tank hull like a hailstorm, and the tracers made an almost continuous line of light.
‘Have faith,’ Brasq had told his crew, and they were Cadian: tough, remorseless, realistic. He hit a flying creature in the wing. It spiralled down to earth and hit the ground head first. Its back was broken in an instant. He hit another in the breast, a sustained volley that tore wing from body.
The third swirled up into the air for a moment, managing to stay just ahead of the autocannon rounds, as two more flew in from behind.
Bold Brasq had a moment’s warning, as the roar of their coming was like the sound of a gale in the high veldt pines. A moment was all he needed. He dropped down into the tank and pulled the cupola down behind him, one half-turn locking it shut.
For a moment there was silence, and then another roar as the monsters breathed upon the sealed tank.
The heat inside rose alarmingly as the flame torrent continued. There was a clunk as one of the tracks came loose, a cough as the engine gave up, and still the flame torrent continued.
‘Frekk,’ Brasq cursed as the vision slits glowed with a bright blue light. Within seconds the temperature had risen even more alarmingly. Thinner patches of the ceramite amour began to glow a dull red and then orange.
‘We’re going to cook,’ Corter screamed from the driver’s seat as the inside of the cramped Leman Russ cabin went from frigid to scalding hot. He threw off his leather straps. Brasq tried to speak, but he found himself gasping for breath. The firestorm was sucking all the oxygen out of the air. The vision slits hissed as their temperature soared, and then something dripped onto Brasq’s hand and he cried out in pain.
The black plastek knob that locked the top hatch had melted and was dripping. Burst relay pipes under
the floor sent hot jets of steam and scalding water into the cabin. Brasq cursed as he tried to flick the dripping substance off his skin. The air stank of ozone. He used his gloved hand to open the top hatch. Another black drip fell onto his cheek. There was smoke in the cabin, and it caught in the back of his throat. He kicked as he pushed himself out of the Leman Russ and into the flames.
Colonel Valentin of the Cadian 47th ‘Firedogs’ had spent his months in Salvation 37A getting drunk on a ton of fine Scarus amasec that had somehow replaced a large section of their ration supply. When the time came for the lifts to the surface, the engine of his Hellhound assault tank was turning over nicely as he shared a last shot of amasec with his other commanders, then clambered unsteadily up into its cupola.
He was largely sober when he led his unit of Hellhounds and assorted assault tanks up to the surface, but was sporting the mother of all hangovers as he pulled his white silk scarf about his neck and waved his column forward into the grey smog that passed for day on Cadia.
‘Forward, brothers!’ he shouted, not even bothering to broadcast over the vox channels.
He didn’t even check his coordinates. He didn’t need to; it was clear where the enemy trench lines were from the tangle of razor wire and the dull shine of Aegis defence lines scoured of camo paint by the weight of fire that had been thrown against them. One minute before the attack was due to start, his whole company of five hundred assault tanks was in position at the head of a force of over two thousand tanks that were arranged in battalions behind him.
‘Ready, sir?’ his driver, Matto, called up.
Valentin’s scarf flapped in the breeze. ‘Can’t frekking wait.’
The opening salvos of the bombardment drowned out his words. They made the earth shake and the sky tremble as the world filled with a roaring maelstrom of sound and fury. Valentin put the scopes to his eyes and watched the heretic lines erupting with fountains of earth and smoke. The precision of the barrage was awe inspiring. It hit the front line with almost clinical discipline, throwing up a line of mud as if a long underground charge had suddenly been ignited.
Cadia Stands Page 10