The third team, Haller’s, was covered in the blood of the first two. Haller was looking down at his battledress, astonished at the gore spattering him, amazed that none of it seemed to belong to him. Merrt had taken a scratch, but had rushed to Nessa’s aid. Vahgner, the scout, was virtually unmarked. His mouth was open as if he couldn’t find anything adequate to say. Vadim put down his sweeper broom to help Raglon, but immediately fell over. A flying shard had cut his Achilles tendon. Belloc, a usually cheerful new influx Vervunhiver, was ashen as he tried to unbuckle his flamer unit so he could assist.
‘Leave that on,’ Vadim hissed.
‘What?’ Belloc replied.
‘He’s right,’ said Daur. ‘Team three’s got to move in first. Haller? Haller!’
Haller jumped.
‘What? Yes,’ he said, blinking.
‘The door’s open,’ Daur said, glancing at Pasha. Despite her miserable wounds, she managed to nod. ‘We’ve got to move in before this prong of the assault collapses completely. We have to proceed. Haller?’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Haller, trying to regain his wits, incapacitated by shock. ‘But… but Vadim’s out. I’ve got no sweeper man.’
Daur breathed deeply to control his panic response. ‘I need a replacement sweeper here. A volunteer. Right now!’
Most of the Strike Gamma force had come forwards to help the injured. Those that couldn’t actually help were just looking on in dismay. They glanced at each other dumbly.
‘That’s an order,’ Hark yelled, moving in beside Daur. A flying filament had nicked his cheek, like a nasty shaving cut. ‘The Emperor expects! Captain Daur needs a sweeper. Come on!’
‘A good one,’ Daur added. He could see the problem already. Gamma and Beta had selected the six best sweepers under Raglon and Domor. There were other Ghosts who understood basic operation, but the most skilful operators in the lateral hold, and the best trained, were the ones lying dead or hurt on the deck in front of him.
‘I can do it,’ said Maggs, wincing.
‘Shut up and wait for the medics,’ Daur snapped.
‘I’ll do it,’ growled Hark. ‘I know how they work.’
Haller coughed. He wiped specks of someone else’s blood off his pale skin.
‘No, it has to be me,’ he said. ‘I was the first reserve on the training list.’
Daur nodded. Haller was right. When they’d been making the selections for the clearance teams, Haller would have been made a sweeper if he hadn’t worked so hard for a team command.
‘You’re right’ Daur said. ‘Take Noa’s kit. Check it works. I’ll lead you in.’
He turned to Hark.
‘You and Spetnin have acting command here, Hark. See if you can assemble a functioning second clearance, and send them in. Then bring the troops in if I signal.’
Hark nodded.
‘And for Throne’s sake get more medics.’
‘I will,’ said Hark.
‘Come on, Ghosts, move!’ Daur said.
He turned and walked towards the bore hole. Merrt followed, with Vahgner and Haller. Belloc buckled his flamer tank and went after them. Vadim’s auspex set had been damaged, so Haller had taken Raglon’s instead. Daur heard Haller quietly promising Raglon he’d look after his precious kit and bring it back, though Raglon was probably too far gone with pain and disorientation to hear him.
Daur reached the bore hole. He glanced up at the ragged tear around the rim, the silver split of metal that had just compromised Strike Gamma’s effectiveness, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.
He activated his lamp pack.
Holofurnace waded into the Sons of Sek. He had harnessed his boltgun and, with spear and shield, was laying waste to them. Body parts and fragments of severed weapons flew out from his spinning blade.
Shields up, Sar Af and Eadwine continued the advance into the withering enemy fire. Firing over their shields, they were trying to break the Sons holding the next hatchway section. Their boarding shields quaked and shook under the deluge of fire. Most of the surface decoration, markings and the purity seals had been seared off.
Eadwine reloaded. He issued quick vox commands that brought the gun servitors in at their flank.
‘Rush them?’ he suggested to the White Scar.
‘While the Snake is holding our left flank? Why not?’ Sar Af replied.
‘We need weight behind us,’ said Eadwine. ‘The damn Guard are slow. Adequate supporting fire would allow us to push ahead.’
