[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  “The Hydras are almost there,” said Bergen. “Listen, Eagle Three. I know you’re up against it out there, but just hold on. We’ll have triple-A support for you in a few seconds. You should be able to see them now.”

  “Two on my tail. Can’t shake them. Wait… By the Golden Throne!”

  “What is it, Eagle Three?”

  “Command, I have visual on a massive ork horde closing in from the south. A huge number of vehicles. The land is black with them, sir.”

  “Confirm, Eagle Three. Significant enemy force advancing from the south.”

  The vox hissed.

  “Eagle Three,” said Bergen, already sensing she wasn’t there, “confirm enemy force in the south. Eagle Three, respond. Oh, for frak’s sake!”

  Anger welled up inside him. Bergen had fought alongside women before. There were Cadian regiments entirely composed of the so-called fairer sex, though they tended to serve on Cadia’s Interior Guard rather than off-world. They were as tough and ruthless as any male soldiers he had known, but his attitudes were still old-fashioned in some respects. The knowledge that a woman attached to Operation Thunderstorm had just been killed by orks stung him with unusual sharpness. Eagle Three was Navy, and there was no love lost between the Navy and the Guard, but she had hung on bravely to the end, as brave as any of his tankers.

  If he lived through this, he swore he would try to find out her name, to make sure she and her fellow Vulcan crews were honoured.

  Commodore Galbraithe will have to be told, he thought. Throne help the poor bastard tasked with that.

  Of more immediate concern, of course, was Eagle Three’s last report: a significant ork force moving north towards their position. It had to be the host that Stromm and van Droi had reported. How fast were they moving? When would they arrive? He couldn’t know. And all the forces at his disposal were already engaged with the orks on and inside the wall. He had to tell deViers. But first…

  “10th Division Command to Armour,” he voxed. “Are you there, Kochatkis?”

  “I’m here, sir,” said Vinnemann. “Go ahead.”

  “You just lost close support from the Vulcans. Thought you should know.”

  “I saw that, sir. The fuselage hit just a few hundred metres away. Looks like those bombers are swinging around for a run on us.”

  “Can you see those Hydras? They should be all around you by now.”

  “They’ve just joined us, sir,” said Vinnemann. “We lost two, but four of them are still in the game. The wind is stripping our smoke cover off and the ork artillery isn’t missing us by much. But the Hydras will be a real surprise for those bombers the next time they make a pass.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Bergen, “but there’s something else I have to tell you. We’re being flanked from the south.”

  “Flanked, sir?” asked Vinnemann. “What kind of numbers?”

  “Can’t confirm that, but from the sounds of it, far more than we can reasonably handle.”

  “Our forces have breached, sir,” said Vinnemann. “There’s no way we can fight on two fronts and still push through to reach The Fortress of Arrogance. What does the general say?”

  “I’m going to report to him now, Kochatkis,” said Bergen. “Just wanted you to know.”

  “Appreciate that, sir. Armour, out.”

  DeViers exploded when Bergen told him the news.

  “They’re bloody what? he demanded.

  “They’re flanking us from the south, sir,” replied Bergen. “Last transmission from Eagle Three stated the land was black with them. Serious numbers, sir. We’re about to find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.”

  “By the blasted Eye of Terror!” raged deViers. “Why now? We’ve just gained the breach.”

  “If I might suggest something, sir,” said Major General Killian.

  “Out with it, Klotus,” snapped deViers.

  “Well, sir. It seems to me that the only place we can hope to fight them and win would be Red Gorge. We’d be cutting it fine in terms of the time left to us, but, if we could effect a retreat to the canyon just before the second ork force arrives, we could fight them on a much smaller single front.”

  Rennkamp nodded. “Straight out of the Tactica. Engage a superior force at a bottleneck. It would give us more control.”

  DeViers eyes were so wide and bug-like with anger that Bergen thought they might pop out of his head. “Retreat to the canyon? And turn this whole thing into a protracted fight? I suppose you think we should just let the orks patch their wall up, too, so we can waste time and resources attacking it all over again? You bloody clods!”

