Darkness was starting to fall as we rumbled through the outskirts of Irongrad, crushing parked groundcars beneath our treads. Our way was lit by the glow of giant flames of industrial gases vented from the sides of the factorum towers. In the distance, something even brighter illuminated the underbelly of the clouds in the sky over the central hive.
Resistance was very light. Macharius’s plan had succeeded. Ahead of us was an entire factorum zone filled with the pyrite production facilities that we needed. In a matter of hours we had seized all of them and taken up defensive positions to prevent the troops of Irongrad from retaking them.
The lieutenant ordered me to put the Baneblade hull-down behind a factorum wall so that our guns would still be able to rake the approaches. I did as I was told and the great armoured beast came to rest. We sat there at our controls studying the empty streets and the mighty towers surrounding us and waited for the enemy to approach. It had been many hours since we had had any sleep. I munched on a stimm tab and protein bar combination washed down by a swig of brackish water from my canteen.
I glanced out through the periscope, studying the long shadows. I was not unduly troubled. I would be able to see anything that approached and mechanised infantry were starting to deploy on foot around us, taking up positions on top of the walls, setting up heavy bolters to rake the streets. One or two of them were already snatching some sleep where they lay. It was nice to know we had some veterans with us. The two-tailed airframe of a Valkyrie hovered above some huts while storm troopers swarmed down a fibre-rope ladder descending into the clouds of trash and dust raised by the aircraft’s drives. They deployed by squad; their heavy carapace armour made them look bulkier than a normal man, and their outsize lasguns did nothing to make them look less formidable.
A line of fire darted out from its nose-mounted cannon. I wondered whether the gunner was firing at hidden heretics or just practising on some of the local giant rats. Such things have been known to happen.
I glanced around the command cabin. The lieutenant was cat-napping while the Understudy watched the tactical grids. Our commander still had his headpiece in and I knew from long experience that any incoming signal would wake him. Looking at him with his head slumped on his chest I felt something like affection. Once again, he had brought us through the firestorm of battle. At the end of the day we were still alive and in the Imperial Guard that is all you can reasonably ask.
I offered up a prayer of thanks to the spirit of old Number Ten. The Indomitable, as much as the lieutenant, had brought us through the battle. No drives had failed at a critical moment, no guns had misfired. The armour had held. We still enjoyed the great beast’s blessing. At the time, foolishly, I can recall thinking that maybe Macharius’s presence on the Baneblade’s side had blessed us too. Perhaps some of his luck, or the Blessing of the Emperor or whatever it was he had enjoyed had rubbed off on us too.
I wondered how much longer it could last.
It seemed I had barely closed my eyes when the lieutenant was barking orders at me. I glanced at the chronometer. A couple of hours had passed since I last looked. Even the stimm tabs had not been able to keep me awake. I glanced into the periscope. It was still night out. The infernal flames of the factorum towers still illuminated the area.
I looked down the long street and saw a number of small vehicles moving closer. Our guns spoke, tearing a huge crater out of the plascrete of the roadway as they destroyed the first of the oncoming Leman Russ. The others swerved around it and kept coming, fire blazing from their main turrets, belly mounted lascannon and side-sponson bolters. They were on killing ground. Our battle cannon swiftly reduced them to burned-out shells. Bailing out of their metal carapaces, their crews had no chance of survival in the wave of fire that descended on them.
While this was going on, heretic infantry had taken up position in the nearby buildings. They had set up their heavy weapons on balconies and along the external piping of the buildings where it was broad enough for scores of men to stand.
Among the troops, giving orders as if they were officers, were a number of robed and cowled figures. The thing that made them so visible was that someone seemed to have set fire to them. Around their heads flames rose, so bright and intense that they should have spread and burned but they did not. Instead they merely outlined their bearers like halos seen in religious pictures.
‘Sir, have you seen this, the burning men?’ I said, just in case the lieutenant had not noticed.
‘They are priests of the Angel of Fire cult, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. There was an undercurrent of disquiet in his voice and I wondered if he, like me, was thinking about the cages we had seen with all those burned bodies within them.
‘Is it some sort of heretical trick, with the burning?’ the New Boy asked. It was a reasonable guess. Many times in my career fighting heretics I had seen very strange things that turned out to be products of some ancient dark technology.
Before the lieutenant could reply one of the priests raised his hands. The aura of flame spread from his head to surround his entire body. It blazed up around his hands as if he was carrying a flamer. He made a gesture at the walls and waves of flame surrounded a squad of our troops, setting their uniforms alight and then consuming their flesh.
It was not the burning that was so horrific. I had seen many men burn to death before. It was the suggestion of something otherworldly about it, as if it were not just their bodies that were being consumed but their souls too. Some of our lads were shooting back, but their las-bolts simply disappeared when they hit the priest. The flaming shield surrounding him grew brighter as if it fed on their energy.
I think the horror of it left us paralysed for a moment. I was very glad I was within the ancient, warded hull of the Indomitable at that moment. The prospect of being outside and facing those burning zealots held no appeal whatsoever.
