‘You bleeding well stay in line, trooper, or I’ll have your guts on the end of my poker,’ Forjaz ordered him.
Blanks stopped, suddenly confused, though only for an instant.
‘Yes… yes, sergeant.’
‘What did you say?’ Carson pushed his way over to him.
‘I’m sorry, lieutenant,’ Blanks corrected himself. ‘I only meant to say that I volunteer...’
Carson grabbed his arm. ‘You think you can do it?’
Blanks looked up at him. ‘Yes. I do.’
Carson looked at the man. No one should be volunteering to do such a task, certainly not on their own, and yet, even crouched here behind the ramparts waiting to be blown to oblivion, this new man to his company had such an air of confidence about him that Carson actually believed he could.
‘What do you need?’
‘Just a permission slip, lieutenant, in case an officer stops me.’
‘Mouse!’ Carson shouted, and the trooper scurried across. ‘Give Blanks one of my absence slips.’
‘Sir!’ Mouse claimed. ‘You know I don’t keep any–’
‘Don’t bull me, trooper,’ Carson told him and Mouse reluctantly reached inside his coat.
‘Forjaz,’ Carson continued, ‘you go with him. Watch his back.’
Forjaz was speechless for a moment. Surely, he thought, the lieutenant knew it was suicide. Feeling Carson’s stare upon him, however, the hard-bitten sergeant muttered ‘Yes, sir’ with a shaky voice.
‘I’ll be quicker on my own, lieutenant,’ Blanks said, taking the plas-sheet that Mouse produced.
‘I’m not sending a man out there on his own. That’s not how we do things,’ Carson replied. And I don’t know you, he mentally added. Maybe you are what you seem and maybe you’re not, but either way I’m not letting you run wild.
Carson watched the two men hasten towards the gate in the southern wall. He doubted Blanks would succeed, but Forjaz would keep his head. Forjaz would come back alive and most likely bring Blanks with him.
‘Incoming!’
Even though they were already crouched behind the ramparts, the platoon ducked instinctively at the sound of the mega-bombard. This time, however, the explosion was followed by the sound they all dreaded to hear; from further down the wall the shout began:
‘Breach! Breach!’
Forjaz paused a moment when he heard the shout, but Blanks did not. He knew what his mission was. There were nearly a thousand men in Fort Eliza, more than enough to defend a breach so long as their officers kept their heads. Given time, however, that mega-bombard could make a dozen more like it. That was the real threat and so Blanks kept running, and Forjaz cursed and hurried after him.
The breach wasn’t fatal. The shot from the mega-bombard had struck the glacis and deflected up, striking the wall there, a quarter of the way up. It had smacked into the wall and the earth behind, but it had not shattered and instead rolled back into the trench, crushing the orks floundering there. With the top half of the wall caved in, the shot formed a giant stepping-stone over the barrier and into the fort.
It wasn’t much, but for the ork warriors who had been forced to wait in the darkness beyond the dead ground, even such a crack was encouragement enough.
‘Red! Red!’ Carson called as the orks roared in slavering anticipation. Red, bless his flaring nostrils and scarlet face, was there.
‘Ready, sah!’ the colour-sergeant acknowledged. ‘Right, you shockers, after me!’
Red no longer commanded only first platoon. He had bawled, shoved and bullied sixty more men from the late Wymondham’s company into line. Now, at their head, Red manoeuvred them like a giant stopper to plug the breach. The construction Sentinels moved ahead of them, carrying empty crates, spars and drums to fill the gap.
Gardner opened fire out over the dead ground again. Carson looked and saw the horde plunging towards them, the light of the floods casting their green skins grey. This was it. Gardner’s weapon and the other autocannons firing along the wall barely scratched it; the mortar shells that Rosa’s men were now lobbing into their midst were not enough. If the western wall was to be held, then it would be with only lasgun and bayonet.
