Baneblade

by Guy Haley

  Third Loader Marsello, the youngest crew member, nodded and got up from his station, making for the narrow stairs heading below, First Loader Meggen hurrying from his station by the top of the shell lift in the turret.

  Cortein coughed and wiped at his streaming eyes. His men were taking too long, the fire had been burning for well over a minute. The Baneblade rocked as another huge impact slammed into its heavily armoured hull. Loaders Marsello and Meggen were now at the side of Tech-Adept Aspirant Vorkosigen, wrestling with extinguishers, directing noisy jets of fire-suppressant gases at the flames. Cortein urged them to greater effort. With two of the loaders on fire control, half the tank’s tertiary weapons were inactive, Third Gunner Vand struggling at the station behind Cortein to work both sponson banks and the forward bolter turret without the help of his loader Marsello.

  ‘What’s the damage?’ asked Cortein.

  ‘It’s the rear left side augurs sir, feedback. They’ve shorted out.’ Commsman Epperaliant replied. He punched a button and the alarm klaxon died.

  ‘Again? What’s the situation outside?’

  ‘The echelons on formation Alpha have driven deep into the orks, the Atraxian 18th are following them in, they’re crushing everything in their path,’ said Epperaliant, hunched over his the comms suite, face lit a sickly yellow by the glow of its screens. ‘But Beta is stalling. The greenskins must have known when and where we were coming – their whole strength is concentrated here.’ He flashed up a tac map onto Cortein’s chart desk. Blinking lights pinpointed the main ork force. ‘Five hundred metres or so out from their trench line, ork anti-tank dug in in the desert. We drove right over them. The 3rd Company has taking a pounding. Half of it’s gone, as far as I can see. The 2nd isn’t faring much better. I count over a half-dozen super-heavy walkers out there, and they’re chewing the Leman Russ to pieces. The 4th and 5th Companies and the 18th Atraxian Super-heavies are faring better, but only because all the walkers are down our end of the line. Alpha’s infantry support is holding its own, advancing as per the plan, but if we don’t put a lid on the situation here, the greenskins will roll up our entire front.’

  ‘Our infantry?’

  ‘Half of it’s been cooked in the can. General order is out for main elements of the 63rd Paragonian Mechanised and 13th Light Savlar to fall back. Artillery bombardment is under way as planned, but my guess is they’re shelling empty sand. All the orks are here.’ He tapped at a screen, his fingernail clicking on it in a way that cut through the noise inside the tank. Epperaliant shot his commanding officer a worried look. ‘Seven heavy walkers. Where by the Golden Throne did they come from?’

  ‘They’ve been holding them back, that’s obvious,’ said Cortein. ‘Those thrice damned kreebirds up at HQ don’t know the ork. This whole affair has stunk of a trap since the outset.’ Cortein jammed his finger onto a vox button, connecting him to Outlanner, the driver to the fore of the deck below, Ganlick at the demolisher cannon, the second gunner’s station, Radden the first gunner in the turret; all compartments. He spoke rapidly, surely. ‘Keep us moving forwards, Ganlick, lay down a sigma pattern, suppressive fire, keep those green scum away from my tank.’ He beckoned to the commsman. ‘Epperaliant, help Vand, do what you can with the heavy bolters while the loaders are busy.’ Cortein scanned over his command suite. ‘Orders from Hannick – the company’s to cover the retreat of the infantry units. Let’s show these ork monstrosities what a full company of the Emperor’s finest can do.’

  ‘Sir.’ Epperaliant rerouted the main vox from his headphones over the command deck. A barrage of vox chatter swamped the cramped room, screams, weapons fire, voices hoarse with shouted orders, all battling with Kalidar’s ever-present roar. He slid his chair along its rails so he could get out, stumbling as the tank took a hit, then joined Vand at the tertiary weapons system fire-control, remotely controlling the bolters and lascannon of the left sponson bank, targets displayed on the screens at the station, relayed by the augur-eyes of the weapons. The muffled report of the hull demolisher cannon joined the faint chatter of the bolters as Ganlick, Epperaliant and Third Gunner Vand set to work, clearing the field in front of the super-heavy tank.

