'Do you have targets for us yet?' Guilliman asked Habron.
'Resolving them now', Habron said. As the greenskin horde came into sight, the Proteus' Explorator cast the gaze of its scanners over the army. Cognis-interpreters read movements, picked up on the currents that portended localised surges, and evaluated the points of disruption.
Guilliman already knew the kind of target the Explorator would select. He had already done so. What he wanted was the coordinates. The augur system's eyes were still better than his. They ranged much further.
'Found them', Habron said. 'Multiple vehicle clusters converging on a point directly ahead of our position.'
Guilliman nodded. Flame of Illyrium was leading a great column projecting out from the main force of the Ultramarines. The column was the spear tip. It was also the bait. The orks saw it first. There was no coordination in their attack. It was a colossal wave, stretching north and south far beyond Guilliman's sight, far wider than the span of the XIII Legion formations. The wave was a mass of individuals. Every brute fought on its own terms. The orks triumphed over organised armies through numbers and crude
strength. An illusion of strategy occurred when a large mob of raging individuals all chose the same target at once.
Guilliman had given them their target so they would reveal to him what he sought.
Theoretical: the enemy can he made to conform to the battlefield. Practical: this enemy knows only direct battle against the most visible target. Offer that target in controlled conditions, and you shape the encounter.
'I have coordinates for the largest concentration,' Habron said.
'Relay them,' Guilliman said. Over the command channel he voxed, 'Gunships and artillery, you have your data. Fire at will.'
The Basilisk and Whirlwind tanks began their attack first. A new order of thunder shook the land. Flights of vengeance missiles flashed overheard, their blazing contrails tearing open the curtain of night. A terrible, strobing day lit the plain, turning the stony ground into a jagged mosaic of bleached white and knife-edged shadows. The deeper booms of the earthshaker cannons of the Basilisks followed.
Guilliman glanced back to see the rows of barrels flare. He nodded, satisfied by the precision he saw, the rhythm of fire calculated to cause maximum damage to the enemy. He looked forwards again. From just over the horizon, deep in the midst of the orks, the fireballs blossomed, first in a rapid accumulation as the missiles hit. Then the shells of the earthshakers came down, and their explosions were majestic. The blasts continued to multiply, spreading out from the initial target sites. Burning wreckage marched over the orks as their vehicles, too close together and too volatile, detonated.
The Thunderhawks streaked over the orks. Heavy bombs fell from their pylon mounts. Violent dawn erupted from the core of the horde. Explosions radiated outwards from the centre of the targeted area. The night pulled back from the billowing, bellowing flame. The devastation already spread over a region hundreds of yards on a side. The gunships pulled away, and the artillery tanks fired again.
Guilliman saw the impact of his first blow take hold as Flame of Illyrium travelled over the final distance separating the Ultramarines from the orks. The Legion's advance was sure, unbroken, a battering ram of Imperial technology. The wave of the orks foundered on the reef of a high-explosive barrage. Only a small portion of the green tide had been struck, but the effect was widespread. The burning vehicles created a lethal barrier before the onrushing brutes. The orks in the lead turned in confusion as the battle suddenly seemed to have moved to their midst.
This much, Guilliman could see or extrapolate from the wall of flames rising in the near distance. 'Update,' he said to Habron. There was time for one more before the furnace of combat. The horde was like a huge, turbulent river. It had direction, yet the undisciplined movement of the mob created flows within of different speeds. He needed to know how the ork currents further out - the ones in the night, beyond the reach of the flames - were reacting.
'Disorder in the currents', Habron reported. ‘The more distant portions of the horde are trying to push forwards towards the explosions. They're placing pressure on the centre. Forward momentum is greatly reduced. There is very little coherence at this time.'
'Good.' On the command channel he said, 'Theoretical - use the orks against themselves. Practical - lure them into a semblance of order, then disrupt it. The rewards of our way of war await! Courage and honour!'
He heard the war cry again at the same moment the sponson-mounted lascannons of the Proteus fired. The energy beams cut across the narrowing stretch of land that separated the Ultramarines from the orks. Across the width of the column, tanks poured las and heavy bolter shells into the enemy. Further back, the other Chapters in the broader phalanx held their fire. They closed in on the orks, an immense force ignored by the enemy.
