[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads
Page 7
There were other challenges, too. Aside from the dannih and the fines, there were numerous minor conditions related to atmospheric pressure, allergies, the unusual but breathable composition of the air, and all the problems caused by living at a constant gravity of one-point-twelve gees. It seemed to Bergen that Golgotha was waging its own war against the Cadians, and the orks hadn’t even got started yet.
Bergen had never been a dour man by nature. Quite the contrary, in fact. He had, in his days as a cadet, been selected to feature in a short series of Cadian propaganda and recruitment films, such was his natural warmth and appeal. But, as he opened the door to his quarters and saw Katz snoozing in a chair by his desk, he decided there were three things about which he was depressingly certain.
The first was that his commanding officer was coming apart at the seams. DeViers had lost his way. A powerful aura of desperation hovered around him, and it heralded disaster for the 18th Army Group and everyone attached to it.
The second was that Exolon would never find the famous Fortress of Arrogance. Holy icon or not, the orks had enjoyed thirty-eight years in which to strip it down to its bare nuts and bolts. If there was anything left of it at all, it would be unrecognisable. No, The Fortress of Arrogance was little more than a carrot dangled in front of the Munitorum’s nose by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Whatever interest they had in returning to Golgotha, Bergen would wager it had little to do with finding Yarrick’s cherished tank.
The third and last thing, the thing that worried Bergen most of all, and the thing that he was convinced of above all else, was simply this: unless the Emperor Himself descended from the heavens to offer them His Divine Protection, not a single man in his beloved armoured division was going to make it off this blasted world alive. The cards were stacked against them like never before. Millions of men had died in the Golgothan War all those years ago. Now, like those men, the fate of Bergen’s troopers would be written in the blood-red sand.
He’d fight it all the way of course. He swore it. He had been born and raised to fight, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to see his men through this.
I’ll go over the old man’s head if I have to. Killian and Rennkamp will back me up. Together, we’ll go to Morten and…
The thought went unfinished. Tiredness crashed over Bergen like a tidal wave and he fell back onto the bed, asleep before his head hit the pillow.
* * *
Elsewhere on the base, about a kilometre west of Bergen’s quarters, the three senior agents of the Adeptus Mechanicus had returned to their apartments and were being attended by a flock of child like slaves. True children would have perished very quickly in such a place — the pungent chemicals that misted the air would have dissolved the tissue of their lungs — but these were not true children. They had once been so, long ago, before extensive surgeries had converted them into ageless amalgams of flesh and metal like the tech-priests they served, though far less sophisticated. Their brains had been cruelly cut, rendering them incapable of independent thought, and their voices had been silenced forever. Their only function was to obey and, as such, they were beyond sin, beyond mischief or evil. Perhaps in recognition of this, their creator had crafted bronze masks for them, faces frozen in beatific smiles, like half-living sculptures of holy cherubim.
They clustered around their masters, disrobing them, removing peripheral devices, pulling data-plugs from flesh-sockets. Then they helped the tech-priests into a deep circular tub filled with a thick, glowing, milky substance that cast its light up to the metal ceiling. When this was done, the cherub-slaves retreated to shadowy alcoves set in the walls. There, they deactivated, and became like dolls at rest in upright coffins.
Apart from the area lit by the glowing pool, the Mechanicus quarters were dark and foul-smelling. To the tech-priests, these things mattered not at all. The darkness hid nothing from augmetic eyes that could see in many spectrums of light. The smells registered only as lists of airborne compounds in varying concentrations, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, simply there.
Wading to the far side of the small pool, Tech-Magos Sennesdiar submerged his misshapen, patchwork body all the way to his neck. Adepts Xephous and Armadron followed suit, and the glowing liquid within the tub bubbled and churned like hot soup.
It was Armadron who broke the silence. His words, when he spoke them, were delivered in the same chalkboard screech he had used at the general’s table.
The tech-magos answered with his own condensed, high-pitched burst.
Armadron did not reply, a sign that he was reflecting on his superior’s words.
Xephous shifted, sending slow ripples over the surface of the milky goop, and said,
said Armadron.
Sennesdiar turned his whirring eye-lenses from one to the other.
Xephous said,
Armadron bowed his near-featureless head,
pulling taut the segmented cables that connected his steel-encased brain to the augmetic ports on his naked metal vertebrae.
protested Xephous.
said the magos,
said Armadron.
said Armadron.
replied Sennesdiar.
the magos replied, interrupting his adept.
Armadron bowed his head and issued a short burst of noise that expressed his understanding and absolute obedience.
Sennesdiar rose from the pool, broadcasting an activation code to the cherub-slaves in their alcoves. They jerked forwards to tend to him as he stepped out. Thick fluids ran down his bloodless body, along the piston housings and cables that jutted from the pallid remnants of the flesh into which he had been born almost four centuries earlier. Silvery drops rolled from his slender metal fingers to the grille floor below as he waited for the little slaves to dress him.
In his robes once more, he stepped to the door of his private chamber, turned and said,
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hold them back, you dogs,” bellowed Colonel Stromm. “Don’t let them pass the outer lines!” He fired his hellpistol into the charging mass of orks, but, squinting through the haze and the sweat that stung his eyes, it was difficult to see the level of damage he was causing. With his free hand, he grabbed his adjutant, Lieutenant Kassel, by the collar, yanking him close to shout in his ear. “Where the frak are my Kasrkin, Hans? Why aren’t they shoring up those blasted gaps?”