  Now for the battle cannon. Radden was doing his best, but he’d do better if Cortein directed him. ‘Radden, follow my mark.’ Cortein’s fingers moved surely over the screens of his command suite, bringing up a weak point on the one-armed walker, a pot-bellied mechanical parody of an ork painted in a camouflage of bright blues. Even bereft of its melee arm, it still bristled with ranged weapons as long as a Leman Russ. The target’s information was conveyed by Martian means to the suite in front of Radden’s chair up above and out to the company’s other Baneblade.

  ‘Hearing you loud and clear, sir!’ said Radden over the internal vox. Tracer fire from the battle cannon’s coaxially mounted autocannon tracked across the chest of the ork war machine, ranging the shot. ‘Give me a moment and…’ Mars Triumphant’s main gun spoke and Radden whooped like a simian. The tank shuddered. Cortein’s screens whited out as Lux Imperator, the company Shadowsword operating to their right, fired its volcano cannon into the heavy walker squadron. Cortein expected the orks to be one walker down after that. Two Baneblades could take down a super-heavy walker in fairly short order if well coordinated; a Shadowsword’s anti-Titan main armament needed no help. It was a damned shame its capacitors were so slow to recharge after firing.

  ‘Was it a hit? Confirm Radden, confirm!’ Cortein cursed Tech-Adept Vorkosigen under his breath; he’d said he’d applied the necessary libations to ensure the smooth working of the anti-glare cut outs when what he needed, Cortein suspected, was to try a little harder with his tools. ‘Obviously didn’t pray hard enough,’ he growled.

  Rattles and banging came from below, Second Loader Ralt working hard alone, shuttling shells from the magazine to replenish the racks by the forward demolisher cannon.

  ‘I’m not getting anything sir, wait… wait… A hit, yes… Hang on… Basdack! Negative, negative. No kill.’

  The grainy images of the world outside returned to the tank’s screens. The heavy walker hit by Lux Imperator was a blazing hulk, molten steel dripping from a large round hole in its hull, but the engine Mars Triumphant had targeted was still standing, wobbling slowly round, fire gouting from a hole in its breast, its head grinding to face them. A shell from Artamen Ultrus blasted into it, bringing away a section of gantry.

  ‘It’s still coming,’ said Cortein. ‘Keep at it. We’ve got its attention. Finish it off! Quickly! Before it returns fire.’

  ‘Sir!’

  The gatling cannon on the giant metal ork’s left arm began to rotate, picking up speed until it was a blur of motion. A hail of shell fire pattered off the hull of the Baneblade, damaging subsystems, augur-eyes among them. Two of Cortein’s screens went dead. The battle cannon fired again. The damaged plates in the heavy walker’s chest crumpled in. It swayed on its feet, gatling cannon firing wild. Rockets burned off a rack set upon the right shoulder, trailing bright fire. They impacted in a wide burst pattern about the Baneblade, one slamming home on the front of the tank, wreathing Cortein’s visual displays in flame.

  ‘Radden,’ said Cortein. ‘Put that walker down now!’

  ‘I hit it! I hit it!’ protested the gunner.

  Two more impacts shuddered into the walker’s armour, buckling plates, one each from Artamen Ultrus’s demolisher and battle cannon. Still it came on.

  The walker stopped. A huge cannon on its shoulder above the ruined left arm began to track down.

  ‘Too late!’ said Cortein. ‘Brace! Brace! Brace!’

  A flash of light showed up the ragged joins in the walker’s armour. Slowly, the walker leaned drunkenly over to one side, staggering on its massive armoured feet, and toppled to the desert floor. Secondary explosions ripped through its structure, breaking its back, and the walker’s hull sank into itself. Cortein breathed a s
igh of relief and a ragged cheer went up from the other nine men on the tank.

  ‘Woo! That was my shot! That was my kill! Cut the fuse a little long on that one. Ha ha!’ laughed Radden. ‘Right in the guts! How do you like that you fat basdack?!’

  ‘Fire’s out, sir!’ called Meggen.

  ‘Back to your stations!’ ordered Cortein. ‘Sponson and secondary weapons intensify forward fire.’ Cortein quickly appraised the situation. The remaining four walkers were off to the right. Let the Shadowsword deal with them. Infantry was their problem right now. ‘Radden, permission to engage targets of opportunity, keep the field round Lux Imperator clear. Let it work unmolested.’

  ‘You’re a gentleman, sir,’ crackled the vox.