The Proteus' las-beams burned a path through the orks. Guilliman climbed out of the hatch. He crouched on Illyrium's roof. His left hand still held Incandor. His right unlocked the Arbitrator from his belt. His finger curled around the ornate trigger of the combi-bolter. He waited for the tactical moment to leap from the tank, to extend the force of the phalanx with his personal strength. There were new stenches in the air now. There was the cloying, foul animal musk of the greenskins. It was a biological aggression so sharp it sliced through the clouds of promethium. And there was the smell of burned flesh. Already many hundreds of greenskins had been blown apart and incinerated. The cloud of their death reached its tendrils across the plain. The leading column of the Ultramarines plunged into the uproar of the enemy. The leading edge of the blade, the gladius stab into the orks, was still a thousand yards wide. Two rows of heavy armour came first, blasting greenskins to cinders and scraping them to bloody smears on the land with their siege blades. Behind the tanks came the legionaries of the First Chapter. The sea of orks milled and howled, pushed back, crushed and blown apart. But it truly was a sea, and the surge of roaring bodies, swollen with muscle and rage, crashed forwards again.
The greenskins fired crude projectile firearms and wielded misshapen blades heavy enough to cut through steel. They were as confused as they were wrathful, and so it was the sheer crush of numbers that hurled them against the XIII Legion. Their attack lacked the force of their full charge. They ran into regimented bolter fire and a synchrony of chainswords. The companies marched into the wall of flesh. They cut the brutes down. They expanded the blade wound.
Instinct and anger urged the orks to destroy the enemy that had come into their midst. If they turned their eyes to the west and saw what was coming, either they ignored it for the immediate foe, or they did not understand the immensity of what they beheld.
'The currents of the horde are still confused,' Habron reported. 'We are the centre of what focus they are managing'
On the roof of Illyrium, Guilliman straightened. He held Incandor aloft, its silver flash a challenge to the orks and a beacon to his sons. He sprayed a wide arc of the ground before the Proteus with the double-timed hammering of his shells. Mass-reactive warheads punched into the bodies of the greenskins and exploded. They vaporised blood. They turned bone into shrapnel. Fountains of ruptured flesh and xenos blood sprayed upwards on all sides of the Proteus. It rained down on Guilliman. His face was soaked with the death of the foe. The roar of guns overwhelmed the roar of the orks.
A good start, Guilliman thought. A good first blow. Smoke covered the battlefield. He breathed it in. It rasped against the back of his throat. He savoured the taste of a falling enemy. The first seconds of the clash belonged to the Ultramarines. Guilliman kept firing. The orks died, and more rushed forwards. Flame of Illyrium bucked upwards as it climbed over a growing mound of bodies. The deafening chorus of snarls changed tone. The orks were finding their direction again. The crush of numbers became a focused counter-attack. They ceased to care about the barrage tearing apart their centre. They wanted the legionaries. They wanted prey they cou
ld rip apart. The individual challenge roared by thousands upon thousands of bestial voices became a ferocious unity. In phalanxes a hundred-strong, the Ultramarines marched into the orks. But their advance began to slow. The orks lost their confusion. Guilliman looked right and cursed. It was too late to help as the squad of Sergeant Tibron was overwhelmed by dozens of greenskins. The orks leapt right into the bolter fire. The leading brutes went down while their fellows lunged closer. The legionaries couldn't cut the orks down fast enough. A huge beast slumped forwards, its chest blown out. It grabbed at its killer as if fell and knocked the barrel down. The ork behind jumped over the dying greenskin. It raised a chainaxe over its head in midair. It brought the weapon down, smashing open Tibron's helmet and cleaving his skull in two. Beside him, two of his brothers disappeared under an avalanche of immense xenos bodies.