  Killian and Rennkamp each took a step backwards. “You can’t mean to fight it out on open land, sir,” said Killian. “It’ll be a bloody whitewash. A massacre.”

  “I’m afraid I agree with them on that count, sir,” said Bergen. “Our expedition will end here if we engage in a stand up fight. You can forget your place in the history books if that happens.”

  The last sentence seemed to surprise deViers. He looked like he had been slapped. He turned on Bergen, hissing, “What would you have me do, Gerard? Call a general retreat? Should we run back to Balkar with our tails between our legs? No holy tank? No glory of any kind? I’ll die before I let that happen. Nothing will get in the way of my success here. Do you understand? Do you all get it?”

  Bergen thought he understood only too well. Whatever happened, it was deViers’ obsession with glory that would decide their fate. For a long moment, no one said anything. It was a metallic voice from the entrance to the tent that broke the spell of silence. Tech-Magos Sennesdiar stood there, his huge, angular bulk a dark silhouette. Just beyond him, standing outside in the daylight, Tech-Adepts Armadron and Xephous waited patiently.

  “There will be no retreat,” Sennesdiar boomed at them in Gothic. “There will be no going back to Balkan.”

  Bergen turned.

  “With respect, magos,” he said. “That decision rests with the general.”

  Sennesdiar stooped a little so that he could fully enter the tent. Then he moved towards them, stopping a few metres away, dominating them with his size, causing them all to look up at him.

  “I did not mean to suggest otherwise, gentlemen. But some moments ago, Adept Armadron received a land-line transmission from Balkar. Our forward base is under assault. The orks have managed to breach Balkar’s walls. The garrison commander does not expert his forces to last another hour.”

  “They what?” gasped deViers. “Balkar is under siege?”

  “As are our bases at Hadron, Karavassa and Tyrellis, if word from Balkar is to be believed. Great numbers of orks have assaulted our outposts from the north and south. It is clear that the orks have found a way to communicate effectively over long range and are coordinating their attacks.”

  DeViers looked ready to fall down. For all his rejuvenat treatments, he suddenly seemed every bit the ninety-one-year-old man he was. “Coordinated attacks?” he muttered. “By orks?”

  “I think our current dilemma confirms the possibility quite solidly,” said Killian. “The orks on the wall called in fighter-bombers, after all.”

  “Yes,” said Sennesdiar. “The attacks are most certainly coordinated. The question I wish to have answered, however, is what the good general intends to do next.”

  “We should go to Balkar’s aid at once,” said Rennkamp. “How can we even consider going on with our supply lines interrupted?”

  Bergen shook his head. “By the time we get back to Balkar, it’ll be too late to make a difference anyway.”

  Killian agreed. “There’ll be no one left, not if the outpost walls have already been compromised. Damn it all. All those medicae personnel, the sick and wounded…”

  Bergen scowled. He knew good men back there, men who had been too sick to go on, and women, too. He didn’t want to think about all those gentle medicae nurses left to face the savagery of the orks without hope of salvation.

  “There will be
no retreat,” said General deViers icily. “Understand that now.”

  “We of the Adeptus Mechanicus,” said Sennesdiar, “wish to recommend that this expeditionary force continues to push east. The Fortress of Arrogance has never been closer. The general’s glorious quest is still well within acceptable feasibility parameters.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” said Rennkamp. “General, please. I think Klotus is right. If we can’t go back to Balkar, at the very least we need to fall back to Red Gorge and dig in there. Fight the orks on our own terms.”

  Killian nodded emphatically. He looked at the magos. “Once we’ve secured the gorge, we could send up one of the orbital beacons to call for evacuation.”

  “Absolutely not,” raged General deViers. “Magos, the beacons must only be used if and when we secure The Fortress of Arrogance. Is that clear?”

  Bergen studied the general’s face, thinking how disappointed he was that the man he had once looked up to had become so self-serving and obsessive. Despite all that, however, he felt that the general was right. To get bogged down in a long-term engagement at Red Gorge would do them no good.