  Cortein scanned the bank of brass-bound monitors before him, his view of the battle a fragmented 360-degree panorama. Tac screens fed in data from the other three vehicles in the company. The technology in the Baneblade was first rate, Martian secrets far superior to the systems of the Leman Russ on the field about them. But even delivered via the 7th’s networked logic engines, the data was scrambled by Kalidar, full of junk, and juddered across screens alive with electric snow.

  A wide chart desk projecting a three-dimensional representation of the conflict occupied the centre of his station. There, the Alpha formation showed as red Imperial signifiers buried deep in dots of swirling green. The right side of the battlefield was not so healthy; Beta formation’s attack had been blunted by the ork ambush and the walkers. Red chevrons, the armoured fist units of the infantry, were falling back in orderly fashion, regrouping behind the super-heavy tank company to shelter from the walkers’ fire.

  With the tac screens and the periscope feeds ranged about his command deck, Cortein’s view of the battle was broad, the height of the Baneblade allowing him to look down on the fighting orks and men as if they were brawling men and children. Others might find it a godlike position, but not Cortein. Hubris was a fatal trait in an honoured lieutenant. To command a super-heavy tank was to command a target, the storm of incoming fire rattling off the hull of Mars Triumphant proving the point.

  According to the tac screens, the super-heavy tanks were making their mark. The walker unit had lost three of its number to the volcano cannon of Lux Imperator and the combined fire of the two company Baneblades, company commander Hannick’s Hellhammer Ostrakan’s Rebirth taking a heavy toll of the greenskin infantry and their smaller machines. Although the Beta assault had been stymied, now it was the turn of the orks to fall back. The heavy walkers were waddling backwards from the 7th, giving the remaining Leman Russ squadrons in the 2nd and 3rd Companies some respite – these had formed into a wall and begun to reverse, but now they halted to better direct their fire.

  Out to the left, the ork line had bowed considerably under pressure from the super-heavies of Atraxia. There, lines of Paragonian infantry marched in gaps between the advancing Imperial tanks, supported by armoured troop carriers moving up behind them, as per the plan. Bright trails of vaporised sand twisted into the wind of the storm as multilaser beams stabbed out, the barrels of the guns running hot. Thin lines of lighter-armed Savlar toxic environment specialists ranged to the flanks, hunting stragglers. Many ork vehicles had been destroyed, undone by superior Imperial firepower. The ork mobs came running in again and again, but were cut down before they were able to close for melee, where they would undoubtedly have triumphed over the weaker humans. Still, Cortein did not think the battle won.

  His eyes were caught by the forward left augur screen. A huge shape appeared then vanished in the swirling sand, lost behind the storm-shrouded silhouettes of the remaining four walkers. ‘Epperaliant! Sector five. What by the holy Throne is that!?’

  ‘I’m not getting anything… Wait! New hostile approaching, designation unknown… Threat indicators are going wild, honoured lieutenant .’

  A hulking shape pushed its way through the ork heavy walkers, clanging into them as it barged them out of the way. It emerged from the dust storm, gut thrust forwards. Like the heavy walkers it was round-bellied, supported on enormous feet, its stumpy arms a mess of enormous, ramshackle weapons, and thick plates of armour decorated with daubed ideograms protecting its clunking inner workings. The similarities ended there. It was far larger, Titan class at least, an ork Gargant, size matched only by the sense of malevolence preceding it. Two globes on ridged conducting rods projected high over its back, and weird energies played about the thing’s grotesque faceplate, darting lightning up to the globes above its horned head, and arcing down in a broad umbrella all about it. Its eyes glowed bright. Cortein felt an uncomfortable sensation at the back of his skull, his teeth itched, and the air took on the taste of aluminium.

  ‘Emperor’s Throne,’ he breathed. He knew the feeling, not felt for a long time, the sensation that came from the presence of a powerful witch. The ork titan was carrying a psyker.

  Honoured Captain Hannick, commanding officer of the 7th Paragonian Super-heavy Tank Company and formation CIC, shouted out over the vox, his powerful override shutting out all other communications and momentarily subduing the planet’s incessant roar of electrostatic.

  ‘All tanks, target heavy engine sector five.’ The Gargant’s outline flashed up in white on Cortein’s crackling screens. Tactical info scrolled urgently over it. ‘Destroy it!’

