With a pop, heat-exchanger conduits in the side of the turret, weakened by the shell impact, burst. Scalding water spurted out, hitting LeTaw in the face before cascading down to broil his loader.
LeTaw tried to scream. The loader’s shrieks echoed around the tank interior.
The shell had severed electrical cables in the footwell of the turret. The swirling water met the fizzling ends. LeTaw and his loader were electrocuted even as they writhed and screamed and blistered.
Targeting a stationary AT70, the Steel Storm exchanged shot after shot with it. Lieutenant Hellier, commanding the Steel Storm, realised his inertial dampers were damaged and that his auspex must consequently be out.
He shut the electronic systems down and began to aim through the reticule of the up-scope. He called out lay numbers to his aimer and was about to make a confident kill when the tank exploded, flipped over and broke apart.
The Steel Storm had hit the edge of the so-far undetected mine-field east of Bhavnager. The Wrath of Pardua crossed into the field immediately behind it, losing track pins and part of its side plating to an exploding mine.
Gunning its drive into full reverse, it was able to limp backwards a few metres while Sims called an urgent dead stop.
The three remaining Conquerors slewed up behind him.
Bouncing up to their rear, the Salamander formations drew out in a line abreast, the infantry herding in around them. Shells from the three AT70s on the far side of the mine-field splashed all around them, chewing up the muddy irrigation system of the farmland which had already been scored with deep furrows by the hurtling armour.
“Sweepers! Sweepers forward!” Rawne ordered into his vox. Two specialist squads of three, one led by “Shoggy” Domor, the other by a Verghastite trooper named Burone, immediately went ahead under fire.
“Infantry units! Support!” Rawne yelled.
The Ghosts began firing at the edge of the town with lasrifles, and with the heavier infantry support weapons they had brought up: four heavy stubbers and three missile launchers, plus the heavy bolters and the autocannons hull-mounted on the Salamanders.
The sweeper squads were miserably exposed, working their delicate magic as tank rounds and small arms fire whooshed around them. They had the expertise to clear a corridor through the field… if they lived long enough.
The second front advance was now dangerously delayed.
More AT70s appeared in support of the existing trio, as well as a quartet of heavy Usurper self-propelleds. Sims wondered just how much bloody armour the enemy had to draw on at Bhavnager.
Deadlocked by the mines, the four Conquerors began free-firing at the enemy position with main guns and coaxial mounts. In the space of a few seconds, the Lion of Pardua comprehensively destroyed a self-propelled gun thoroughly enough to ignite its munition pile, and the Lucky Bastard knocked out an AT70. The detonation of the self-propelled gun was severe enough to spray shrapnel out over the minefield and trigger a few of the buried munitions off.
The Say Your Prayers and Sirus’ Wrath of Pardua slung over some tank rounds that blew out the north retaining wall of the temple. The Wrath’s driver and a Pardus tech-priest from the Salamanders took the opportunity to rig running repairs on the Conqueror’s damaged track section.
In a shell-dug foxhole near to Rawne’s Salamander, Criid, Caffran and Mkillian prepped one of the foot support missile launchers, known as “tread-fethers” in the regimental slang. It was a shoulder tube of khaki-painted metal with a fore-scope, a trigger brace and fluted venturi at the back end to vent the recoil exhaust.
Heavy support weapons like this weren’t commonly deployed by the stealth-specialist Ghosts; in fact Bragg was often the only trooper carrying one. But they were in the middle of a tank fight now. Caffran shouldered the tube and aimed via the crude wire crosshairs at the AT70 that had duelled with the late, lamented Steel Storm. Like many Ghosts, Caffran had become familiar with tread-fethers during the street-to-street war at Vervunhive, where he’d used one to knock out five Zoican siege tanks.
In fact he’d been fielding one in the burning habs when Criid had turned up to save his life from Zoican storm troops. They’d been together ever since.
Over the roar of the fighting, he heard her say “For Verghast” as she kissed the armed rocket-grenade Mkillian handed to her. She slammed it into the launcher pipe.
“Loaded!” she yelled.
Caffran had his target. “Ease!” he ordered.
