A Volpone force under Corday also managed to resume contact with its distant elements. Corday adroitly used his short-range micro-beads to relay the new channel setting from man to man through the field. Unfortunately, he had chosen a channel that was crippled by interference from the Shield harmonics.
At Veyveyr, matters were made worse by the fact that Modile had shut down the main channel to cut off the demands of his officers — men like the late Racine — who were now questioning Modile’s orders. Corbec received Bulwar’s “Anvil” code over the short-range and was able to coordinate his resistance with the NorthCol commander, but they found their forces conflicting with Vervun Primary troops following Modile’s increasingly knee-jerk commands.
Gaunt, who had been at Hass West when the storm began, immediately headed for Veyveyr with Daur and a platoon of Tanith. Their troop-truck convoy found the back end of the reinforcement columns jammed fast and they struggled to find a way around or through. Gaunt tried Raglon’s vox-set frantically to get House Command to rectify the growing logistical disaster, but he found the lines as jammed as the other commanders had before him.
He handed the speaker horn back to Raglon and looked down at the pale-faced Daur. The rumble and roar of the nightmarish Veyveyr battle backlit the buildings and habs ahead of them.
“How far to Veyveyr from here?” Gaunt snapped.
“Four, maybe five kilometres,” replied the Vervun Primary liaison.
Gaunt eyed the solid wall of troops and troop carriers choking the highway ahead and cursed quietly. Establishing proper and workable vox-protocols would be his priority once this day was done. The Vervun Primary were brave men and the noble houses were honourable institutions, but in war they were rank amateurs.
“Dismount!” Gaunt yelled back down his force and leaped out of the lead truck. Daur joined him, prepping the lasrifle he had drawn from stores after the First Storm. His arm still hurt and wasn’t mended, but it worked well enough for him to carry a weapon and he’d be damned if he was going to follow the commissar into action again and have to ask to borrow a gun. He gulped down a couple of painkiller tablets to soothe the ache.
The fifty Tanith Ghosts had assembled on the road beside the trucks.
Gaunt walked down the rank, speaking directly and briefly. “We’re advancing on foot. It’s five or so kilometres and we need to move fast, so ditch any extra weight — just carry weapons and ammunition, bayonets. Get rid of anything that’ll slow you down or wear you out by the time we get there. Daur will lead.”
He looked round at Daur. “Captain? Find a way.”
Daur nodded, confidently. Though a hiver born and bred, he knew the vast complexities of the southern manufactory district no better than the off-worlders. He pulled a chart-plate out of a thigh-pouch and deftly cycled through the map-patterns until he found the area they were in.
With a stylus, he worked out a possible route. He was determined not to fail the Ghosts — and, more particularly, Gaunt.
“Follow me,” he said and headed off the road at a trot, pushing through a flak-board fence and into the service yard of a machinesmithy.
Gaunt and the Ghosts hurried after him.
At Croe Gate, the Zoican push was hitting the adamantine gates so hard and so frequently that they were denting and starting to glow with heat. Nash brought what mechanised forces he had into place inside the gates, in case they fell.
Outside, a line of enemy tanks and armoured fighting vehicles perhaps five hundred strong, stretched out down the cuttings of the rail tracks and the rockcrete supports of the elevated express line. Some Zoican infantry strengths were visible too, but so far it was entirely a war of cannon, rocket, mortar and wall-gun against tank and artillery. If the Vervunhive forces could only keep them out and keep the mighty gates sealed tight, the battle might never descend to the level of infantry mayhem that was occurring at Veyveyr.
If two such infantry fronts opened — if Croe Gate broke — Nash knew it could signal the start of an inexorable defeat for Vervunhive. He prayed to the holy Emperor of Terra that the Zoicans had no more death machines left to unleash.
Veyveyr was truly a nightmare. The air across the vast yard was thick with las-fire and tracers, gouts from flamers, whooping rockets and dense palls of smoke. Despite the volatile highlights of his combat career, Corbec had seldom seen anything so fierce or intense. Ducking into cover and trying to clear a feed-jam in the autocannon with Genx crouched next to him, Corbec wondered if it was because the fight was so enclosed: the Curtain Wall on one side, the manufactories around, the Shield above. It was as if this hellish firefight was being conducted in a box that concentrated the fury and amplified the noise.