‘They will get here in their own sweet time,’ replied Sar Af.
‘Their own sweet time is not good enough,’ said Eadwine.
Kolea was pinned behind a processor unit, enduring some of the worst crossfire he had ever known. It whined and streaked around him, slamming off the metal casing of the unit, puncturing and buckling it. Two Ghosts had already died trying to cross the open depot floor to join him. The Sons of Sek were intent on containing the invasion force in the outer compartments that the Caestus had penetrated. They were positioning to block them, shut them out, and then drive them back into the hard vacuum. Kolea had several company strengths behind him, but none was in any kind of position to advance and deliver firepower.
As for the Space Marines, they had plunged ahead regardless. Kolea was physically unable to render them any support. Indomitable as they were, the Space Marines would soon be cut off, surrounded and ultimately overwhelmed. They were the spearhead of the weapon, the tip of the sword. It didn’t matter how sharp it was, a sword still needed a strong arm behind it.
Kolea had no doubt the Space Marines would pile body on body before they finally fell.
But in the end, they would still die.
Electromagnetic distortion from the torrential gunfire, especially the hellguns and plasma weapons fielded by the Sons, was chopping all vox exchanges. Kolea could barely coordinate with the other squad and company leaders. He’d lost sight of Rerval during a particularly fierce barrage, and he hadn’t got a reply from Eadwine or the other Space Marines for twenty minutes.
The focus of the enemy fire shifted away from him, like a rainstorm passing overhead. He looked to his left, across the burning litter and destruction of the ravaged depot space, and saw Ferdy Kolosim’s company being driven back into cover behind a row of huge steel bunkers. They left their dead on the deck behind them.
‘Kolea!’ his vox crackled.
‘Go!’ Kolea responded.
The vox burbled something else indistinct. He looked to his right in time to see a couple of shoulder-launched rockets whoosh up from the Guard lines into the upper part of the depot chamber. They blew out a row of generator pumps and hurled the bodies of several Sons into the air. Heavy, clacking fire, some of tracer rounds, zipped from .30s and .50s. Baskevyl’s company, D, was attempting to push forwards from the hangar space. They hadn’t come through the hole the ram had punched. They’d forced the internal hatches and surged through under the cover of gantries and service walkways.
The Archenemy line taking D Company’s fire withered slightly and tried to retrain. Kolea saw Baskevyl get up and lead a rush towards some heavy manufactory engines that stood in a row across the centre of the depot’s decking.
Plasma fire streaked into them immediately. Kolea winced, head down, as he saw three or four Ghosts cut down. Then some rockets fell too, screeching down out of the vault, and the gritty blast wash knocked Kolea back.
The last thing he glimpsed was Baskevyl’s burning body thrown, headless, into the air.
Blinking, dizzy from the concussion, Kolea looked around. Fury was filling him, rage at the losses and the helpless state of their situation. He saw Meryn and some of his force pinned around another row of processors.
‘Move up. Move up!’ he yelled. ‘Into the fethers, captain!’
Meryn didn’t appear to be able to hear him over the roar of the firefight. His men were pinking off shots in a feeble manner, their heads down.
Something snapped.
N
o longer really thinking rationally, Kolea got up. He hefted up his shield and ran at the Archenemy position, leaping debris and bodies, firing his lasrifle through the shield’s slot.
Somehow, he didn’t die.
Afterwards, he could not account for it. It was a story he would tell, when suitably persuaded and after an amasec or two, for the rest of his life. Kolea was destined to live out a soldier’s life, so that wasn’t a terribly long time, but it was long enough to make that day, that moment, an old story. Others told it in turn, after his death: Kolea, running the line like a madman, shield up, gun blasting. He was yelling something as he went and, depending who was telling the tale, what he yelled varied.
Some said it was the Vervunhive battle cry, others the Founding Oath. Some said he was cursing the names of Daur and Rawne, and everyone else who’d drawn the easy option of the Gamma and Beta insertions.
The truth was he was probably yelling the name of his friend Baskevyl.