  “Neither I nor my adepts have any intention of utilising the beacons until the moment is right, general. You may be assured of that. You do not intend to leave without your prize. So, too, it is with us. No one will be lifted from Golgotha until our objective is met.”

  Bergen read between the lines. He heard the unspoken words. At no time had the magos said that his objectives were the same as the general’s, but whatever the tech-priests wanted, it suited them to support deViers. He saw that fact give strength to the general now. The old man stood taller, the years falling from him once again.

  “Every last damned one of you,” deViers said. “When you get back to your vehicles, I want you to tell our forward elements to hold that breach at all costs. And get every other man and machine under my command through it before the orks get here from the south. That means the fuel trucks, the water trucks, food, supplies, munitions, every last damn bit of it. I want everything we have, everything we’ll need, through that breach and heading east towards The Fortress of Arrogance before the ork reinforcements are on us. Is that understood?”

  Rennkamp mumbled something incoherent.

  “I said is that understood?” hissed deViers.

  “Understood, sir,” said the three major generals.

  Tech-Magos Sennesdiar didn’t wait to be dismissed. He turned and left the tent, saying nothing more.

  “You’re mad, sir,” said Rennkamp. “You do realise that?”

  DeViers looked at him and grinned. “Mad, Aaron? Or inspired?”

  It’s a thin line between the two, thought Bergen. He felt miserable. He had known for a long time that deViers would get them all killed for his own sake: Balkar lost, supply lines cut, every major outpost they had won under siege by the greenskins. It was worse even than he had imagined it would be, but still The Fortress of Arrogance pulled the general on relentlessly, and with him, the men and machines of the 18th Army Group.

  “You’ll see that I’m right, gentlemen,” said deViers. “It’s odds like these that make legends of men. We can still find Yarrick’s tank. It awaits us not far from here. And one day, all of the Imperium will know our story.”

  No they won’t, thought Bergen. Because none of us will survive this to tell it.

  DeViers dismissed them, and, after a salute that lacked any sincerity whatsoever, Bergen returned to his Chimera. The men of his division were still out there, fighting for their lives, fighting to hold the breach in the ork wall so that the infantry could keep pouring through, helping to secure more and more ground on the other side.

  If he and the other divisional commanders could just get everyone through before the orks from the south moved into range, then maybe, just maybe, they could run east. With luck, they might stay ahead of the orks for a while. They might even reach the supposed coordinates of Yarrick’s tank.

  Bergen hoped he survived that long. He hoped the tank was there, despite his doubts. He wanted to know that the dead had fallen for something greater than an old man’s self-importance.

  In the back of Pride of Caedus, he hit a toggle on his vox-caster and opened a link to Colonel Vinnemann.

  “Armour, this is Division.”

  No answer. Bergen felt his skin crawl.

  “Armour Command,” he voxed, “this is Divisional Command. Respond, please.”

  Nothing but static.

  “Damn it, Vinnemann, respond. That’s an order, you hear?”

  Words tumbled over and over in his mind, like a mantra: don’t let it be, don’t let it be.

  Perhaps there was just something wrong with the Angel’s vox.

  Emperor, let it be that, he pleaded.

  He switched channels, contacting Colonel Marrenburg, who was overseeing the artillery companies not far from deViers’ forward command tent. “Marrenburg, can you get a visual on Angel of the Apocalypse? I can’t raise Vinnemann on the vox.”

  Marrenburg sounded like a different man when he answered, and Bergen realised that his fears were well-founded.

  “It was the ork bombers, sir,” said the colonel. “The Hydras got most of them, but Vinnemann’s tank took too many direct hits. We just took the last one down, but not before it managed to deliver a final payload. Not much left the Angel of the Apocalypse now, sir. Throne rest the souls of all those who crewed her.”