Bulwar signalled him again and Corbec had to strain to hear. The NorthCol Commander was driving forward in a wedge from the west, bringing his armour in as well as his ground troops and several units of Vervun Primary that he had been able to pry away from the useless Modile. He wanted Corbec to support with his Ghosts from the east.
Corbec acknowledged. He sent the word down, from man to man, trying to unify them into a co-ordinated effort. But the Zoicans were everywhere and Corbec knew at least three parts of his force were bottled in behind him and fighting for their lives.
He took a look eastwards at the dank slopes of the Spoil. Enemy shelling still whooshed down into it and he could see the sparks of las-fire exchanged up and down the ore-slag. The Spoilers were engaging hostiles coming up the Spoil. He hoped the Zoicans would continue their push up at the well-defended Spoilers. If they turned west, they would flow in on his meagre force from the rear and—
He shut off the thought.
“How much?” he shouted at Genx.
With his one good hand, Genx indicated they had about three thousand rounds left for the autocannon, in loops around his body or in the panniers of ammo-drums he had collected. About two minutes’ sustained fire, Corbec thought.
He voxed his men to present and move west. They rose, then immediately ducked back as a heavy rake of las-fire swept in from the northwest.
Corbec screamed a curse. The fething Vervun Primary, effectively leaderless and alone in the mid-yard, were firing at anything that moved and had flanked the Ghosts as well as if they’d planned it.
Corbec tried to raise Modile on the vox. All he got was Modile’s adjutant screaming obscenities down the link, demanding that the NorthCol and the Tanith regroup as per battle orders.
Modile’s dead. Gonna kill him myself, Corbec decided.
He rose and set the autocannon chugging a blurt of fire down the rubble line at Zoican movement.
A bolt-round slammed into the stone beside him and glanced off, hitting him in the thigh.
Corbec tumbled down with the impact and tried to claw the smouldering shell-case fragments out of his tunic pants. The cloth was punctured and there was blood. He found the round had been spent on impact with the stone and just the case had spun off into him, peppering his leg with dozens of metal scraps. He flexed the limb. It hurt and was bleeding freely, but he could use it.
Modile was definitely going to die.
There was no going west, not directly. He pulled his units after him and headed towards the gate under cover of the eastern trenches and barricades. They might be able to break west further down, beyond the range of the hopeless Vervun Primary.
Shells roared overhead and there were a great many more rockets banging in through the gate mouth now.
Corbec’s force had gone a hundred metres when they met a battlegroup of Zoican shock troops head on.
Milo reached the end of a shattered stretch of wall and tossed a grenade around the corner. As soon as the blast thumped out, vibrating his chest and spilling brick dust and plaster from the wall-section, he raced across the gap and took up station at the next las-chewed corner, kneeling, sweeping his lasgun around in the grenade smoke to cover Baffels, who crossed behind him.
A few enemy shots rang over their heads, higher than the wall, cra
cking the air.
Neskon and Rhys came up after, darting across the gap as Baffels and Milo fired cover.
“Where’s Dremmond?” shouted Neskon over the roar. He was plastered in blood, but it wasn’t his own.
“Ahead, I think!” yelled Milo. He tried his micro-bead link, but it just ground out static.
The platoon had been advancing down the ditchlines between the buildings towards the gate, in support of Colonel Corbec’s brave push and for a while Dremmond’s flamer had been clearing the way. But a trio of rockets had slammed into the ditch and broken the advance, and now the forward section of the platoon format, with Dremmond and Sergeant Fols in it, had advanced out of sight in the smoke.
Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed on down the side of the next bombed-out storeblock as Neskon covered the gap for the next group of Ghosts: Domor, Filain and Tokar, followed by the vox-officer, Wheln, and Troopers Caill and Venar. Neskon and Domor then advanced, leaving Filain and Tokar to cover the overlap for the three following.
