by Henry Zou
The momentum of the cavalry charge was faltering. Ironclad infantry were regrouping and fighting back. Fast-moving FPVs were converging on them, making their presence known with pintle-mounted heavy stubbers.
‘Tighten the formation!’ Roth screamed, his voice stolen by the wash of rain storm.
A cone of flame rippled across his front, consuming several horsemen and the wreck of a KL5. Like a ghost, the sinister form of a Hellhound flame tank emerged from the rain curtain. Its turret was licking with tendrils of fire.
Roth turned his horse and spurred it into a gallop. He had to find a vox-operator before the Archenemy, clashing their war drums and howling for blood, managed to encircle and overwhelm them all.
He found a vox-caster, but the operator was no longer alive. His horse was nowhere to be seen, and his body was laid out on the soil, stiff and jawless. The vox system was submerged in mud several metres away.
Vaulting off the horse, Roth sunk to his knees and scrabbled for the handset. A line of tracer stitched the mud in front of him, kicking up plumes of grit. Roth forced himself to steady his pulse and hands before dialling in on all vox frequencies.
‘This is the Seventh and Twenty-second Magdalah Cavalry. Request immediate reinforcements in the Magdalah foothills, we are pinned by anchor fire. Over!’
‘Magdalah Cav, this is command HQ. Reinforcements denied. Magdalah hills is red zone, what in the Emperor’s name are you doing out there?’
Roth fired several plasma rounds from his pistol in the general direction of enemy muzzle flashes. He doubted he hit anything.
‘HQ Command, we are reclaiming the foothills. Request immediate assistance to consolidate captured ground.’
The voice on the other end, despite being fuzzed with static, was clearly incredulous. ‘Consolidate captured ground?’
‘Are you stupid? We’ve shaken the Ironclad loose. I am–’
Roth was cut off as a solid slug punctured the vox-caster. The next shot slammed into Roth’s chest just below his ribs, putting him straight onto his arse. The kinetic force was so great that he sunk slightly into the mud. Roth wheezed for constricted breath. Beneath the trauma plates, he could feel the small bones of his floating ribs popping and grinding.
A second shot hit him at the armoured strong-point below the sternum. A rounded segment of abdominal sheathing just above his breastbone collapsed inwards. At best, it would be a hairline fracture and severe bruising. But Roth feared the worst – deep internal haemorrhaging.
He tried to roll onto his knees but the hot brittle pain flickered his consciousness. Blacking out repeatedly, the next few moments became a stuttered series of events as Roth slipped in and out.
He saw Ironclad troopers march out of the enshrouding smoke – a long line, their silhouettes bladed and sharp.
He saw the corded pillars of equine limbs appear around him. The Canticans must be regrouping.
A shell ploughed into the cavalry. He didn’t know how close. But it was close enough for him to see at least one horse and rider thrown five metres into the air, limbs skewed in impossible angles.
There was a lot of shooting. Many of his men were dying.
When he finally came to, rainwater had collected in the gaps of his armour. The cold seepage on his bare skin brought him some clarity. Looking around, he saw some of the Seventh and 22nd still fighting, the riders standing high on their stirrups as they fired their lasguns. But most were casualties. The bodies of horses, upended, their legs in the air like in a slaughterhouse, littered the battlefield. Guardsmen hunkered down behind the bulk of fallen steeds, firing sporadic shots as they tended to wounded comrades.
There was no real cover. The Ironclad went to ground, firing from prone positions. Visibility was almost non-existent.
‘Can you hear me?’ a voice lanced through the wall of gunfire, and a heavy hand gripped the back of Roth’s shoulder rig.
Roth rolled his head back and saw Major Arvust. A gash had opened over the officer’s eyebrow and diluted blood leaked down his face. Roth managed a weak nod.
Arvust began to drag him back towards the defensive position. Cantican Guardsmen, probably less than company-strength, were huddled down behind the broad flanks of dead horses. They faced outwards in a ring taking single well-aimed shots to conserve ammunition.
Of the remaining Imperial force, they had one heavy weapon at their disposal. It was a wheeled rotary gun – a heavy stubber with multiple repeating chambers towed by Cantican cavalry. It was not much but it was all they had.
