at mid-range. One of the ork machines was hit dead centre. The Russ’ armour-piercing round must
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have punctured the enemy tank’s magazine, because Bergen saw it explode spectacularly, the entire
turret spinning into the air on a pillar of glaring orange flame.
The other two ork machines were still closing on the no-longer-mechanised infantry. The
soldiers fired on them in tight, ordered volleys, but it was futile. Las-bolts smacked harmlessly
against thick red armour. A second later, however, the three Leman Russ fired again. The ork
machines were struck hard, skidding sideways on their treads before halting. Greenskins started to
bail out, some of them already howling as flames licked their leathery brown flesh. The Cadian
infantrymen moved straight in, pouring las-fire onto the ork crews, cutting them down, blazing away
on full charge until there was little left but smoking black hunks of meat.
“Armour Command to Division,” said a voice on the vox. “Armour to Division. Please
respond.” It was Colonel Vinnemann.
“I read you, Armour,” said Bergen. “Go ahead.”
“I have a visual on enemy light vehicles breaking left to strafe our forward lines. Armour cannot
engage. I repeat, armour cannot engage. We have hostile tanks front and right, and we’re taking
heavy fire from artillery located inside the base.”
Bergen cursed. “Understood, Armour. Leave it to me. Division out.”
He panned his glasses right until he found the machines in question. There were ten of them: ork
war-buggies bristling with heavy stubbers, rocket launchers and more. They were roaring straight
towards the Cadian assault line. The men were exposed, busy trying to push the hordes of ork
infantry back. They would be slaughtered under the concentrated fire of the buggies unless…
“Division to Recon Two,” Bergen voxed. “Come in please.”
“Recon Two reading you loud and clear, sir. Go ahead.”
“Ork light armour advancing on our infantry at speed. Look to your two. Those lads need a little
Sentinel support, wouldn’t you say?”
The man on the other end of the vox was Captain Munzer. Bergen could picture the grin on the
man’s scar-twisted face as he replied, “Sentinel’s moving to intercept, sir. We’ll light the bastards
up. Enjoy the show.”
Seconds later, Bergen saw Munzer’s bipedal machines lope out from behind a rocky hill to the
left and open fire. Each of the Cadian Sentinels sported an autocannon, ideal for ripping right
through their current targets. Ork bodies were torn apart in the deadly hail. Fuel tanks ignited and
the speeding buggies flipped and spun, rolling end over end, spilling the xenos filth onboard.
He couldn’t hear them, but Bergen could see the infantry cheering the Sentinel pilots. The cheers
stopped dead when five of the Sentinels vanished suddenly in a great ball of flame. A row of ugly
black machines had emerged from Karavassa to join the fray. More ork artillery! The surviving
Sentinels immediately turned to identify their attackers, but the range was far too great to strike
back. Over the vox, Bergen heard Captain Munzer ordering his walkers to scatter so they wouldn’t
provide such an opportune target again.
“Command to Armour,” voxed Bergen urgently, “be advised, we have additional ork artillery
pushing out from the main gates. What’s your status?”
My status, thought Colonel Kochatkis Vinnemann, is that my back is bloody killing me.
He cursed his own stupidity. As he and his men had neared the outpost, completely preoccupied
with the coming battle, he had neglected to take the vital medication that counteracted his body’s
immune system. It had been years since the implant surgery, but his body still steadfastly refused to
accept the augmetic spine. He needed large, regular doses of immunosuppressants and pain
mediators in order to function at his best. But there wasn’t time to stop and take them now.
“Division, we are still engaged with hostile tanks. Ninth company is down to half strength.
Fourth and Fifth companies have taken multiple losses. We’re trying to push in, to flank the buggers
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on the right, sir, but the damned artillery… I’ll ask one more time, sir, will you not put some
Basilisk fire down behind those walls? It would make one hell of a difference.”
“That’s a negative, colonel,” Bergen answered with obvious regret. “The objective must be
taken intact. We have enemy artillery fire from just outside the main gates. I need one of your
companies to knock it out. I know you’re up against it, colonel. It’s damned messy out there. But do
what you can.”
By the blasted Eye, cursed Vinnemann. “Understood, Division. We’re on it. Armour, out.”
He tapped a button on his headset, switching from vox to tank intercom.