'Maintain course,' Guilliman ordered Habron. 'Invictarii, with me.' He leapt from the roof of the tank. The side hatches banged open, unleashing the honour guard on the greenskins. Guilliman fired into the orks. He shredded them with bolter fire. He and the Invictarii waded into their midst, drawing their attack and taking them apart while the squad regrouped. Guilliman blasted the orks coming from the forward position. To his left, he jabbed Incandor through the forehead of another greenskin. The thick bones cracked like an eggshell from the force of his blow. The blade sliced through the ork's brain. He pulled the gladius out and stabbed again, killing another ork before the body of the first had hit the ground.
'They think they have our measure!' Guilliman called to the Legion. 'Instead we have theirs!'
Ahead, a clanking behemoth crashed through the wreckage barrier. Gears screamed in their eagerness to prove Guilliman wrong.
The great pitfall of observation and analysis is assumption. Guard against it. The very rigour of thought lends strength to the temptation. Pride and consciousness of the knowing application of the science of warfare opens the mind to the hubris of infailability. Assumptions result, and mistakes inevitably follow. The shield against such potentially fatal battlefield errors is adaptability. This is not simply - or even principally - the physical resilience that permits survival in adverse, shifting conditions. It is the ability to recognise that a given theoretical is exactly that: theoretical. Contrary facts must be respected, and the theory must be altered, or even abandoned, as indicated by reality, not by desire. The practical and war are both fluid and evolving. The advantage of the practical is that it is also conscious.
- Guilliman, Prologomena to Tactics, 10.4 iii
Four
THE PLAIN • STRONGPOINT • EVERYWHERE
The vehicle was a monstrous creation of chance. Anything the orks managed to construct that was more complex than their axes and deavers seemed to Guilliman to be the result more of happenstance than will. The question of how they managed to construct even a single void-worthy craft was still a mystery, one that had consumed the thoughts of more than one remembrancer.
Even at first glance, Guilliman could easily imagine how this creation had come to pass. It looked like two separate vehicles had collided in the late stages of their construction giving bloody birth to this monstrous machine. Its core was bulbous, as if still swelling from the force of the impact. Plates overlapped and folded against each other. The thing had too many wheels. Its shape was a sprawling nightmare. Its axles were bent. Some of the wheels were turned, at odds with the direction of the majority. Limbs projected from the fused chassis. They carried chains, wrecking balls and six-foot blades. Larger projectile guns than the ones carried by the foot soldiers were mounted on a multitude of skewed turrets.
The thing wasn't a tank. It wasn't a transport. The orks had been building two of their attack trucks, and the collision had, instead of destroying both, created a thing that still functioned. The orks had built upon their chance machine, adding more and more guns and assault arms, slapping armour plate atop of armour plate. Now it bristled with death and the feral pride of the brutes. It appeared, and all the orks within sight of the creation shouted in joyous ferocity. It was a mad thing, and its mere existence was their promise of ecstatic battle.
It must die, Guilliman thought. It was an engine of ork morale. It had to be removed from the field.
The vehicle was two hundred yards north-east of his position. It would pass him by unless he caught up to it.
The Land Raider Ozirus closed with it, lascannons and heavy bolters pounding the front armour. Turrets exploded. Flames raced over the hull of the vehicle. It kept going. Guilliman counted at least six turrets still active. Their fire burst against the armour of Ozirus. The two vehicles rumbled past each other. The ork machine's huge wrecking balls slammed into the flank of the Land Raider. The tank's composite held. But one of the huge masses hit the port sponson. It crushed the barrels of the lascannons as they fired. The guns exploded, damaging the armour in a way the ork vehicle could never have managed with its own weaponry. Energy blasted back into the Land Raider, triggering reserves of energy cells. The flash of the guns became a blinding, uncontrolled discharge. The port flank of Ozirus blew out. The wreckage slammed into the ork machine, collapsing that side of its hull. The vehicle barrelled on. It was excess given metallic form. It should never have worked at all, and because it did, it was unstoppable;
Behind it came more ork vehicles, belching clouds of black smoke, streams of flame bursting from exhaust pipes and from between the seams of the poorly welded iron plates. The initial bombardment had destroyed many of the machines the orks were capable of fielding. Some had survived, though, and they had gathered behind the largest. They converged on the wounded Ozirus. Their solid shells slammed into it. Most bounced off the forward armour, but some found the huge rent in the port flank. The Land Raider was still moving, sluggishly, and fired only from the starboard side.
