The mountain trail took them down onto more manageable ground, and additional vehicles moved up from the rear to support the vanguard. The column began moving in a meandering line along a series of low rocky gullies. Sandstone hills rose on all sides, but it wasn’t long before the Cadians noticed something amiss. The sky beyond the next rise was darker than it was elsewhere, stained with copious amounts of smoke.
General deViers ordered scouts to investigate further, and small groups of Sentinels lurched off, careful to keep low so that they presented no silhouettes above the hill-line. Minutes later, the scout leader called back to recommend that the general halt the column and come in person to the forward observation point. He had found the source of the smoke.
Bergen lay on his belly with his magnoculars pressed to his eyes, scanning the scene before him, uncaring of the fact that his uniform was filthy with red dust. A dozen officers on either side of him lay in similar positions, muttering and cursing at the focus of their attention.
Beyond the rise, the land was broad and open, gently curving upwards on either side. The Cadians were looking down into a huge crater, a volcanic caldera ten kilometres across. The volcano was long dead, but at its centre sat the source of the dark smoke.
“Millions of them,” said Killian, lying on Bergen’s right. “There must be millions of them.”
“A hundred thousand at the most,” said Rennkamp.
“Either way,” said Killian, “we’re still heavily outnumbered.”
Bergen couldn’t really decide what he was looking at. Either it was the ork equivalent of a town, or it was simply the biggest collection of scrap metal he had ever seen. Finally, he decided it was both, and in equal parts. Heaps of rusting armour plate and twisted girders rose a hundred metres into the air, the most prominent feature of the scene before him. Here and there, ruined vehicles poked their noses out, some recognisable as the crumpled remnants of Chimera APCs and Leman Russ tanks, others not so familiar.
Wreckage from the Golgothan War, thought Bergen. For thirty-eight years they’ve scavenged the old battlefields and brought it all back here. Was this the place where Thraka constructed his war machines for the assault on Armageddon? Was The Fortress of Arrogance brought here?
He hardly dared to hope that it was still here today. The old certainty that deViers would never find his prize was still strong. Peering hard through the lenses of his magnoculars, he struggled to find anything even approximating the profile of the famous Baneblade.
No, nothing came close.
Perhaps they took it off-world, he thought. Here we are desperately searching for her on Golgotha so that we might repair her and ship her to Armageddon, and the blasted orks have probably moved her there already!
He zoomed in on a pair of massive cylindrical structures at the southern edge of the ork base. They appeared to be some kind of greenskin foundries. They were covered in snaking pipes and valves, and were pouring smoke into the air, some of it black, some of it a noxious yellow-brown. Now and then, great plumes of fire erupted from a series of thin, teetering chimneys. He saw hundreds of beastly figures hefting scrap through massive doors. There were workshops attached where the sharp white glare of promethium blowtorches could be seen. Showers of orange sparks accompanied the harsh metallic banging sounds that rolled towards him across the floor of the caldera.
In the centre of the base, surrounded by the mountains of scrap, there were hundreds of huts and hangars, all made of corrugated steel and arranged in no particular order that Bergen could discern. Unsurprisingly, every single surface was painted red and decorated with crude glyphs, the vast majority of which seemed to be skulls or faces.
There were towers placed all around the perimeter, too, unsteady-looking frameworks of iron and steel that rose as high as any of the mountainous junk heaps. Atop each of these, Bergen saw observation posts boasting pintle-mounted heavy weapons. They were manned by members of the smaller, skinnier greenskin slave caste. They were hideous, chittering things, known to the soldiers of the Imperial Guard as gretchin — relatively weak at close quarters, but more capable of aiming a gun than their bigger kin.
“What in the name of Terra is that for?” asked Colonel Graves. “There, on the north side. Is that a cage?”