It was a wild action, and utterly lacking in discipline, especially given that Kolea was the force commander and should have been setting a measured and sober example to the ranks. Caober said it was exactly the sort of fething idiot stunt Colonel Corbec used to pull.
That was why Caober got up and followed him. Derin did too, and Lyse, Neith and Starck… and Irvin, Bewl, Veddekin, Wersun and Vanette. Ludd, who should have been ready to reprimand Kolea for reckless deportment, got up and charged as well.
‘Men of Tanith!’ Ludd yelled. ‘Straight silver!’
Most of C Company broke and charged after their commanding officer, and so did a decent section of D Company and Kolosim’s H Company. Meryn’s company was mostly pinned, but a chunk of that also broke and sprinted after Kolea. Dalin led these men, bayonet fixed.
Some versions of the story, later ones, insisted that not a single Ghost who took part in that gloriously foolish and improvised charge – Kolea’s Charge – fell or took so much as a scratch. This was not true. Plenty died or were maimed. The Sons of Sek were not so astonished that they forgot to keep shooting. The charge left almost forty dead or injured on the depot floor.
Nevertheless, it hit the Sons like a tidal wave and broke their line. Kolea was first over the barricades. In his mindless haste, he had forgotten even to fix his silver, so he shot the enemy instead, point-blank, smashing with his shield, clubbing with his stock. The men behind him were slightly more composed. They came in with bayonets up, stabbing and spearing the Sons of Sek from behind their pock-marked shields. Some lobbed grenades over the front row into the support groups, blowing yellow uniformed brutes off their feet. A couple of flamers belched spears of liquid fire into the Archenemy ranks. Figures staggered, on fire, like ritual straw doll offerings, shuddered, fell.
Kolea killed eight of the enemy troops before he ran out of strength and dropped to one knee, panting, astonished by the sudden realisation of his own madness and, more, at the fact that he was still alive in spite of it. The charging Ghosts swarmed in around him, fracturing the enemy masses and driving them back along the defence barricade in both directions. Kolea had renegotiated the map of the battlefield and broken the impasse.
‘Are you alive?’ asked Dalin, helping him up.
Kolea nodded.
‘I mean, sir,’ Dalin added.
Kolea laughed.
‘That was madness,’ Dalin said.
‘Yes, well, it runs in the family, so be warned,’ Kolea replied.
Ghosts jostled past, forcing deeper, securing the position and firing on the retreating Sons. Ludd and Kolosim supervised the new deployment, yelling orders.
‘You’re quite insane,’ said Baskevyl, slapping Kolea’s arm. ‘Probably get a bloody medal, though.’
Kolea stared at him.
‘You–’ he began.
‘What?’
‘You were hit. I saw you.’
‘Not me,’ said Baskevyl.
‘The rockets! They came down right in amongst D. I saw you. You–’
Baskevyl grimaced.
‘I lost eight men. Gudler was right beside me. Got his head blown off.’
‘I thought it was you.’
Baskevyl laughed.
‘Damn it, Gol. You charged the Sons of Sek because you thought I was dead?’
‘I was angry.’
‘He probably wants to marry you,’ said Kolosim, running past them.
‘Major Kolea!’ Ludd shouted. ‘We need some orders here.’
Kolea ran over to Ludd, assessing how best to disperse the Ghosts from the new positions that had just taken. Though in hard retreat, the enemy was still laying down heavy fire.
‘We need to find exit points,’ Kolea told Ludd. ‘Drive on through. The Space Marines expect us to support them and we’re lagging badly.’
Ludd nodded.
‘Maybe we can bring up some tread-feathers,’ he suggested, pointing. ‘Punch a hole there and there, by that silo. Then we could advance under shields–’
He broke off. Just ahead of them, Sons of Sek were moving. Their unit discipline had vanished.
‘Feth me!’ Ludd exclaimed. ‘Are they counter-charging us?’
‘No,’ said Kolea. ‘They’re running.’
A whole section of the retreating Archenemy line had broken and scattered towards Kolea’s force. The advancing Ghosts began picking them off, amazed by the sudden opportunity. Explosions drove the Sons forwards into the Tanith field of fire. It was a brief but sustained slaughter.
‘Look!’ Ludd cried.