The priest spread his arms wider and his aura blazed ever brighter, twin columns of flame erupting from his back until it seemed as if he had wings of fire, as if he was becoming the living embodiment of the supernatural being he worshipped. He was a living flame, vibrant with a terrible power. The blaze of energy around him should have consumed those with him but it did not. It left the heretics untouched even as the fires he had invoked consumed our soldiers.
‘Enough,’ said the lieutenant savagely. ‘Antoniev, Saranin. Kill the bastard.’
Anton and Ivan did not need to be told twice. Our main guns sent an enormous shell into the heretic position. It was overkill. Whatever protected the zealot from small arms fire, it was not enough to stop an explosion that could shatter a main battle tank. The whole vast web of piping the heretics perched on exploded, sending blazing, smashed bodies tumbling through the air to land on the ground below.
‘Keep firing till you have cleared the streets,’ said the lieutenant.
They did.
Five
On the second day, curtains of heavy artillery fire descended upon us, smashing into our position, killing anyone who was not dug in deep. The soldiers brewing chai in the shadow of our tracks were reduced to a bloody smear on the stone. The outskirts of the factorum went from being an ordered, organised grid of plascrete walls to a smashed, desolate landscape as bleak and jumbled as the surface of some meteor-bombarded moon.
The Baneblade rocked on its treads as high-explosive shells rained down upon us. The noise was deafening and the sheer sound of the chaotic blasts would have driven you crazy. It was like being at the centre of an inferno of noise. A legion of devils beat on the armour with a thousand mighty hammers. Monsters roared outside the safe zone that the hull of the Indomitable represented.
A wall tipped on us, burying us beneath tons of shattered plascrete. It felt as if we were being trodden on by a giant. I put the drives into full reverse and the Baneblade shook off broken stone like a dog shakes off water as it emerges from a stream.
One by one, the towers surrounding us crumbled.
The first time it
seemed impossible. One moment, there was a huge starscraper standing there. The next moment the earth shook and a cloud of dust erupted skywards. The whole huge structure slid into the ground – that’s the only way I can describe it. One moment the building was there and the next it had retracted into the plascrete leaving only a column of dust and a pile of rubble the size of a small hill.
The heretics were destroying the buildings with demolition charges, clearing the ground for a massive counter-attack on the factorum zone. They had infiltrated them with combat engineers from the hive below. It showed how desperate and fanatical some of them were that they would consider doing such a thing. Those towers had been the homes of tens of thousands of people and had contained shops and schola and medicae and all the other things that people need to live. All were flattened at the whim of some commander somewhere who had decided that they represented an obstacle to his great plan being accomplished.
Where before we had looked out upon rows and rows of skyscraper towers, now we gazed upon great dunes of rubble across which we knew our enemies would soon attack.
The lieutenant had one hand on his earbead and glanced down at his tac-grid. I was looking into the periscope. Over the huge mounds of rubble created by the collapsing towers an enemy army approached. In the lead were Shadowswords, the greatest tank killers on the battlefield of the newborn 41st millennium, an enemy vehicle that filled me with dread. Around the Shadowswords were hundreds of Leman Russes and thousands of Chimeras, and around them were hordes and hordes of infantry. They were packed very closely. It was like watching a bloody-red tide come in. Their crimson uniforms made the oncoming heretics seem like a lake of blood puddling out from the corpse of a giant.
‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant!’ I said. ‘We’re under attack.’
He looked up from the tac-grid and spoke rapidly to whoever was on the other end of the comm-channel. After a few seconds he began to give orders to the gunners and he told me to hold myself ready.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a larger force coming at me. I certainly had not up till that day. I had put the Baneblade hull-down behind what was left of the factorum wall. There was only a small stretch still intact. The rest had been reduced to rubble by the constant bombardments. It was not much but it was much more than many of our comrades had. Most of the other tanks stood alone in the rubble around the factorum, providing such cover as there was for many of our infantry. The smarter soldiers had already taken up position among the collapsed walls and buildings.
‘Steady! Steady!’ the lieutenant said. His voice was unnaturally calm. I could tell he was thinking exactly what I was; that there was no way that we were going to survive this. We were outnumbered and outgunned by those oncoming Shadowswords and all their support. The enemy general who had planned this attack had known what he was doing. This was probably the weakest part of our defensive perimeter, the softest spot in our defensive line. He had aimed a hammer blow at the most vulnerable point. It was unfortunate for us that we just happened to be there.
The Shadowswords opened fire. One of the tanks next to us was hit by storm of super-heavy las-fire. Its turrets were crippled immediately. A beam penetrated the side armour. I don’t know what happened next. Possibly there was an internal fire or one of the drive cores overloaded. There was an enormous explosion and the main turret lifted right out of its mounting before tumbling to one side.
I have never seen a Baneblade quite so comprehensively destroyed. The fusillade of fire was overpowering even for one of these ancient monstrous tanks. All I could do was offer up thanks to the Emperor that we were partially concealed by the tumbled-down wall. I knew that we were next in line. Our own guns opened fire. The shells fell among the enemy. The destruction was enormous in that closely packed formation. Unfortunately, it did not touch the Shadowswords but no Leman Russ could withstand the impact of our main batteries, not when they were fired by gunners as accurate as Ivan and Anton and the others.
