“Target disabled! Reload AP, target tank 3 o’clock!”
Staff sergeant Drass pulled his face back just long enough to reach under his mask and swipe away the sweat running into his eyes, then glued them back to the heat-scope. With the hatches locked, and the filtered vents at minimal flow to guard against the smoky air and a possible chemical attack, the tank was a cramped, ceramite-armoured oven. Even at idle the engine rumbled like a caged beast, and Drass could only hear his crew by virtue of the vox-casters in his helmet.
It was worth the discomfort to command one of just nine Vanquisher tanks in all of hive Alda. Drass had been chosen by the soothsayers for the honour. The tarot card etched into his mask was the Three of Mandatio, three swords pointing up together at a common foe. It stood for co-operation - him and his tank crew, their supporting troops, the whole of hive Alda and Baraspine itself, working together to show the crusaders that their revolution would not be ground back beneath an Imperial heel.
Through the scope, Drass saw the two surviving tanks of the Imperial platoon lurch into reverse, two hot silhouettes glowing through the cold stone of the church. Two phosphor shells fireworked, and the green-hued auger image was half enveloped in blinding white. Drass was cursing quietly to himself when more hot-white began to sputter from the supposedly-destroyed lead tank.
“Emperor damn! Correction - original target, 12 o’clock!”
The stream looked like a cupula stubber; harmless to a tank, but Drass was not willing to take the chance that whoever had survived the first hit might also be manning the main gun. As the turret hydraulics whined, the driver below threw one track into reverse, slewing the tank round to bring the gun to bear faster.
“Identified!” the gunner reported sharply.
“Fire!”
+ + + + + +
"It's too late he's gone!" Dieter screamed, before forcing them onto the ground. "Midnight's going to cook off!"
The explosion came sooner than expected, as what could only be another Vanquisher shell burst through the church wall and rocked the wreckage of
Midnight. As the church groaned and collapsed, flame squirted from the Russ’ open cupula. Dark smoke billowed, mixing with brick dust and the choking clouds from the phosphor shells. The two orphaned tank crew pulled on their rebreathers and shielded their eyes as they stumbled back alongside the retreating
Moxie and
Matchlock.
+ + + + + +
Opportunistic fire snapped back and forth as the mixed Imperial force prepared for attack. Tanks and Chimera IFVs snarled as they moved into position, a sound that was surely carrying over to the defenders in the railhead. Commissar Schenke would never have let it show, but if he had been among the traitors now, he would have been terrified.
“What are ground-pounders doing with grav chutes?” Janie wondered aloud. They were hugging the reverse slope of a pile of brickwork that had used to be a house, along with two of the Haven infantry squads and a gaggle of frateris militia, but her question was directed at the men who were pulling bulky backpacks from the rear storage of one of their Chimeras.
“A question for later, maybe.” Schenke replied with a shrug. He glanced at a nearby militiaman who was steadily chewing his lip as he checked his lasgun’s bayonet. “Don’t worry brother.” he reassured, grinning at the man. “Hard fights like this are casting calls for heroes.”
The squeal of tracked vehicles on the move intensified, and then there was a roll of thunderclaps as the Cadian armour fired their covering smoke. Multilaser fire began to screech overhead from the Haven Chimeras, and was answered by a storm of small arms from the train station.
“That’s our cue!” Schenke called out to the men around him, and began to race the Haven veterans up the slope into the teeth of the Patriot fire. “Stay low!”
+ + + + + +
Haven 14th 2nd platoon, Cadian 2451st 2nd platoon
The kill-teams of Minch’s 2nd platoon wormed their way up through the surrounding buildings, occasionally running into small knots of die-hard Patriots who hadn’t fallen back to the railhead. Reaching the windows, they saw mortar rounds bursting along the concrete roof of the station. Apparently the frateris had brought some support weapons, although their accuracy and effect was sporadic. Spreading out, the kill-teams began to snipe opportunistically down into the defences, but were soon hampered by the same smoke that was covering their comrades’ advance.
The harassing fire did not go unnoticed by a second Baraspini Hydra, parked near one of the barricaded side entrances. Before long it had swung its turret round and begun to shoot through the gaps of ruined buildings. Its autocannons savaged the upper floor of one of 2nd platoon’s strongholds, blasting clouds of debris and deadly shards of rebar through the Haven squad encamped there.