The air danced with tracer fire as the orks pushed closer, huge pistols and stubbers blazing. The Cadians fired back with deadly intensity, bright las-beams licking out from their sandbagged positions, slicing through the clouds of billowing dust thrown up by the anti-personnel mines that were detonating under the feet of the green-skins’ front ranks. Heavy brown bodies spun into the air to land in bloody, mangled heaps. Other orks trampled over them uncaring, undaunted, yelling and hooting, and roaring bestial battle cries with unrestrained glee.
Competing with all the noise, most particularly with the deafening crack and stutter of nearby las- and bolter-fire, Lieutenant Kassel placed his mouth at his colonel’s ear and replied, “Vonnel’s platoon is taking heavy losses on the right flank, sir. The Kasrkin have moved across to plug the breach.”
Damn it, thought Stromm. Five days. Five days we’ve lasted out here on the open sand, and not a single bloody sign of rescue, no vox-comms, nothing. And there’s no end to the greenskin bastards. Scores of men are dead or dying. Our perimeter is shrinking with every charge made against us. This looks like the last of it for The Fighting 98th.
His mind turned to his family, safe aboard the naval heavy-transport The Incandescent, which was anchored in high orbit with the rest of the fleet. He had a son, still just an infant, who had been born during the Palmeros campaign. Stromm had hoped to watch the lad grow, to see him strengthen and develop, and, one day, become an officer like his father. No, not like his father, better than his father. A son should always strive to achieve more than the man who sired him. He had hoped to see it, to live that long despite the odds. But he’d known the second old deViers had brought Exolon to Golgotha that his life expectancy had been suddenly, dramatically reduced. Here today, before his eyes, the truth of it was playing out.
Curse this world, he thought. To the blasted bloody warp with it! We should have virus-bombed it from space. That would have been poetic justice in that — revenge for all the people Thraka’s asteroids have killed. If it weren’t for Yarrick’s damned tank…
The orks were closing. Six hundred metres. Five-ninety. Five-eighty. The Cadians’ landmines were barely slowing them. Heavy alien bodies were being blasted high on pillars of smoke and sand, but the enemy far outnumbered Stromm’s men. The foe had bodies to spare. Those that escaped the deadly fragmentation and explosive pressure waves created by each blast just kept on coming, not faltering for even a moment.
On Stromm’s first day, the day his drop-ship had smashed nose-first into the red sand, he and his officers had decided that it was best to stay put, sure that Major General Rennkamp would send out reconnaissance units to look for his missing men. But vox-comms weren’t worth a damn out here, and darkness fell quickly in the desert, so Stromm hadn’t wasted any time in ordering makeshift defensives built, though progress was initially slow under lamp and torchlight.
Sand was, of course, in plentiful supply and had been put to good use. The sandbags had hardened like concrete, such was the effect of water on the Golgothan dust, though Stromm was reluctant to spare even a fraction of their precious reserves for anything other than drinking. Scrap metal pulled from the wrecked ship was plentiful, too. With these resources, his 98th Mechanised Infantry Regiment had constructed outer and inner defensive works, reinforcing the heavy-weapons nests with plates from the ship’s crumpled bulkheads.
The resulting fortifications were basic in the extreme, but at least they offered better protection than the open sand. As he fired shot after flesh-searing shot into the charging xenos horde, Stromm was damned glad of those defences.
Torrents of fire blazed out from each of the heavy-weapon nests, chewing apart scores of grotesque alien bodies with broad sweeps of enfilading fire. Some of the regiment’s Chimeras and halftracks had survived the crash and were entrenched behind walls of compacted sand and steel, adding their considerable firepower to the desperate battle. The Chimeras’ hull-mounted heavy bolters chattered deep and low, ripping the enemy into blo
ody hunks of meat with their explosive ammunition. Turret-mounted multi-lasers hissed and cracked, scoring the air with blinding brightness. A few of the Chimeras boasted autocannon as their main armament, their long barrels chambered for powerful thirty-millimetre rounds. They made a harsh chugging sound as they spewed shells out in devastating torrents. Over-muscled brown bodies dissolved into scraps and tatters wherever the autocannon found their mark.
The Chimeras and the weapon-nests were not alone in providing heavy support. Thick spears of lascannon fire blazed down from atop the crumpled hull of the drop-ship. The ship’s cockpit had folded like a concertina in the crash and the flight crew had been killed outright, but a handful of navy ratings — tech-crew mostly — had survived. They had been insistent about manning the ship’s turrets, only a few of which still functioned. Stromm had seen it in their faces: the fear, the panic. When he had agreed to let them man the turrets, their relief had been all too apparent. They were terrified of meeting the orks face-to-face. He cursed their cowardice, but he couldn’t hate them for it.
They hadn’t been raised on Cadia. They were lesser men by birth.
In his opinion, that said it all.
Despite such thoughts, he was glad to have those turrets manned by anyone. They poured blistering fire down on top of the orks, killing dozens at a time, charring their bodies to shrunken black husks.
Given the weight of combined fire the Cadians were pouring out, it seemed that scores of orks were dropping with every metre of ground they gained, but they were still gaining. Stromm could already see that it wouldn’t be enough, not by any stretch. As so often in a straight fight with the orks, it would ultimately come down to numbers, and numbers were something he didn’t have.