Connecting a wedge of coiled ammunition into the cartridge cylinder, Major Arvust set down behind its butterfly trigger, peering over the brass gun-shield.
‘How many spitters do we have for this thing?’ Arvust called to his troopers.
‘Six hundred jacketed lead and about four hundred boat-tails and tracers, sir,’ a young corporal replied in between shots.
‘Get rid of the tracers, I don’t want to give away position. How many do we have then?’
The corporal immediately began to slot out the interspersed tracer rounds from a wedge of ammunition with the tip of his bayonet. ‘No more than nine hundred rounds all up, sir.’
Major Arvust cranked the rotary handle. ‘Well then, we better make these count.’
Rocking back on its spoked wheels, the heavy weapon began hammering out a steady cham cham cham. Spent cartridges, steaming in the downpour, ejected from the side port. Roth counted them as they spun, arcing through the air.
Chapter Nineteen
The scarlet letter was the most basic of Inquisitorial methods. But throughout the centuries it was always one of the most effective. Gurion had used it to great effect throughout his career and it had never once failed him.
It was the most rudimentary method to reveal infiltration. False intelligence, or the bait, was deliberately slipped off to the enemy. In this case, Roth had specified Lord Marshal Khmer.
From then on, it was a mechanism of human manipulation. The enemy would pass the bait on to the infiltrator. The infiltrator would act on false intelligence, thereby revealing himself to possess knowledge that no one unaffiliated with the enemy should know. It was a simple trap and one of the core tenets of Inquisitorial method.
It was simple, but its complexity lay within the artistry of execution. A perfectly orchestrated scarlet letter was a trap of subtlety.
Gurion had delighted in the pantomime. He had even agonised many days over it. Something special and particularly intricate would be reserved for Khmer.
First, he had selected the corpse of a crewman from the morgue. The man had died of natural causes; as natural as could be when a hawser cable in the docking hangar had snapped loose, whipping eighty kilograms of tension cable into his chest.
Gurion had dressed the body in a grey storm coat and tactical vest, and even holstered a bolt pistol to the hip. Most crucially, he slipped an Inquisitorial rosette around the corpse’s neck and ordained him ‘Inquisitor Gable’.
The bait, in this case, was documentation placed in the pocket of Inquisitor Gable. It simply stated that the Conclave suspected an infiltrator in Roth’s Overwatch Task Group. Further, it stated that Delahunt’s encrypted rosette contained the identity of the infiltrator and that Roth was working to decrypt the rosette. Of course, it was conveyed in code, but it was a basic code that Gurion had purposely made sure Naval Intelligence could analyse.
The irony was that Gurion had no concept of what was contained within Delahunt’s log beside his contact with Celeminé. But Khmer was not to know that. The seed would already be planted.
The corpse of Inquisitor Gable was placed onto inbound cargo, left specifically for subordinate officers of High Command to discover. Gurion did not doubt that High Command would examine the corpse and secretly pilfer any intelligence before tasking the body to Gurion’s care.
It happe
ned exactly as Gurion predicted. The corpse was repatriated to the Conclave, minus the documentation on its person. It would be in the military bureaucracy’s hands now. To have attempted to directly feed the false intelligence to Khmer would have been far too obtuse. Instead he let events take their natural course. Without a doubt, Lord Marshal Khmer would be briefed on the corpse if he did not directly search the body himself.
As the finishing touch to his scarlet letter, Gurion wrote a post-mortem report on Inquisitor Gable. He reported that the inquisitor had been killed on Kholpesh by subversive elements. At the following Council of Conclusions, Gurion debriefed the war council with great solemnity. Inquisitor Gable had died in the service of the Conclave, and the officers, including Khmer, had participated in a minute’s silence.
The trap was laid. The rest, he knew, was up to Khmer.
A tank shell landed in the midst of the Imperial ground assault.
It was a splintered sabot projectile. The way it skimmed low across the terrain, screaming like an unleashed banshee, was unmistakeable.