At the front of the group, Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed forward again, grenading a break in the wall and sprinting across it to lay cover for the parties behind.
There was ferocious fighting from a hundred metres ahead. Milo’s micro-bead squawked and he heard flashes of Corbec’s commanding voice.
Domor and Neskon moved up to them and Domor probed the smoke cover ahead with the optic implants he had acquired after an injury on Menazoid Epsilon.
The focus rings hummed and whirred around the blank lenses. “I read heat — lots of it. A flamer, pouring it on.”
Milo nodded. He could smell prometheum.
“Dremmond,” Baffels suggested.
Encouraged that they might be closing on their forward element, the platoon rallied and pushed forward. Milo realised that they seemed to be following him, looking to him for leadership, with Sergeant Fols absent. It was mad — they all had more combat experience than him, and all were older.
It was as if the gloss of Gaunt was on him, as if he represented some kind of natural authority simply by association with the commissar.
The cover ahead broke into a series of low-dug ditches punctuated with shell-craters. Enemy fire was sheeting across it, making it impassable. Milo saw at least two dead Ghosts twisted and broken in the ditch-line.
“Round! We go round!” he urged and Baffels nodded. The men liked Baffels too, and he seemed to be readily adopting the role of second to Milo’s lead, like Corbec to Gaunt. Milo marvelled at the way structures simply evolved organically in combat, without question or spoken decision. With focus, fear and adrenaline that high, right on the tightrope of life and death, men made simple, natural decisions.
Or a well-trained, motivated unit like the Ghosts did at any rate. Milo was sure the Vervun Primary troops were collapsing simply because they lacked that resolve and that organic spontaneity.
He took his fellows left, towards the edge of the Spoil, through a series of drumlike scrap stores where greasy rail bogeys and axle blocks were stacked. Venar had an autocannon and several cans of ammo still strapped to his load-bearing harness, so Milo gave him point to clear the way. The rattle of short cannon bursts echoed through the stores as Venar picked the way ahead clean.
The stores opened out into a hectare or so of stockyard that was miraculously unscathed. Flatbed wagons and pipe-trucks sat in linked trains along six parallel sidings. There was a burned-out diesel locomotive at one buffer-end.
The platoon edged forward, through and around the dormant wagons, sometimes sliding under or between trucks, or clambering over hook assemblies thick with sooty oil.
Las-shots began to hammer into the wagons near Milo. They blew out sections on the wooden sideboarding, and Baffels and Milo were showered with splinters.
The men dropped into cover, spread out through the wagon yard. Curt assessments as to the angle and position of the shooters flicked back and forth through the micro-bead link. Venar fired a few bursts of cannon under the wagon he was sheltering behind, and Milo heard shots ping and ricochet off the ironwork of the bogeys.
The enemy fire increased.
Milo moved them forward. He saw Filain scoot out from between wagons and then duck back into cover as las-fire scooped up the gravel and stone around him. One shot severed a piece of track and the metal section broke with an almost musical chime.
Domor and Neskon also tried to move forward. They skirted back a few trucks and came out around a high-sided freight wagon. Las-shots spanged off the thin metal sides of the wagon. Neskon dropped, but Domor dragged him up and they fell into cover along the next truck line. Neskon wasn’t hit. He had simply stumbled.
Milo and Baffels, with Rhys and Tokar just behind them, were pinned. Milo tried to creep around the end of the nearest wagon, but more firing erupted and he hit the ground, winded.
“You’re hit!” he heard Baffels call.
“No, I’m fine—” Milo said.
“You’re fething hit!” Baffels repeated.
Milo reached around and felt a wet hole in the left shoulder of his tunic. It was sore, but there was no real pain. He had been hit. He hadn’t even felt it.
Milo got to his feet and then paused, lowering himself again and carefully looking out under the wagons. When he had dropped, he’d glimpsed something that his mind was only just identifying.
Three trains away, under the trucks, he could see feet. Armoured, heavy booted feet in distinctive ochre armour.
He waved the others down to look.
A dozen, maybe more.
Zoicans.