The poor infantrymen surrounding the tanks had no chance whatsoever – they were simply reduced to bloody jam smeared on the plascrete.
The enemy did not stop coming. The Shadowswords kept firing.
I kept my hands on the control sticks. I offered up prayers to the spirit of our great tank. I felt useless and helpless. There was nothing I could do. Instinct urged me to unlimber my combat shotgun, for I felt certain that if I survived the next few minutes, I was going to have some use for it.
The New Boy groaned. The Understudy was probably wetting himself. I kept my eyes focused on the enemy, willing them to die. If terror and hatred could form a lethal beam, I would have killed a few hundred just with my gaze. The enemy were not impressed by my attempt to use psychic powers. The lesser tanks were firing now and even a few of the infantry. Las-bolts flickered in our direction.
Some of our own soldiers had started to respond in kind. I could see one of their commissars rushing around, dust covering his normally immaculate uniform, bellowing orders and gesticulating frantically as he sought to get them to hold their fire. An explosion bloomed on the spot where he stood and he went to greet the Emperor in the company of the men he had been trying to lead.
It let me know in no uncertain terms that the Emperor was not with us that day.
Six
The enemy horde raced on, the tanks leaving the infantry behind now except where the footsloggers had scrambled up onto the hulls of the armoured vehicles. They had about them that certainty of victory that keeps men coming even in the face of near inevitable destruction.
Every one of those soldiers over there was convinced that somehow death would pass him by. It might tap the shoulder of his comrades but it would leave him alone. That and rotgut alcohol are the only two things I know that can be relied on to keep men walking forwards in the face of the sort of fire we laid down – those and maybe a stern-faced commissar standing behind them with a bolt pistol and a chainsword in his hand.
I could tell from the panicked chatter over the comm-net that our own forces did not possess such conviction. All of us knew that we were doomed. There simply was no place to run in the face of that oncoming wave of killer tanks and bloodthirsty soldiers. Our gunners fired like madmen, blowing huge holes in the enemy line. There was no way they could miss. There were just too many targets.
Tens of thousands of las-bolts hailed down on our position. Of course, they could do nothing to the Indomitable but it was like trying to peer into an incoming blizzard through the visor of a helmet. The Indomitable shuddered under near impact from incoming shells.
Another of our tanks brewed up. More men I had fought alongside for a decade died in the burning inferno it became. I waited and I waited. I offered up more prayers. I hoped that the lieutenant would say something, anything. I hoped that he had a plan as he so often had in the past. All I can remember is that calm voice saying, ‘Steady lads. Steady!’ The smell of stale sweat and fear filled the cabin. My hands felt clammy on the sticks.
The Shadowswords started to target us with everything they had. At first the beams ploughed through the rubble around us, adding to the chaos of broken brick and plascrete.
Every time they missed I breathed a little easier, but I could tell that the shots were coming closer. They were starting to bracket us, and then it was only a matter of time before they got the range. Their gunners were not as good as ours but they would get there in the end.
I took a deep breath and fought down the urge to throw the Baneblade into reverse and try and get us out of there. Doing so would just get me a bullet in the back of the head.
Anton and Ivan kept firing. They hit one of the Shadowswords and immobilised it. A moment later something else hit it and sent its crew to hell. I heard cheering over the internal comm-net. It was a small victory but our gun crews felt the need to celebrate it.
The next moment the Indomitable shook. We had been hit although I had no idea how badly. I heard the lieutenant bark some questions. He wanted reports from every part of the
tank. Most of them came in but there was nothing from the drive rooms.
That was bad. If we lost all of our drives we would have no power. We would be unable to move. In the worst-case scenario, the servomotors on the guns would stop working and crews would need to crank everything by hand.
In quick succession we were hit three more times. It was as if we were inside an anvil and a giant was pounding on us. It was only afterwards, when I had time to think, that I realised that was the case. The shots were so close together and so powerful and the effect was so devastating that I did not have time while it was happening. One of the shots must have hit the tracks because afterwards I saw that they were torn to shreds. I know another hit one of our turrets and killed its entire crew. I was much more concerned by the effects of the third shot. I felt those personally.
The entire command chamber erupted in a blaze of light. The air was filled with the smell of ozone and melting fuse wire. My display went mad for a moment and then dead.
Instinctively I tugged at the sticks but nothing happened so I looked over at the lieutenant, hoping for instructions. It was then that I saw the great gaping hole in the internal bulkhead where something had torn through it.
I saw also that the lieutenant was not going to be giving me any orders ever again. Whatever had smashed through durasteel had not been slowed down in the slightest by his mere flesh.
All that was left of the lieutenant was a torn corpse, a mess of entrails strewn across his commander’s chair. His head lay where it had rolled on the far side of the cabin. Some quirk of fate had spared the Understudy. He stood there, horror-stricken, blood splattered on his beautiful uniform and on his face. His eyes were wide. His mouth was open. He seemed to be screaming and groaning at the same time.
I don’t suppose he had expected to take over command of the Baneblade under quite these circumstances.