Everyone nearby echoed the word, so that their mouths would be open when the tube fired. Anyone with closed mouths risked burst eardrums from the sudden firing pressure.
With a hollow, whistling cough, the tread-fether shot the rocket grenade at the enemy, leaving a slowly dissolving con-trail of smoke behind it. The hit was clean, but the rocket exploded impotently off the heavy front armour of the Reaver. As if goaded, the AT70 came around. “Load me!”
“Loaded!” Criid yelled. “Ease!”
Now that was better. The AT70 shuddered and began to burn. Its cannon muzzle drooped, as if the tank itself was feigning death.
“Load me! Just to be sure!”
“Loaded!”
“Ease!”
The burning AT70 now shivered and exploded in a blizzard of machine parts, armour plating, track segments and fire.
A cheer rippled down the infantry lines. Then, above the ceaseless waning, the sound of another, louder cheer.
Rawne leapt out of his Salamander to investigate, running hunched as tracer fire crackled over his position.
Larkin had scored magnificently with his first shot of the engagement.
“I saw it for definite,” Trooper Cuu told Rawne excitedly, tapping his lasgun’s scope. “Larks got the officer, dead as dead.”
At a distance of over three hundred metres, Larkin had put a hot-shot las round through the sighting grille of the pulpit armour on one of the Usurpers and killed the artillery officer in charge. It was one hell of a shot.
“You go, Larks!” Trooper Neskon yelled. One of the unit’s flamer troopers, Neskon was reduced to firing his laspistol, his flame-gun pretty much redundant in these mid — to long-range conditions.
“Could you do better closer?” Rawne asked Larkin.
“I’d feel better further away, major… like on another planet, maybe,” Larkin said sourly.
“I’m sure, but…”
“Yes, of course, sir!” Larkin said.
“Follow Domor’s team out into the field. Feygor? Form up a five-man intruder team around Larkin. Get another sniper in there if you can. Move out down the swept corridor and give the sweeper boys cover. Use the reduced range to do some real damage. I want officers and commanders picked out and killed.”
“Don’t we all, major,” replied Feygor as he leapt up to obey. The voice of Rawne’s adjutant had always been deep and gravelly, but ever since the final fight for Veyveyr Gate, he’d spoken through a voicebox deformed and twisted with las-burn scar tissue. He was permanently monotone and deadpan.
Feygor scrambled around and selected Cuu, Banda and the Verghast sniper Twenish to accompany himself and Larkin.
Under the storm of fire, the quintet moved out into the killing field. Domor’s party, working alongside Burone’s, had cleared a ten metre wide channel that ran thirty metres into the field, its edges carefully denoted by staked tapes laid by Trooper Memmo. One of Burone’s squad was already dead and Mkor in Domor’s had taken shrapnel in his left thigh and shoulder.
Domor’s team was slightly ahead of Burone’s, and this competition was a matter of pride between Tanith and Verghastite minesweepers. Domor, of course, had the advantage of his heat-reading augmetic eyes to back up the sweeper brooms.
Feygor’s intruder team joined them, Larkin and Twenish immediately digging in and sighting up as Cuu and Banda gave them cover fire. The vulnerable sweepers were glad of the additional support.
“Couldn’t have brought a fat stub or a tread-fether with you, I suppose?” Do
mor asked.
“Just keep sweeping, Shoggy,” Feygor growled.
Twenish was a damn good shot, Larkin noted. He was one of the very few Verghastite newcomers to have specialised in sniper school before the Act of Consolation. A long-limbed, humourless fellow, Twenish was ex-Vervun Primary, a career soldier. His long-las was newer than Larkin’s nalwood-furnished beauty; a supremely functional weapon with grotesquely enlarged night-scope array, a bipod stand and a ceramite stock individually tailored to fit its user.
The two snipers, products of entirely diverging regimental schools and training, began firing at the enemy armour. From three shots, Larkin dropped a Usurper gunlayer, an infantry leader, and the commander of an AT70 who had made the mistake of spotting from his turret hatch.
