Colonel Maxim watched grimly as the field turned to hell. No tanks to be seen, tank busters on the road, and all hell broke loose way too soon. And on top of that, they might not get anything more for 30 minutes. A bloody long time in a battle.
He raised his magnocs to see the field. The smoke made it hard for both sides to see. He scanned around the field and off it, hoping maybe to get a glimpse of something that might help them.
Through the smoke he could see the brief backlight flares of explosions along the road - one of Norin’s squads was hanging back and braving the mortar fire to detonate some of the mines in the path of the mechanicus war-bots. Closer to him he could see the wounded and dead casualties of the barrage beginning to appear through the thinning smokescreen, stark against the rusty clay. Further away he could see long, stuttering lines of tracer fire roping back and forth from the high ground to either side. That meant his men had gotten closer to the objective - close enough to come under fire from the heavy bolter nests on the cliffs.
+ + + + + +
Blizzard Phantom Two were still hiding in their captured gun nest, afforded a prime view of the valley that was now shrouded in smoke and alive with mortar blasts.
“Patsie troops approaching second marker,” came a voice through the captured vox they had propped against the sandbags. “All heavy weapon teams fire at will! Light the bastards up!”
Bolter fire began to hammer down from the cliffs, above and behind them. It stitched through the cratered hellscape of the valley, spitting up rock and dust against the dissipating smoke. None of the Jotunhel infiltrators envied the poor bastards trying to advance down there.
“What’s taking them so long with those orbital picts?” one of them said, cursing under his breath as he glanced up at the sizzling blue sky. “It’s not as if there’s any fucking clouds!”
Back behind the ridge, it was as if the Nebulas had heard his stern rebuke.
“Blizzard, this is Striker Six.” Hassek’s own vox fuzzed. “Orbital track reports negative on enemy armour in your combat zone; however they can see vehicles being airlifted from the beach three kilometres to your east. Unless they’ve got tanks hiding under camo, looks like you folks are fighting a rearguard.”
+ + + + + +
And they went again, Sisilia trying to form any sort of barrier around them. The effort was making her pant, more than running around in the ill-fitting armor was. Focusing past the heat and the din of the bombardment, she saw the terrain around them swim and distort as a thin bubble of psychic force domed in around them, bending the incoming light. Trying to hold it steady as they advanced was a trial, and after half a minute she was already feeling a painful, thudding pressure around her eye sockets.
The mortar shell landing a scant ten metres away was like a thunderclap. An explosion clawed up the side of the bubble, and a cone of shrapnel whistled as it was redirected away from the squad.
“Good work little sis!” one of the Wolf Pack shouted back over his shoulder.
The sharp
snap of lasguns firing prompted the Tephainians to hit the ground again, this time behind a shoulder of crumbled clay where a fold in the ground had half fallen away. The respite gave Sisilia the opportunity to drop her barrier, the pain around her eyes receding slightly. She risked a peek over the lip of the cracked slope.
Ahead, the broken ground was crowned by the square, grey stripe of a prefab defence line. Every few metres was a firing slit spitting blue threads of las, and here and there a gun emplacement. Sisilia recognised the four barrels of a hydra quad-gun, slamming back two by two as they ripped the ground into ruin somewhere behind her squad.
Gunfire was lashing with fury from the fortified line - lasguns, autoguns, heavy stubbers. Whoever was in charge of this place clearly wasn’t concerned about running out of ammunition.
+ + + + + +
Two kilometres from the imperial line, sniper Nile rotated the focus ring on his autocannon scope, muttering curses about the smokescreen even though it had been dropped with saving his comrades’ lives in mind. The artillery and mortar fire threw up even more muck, and the blazing light-show as the aegis line opened up was just the icing on the cake. He found the blocky shapes of the ammo dump through the haze and tried to work outward from there.
“Wait.” Nile suddenly spoke aloud, half to himself and half to his spotter. “There you are, you bastard.”
Behind the safety of the aegis line, imperial guardsmen were running back and forth with belts and boxes from the ammo crates, their shoulders hunched against the noise alone being pelted out by their fellow defenders. Overseeing the operation was the woman Nile had seen previously, her black flak-coat fluttering around her ankles as she shouted orders at the runners. The officer whom Nile had seen her threatening earlier was taking a more subdued approach to command, kneeling by the wall of the abandoned school and speaking into a vox handset as he coordinated the defence.
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