Guilliman pounded over the ground towards Ozirus. He ran alone, leaving the Invictarii behind to continue cutting the path forwards through the horde. The risk was a strategic one. Theoretical: the greatest blow to ork morale will be a single warrior destroying their great weapon. Practical: I must be that warrior. He fired as he ran, blasting the way clear through the brutes. The orks came at him with all their muscular savagery. Some of the beasts were almost twice his height. He did not let them slow him. He blew them apart with the shells of the Arbitrator. Incandor slashed throats and cut torsos wide open. He was a blade. His route took him through the bodies of his foe, reaping a tidal surge of blood. He was less than fifty feet from the stricken Land Raider. The ork machines had it surrounded. There were dozens of the vehicles.
They were beyond crude. They were all accidents of design; products of savage enthusiasm that functioned despite themselves, explosive agglomerations of aggression and industry. They had isolated Ozirus from the other Ultramarines tanks. A pair of Land Raiders was blowing up the outer ork machines, trying to force their way back in to aid Ozirus. The others had no choice but to continue the advance. Guilliman had ordered there be no gap in the exterminating wall of heavy armour. The march must not stop. The orks were disorder and riot. They would be driven back and purged from Thoas by discipline and coherent strategy.
There were costs to order. Ozirus might be one. But Guilliman had the freedom of movement. Where he moved in the field, he created the means of the advance.
Thirty feet. Orks were jumping off the crowded roofs and sides of their vehicles and rushing into the gap in the Land Raider. They were mowed down by the fire of their own turrets and by the resistance of the Ultramarines in the tank. But there were always more. Fifteen feet. Ozirus exploded. The fireball was sudden, a gigantic blast of killing light. Guilliman ran into the shock wave. Heat and force tried to scorch the flesh from his skull. Slabs of twisted armour wheeled end over end past him. Guilliman kept moving, straight into the fire, straight into the furnace. There was a moment when the world disappeared. He moved through a cauldron of deafening white pain. He pushed through it, carried by momentum and anger,
and most of all by necessity. On the other side was the blackened, roaring hulk of the ork machine. It was charging forwards again, multiple engines screaming with eagerness for more prey. Guilliman leapt. The arc of his jump carried him to the roof of the machine. It was a forest of pipes and turrets and spikes. He came down through a hail of shells. Flame and smoke billowed around him. The orks riding the vehicle saw him coming. That did them no good. No preparation could help them. He landed with a blow that resonated through the entire hull. An ork died beneath his boots, its back crushed to pulp. The plating on the roof cracked and bent inwards. The vehicle shuddered. Its advance hesitated. Guilliman made his way towards the rear, where the hull bulged and a forest of pipes spewed flame into the night. Greenskins clambered over the roof after him. He blasted them with the Arbitrator. The impact of the shells sent their bodies flying from the vehicle. He sheathed Incandor and wrapped his gauntlet around the nearest pipe. He squeezed. He wasn't wearing the Hand of Dominion, but he didn't need the power gauntlet. His own strength was more than enough. He constricted one pipe after another, forcing the heat flow back inside the engine. By the time he reached the back of the vehicle, the roof was trembling from the pressure. A loose exhaust pipe shot off like a missile. A jet of flame screamed upwards in its wake.
Guilliman fired downwards. The combi-bolter's shells hit the armour like a focused artillery strike. They punched through the metal and into the furnace of the engine. Guilliman kept firing. Orks howled and clawed over each other in an effort to reach him and pull him down. Without shifting his focus, he grabbed Incandor from its maglocked belt sheath. In the corner of his eye, he saw the shapes come for him and he ripped them open. He was immobile, absolute as a mountain. The ork machine lurched forwards. It veered left and right as if it might shake him off. He kept shooting into the engine, pummelling the interior with a directed stream of explosions. The orks shrieked with frustration. Bullets careened off his armour. Blows landed. They meant nothing. He was unmoved.
Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar Page 6