  Bergen’s mouth went dry. He was speechless. He thought of Vinnemann, of the hunched little man who had endured so much pain, so much struggle just to keep on fighting. Few men Bergen had ever met could be said to embody the Cadian spirit of honour and resilience so well. His eyes began to sting, and his throat felt tight. He would miss Kochatkis Vinnemann. The unrelenting colonel had gone beyond the call of duty long ago. Perhaps now, his soul would be reunited with that of the wife he had spent so long avenging. He had more than earned his peace.

  The 81st Armoured Regiment’s second-in-command would have to take over. That was Captain Immrich.

  Bergen would promote Immrich later… if he was still alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Captain Immrich was alive, and he was working damned hard to stay that way. He was doing a fine job of it, too, and of gaining ground as he led the tanks of the 81st Armoured Regiment against the ork hordes that swarmed towards them from almost every direction.

  Under Immrich’s command, the Imperial armour kept pushing out beyond the wall, and the space they created behind them became filled with ever greater numbers of Chimeras, halftracks, Thirty-Sixers full of troops, and Sentinel walkers that added the firepower of their auto-cannon to the battle, slaughtering hundreds of greenskin filth with great sweeps of fire.

  The ground was a carpet of smoking metal, big brown bodies and raw red meat. Ork carcasses covered every inch of sand and rock. The Cadian tanks pulped them as they rolled forward. There was no way to avoid them. The bodies were everywhere. Treads of black iron became slick and shiny and red. Only the filter-masks worn by the Cadians protected them from the stench. Without the masks, it would have been impossible to breathe without vomiting.

  Even with all his hatches locked up tight, Wulfe’s nose crinkled in disgust as the smell of so much death permeated his turret, competing with the powerful combined stink of oil, sweat and fyceline.

  Last Rites II had knocked out three ramshackle ork machines already, and Beans was swinging the turret around on a fourth that was approaching from front-left, when Wulfe heard Immrich’s voice on the vox-link. It sounded different, drained, as if something had sapped the life out of the man. He sounded lost. “All units, listen up. This is Captain Immrich. New orders from General deViers. All tanks are to focus on carving and holding a corridor east. The rest of the army group is coming through behind us. When they’re clear, I’ll give the word. I want all tanks to fall in behind them and cover the column’s rear.”

  We’re running east, thought Wulfe. Why the frak
aren’t we solidifying our position here first? The orks will close in behind us and harry our flanks if we run now. Does the general mean to let them cut off our route back to Balkar?

  “There’s more,” said Immrich. “I’ve just been placed in temporary command of the regiment. Colonel Vinnemann… Colonel Vinnemann has gone to meet the Emperor.”

  Wulfe reeled backwards in his seat. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be. Vinnemann was the regiment. To every man who knew him, he was as permanent as the stars. What would the regiment be without its guiding light, its living symbol of honour and duty? He felt the news hit him like a physical blow.

  The sudden boom of his tank’s main gun shook him back into himself. The turret jolted. The smell of burnt propellant tugged his nose. He checked the vision blocks and saw a heap of burning black metal straight ahead. The main gun was still pointing directly at it.

  Beans whooped with satisfaction. “How many points do I get for a truck full of the bastards?”

  “Metzger,” said Wulfe, ignoring the gunner’s celebration, “wheel us around to the north. We’re to hold a corridor here for the others to come through.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Metzger, and the tank started to move.

  “Siegler, Beans, keep that rate of fire up,” said Wulfe. “Armour-piercing. Focus on their armour. Our infantry can deal with their foot soldiers.”

  He hoped that were true. So far, they’d given the orks a damned hard time getting anywhere near the Cadian tanks. Every vehicle that careered towards them had been lit up like fireworks at a Founding Festival. The orks were still coming, though, pouring towards the breach from all along the wall, desperate to join the fray where the fighting was at its thickest. As the Imperial tanks steadily thinned down the number of ork machines, the fight became one of lighter weapons: lasguns, bolters, stubbers and the like. Wulfe moved automatically, unlocking the hatch of his cupola without thinking, still numbed by the news of Vinnemann’s death. How would van Droi be taking it? The lieutenant had idolised his senior officer.