The White Scar, Sar Af, appeared out of the smoke, driving the breaking Archenemy troopers in front of him. He was blasting with his boltgun, disrupting their unit cohesion and driving their line around so that it buckled and withered under the Ghosts’ fire.
He spotted Kolea.
‘What is keeping you?’ Sar Af bellowed.
‘We were occupied,’ Kolea yelled back.
‘With what?’
‘The usual,’ shouted Kolea.
Sar Af shrugged his huge shoulderplates. He turned and blasted bolt rounds into the weakened enemy positions to his right.
‘Come on if you are coming!’ he yelled. ‘We will not wait any longer. I told Eadwine I would come back to find out if you had a good excuse for not keeping up.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like being dead! Now come on, Emperor curse you!’
The White Scar began to move towards the depot’s main rear hatches. The deck was covered in enemy dead. The hatchway was broken and buckled. Smoke threaded the air in dense, noxious walls.
Kolea turned to the advancing strike force.
‘Double time,’ he yelled. ‘Put your backs into it. We’ve got a battle to win, and I don’t intend to fight it on my own!’
‘Despite evidence to the contrary,’ said Baskevyl.
The deep interior of the Reach was dark and cold. Daur’s team moved through dank chambers and rusting tunnels, edging a few metres at a time, picking a path. Merrt’s rebreather had become a hindrance, and he’d taken it off. Soon afterwards, the others had ditched theirs too. The chilly, metallic air was infinitely preferable to the sweaty, claustrophobic limits of the masks.
Haller was edgy. He was painfully conscious of how much depended on him reading the sweeper’s scope right. He played the broom back and forth with infinite care.
‘Just do it right,’ said Daur. ‘Don’t overdo it.’
Haller nodded to his friend, loosened his collar, and moved on.
Eerie breezes murmured along the ancient, twisting tunnels. The burner of Belloc’s flamer jumped and fluttered. In some places it was so dark that even the twitching light of the flamer cast their shadows up the rotting walls.
‘Wait!’ said Haller suddenly. His scope had started clucking. They held position while he moved the broom. Merrt quietly loaded a saline charge into his old rifle. He’d injected the muscle relaxant into his jaw again, and it was numb, but the second dose made the muscles in his neck and lower back ache.
‘There,’ said Haller, studying the scope while he pointed. ‘Left side, wired along.’
‘Left side, wired along,’ Vahgner repeated, looking through his hand scope and running the passive tagger.
‘Whoa, you’ve overshot,’ warned Haller. ‘There. Behind that bulkhead.’
They got the lamps on it. Twenty metres away, four squat munition boxes were stacked up behind a bulkhead support. Cables ran back under the seam of the deck to pressure plates directly in front of them.
‘One more step would have been bad,’ said Haller.
Daur nodded.
Vahgner was moving the tagger beam around.
‘Look, there,’ he said. Closer to the device, a hair-thin trip line was threaded across the deck at ankle height. If somehow you stepped over the pressure trap, a second surprise awaited you. Vahgner put the tagger back on the firing pin screwed into the top of the boxes.
‘Twenty point one eight metres,’ he said.
Merrt lined up and locked his scope to the tagger Vahgner was supplying. Twenty point one eight metres. A breeze came up in their faces with a slight lift to it. He wanted to swallow, but his jaw and throat were too numb.
He snuggled in, the rifle held firmly but not too tightly. Everything in his life since that moment in the jungle on Monthax, everything had been about this moment, this shot. He felt sick.
‘Good,’ said Daur. ‘Good shot, Rhen.’
Merrt blinked. A wisp of smoke was trailing from his rifle. He’d taken the shot. He’d been in the zone so completely he hadn’t even noticed it.
‘Perfect,’ said Vahgner, checking through his scope. ‘You sheared the firing cap right off.’
Haller moved forwards. The deck plate trigger was dead. He disengaged the tripwire, removed the trigger and sprayed inert gel into the device. Then he marked out warnings in red chalk.
‘Think you can do that again?’ Daur asked Merrt.
Merrt signed an affirmative. He wanted to whoop with satisfied delight, but his jaw was too numb.