Major Roussell heard the news of the breach. Established procedure in the instance of a breach was to construct a second line; however, adhering to established procedures was not a cast-iron defence in a court-martial. Following a direct order, on the other hand, was. Guard officers were not excused the use of their initiative in the pursuit of victory, but orders were inviolable. And so Major Roussell used his initiative and relayed the news to the increasingly exasperated Arbulaster and waited for orders.
‘Grenades!’ Carson commanded. The orks were racing for the breach now. For all their bulk they had a surprising turn of speed. Each one of them was running at full pelt, but even in such a mass, they were not stumbling or tripping over each other. Their base, unerring warrior instinct kept their charge intact, and they were going to beat Red’s scratch company to the breach. They shoved their weapons between their teeth and, dropping onto all fours, they bounded up the impromptu ramp made by the bombard shot and launched themselves at Tyrwhitt’s defenders.
The orks, however, would not beat the Sentinels. The beards at the controls manoeuvred the striding engines of war up the incline with the ease of long experience. Now the orks had committed their full force, Carson’s men and the Sentinels would only have to hold their attack for a few minutes until the companies still held in reserve all around the camp could come up. Then any ork that made it through the breach would be met by hundreds of lasguns.
Carson heard another squawking on the vox, but did not care to hear Roussell exhorting them still further. But the beards in the sentinels had listened. They paused a moment and then, with the same expertise with which they had advanced, they swung their walkers around and marched back down again.
Carson could not believe his eyes. He looked in askance at his vox-trooper, but he was already staring back towards the camp; in every corner the reserve companies had halted as well. Then, following a chorus of new orders, they too turned to retreat.
‘What’s that idiot done?’
‘Yes, major, follow established procedures if you are not certain the breached wall can be saved,’ Colonel Arbulaster repeated over the vox, while the sounds of the Valkyries lifting-off could be heard in the background.
‘And the companies still engaged on the wall, colonel? Can you just confirm?’ Roussell queried.
‘Is your secondary defence line already established?’ Arbulaster’s voice seared with sarcasm.
‘No, colonel,’ Roussell reported conscientiously.
‘Then they’ll have to buy you the damn time then, won’t they.’
‘Hold position, sir,’ the vox-trooper replied. His voice had not quivered, but Carson could see that beneath the brim of his Guard-issue helmet the man’s face had paled.
Carson felt the blood thundering in his ears. Roussell was hanging every man at the wall out to dry. Carson was going to kill him, if he didn’t die here first.
Blanks flew through the darkness. He and Forjaz had run over to the southern wall, ignoring the flood of men who streamed past them towards the breach, and dropped down the other side of the main gate onto the hard track beyond. With the orks focused on the new partial breach in the western wall, speed was more important than stealth.
They had dashed down the track, almost as though they were fleeing the battle, until they were outside the range of the floodlights. There they had switched to the noctocles and looped up into the woods and around to where Blanks was certain he had spotted the ork mega-bombard.
As they went, Blanks could see the glowing outlines of the trees and the morass of tangled undergrowth through the noctocle. It was difficult terrain even in the day; at night, at a run, it should have been nigh impossi
ble, and yet every time he put down his foot it found somewhere firm, every time he stretched out his hand it grasped solid wood to steady his step.
Behind him, he heard Forjaz breathing hard at the exertion, but he had barely broken a sweat. A tree had fallen across his path; he leapt and vaulted across it. He did not know how his body knew to do such things, it just did. Maybe this is what he had been in his old regiment: a runner, a messenger, someone who might deliver the vital ammunition to the gun team, the spare part to the broken-down tank, or return the critically wounded man to the medicae.
He saw the outline of the ork on the other side of the tree trunk just before he crashed into it. They both went down in a tangle of limbs. Blanks felt his elbow strike the beast’s throat, then found his bayonet in his hand plunging into its eye. He pulled it free, rolled to his feet and flung it hard in front of him. The other ork made a bubbling noise as it sank to its knees, Blanks’s bayonet embedded in its neck. It was only then that his instincts stopped firing and his thoughts caught up.
‘You’re a violent bastard, aren’t you,’ Forjaz said from atop the fallen trunk, regaining his breath.
‘You need to stop?’ Blanks asked.