“Triple-A!” lieutenant Ennius’ gunner called out aboard
Maximum Precision. 2nd platoon’s lead tank had already been battered once by autocannon fire from a different Hydra, but was still in the fight. He snatched at the focusing dial on his scope as he zeroed in on the burning ribbons of hellfire shells. “Ten o’clock, range six hundred - target obscured by rubble!”
+ + + + + +
Cam’s Lot militia, Haven 14th 1st platoon
The Cadian tanks clawed forward, wreathed in smog and striking out with high explosive shells that collapsed walls and blew apart barricades. Krak missiles whistled in reply, throwing up dirt and bursting with savage fury against the tanks’ heavy frontal armour.
Cloaked in smoke, Minch’s infantry lurched and stumbled past the advancing tanks. Alternate men went to their knees and braved the incoming las-storm to blaze suppressing fire over their comrades’ heads. The men who managed to crawl up to the defences first had it worst: rising from prone to hurl grenades or sprint the last twenty metres, they were swept out of existence by a crossfire of heavy stubbers spitting a deadly X across the front of the Patriot line.
“Get down!” Schenke roared at the militiamen around him as they pressed on through the smoke. “Steady! Wait for it!”
A fireball blossomed, backlighting a gruesome cartwheel of metal and body parts as
Mauler drew a bead on one of the enemy machine-gun nests. The other disintegrated in fizzing holes and puffs of vaporised blood as a Chimera’s multilaser joined the fray.
“Go, go!” the commissar shouted, pushing up onto his hands, “Storm them!”
The militia fanatics needed little encouragement, surging up with a roar. Behind the ragged barricades, masked Patriots rose up and opened fire or were snatched back by return shots. Schenke fired his shotgun from the hip, and felt a fierce kick against his wrist as the masked face ten metres in front of him shattered like an egg. He couldn’t fire again without hitting the dusty-robed frateris who surged over the barricade with murderous intent.
He glanced left and saw the rest of the Imperial infantry moving up, but not his adjutant.
“Janie?” he yelled through the hammering gunfire.
Janie Ephese had been forced to one side by the advancing tanks, and had ended up running alongside Jens’ squad and another gaggle of militia. Sprinting through shell blasts and grenade shrapnel, they vaulted over a barricade already choked with corpses.
Ahead of them was the open gallery of the station, with a dozen platforms facing. Trains were parked at several, and their carriages had been turned into rows of makeshift pillboxes. The thumping turret of a Hydra flak tank jutted above a central platform, its four guns pistoning in sequence as its shells roared past the attacking infantry and ripped furrows through the railhead forecourt. The only meaningful cover for the Imperials once they entered the platform area would be the shuttered shops and the graffitied rockrete columns that held up the roof.
Janie took a fearless step forward and opened her mouth to shout the crusaders forward, only to feel her leg go out from under her as something lunged up out of the corpses by her feet. She went down hard on her back, driving all the air from her lungs, and saw half of a blood-streaked face snarling down at her from behind a broken iron mask. A silver knife glinted as it came down, hard and cold and grinning.
There was only instinct, kicking into primal force in a moment that was as fast and lethal as the knife aimed at her throat. Janie snatched at the man’s wrist, needing both hands to defeat the strength of his. She arched her back and uncoiled the tail she had been hiding beneath her coat. She speared the ugly pink appendage up and drove its barbed tip through the wild, dilated eye pressing down above her. The man let out an awful scream, and she jabbed again, stabbing until she had rolled them both to bring her up from the blood-slick floor and her attacker was just another twitching corpse underneath her.
“Ah frell! Ah frell!” Janie heaved a breath, shaking with adrenaline. And then she spoke the curse again, this time with a sinking sense of dread. Schenke had disappeared in the crush, but the men she could see were looking straight at her.
Or rather, they were looking at her blood-streaked tail.
+ + + + + +
Lady Gwendolyn
The fire from the hull-down Hydra stitched towards
Manifesto as she powered up and over a mound of debris, ripping apart concrete and threatening to do the same to the tank’s soft underbelly.
Clinging to
Manifesto’s turret, Gwendolyn put out her hand and a heat-haze shimmer enveloped the tank. In the space of two heartbeats, eight or nine shells shattered in midair, hammering and bursting against the invisible barrier. The fire fell silent on the third heartbeat as the psyker reached out and scrambled the Hydra’s scopes with her machine curse.