Bergen panned left and saw the structure Graves was talking about. It certainly looked like a cage, but it stood well over fifty metres tall. What in the warp had it been built to contain? The bars were thicker than an average steel girder. There was no sign of life inside, but the sight of great piles of reddish-brown dung left Bergen with a distinct sinking feeling. He thought he knew the kind of creature such a cage might have been built for. If they were lucky, the empty cage meant it was already dead. If they were unlucky, it was out on patrol somewhere, perhaps on the far rim of the crater.
He saw dozens of smaller pens around the cage, filled with the vicious-looking ovoid creatures that orks were known to eat. These were called squigs. Just over a decade ago on Phaegos II, Bergen had witnessed them being fired into the midst of a Mordian infantry regiment via a kind of crude ork catapult device. It was one of the strangest tactics he had ever seen the greenskins use. Strange, but effective. The result of such voracious and aggressive creatures landing smack in the middle of tightly packed troops was absolute panic as the squigs attacked everything they could get their razor-like teeth into. His tanks, moving up in support of the Mordians, had destroyed the catapults, but not before a good many men had died.
“That’s a lot of armour they’ve got sitting around,” said Captain Immrich. “And they’ve plenty of light vehicles, too. They’ll give your infantry something extra to worry about, colonel.”
Graves grunted something by way of reply. Bergen didn’t catch it.
Immrich was a few metres away on Bergen’s left. He seemed to be managing well in his new position as leader of the 81st Armoured Regiment, but Bergen had been a little stunned at the physical change in him. He looked a lot less robust than Bergen could ever remember him being. Then again, they all did. Bergen had studiously avoided looking in a mirror recently. The reddish tinge of his flesh was warning enough that Golgotha was taking its dreadful toll.
As Immrich had pointed out, ork vehicles were everywhere. Bikes and buggies roared back and forth as if their drivers were engaged in some kind of game. They hooted and hollered, and their passengers lashed out with hammers and blades every time they came within a few metres of each other. Bergen saw one ork beheaded in such a pass. The others howled with laughter as its lifeless body tumbled from the back of the buggy it had been riding. Seconds later, a trio of bikes ran straight over the corpse.
Mad savages, thought Bergen, but his revulsion was nothing to the apprehension he felt as he panned his gaze over the disorganised ranks of the greenskin armour. There were literally hundreds of tanks, halftracks, APCs, artillery pieces, dreadnought walkers and more. Each looked just as likely to fall apart as to put up any kind of fight, but Bergen wasn’t fooled. Ork machinery could be deceptively effective. Whichever Eye-blasted warboss ruled here, he was certainly well equipped.
“I’ve seen enough,” said a sharp, clipped voice.
Bergen heard shuffling to his left and lowered his magnoculars. General deViers was moving backwards down the slope. When he was below the ridgeline, he rose to his feet and dusted himself off.
“The scouts say there is no other way forward,” he said, addressing them all at once. “We’ll have to wipe them out. We’ll need time to search all those mountains of scrap for The Fortress of Arrogance.”
Other officers had begun shuffling backwards down the slope. Many of them stopped at his words and turned to gape at him. Judging by the look on Colonel von Holden’s face the man was just about ready to explode, but Pruscht, who had always seemed such a pragmatic and level-headed officer, beat him to it.
“You can’t be serious, sir,” he hissed. “In the name of Terra, think of the numbers. It’ll be a massacre and we’ll be on the wrong
side of it, mark you.”
DeViers looked around, eyes suddenly hard, and Bergen had the distinct impression he was searching for a commissar. Fortunately, they had been left to watch over the troopers while the senior officers moved up to observe.
“It will be massacre,” the general snapped. “A massacre of orks. The Fortress of Arrogance must be out there. Any coward who turns from our glorious path will be shot dead. There will be no trials. Our very fingertips brush the prize. Today, we seize it.”
Emboldened by the dismayed looks of the others, Colonel Meyers of the 303rd Skellas Rifles added his voice to the protest. “But there’s no evidence that—”
The crack of a bolt pistol cut his sentence short. His skull detonated, spraying Colonels Brismund and von Holden with a fine shower of gore.
“In the name of Terra!” exclaimed Colonel Marrenburg, turning suddenly pale.