‘No,’ Forjaz bit back, but his heaving chest said otherwise.
Blanks stepped warily over to the gurgling xenos, watching its eerie green outline through the noctocle. Its eyes were fixed, but its arm was still flapping a fraction. Its brain was trying to send signals to its arm to pull the weapon free from its neck, but its arm no longer understood the brain’s instructions. It hadn’t been like this at the ambush; there he had been in the third line, the orks had been shapes through the trees and then scorched corpses on the ground. He had seen them alive and dead, but he had not watched them die.
He trod down on the arm to stop it moving, twisted the bayonet and cut it free through the flesh, opening the ork’s throat. It slumped, dead, into the undergrowth.
‘Rearguard, do you think?’ Blanks asked.
‘Unlikely.’ Forjaz sat on the trunk and pushed himself off, his breathing still heavy. ‘They’re new-spawns. Whelps. They were probably doing the same as us. Trying to sneak around the back.’
‘Orks sneak? I thought they only went straight for you.’
Forjaz stared at the trooper. ‘Of course they sneak! You never fought them before?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Perfect,’ Forjaz spat.
Ahead of them, the woods lit up as the mega-bombard fired again.
The shot flew across the same path as the last. The wall exploded, throwing fragments of wood, earth and pieces of both the orkish attackers and Tyrwhitt’s defenders up into the air. As the shower of blood, flesh and dirt fell to the ground Carson saw the yawning gap that had now been created, as though the orkish gods had swung an almighty hammer and smashed their way through.
‘Get the breach! Get the breach!’ Carson bellowed to his platoon, but the orks were already there. They were ugly, snorting animals, daubed with war-paint decorating their bodies with the symbols of their gods, wielding clubs and cudgels hewn from the jungle trees, and picks and axes made from sharpened spars and rocks. They roared with bloodlust as they charged forwards over the trench of their dead and into the fort.
‘First rank, fire!’
The orks at the front were sliced to pieces by the criss-crossing las lines.
‘Second rank, fire!’ It was Red. As soon as he had realised that he would lose the race to the breach he had formed the survivors of Wymondham’s company up within the camp itself. Now he was calling out the ranks as quickly as he could, disciplining the fire against the cycle time of the lasguns to work them at their utmost effectiveness. Against a human foe it might have been enough, but orks were not human.
‘Gardner!’ he shouted to the corporal still blazing away on the autocannon that Frn’k had braced against his shoulder. ‘Redeploy!’
Gardner released his trigger and smacked the ogryn on the side of the head.
‘Trouble, we move! Quick march!’ The ogryn grunted and then heaved both the autocannon and Gardner bodily into the air. When they reached the rest of second platoon, Frn’k simply dropped to one knee, holding the gun like a bazooka, and Gardner was firing in an instant.
The platoon poured their fire down onto the endless ranks of orks streaming inside. Even as some of the orks turned to meet the threat, the toughest of the first wave, screaming and scarred, reached the ranks of Red’s company, only to be pierced by the tips of the troopers’ bayonets.
But the orks did not feel pain as men did. Each attacker had to be crippled or killed to halt them and, even impaled, they still clawed at the troopers. Red’s company lost their firing routine, as their line crumbled into a brutal close combat they could not win. Red launched himself forwards, swinging ‘Old Contemptible’ high to bring it crashing down on ork heads. Carson flicked his pistols up to help him, but one of his troopers blocked his shot.
‘Get out of the way!’ he snarled, but the trooper was already moving, running down the slope towards the melee, drawing a heavy, curved blade as he went. It was Stanhope. He was not yelling; he was deathly silent, his energy entirely focused. He reached the combat just as Red fell back, face crumpled by an ork fist. The ork grabbed the sergeant by the arm to finish him off and Stanhope whirled the fell-cutter in his grip and brought it down.
The fearsome reputation of the fell-cutter, and the margoes who wielded them, was well-deserved. Though it looked like a sword, its use bore little relation to the swift, slender blades that Brimlock officers and cavalrymen carried, which were designed to thrust at their opponents; the fell-cutter’s sole purpose was to cut, and that it achieved with great effect.