“Listen up,” he told his crew. “Our troops are hurting out there. Not just our tankers, but
Marrenburg’s lot, Graves’ lot. So it looks like the Angel gets to enter the fray after all.”
This announcement was met with resounding cheers from his crew. To some extent,
Vinnemann’s tank, Angel of the Apocalypse, was a victim of her own superb design. She was a
Shadowsword super-heavy tank, ancient and deadly, but her Volcano cannon, with its nine-metre
barrel, had originally been designed for felling traitor Titans and the like. She was far too specialised
to warrant being fielded in most conventional battles, including this one.
Today, though, she would get to show what she could do.
The very thought of it was almost enough to overcome the pain in Vinnemann’s back.
“Bekker,” he said, addressing his driver, “get us behind that ridge on the right. Hull down, but
leave plenty of clearance for the gun. The rest of you, prep for firing. We’re about to make things
interesting around here.”
With a great chugging cough from her exhausts, Angel of the Apocalypse rumbled into motion.
Bergen saw Vinnemann’s massive Shadowsword roar towards a shallow rise and settle into firing
position. The ork artillery pieces had turned their attention to the infantry’s forward lines. The
bodies of good Cadian men were being blasted apart to rain back down to the ground in ragged
pieces. Scores of them were dying with every lethal shot, and the greenskins on foot were using the
cover of the artillery fire to bridge the gap, hungry for the slaughter that would take place at close
quarters. Elsewhere, Vinnemann’s tanks were holding their own against the technically inferior but
far more numerous ork machines. Smoking wrecks littered the land, providing cover for small
groups of terrified men who had lost their nerve. Through his field glasses, Bergen saw one such
group huddled together, eyes shut tight, hands pressed over their ears. It was hard to see through all
the smoke and fire, but they were clearly green. New meat.
Where in the blasted warp was their sergeant?
If their regimental commissar noticed them huddled there, frozen in fear and panic, they
wouldn’t live to become old meat. Executions for cowardice were swift and brutal. There were no
appeals. Bergen didn’t like executions, but it was the way of the Guard: do your duty and die well,
or run from it and die without honour.
He pitied them. It was easy to lose your balance when everything around you was going to hell.
He voxed Colonel Graves. “Division to Infantry Command. It looks like some of your rookies have
lost their officer. Check those burning tanks on your ten o’clock, Graves. Get someone over there.
Get them back in the fight. If the orks find them first they’ll be massacred.”
Colonel Graves’ response was brief and affirmative. Seconds later, Bergen saw a squad push left
and join the huddled men. His attention was diverted, however, by a high-pitched whine that rose
from the right. He had heard its like before, though on regrettably rare occasions. Hearing it now
caused a thrill to run through him. He immediately panned his glasses towards Vinnemann’s
Shadowsword and saw a white glow forming at the muzzle of her huge cannon. Knowing what was
to come, he turned his eyes towards the black artillery pieces by the outpost gates. Over-muscled
greenskin gunnery crews were hefting shells the size of oil drums into the breech of each huge gun,
readying to pulverise the advancing Cadian lines once again.
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There was an almighty crack, like a clap of thunder, so close that Bergen felt it resonate deep in
his bones. Everything in the area outside the outpost’s main gates was engulfed in blinding white
light. Bergen thought he saw the shot hit the row of greenskin war machines at an angle, cutting
across them diagonally, but he could only watch for a fraction of a second. Looking directly at the
beam was painful, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
A glowing afterimage of the Volcano’s lethal beam remained behind his eyelids. When he
opened his eyes again, he saw that a good number of the enemy machines had ceased to exist.
Bubbling pools of liquid metal were the only trace left. Others, though not struck directly, would no
longer be firing on his men. Their crews had been roasted to ash. The raw heat of the Volcano beam
striking the neighbouring guns was simply too intense to survive.
The Cadian infantry had seen it all happen. A great cheer sounded from the battlefield as their
spirits were lifted, and they surged forward, inspired by the incredible display of power they had
witnessed from their own side. Bergen could feel it on the air, the special moment that every
commander awaited so anxiously. It was the beginning of the end.
He voxed Vinnemann. “Division to Armour Command. Hell of a shot, Kochatkis. Hell of a shot.
That showed the filthy savages.”