The shell exploded on impact, its bursting charge expelling shrapnel in a streamlined forward direction. The effect on troops in the open was terrible, shredding uniform from flesh and flaying flesh from bones.
Most likely, Roth thought, it was fired from a Leman Russ. He had to move before the Archenemy gunners could realign and reload.
Roth rolled out from behind the cover of a fallen horse and began to crawl through the mud towards where the Seventh and 22nd were reforming. His ribs throbbed with a deep bone pain and his dented sternum plate dug into him, but he kept moving. The lancers and light horse were a disciplined lot, and they kept movement constant, firing and reforming before the Archenemy could draw an accurate bead. Disciplined fire and movement was the only thing that kept them alive.
That and the rain. Precipitation continued to shaft down in whickering grey pillars, hard enough that Roth could barely see twenty metres in any direction. If it abated, they were as good as done.
Major Arvust dived into the mud slick next to Roth. His kepi hat was gone and mud was on his cheeks. ‘Inquisitor! We have to withdraw! I can’t afford any more casualties,’ he shouted.
To reiterate his point a high-powered las-round, more than likely from a lascannon, scorched the ground ten paces away. The sudden pillar of energy left a vacuum in its wake that refilled with a thunderclap.
Roth was torn. To withdraw now would relinquish all the gains they had made in the foothills. Although they left a trail of burning vehicles in their path, the enemy would reclaim the high ground and they would be strategically in the same situation as before. It would turn their tactical victory into nothing more than a fleeting act of defiance.
‘Withdraw then, while we still can,’ Roth said. He would have liked to believe that his injuries played no part in his decision, but he was not so sure.
‘Listen for my signal. We’ll veer to our east and circumvent the Ironclad’s frontline trenches in the event they’ve regrouped to cut us off.’
‘Clear enough!’ Roth cried, rainwater and blood trickling into his mouth.
Major Arvust rose into a crouch and took two steps. A solid round punched through the back of his head. The exit wound sprayed Roth with a sudden, shocking burst of steaming blood.
Arvust froze. He looked at Roth, his eyes wide. The major’s mouth was moving, trying to work words but nothing came out. His brain was no longer connected to his spine. In a slow, syrupy motion, the major toppled backwards at an angle.
Then the Ironclad exploded out from the mist curtain.
They came, shrieking down on them, materialising out of the threshing rain like smoking ghosts. Water vapour curled off their scrappy, plated silhouettes. Their combat instruments were brandished. Maces, flails, warhammers and cleavers glistened with the sheen of wet metal.
For the first time, Roth found himself face to face with the raiders of Khorsabad Maw. He saw their masked, featureless faces and their crudely barbarous attire. He felt outraged that such savages could threaten the fabric of civilisation. Roth realised he hated them. It was not fear or adrenaline, but a bland baseline hatred. He hated them for the inconvenience it caused him. It was absurd that he was squaring up with the Archenemy, but was driven by a cavalier disregard for his own life. He didn’t care, he was just angry.
The Ironclad splashed through the mud. The first Canticans they met were still crouched, firing lasguns over the ribcages of fallen steeds. Their forceful, brutal instruments of war clove into yielding flesh and brittle bone. The impact of the Ironclad charge threw up vertical sheets of blood. Guardsmen toppled as heavy pieces of metal broke them apart.
Roth rose to his feet, his rage overriding his pain. ‘Up! Form up and at them!’ he bellowed. ‘Fix bayonets and at them!’
There was no real direction in attack any more. Roth could not distinguish forwards, nor rear or flank. The battle was a clashing mess. An Ironclad with bulky shoulder pads forged from tank-treads slid in front of Roth. Roth pressed his plasma pistol against the Ironclad’s hulking shoulder rig and blew it off. At point-blank range, the Ironclad fell aside, his upper torso incinerated. The superheated gases blistered Roth’s face with steaming backwash, but he was glanding on far too much adrenaline to notice.
Roth fired more shots. The fusion-boosted trails of energy ruptured three more Ironclad. Solid matter was rendered into gas, forming dense fountains of bloody steam. Roth drained his entire cell and reloaded.