Inside Manifesto, the section commander heard the turret hydraulics groaning as a film of ice began to spread across the inside of her vehicle. Next to her there was a cough, and she saw her gunner pawing at trails of blood that were suddenly leaking from his tear ducts.
+ + + + + +
“Driver stop.” Drass ordered, as the Patriot Vanquisher jolted into position athwart a side road, protected on one side by an artillery-ruined office block and on the other by the guns of the supporting infantry. They would not falter.
Noble is our cause; just is our reward. The Tephaini were historically no friends of Baraspine, but the words of their chancellor Souvage were a rallying cry worthy of Alda’s Divinatory Guard.
The crusaders would spread out, Drass knew; come at them from multiple directions while their heavy guns reduced the railhead walls to fire and rubble. They had to hold the right flank, and kill the supporting armour to give the dug-in infantry some hope of survival.
Suddenly he saw them, as the Vanquisher’s optics cut through the dispersing smoke. Two heavy tanks, rolling up through the intersection with hunched troops running behind.
Emperor’s blood, they’re right on top of us!
“Two tanks plus troops, twelve o’clock, range four hundred!” the gunner snapped, as if Drass hadn’t already seen them.
Mask pressed to the optics visor, Drass had less than a second to make the decision. The right tank was a standard Russ, tooled up with hull and turret bolters. The left was a less-lethal Exterminator, but with the unmistakable long barrel of a lascannon jutting from its hull, and two hunter-killers bulging from its turret.
“Gunner, left tank!”
The gunner locked in his target with a snap of gears. “Identified!”
“Fire!”
+ + + + + +
Cadian 2451st 3rd platoon, Cam’s Lot militia
Lasbeams and flying fragments cut back and forth through the air, pinging harmlessly from
Moxie’s hull but adding thick palls of dust to the hot-burning clouds from the smoke shells.
Feeling all the weight of his battlefield promotion, sergeant Wilhelm could hear the heavy, repeating
whoosh of the hull bolter firing to suppress the enemy infantry. The frateris militia were taking full advantage of the covering fire, screaming their way up the street with a knot of shield-bearing Crusaders in the lead.
Moxie’s main gun was holding for now, saving its AP penetrator for the greater threat of the enemy Vanquisher.
Matchlock’s hunter killers would add to the barrage as soon as one of them could get an auspex lock through the damned-
There was a metallic crunch, and
Matchlock’s cupula burst off on a trail of fire, ejecting what looked like the legless torso of the tank commander along with it. Several men near the tank were knocked flat by shrapnel and overpressure.
“Eleven o’clock!” Wilhelm’s gunner screamed. “Muzzle flash, eleven o’clock!”
+ + + + + +
Haven 14th, 3rd platoon kill team
Third platoon’s kill team had peeled off from the left-flank thrust, hooking wider round the crumbled office blocks and using them as a shield against the savage fire spitting from the train yard. The enemy Vanquisher announced its presence with a thunderous boom, causing the loose rubble all around them to shudder.
“Get up there!” the sergeant shouted, pointing up the side of the half-ruined high rise. “We’ll drop down on the bastard!”
Private Gauthier ran, impeded by his heavy grav-chute pack, muscles burning as he and his fireteam-partner gained the stairway and began to push up through the derelict building. Every window was smashed, and every room was strewn with debris.
“Ground floor clear!”
“Stairs, clear!”
They made it to the first floor. A lasgun cracked in short bursts, and a Patriot appeared at the landing above only to be cut down by the kill-team’s return fire. Gauthier and his wingman pivoted right, and barged through a door to see two flak-coated Baraspini manning a heavy stubber at a corner window.
“Surrender! Surrender!” he bawled at them. The two men fell over themselves as they spun round, hands going up as they babbled in Baraspine gothic.
The private heard a roar behind him, and a Two of Discordia stamped into an iron mask flashed in front of his eyes, a split-second before the Patriot barrelled out of a side room into his team-mate. Threads of las stippled the ceiling as his partner forced the Patriot’s gun barrel away, and then fists were flailing and both men were cursing as they rebounded from the wall and rolled across the ground, locked in a mutual grapple.
Gauthier’s heart thumped, and his feet felt leaden. For a moment he could only dart his eyes between the two frozen prisoners and his comrade shouting out for help. And then-
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