Vinnemann answered through gasping breaths. “Thank you, sir. Great to fire up the old Volcano
cannon again after so long. She’s drained the tanks, though. And we lost two capacitors. We’ll need
a Trojan over here for a refuel.”
“Are you all right, man? You sound…”
“Don’t worry about me, sir,” replied Vinnemann. “It’s just the usual. I’ll deal with it when this is
over.”
Bergen was scanning the field of combat, watching his forces surge forward, taking a murderous
toll on the foe.
“You won’t have to wait long, Kochatkis. Our lads are really pressing forward now. You’ve
inspired them, by Terra. They’re cutting into the ork lines like a bayonet through butter.”
It was no lie. The greenskins’ brute strength and instinct for battle simply weren’t enough to
hold off the well-coordinated Imperial forces any longer.
Within the hour, the walls of Karavassa were breached.
65
CHAPTER NINE
Gunfire still stuttered here and there along Karavassa’s narrow streets, but the sounds of battle were
little more than faint echoes of the madness and bloodshed that had now passed. The outpost had
been retaken. Bergen had achieved his objective. General deViers had the first of the positions that
would defend his supply and transport routes between Hadron Base and his intended destination in
the east.
One of Colonel Marrenburg’s mechanised platoons had found and killed the ork leader, an
abomination of preposterous size and musculature, while securing the old Imperial communications
building at the heart of the outpost. Bergen had been invited to verify this as soon as the area was
judged clear of significant threats. Now he stood in a broad, low-ceilinged room, looking down on
the body, marvelling at the size of the creature that lay motionless on the stone floor at his feet. The
smell from it was overpowering, like stale sweat and rotting garbage.
He judged the fallen warboss to be at least two and a half metres tall, and not much less from
shoulder to shoulder if one included the hunks of iron plate that had been bolted together to form its
crude armour. It would have needed to hunch over just to fit inside the building, but then, orks
tended to hunch anyway due to the massive slabs of overdeveloped muscle that covered their bodies.
There was a poorly painted skull and dagger design on its angular breastplate, the symbol of
whatever clan the foul wretch had lorded over. Bergen didn’t recognise the glyph.
“Not the best looking bastard I’ve met, sir,” said Colonel Marrenburg. He stepped forward,
stopping at Bergen’s side.
“He’s no charmer, Edwyn,” Bergen replied, “that’s for sure. Are we certain this one is the
leader?”
“It’s always the biggest, isn’t it?” said Marrenburg. “He had a bodyguard around him, too. Lost
eleven men taking him and his guards down.” The colonel kicked the dead ork’s thick forearm in
contempt. Bergen watched the huge lifeless hand flop on the floor. The creature’s thick fingers
looked like they could have crushed a man’s bones to powder. “Made him pay in the end, though,”
said Marrenburg. “Mind if I smoke, sir?”
“Go ahead,” said Bergen. “Maybe it’ll cover the stink.”
“We’ll have this place cleaned out in no time, sir,” replied Marrenburg as he pulled a packet of
smokes from his breast pocket. “Offer you one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Marrenburg with a grin. “I always forget you don’t. Anyway, if you’re done
looking at this one, the enginseers are waiting to set up some kind of equipment. Don’t suppose
they’ve come up with a solution to the long-range vox problem, do you?”
Bergen turned from the dead ork. “In a roundabout way, I suppose they have. The tech-priests
have been laying cables under the sand all the way here, a kind of landline that they insist will do
the job. Tech-Adept Armadron has promised to brief us fully once the system is operational. It’ll
save us having to send any more runners all the way back to Hadron to communicate with the
general.”
“Have you sent one to report on our victory here?”
Bergen nodded. “Two, actually, just in case. Hornet riders with coded parchments. I sent them
out as soon as we entered the gates. I expect Tech-Adept Armadron will have his landline system up
and running before they reach Hadron Base, but I like to have a little insurance.”
66
Hornet motorcycles were a variant of the old standard-issue Blackshadow bikes. They were
noisy, unarmed, and unarmoured, but they were the fastest machines available to 10th Division.
Excepting for any problems, Bergen expected the couriers to reach Army Group HQ the following
day.
“Very wise, sir,” replied Marrenburg with a nod.
Bergen didn’t feel wise. Today’s victory had lifted his spirits — he had seen the raw might of
his armoured division overcome a significant enemy presence, and he knew a good number of his