“That man was a senior officer!” gasped Major General Killian.
“Sir,” hissed Major General Rennkamp, “are you trying to get us all killed? If the orks heard that shot…”
DeViers’ voice was utterly level. He eyed each of the men before him. “Does anyone else wish to meet the Emperor’s judgement as a coward and a traitor? If so, step forward.”
No one moved.
“Our mission has but one goal,” he continued. “All else is irrelevant. Whether we live or die, gentlemen, we will ensure that The Fortress of Arrogance is taken from the orks and turned over to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Yarrick will have his tank back, and our expedition will be forever remembered in the proud annals of the Imperial Guard. As you have just witnessed, I will kill any man who stands in the way of that, for he is an enemy of the Emperor and no true son of Cadia.”
Those last words struck out at the officers like a lash. Bergen saw von Holden physically steadying himself against their impact. They affected the speaker, however, in quite a different way. As he finished his pronouncement, the general stood noticeably taller and prouder, his chest expanding until Bergen thought the buttons of his tunic might actually fly off.
The mad old bastard had really lost it, now.
The other officers were frozen. No one else dared speak. No one, that is, except the tall, hooded figure who approached from the bottom of the slope, his fluttering robes as red as the rocks on which he trod.
As red as blood, thought Bergen, eyes narrowing.
Magos Sennesdiar’s toneless voice seemed to echo from the near hillsides as he said, “A rousing speech, general. And I believe you will soon fulfil your destiny. My adepts have just completed consultations with the spirits of our auspex scanners. We have every reason to believe that the tank you seek is indeed located in the ork base up ahead. It is time for you to earn your place in history, and the Adeptus Mechanicus stands ready to offer our support.”
His hopes confirmed, a broad grin spread across the general’s face, creasing the skin around his eyes. Bergen, however, saw all too clearly that the old fool was being manipulated. His desperation, his need to leave some mark on the Imperium, had made him a willing pawn of greater forces. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely his fault. He had been great once, before the disaster on Palmeros had unhinged him. Most men, men of the aristocracy in particular, sought to leave something behind, though in the main this was achieved by the continuation of their bloodlines. DeViers had been denied that path to immortality, so he’d found another.
The poet Michelos had said something about fools writing history in the blood of better men, but Bergen couldn’t remember the exact words.
Suddenly, Magos Sennesdiar turned his head southwards. Something had caught his attention.
“We must move at once,” he said. “Quickly. Back to the vehicles. We have to hurry.” Though his vocaliser couldn’t convey a sense of urgency through tone, his words were adequate to the task.
Everyone turned to face the same direction.
“What do you hear?” demanded Rennkamp, but the magos didn’t need to answer. The officers could hear it for themselves now, the roar of an engine getting louder all the time until it was almost deafening.
“Above us,” shouted Colonel von Holden over the noise.
Bergen looked up just in time to see a chunky, snub-nosed jet fighter scream past them only a few dozen metres above the ridge line. It was painted red with some kind of shark’s tooth pattern around the air intake at the front. There were rocket-pods and bombs fixed to the pylons under its wings. For the very briefest instant, Bergen thought he saw the leering face of the pilot, a hideous goggled ork with slavering, tusk-filled jaws.
“Move!” shouted deViers, and everyone broke into a sliding run that carried them to the bottom of the slope in a torrent of rolling rocks and dust.
The pilot must have reported their presence over some kind of greenskin vox device because, from the ork settlement at the centre of the crater, the thunder of war drums began.
The Cadians’ chance to properly plan an assault was gone. Any advantage was lost. The beasts were already spilling out to meet them.
It was time to kill or be killed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
They clashed halfway towards the ork settlement with a violence that shattered iron and bone. Things descended into madness almost immediately. There was no cover. It was open ground all the way in. The Cadians dropped hundreds of the foe at range, their Basilisk artillery pieces taking a terrible toll from about five kilometres back, but the orks had numbers to spare. They were a roaring, seething storm front of blades and guns, tusks and muscle, and they had gone a long time without a fight. At last, war had returned to Golgotha. The greenskins roared and laughed as long-range fighting quickly gave way to mutual slaughter at close-quarters, and the bloodletting began in earnest.