The punishing fire that had pinned them slowed. The Zoicans were evidently moving too, pushing in and around the trucks just as the Ghosts were, but from the other side.
Milo counted off the men and sent them wide, using the concealment of the trucks. Few in the Imperial Guard moved as stealthily as the Tanith.
There was a burst of cannon fire twenty metres south of Milo. Then two more, a few answering las-shots. Venar had engaged.
More firing, brief and fierce, came from the next lane of wagons. Over the link, he heard Wheln curse, then laugh.
Baffels crawled ahead of Milo, down the length of a flatbed wagon. The Ghosts were all grey with gravel dust now, and their hands and knees were thick with oil.
Milo heard a dull sound from the body of the truck.
He yelled a warning and swung upwards as the Zoican storm-trooper appeared over the lip of the wagonbed and fired down. Baffels had rolled instinctively in under the side of the truck and slammed against the wheels and the sleepers as the Zoican’s fire exploded the grit where he had been crawling.
Milo fired a burst upwards, punching three las-rounds through the aluminium siding of the wagon and the Zoican behind. The ochre-armoured figure convulsed and toppled clumsily out of the wagon. He landed next to the cowering Baffels, who automatically turned and shot the corpse through the head, point-blank.
Neskon, Rhys and Tokar were firing out between wagons, scoping for Zoicans just the other side of the track. Zoican las-fire and hard rounds came back between and under the wagons and forced Tokar to scramble on his arse back behind a slumped fuel drum. Neskon used the heavy bogey assembly of a wagon as cover and shuddered as persistent fire whipped under the cart-body and slammed into the huge iron wheels against his back.
Rhys rose, a las-round just missing his head, and lobbed a grenade over the wagon so that it fell neatly on the Zoican side of the rolling stock and vaporised them. A cracked Zoican helmet, split across the sneering, emotionless sculpture of the face, tumbled through the air and bounced near to his feet. He thought about taking it as a trophy until he realised there was the best part of a head left in it.
Milo heard Wheln cry out. The man was down. He could hear him moaning just a few paces away on the other side of the wagon.
“My leg… my leg…”
“Shut up!” Milo yelled, then dove over the hook-lock between wagons to roll clear on the other side of the track. Whel
n was sprawled in the open between siding tracks, his left leg below the knee a ruin of blood, bone and tattered cloth.
Milo ran low to him, grabbed him under the arms and began to drag him into cover. Shots stitched the gravel around them. Two Zoicans appeared on the top of the next wagon over and another two edged out from between trucks. A las-shot cracked past Milo’s nose, and then two more ripped through the loose folds of his camo-cape.
There was a bark of cannon fire, and the two Zoicans on the truck top came apart and fell. The others dropped back into cover. Milo got Wheln into the shelter of the back end of the wagon, pulling him in between the tracks. There was a group of Zoicans at the other end of the same truck, firing around it. Some fired under, but the shots were deflected by the axles. Milo looked frantically to each side for help. He saw Baffels in position behind a cart on the adjacent train, the one Milo had just scrambled from to reach Wheln. Baffels was too pinned with fire to make a shot.
Milo looked up, trying to ignore Wheln’s moaning, and studied the hook-damp that linked the wagon they were using as cover to the one behind them. It took him a few moments to figure out how to disengage it, his hands slipping on the greased iron.
When it was free, Milo hooked a grenade over a brake cable and pulled the pin. Then he yanked Wheln out from behind the truck and they fell down a slope the other side, Wheln shrieking with pain.
The grenade detonated and the force cannoned the freed truck, all eighteen tonnes of it, down the trackway, crushing the Zoicans sheltering at the far end between it and the next wagon on the rail. The entire length of rolling stock slammed and rattled into itself.
Rhys, Neskon and Baffels crossed over to cover Milo as the boy struggled to tie off Wheln’s ruined limb and stop him bleeding out.
Wheln wouldn’t stop screaming. Milo wanted to call for a medic, but he knew the vox-lines were useless and besides, Wheln had smashed the vox-caster when he fell. That was even supposing there was a medic anywhere near.