  The thing’s mouth slowly opened, a barbed cannon extruding from its distended jaws. Cannon and lasfire went flying in at the Gargant from all directions, the remaining Leman Russ and the Super-heavy Company all targeting together.

  Little got through to the ork Titan’s bulging hull. Explosions erupted all around the Gargant as shells detonated, lascannon blasts and plasma shots smeared themselves to nothing well away from its armour, dissipated by its shield of green lightning. The screens on Mars Triumphant whited out again as Lux Imperator’s volcano cannon discharged once more, terawatts of energy unleashed in one blast. Mars Triumphant’s screens cleared for Cortein to see Lux Imperator’s beam stopped and spread like molten glass across the energy fields protecting the Titan. Cortein felt blood trickle from his nose. The Gargant’s tongue punched forwards, vomiting a braided spout of green lightning. The stream of energy ran across the floor of the dead sea, tearing it up, a spume of earth following in its wake, cutting through Leman Russ and Chimeras as if they weren’t there, scattering men in pieces to Kalidar’s endless winds. Sensors aboard the Baneblade spiked. Alarms wailed as the wave ran to their left, cleaving the ground perilously close to them.

  An explosion buffeted the Baneblade and the lights went out. Cortein reeled. Epperaliant was thrown from his chair. The tank’s ancient systems screeched and the hull groaned with stress. Lockers popped open and supplies tumbled to the floor, a lasgun power pack catching the commsman on the head.

  Cortein pulled himself up. Half the augur screens were dead. The fire klaxon sounded once more. Emergency lighting flickered on.

  ‘Witch engine! It’s a damned witch engine,’ shouted Cortein. In thirty years he’d only seen a machine of this type once before, an unholy mixture of technology and the arcane, wielding the unholy powers of the immaterium to deadly effect.

  The Titan waddled forwards, trampling all before it, the more mundane cannons, rockets and energy weapons covering its arms and shoulders wreaking terrible destruction on the forces arrayed before it. Tanks exploded, men were rendered into scraps of flesh.

  ‘What?’ shouted Marsello, his face white with terror. He was barely a boy, a replacement for an old comrade lost to the eldar back in the Indranis Campaign.

  ‘There’s a psyker on board that thing. Some kind of machine to intensify its warp energies,’ explained Epperaliant. ‘Sir, we don’t have anything to go against that. We’ve no Scholastica Psykana support here.’

  Hannick’s voice came over the vox. ‘Tanks two and three to redirect fire against the heavy walkers. Protect Lux Imperator during recharge.’<
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  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Cortein. ‘Marteken! Hear that? We won’t get through that energy shield. Take out the Titan’s support. Concentrate on the leftmost heavy walker!’

  ‘The red one?’ came back Colken.

  ‘Aye!’ shouted Cortein. ‘Outlanner, get us in closer, I want Ganlick in range – let’s make this quick.’

  Four heavy cannons, two apiece on the Baneblades, spoke in rapid succession and lines of lascannon fire seared the air. The heavy walker disappeared behind a wall of flame. When it reappeared, it came on only slowly, small fires burning all over it, right arm hanging uselessly by its side.

  ‘Finish it!’ yelled Cortein.

  Artamen Ultrus and Mars Triumphant obliged. Shells hammered into it. Internal explosions went off in a long string, fire spurting between joins in its armour. The super-heavy walker stopped dead, smoking.

  ‘Lux Imperator – main cannon charged!’ came the voice of the tank’s honoured lieutenant. Again the volcano cannon spat fire. Again it was stymied by the shields of psychic energy surrounding the enemy engine.

  The Gargant replied. Cortein’s teeth itched as another wave of energy ripped across the desert, furrowing the sand and scorching it to glass. There came the noise of a massive explosion, and shrapnel dinging off Mars Triumphant’s armour.

  Epperaliant bent over the comms suite. ‘Lux Imperator! Lux Imperator is hit!’ he said, blood running down his face from the cut in his scalp. On the screens of the command and comms suite, the great shell of the Shadowsword burned.

  ‘Basdack! No!’ shouted Radden.

  ‘Emperor’s mercy, we’ll never beat that,’ muttered Cortein, low so his men would not fear. ‘Get Honoured Captain Hannick on the vox, now!’ shouted Cortein.

  ‘Sir!’ Epperaliant wiped blood from his eyes, trying to staunch the flow with his cap while he swept materiel off his comms desk.