Twenish fired in quick double-shots. If the first didn’t kill, it at least found range and drew his aim to his target for the second. From three of these paired shots, he made two excellent kills, including an Infardi priest rousing his men to combat. But to Larkin, it seemed like wasted effort. He knew about the double-shot method, and also was aware that many guard regiments taught the approach as standard. In his opinion, it gave the enemy too much warning, no matter how quickly you adjusted for the second squeeze.
As he lined up again, Larkin began to find the crack-pause-crack of Twenish’s routine off-putting. Twenish was obsessive in his care, laying out a sheet of vizzy-cloth beside his firing position that he used to polish clean the scope lenses between each double-shot. Like a fething machine… crack-pause-crack…. polish-polish… crack-pause-crack. Enough with the precious rituals! Larkin felt like yelling, though he had more than enough of his own.
Larkin snuggled in again and with one shot killed the driver of a halftrack that was moving into the opposition line.
Banda, Cuu and Feygor knelt in the folds of soil, blazing suppressing fire freely at the enemy.
Banda was an excellent shot, and like many of her kind — female Verghastite conscripts, that was — she had wanted to specialise in marksmanship on joining the Ghosts. As it was, there was a strict limit on numbers for that specialisation and she’d been denied, although, to Banda’s delight, her friend Nessa had made it. Most of the marksman places went to Vervun Primary snipers like Twenish who were carrying their specialisation over into the Ghosts with them. But Banda could shoot damn well, even with a standard, bulk-stamped las-rifle… a fact she’d proved to the gak-ass Major Rawne in the Universitariat clearance.
A swathe of autogun fire rippled across the position of the sweepers and the intruder team and every one threw themselves down. The remaining member of Burone’s team was shredded, and Burone himself was hit in the hip. As they all got up again, Banda was first to realise that Twenish was dead; hammered into the soil in his prone position by the stitching fire that had raked over them.
Without hesitating, she leapt forward and prised the Verghastite long-las from Twenish’s stiff grip.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Larkin called to her.
“Yes, gak you very much, Mr Tanith sniper.”
She took aim. The stock, molded for Twenish’s longer reach, was awkward for her, but she persisted. This was a long-las, gak it!
No double-shots for her. An Infardi artillery officer running from one Usurper to the other crossed her sighting reticule and she blew his head off.
“Nice,” approved Larkin.
Banda smiled. And took an Infardi gunman off the balustrade of the temple at four hundred metres.
“Beat ’cha at yer own game, Larks,” Cuu simpered at Larkin. “Sure as sure.”
“Feth off,” said Larkin. He knew how brilliantly — if psychotically — Cuu could shoot. If Cuu wanted a piece of it, let him get his belly dirty and use the damn long-las. At least Banda was eager. And damn good. He’d always suspected that about her. Since the day he’d first met her at street junction 281/kl in the suburbs of Vervunhive. The cheeky fething bitch.
As Domor’s squad continued forward with their unenviably deadly task, and a fresh sweeper team ran forward to replace Burone’s unit, the two Ghost snipers plied their precise and murderous trade across the enemy positions.
“Three, one. We’re deadlocked!” Rawne told Gaunt via his Salamander’s powerful voxcaster set. “How long, three?”
“At this rate, an hour before we’re even at the temple, one!”
“Continue as you are and await orders.”
South of Bhavnager, the infantry forces were swarming into the town itself on the smoking heels of the Pardus main armour. Tanks were engaging the enemy at short range now, in the limiting spaces of the narrow market area streets.
Woll’s Old Strontium knocked out three N20 anti-tankers during this phase of close armour, and hit a Usurper before it could train its huge tank-killing weapon down to fire.
Kloepas’ Heart of Destruction was caught in a firelight with two Reavers, and the Conquerors Xenophobe and Tread Softly smashed down low corral walls and single-storey brick-built houses as they moved to support it.
The Executioner tank Strife, flanked by the Conquerors Beat the Retreat and P48J, crushed a squadron of halftracks and broke into the compound of the south-western produce barns. Kolea’s troop spearhead swiftly moved up to support them, enduring a series of fierce, close range fights through the echoing interiors of the barns. Mkoll’s scout force pushed through towards the town centre marketplace after an ambiguous but deadly confrontation in the yards of the warehouses, where bales of dried vines were stacked. A platoon under Corporal Meryn fought their way in after them, meeting a counter-assault massed by fifty Infardi gunmen.