Stanhope’s first blow chopped straight through the arm holding Red and carried on going, slicing the cap off the ork’s knee. Even as it fell back, the beast behind it grabbed straight for Stanhope who spun and drove the blade into its stomach, its curve sliding it up behind the ribs. Stanhope shoved it away, pulled the sword out and, bringing it round like a windmill’s sail, chopped the ork’s head in two.
Carson adjusted his aim and blew out the brains of the third ork about to swing a stone axe down upon the major’s back. Stanhope did not notice, he only kept on fighting.
The volleys of fire began haltingly again as the foremost orks reeled back for a moment. Stanhope fought through the beams, miraculously untouched by his own side, but Carson knew this moment’s brilliant madness could not last.
A few orks had stepped back, but that was nothing against the tide behind them pushing them further in, and the orks redoubled their charge.
The mega-bombard fired again and struck the southern tower and Tyrwhitt’s heavy weapon crews firing there.
‘Sir!’ Gardner called as he continued to fire. ‘Need more ammo!’
Carson heard the sound in the wind, the screech that would turn into a deathly roar as though now the planet was coming for them. Any retreat under these conditions would turn into a rout as the orks launched themselves upon them, but he had no other hope.
‘Message from Valkyrie flight, sir,’ the aide reported to Major Roussell. ‘They’re incoming, requesting targeting instructions.’
‘Targeting?’ Roussell declared. ‘There’s an ork horde outside our walls and they want us to tell them where they are? Tell them to look out their damn windows.’
‘They’re coming in rather fast, sir. If they have to fly-past first to recce then it will delay–’
‘Yes, yes, very well.’ Roussell gritted his teeth in annoyance, yet he could not allow any evidence that he had been negligent in his duties. ‘Give them the coordinates of the breach. The orks will have taken it by now, they’ll be massed there. They can fire free.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Crouching low in the dark undergrowth, Blanks watched the mega-bombard being reloaded. Its crew
of dozens of gretchin swarmed across its surface, trying to hoist a new shot into its wide gaping mouth. One of them slipped and fell inside, leaving the others to burst into hoots of laughter, curtailed by one of the ork overseers cracking its whip. The defences around the mega-bombard were exactly as Forjaz had feared. Formidable. Aside from the overseers, nearly fifty ork warriors stood close at hand. These were not the thinner, smaller new-spawns they had fought before; these were fully matured. Even hunched over they were as tall as men, the muscles of their arms as thick as a man’s torso. At their head was an even larger ork carrying a stone hammer and adorned in armour made of bent metal rings. It was obviously enjoying the carnage the mega-bombard was inflicting.
‘That’s him, that’s the warboss,’ Forjaz muttered, lying beside Blanks. ‘I don’t know what your plan is, but if you think you’re going to pull some one-man-army bollocks and try to storm it with just the two of us, I’ll shoot you myself.’
‘Understood,’ Blanks replied. In truth, he did not know what his plan was. He hadn’t had a plan even when he volunteered, he hadn’t been thinking; it’d been instinct. The mega-bombard was the primary threat, it had to be destroyed. He could not destroy it from a distance, and so he had to get closer. It had all been obvious to him at the time, but now he was here he found himself reaching for knowledge in parts of his mind and finding them empty. But then he heard the sound of the wind, and that was when he stopped thinking and started letting his instincts rule his actions.
‘Give me the hand-vox,’ he told Forjaz.
‘Who’re you going to call?’ he asked, mockingly, as he handed it over.
But Blanks wasn’t going to call anyone. Instead, he tore open one of the panels and went to work.
Forjaz shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re never going to risk sending another lot out here.’
Blanks sealed the panel, then took off his helmet and secured the hand-vox into the lining inside. He stood up and hurled his helmet into the branches of the trees above the mega-bombard.
‘What the–’ Forjaz began. ‘Unless you’ve been stashing atomics that’s not going to do–’
Imperial Glory Page 15