Captain Pradal floated in Roth’s peripheral vision, his lasgun chopping away on semi-auto. Roth had thought he was dead too. The sight of him urged Roth to fight on.
‘Getting us all killed wasn’t part of the original plan, captain, I apologise,’ Roth yelled as he fired at targets no more than striking distance away.
‘We did what we came to do and we’re doing it well!’ Pradal shouted back. He nailed an Ironclad through the vision slit in his textbook shooting stance.
‘Nonetheless, I sometimes think I put myself in unnecessary danger,’ Roth yelled as he side-stepped a flanged mace.
‘You really think so?’ replied Captain Pradal. Roth couldn’t tell whether the captain was being sarcastic. A mace slashing across his field of vision warranted most of his attention.
One of the Guardsmen close by fell to his knees, his forehead stoved in by a ball-socketed hammer. Roth lunged with his power fist, splitting weapons and pounding aside the Ironclad who pressed in around him.
He was so lost in the frenzy of punching, bobbing, weaving and tearing that he didn’t see the sledgemaul that slammed into his lower back. Electric agony shot up his spine and his legs buckled. The pain was so real he could taste it in his mouth, harsh, bitter and sulphuric. He was hit again but this time he didn’t feel it. He only found himself laid out on his back, staring at the sky.
The world around him seemed to shut off. Scenes of fighting became stilted and fragmented. He remembered thinking that pain was a good thing. Pain meant his body was still working the way it was meant to. No pain at all was never good.
He saw the sledgemaul swing up like pendulum. Roth watched its trajectory. He waited for it to come down on his head. He wondered if he would feel anything.
But he never did.
The sledgemaul never came down. A round poleaxed its wielder away, in a direction that Roth couldn’t see.
Other shots followed the first. Clean, precise shots. Glowing white, las-rounds like rays from the Emperor’s halo. Several Ironclad close by were hit. They went down soundlessly.
Dimly, as if very, very far away, Roth could hear the sound of tin whistles. At first he thought it was the sound of pressurised blood escaping his ears but it was not the case. The sound of CantiCol command whistles was distinct. It was the most beautiful sound Roth had ever heard.
Captain Pradal’s face fell across his vision of the sky. ‘K
eep breathing, Roth, keep breathing. Can you move?’
Roth shook his head, not knowing if he could. Then he realised his foolishness and raised a leg. He could.
‘Are they here?’ Roth said as Captain Pradal shouldered his arm and guided him back to his feet. The captain fired several more shots from his lasgun, one-handed.
‘They’re here. They’re here in force,’ Pradal replied.
The rain was abating now. Across the mudflats, advancing across their flank, churning on segmented treads, came a full squadron of Leman Russes. The smooth-plated hulls were painted in the brown, grey and gold of the Cantican regiments. Their pintle mounts were spitting tracers with overlapping regularity.
Advancing between the rare Cantican tanks came six, eight, perhaps ten companies of Cantican infantry. Arrayed in close-order march ranks, they fired as they advanced, a withering lattice of enfilade fire that scythed down the enemy’s exposed flank. Drummers rolled out a strident percussion, officers conveyed orders on their tin whistles and regimental banners fluttered.
‘They answered the call then,’ Roth muttered.
Pradal didn’t answer. He fired several parting shots one-handed as the Ironclad broke away. The impetus of their counter-attack was gone, chased down by las and solid shot. The torrent of fire stitched up the Magdalah hills, following the Archenemy over the crest. Firepower like thousands of glowing darts following the fleeing enemy, tagging and dropping them face-down into the terrain.
Someone shouted ‘Magdalah is ours!’
The survivors of the Seventh and 22nd did not cheer. They simply collapsed into the mud, exhausted, their faces mute. Many closed their eyes and just went to sleep. They knew, for now, they were safe.
The Magdalah foothills had been the first real Imperial victory for many months.
Elements of the CantiCol field artillery and other infantry battalions reinforced the Seventh and 22nd on the Magdalah. Wading through the after-smoke of defeat, the Ironclad retreated, losing a two kilometre stretch of defences. The Imperial standard was raised on the hills.