The flame-troopers, typified by Brostin and Dremmond and the Verghastite Lubba, excelled themselves during this part of the fight, sweeping clean the hard-locked barns of any Infardi resistance.
Accompanied by Vox-officer Beltayn, Gaunt advanced through the promethium smoke and the fyceline discharge. He took the handset from Beltayn as it was offered.
“One to seven!”
“Seven, one!” Sergeant Baffel’s replied, his voice eerily distorted by electromagnetics.
“Three’s counter-punch is deadlocked. We need to secure the fuel depot stat. I want you to push ahead and cut us a way through. How do you feel about that?”
“Do our best, one.”
“One, seven. Acknowledged.”
Sergeant Baffels turned to his prong of the advance, as heavy shelling whipped over them.
“Orders just got interesting, people,” he said.
They groaned.
“What the gak are we expected to do now, Baffels?” asked Soric.
“Simple,” said Baffels. “Live or die. The fuel depot. Let’s look like we mean business.”
At waymark 00.60, standing amid the parked tankers, Chimeras, Trojans and troop trucks, they could hear the rumble of battle from away through the trees at Bhavnager.
Varl’s defence section stood about aimlessly, talking with the waiting Munitorium drivers, smoking, cleaning kit.
Varl paced up and down. He so fething wanted to get down there and into it. This was a good duty and all, but still…
“Sir?” Varl looked round. Trooper Unkin was approaching.
“Trooper?”
“He says he wants to advance.”
“Who does?”
“Him, sir.” Unkin pointed at the ragged old ayatani, Zweil. “I’ll deal,” Varl told his point man.
He wandered down to the old priest. “You have to stay here, father,” he said.
“I have to do no such thing,” Zweil replied. “In fact it’s my duty to get down there, on the path of the Ayolta Amad Infardiri.”
“The what father?”
“The Pilgrim’s Way. There are pilgrims in need of my ministry.”
“There’s no such—”
A distant, powerful explosion shook the air. “I’m going, Sergeant Varl. Right now. To do less would be desecration.”
Varl groaned as the elderly priest strode away fro
m him and began heading down the highway through the fruit groves towards Bhavnager. Gaunt would have Varl’s stripes if anything happened to the ayatani.
“Take over,” Varl told Unkin and began running after the retreating figure of the priest.
“Father! Father Zweil! Wait up!”
Caustic smoke was rolling down the length of the side street obscuring Kolea’s view. Somewhere down there, somewhere close to the point where the street met the main through road just off the market square, an enemy halftrack was sitting and chopping fire from its pintle-mount at anything that moved. Every now and then, it fired its anti-tank gun too.
The wretched smoke was pouring out of a threshing mill close by. Las-fire whimpered down the thoroughfare. The tightly packed buildings in the side street degraded vox-quality. It reminded Kolea rather too much of the fighting in the outhabs of Vervunhive.
Corporal Meryn’s platoon, fresh from their firefight in the barns, moved up behind Kolea’s bunch. Kolea signalled Meryn by hand to force a way through the buildings to the left and out onto the street running parallel to the one that currently stymied the advance. Meryn acknowledged.
Bonin, one of the scouts, had peeled to the right and found a walk-through breezeway that opened onto a small area of open wasteland behind the street buildings. Hearing this over the vox Kolea immediately sent Venar, Wheln, Fenix and Jajjo through to link up with Bonin. Fenix carried a “tread-fether” in addition to his lasrifle.
From cover, Kolea continued to scrutinize the billowing smoke for signs of the gakking N20. After a while, he began to fire off rounds into the section of smoke his instinct said concealed it. He was sure he could hear his shots impacting off hull metal. A heavy burst of stub fire raked back in response, chewing into the rubble and debris on the street. Almost immediately, it was followed by a whistling bang as the anti-tank weapon fired. The shell, travelling, it seemed to Kolea, at head height, impacted explosively in a burnt-out hut behind Kolea’s position. As it sped through the smoke, the projectile left behind a bizarre corkscrew wake pattern.