Sheet lighting began to flash regularly in the sky above, almost as if the excitement of the orks was somehow charging the atmosphere.
Leman Russ Exterminators and Conquerors, Chimera APCs and Heracles halftracks all pushed in to support the out-muscled Cadian infantry with sheets of blistering fire, opening temporary gaps that allowed the footsloggers to employ their lasguns briefly before the enemy surged forward again, trampling the bodies of the dead. Sentinels stalked the far left and right flanks charged with preventing the fast, light ork bikes and buggies from circling around the main force and striking from the rear. Their autocannon blazed, spewing brass casings on the sand. Those sections of the battlefield soon became littered with smoking machines from both sides.
In the centre, the air burned and throbbed, filled with scorching las- and plasma-fire. Solid rounds whipped and whined in every direction. Streams of liquid flame turned men and orks alike into roasted black marionettes that fell as if their strings had been cut. Shelling from both sides made the floor of the crater shake as if it might give way any second and plunge everyone into a sea of orange magma.
Outside the buttoned-up turret of Last Rites II, the world had descended into deafening, dust-choked mayhem.
Lesser men might have lost their minds in the face of such ferocity, for nothing could match the savagery, the gleeful brutality, of the orks. Cadians, however, were not lesser men. They were born and bred for war. This was their duty, and Wulfe was not afraid. His years of training and experience took over from the start, moving to the fore of his consciousness. His senses felt sharper, his movements faster and more assured, and his scar was itching, a reminder of all the hate he carried within him.
Whether or not he died today, he intended to take a heavy toll on the race that had killed so many of the men he’d known.
He heard van Droi on the vox. “Take it to them, Gunheads. Show those bastards what it means to unleash the Emperor’s wrath!”
FOOM!
The sound of cannon fire cut across everything else as the Cadian tanks loosed round after round into the melee.
Beans stamped his foot trigger and added to the fusillade.
Major General Bergen had ordered all the regiment’s Vanquishers, st
andard Leman Russ, Executioners and Destroyers to race straight forward through the xenos lines, guns blazing, with the objective of knocking out the enemy armour and artillery pieces lined up on the settlement’s western edge. From there, they could wheel around and strike at the orks’ rear.
It wouldn’t be easy. They were already drawing massive amounts of fire. Ploughing straight through the ork horde would put them at even greater risk, but the long-guns had to be taken out if the infantry were to push forward. There was simply no other way.
Bergen thumbed the trigger of his autocannon, strafing the orks from the turret of Pride of Caedus, sending a row of them to the ground as lifeless heaps. All around him, the men of the 71st Caedus Infantry fought like rabid dogs. They were inspiring, even as their numbers dropped lower and lower. They made him proud. He was doing his best to support them, as was their commander, Colonel Graves, but if Immrich’s tanks couldn’t gain the advantage soon, all would be lost. General deViers’ holy quest would end here.
The general was raging over the vox at anyone and everyone who was listening, demanding that they gain ground and break the ork charge. Bergen might normally have cursed him or ignored him, but not this time. This time, the old man was right in among them, in the eye of the storm, pouring out a hailstorm of multi-laser fire from the turret of his own Chimera. No one, he had insisted, could sit this one out. The odds were too great, and too much was riding on victory.
That suited Bergen. He figured it was about time the mad old bastard got his hands dirty.
From left to right, the battlefield was a sea of monstrous brown bodies clad in black iron plate. Gaudily painted dreadnoughts waddled alongside them, almost comical in their clumsy movements. There was nothing comical, though, in the torrents of death they spewed from hip-mounted stubbers and flame-throwers. Cadians went down in great screaming lines, their bodies cooked or ripped to pieces by sprays of heavy enfilading fire.
[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads Page 31
