enough. The magazine inside the tank detonated seconds later, and both the escaping crew and the
orks on which they had dropped were roasted to death in a massive rush of red fire.
Wulfe heard Captain Immrich broadcasting on the regimental channel.
“Good kill, armour,” he said. “But the other two aren’t taking it very well.”
The other monstrosities brought all their cannon to bear on the Leman Russ machines closest to
them and unleashed a ground-shaking fusillade of high-explosive shells. Two Imperial tanks — one
a Conqueror, the other a Destroyer — erupted into fire almost simultaneously. The Destroyer’s
onboard plasma-containment field lost integrity almost immediately. It exploded with a spectacular
and lethal burst of energy that turned a dozen Cadian infantrymen nearby into piles of ash.
Wulfe yelled out in protest as he watched. He heard Captain Immrich’s voice on the vox.
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“Armour down,” the man was yelling. “I want those bloody abominations taken out, now!
That’s an order!”
Wulfe wondered who the dead tank crews were. There hadn’t been any chance to read the names
on their crates before they were brewed up. There would be time to find out after the battle, if he
lived through it. For some men, the absence of friends would become brutally, painfully apparent
after the fighting was done. Thinking of this, he looked around for Viess and Holtz. Were they still
alive? Still fighting?
They were. Old Smashbones was blasting away at a sturdy-looking ork tower on the far right.
Steelhearted II was standing parallel with van Droi’s tank, its turret slowly turning to face the ork
armour.
Wulfe realised that his own crate had a clear line-of-sight on the right-hand target.
“Beans,” he said, “target the one on the right. See that plate of armour just right of the main
gun’s mantlet? The one with the glyph?”
“The skull-looking thing?” said Beans. “Yeah, I see it.”
“There’s a damned good chance that armour is protecting the gunner’s station. If we can put one
through it…”
Beans didn’t answer. He hit the traverse pedal, already busy lining up the main gun. Electric
motors hummed as he adjusted elevation. He had to get it right. A miss might very well mean more
Cadian deaths.
“Lit,” said Siegler.
Beans was just about to call out Brace! when the whole tank was suddenly shunted backwards
about three metres. Wulfe shook his head, trying to lose the ringing sound in his ears. They had been
hit right on the front armour, the glacis plate.
“Damn,” spat Wulfe, simultaneously checking himself for injuries. “Metzger, you all right?”
“More armour approaching from front-right, sarge,” reported the driver. “They look like looted
Leman Russ.”
“Try to hit their treads with the lascannon,” ordered Wulfe. “Buy us some time.”
The vox was filled with reports of the new machines’ approach. Beans was already reacquiring
his original target. His crosshairs were quickly re-centred on the skull-glyph that decorated the
multi-cannoned monster to the north.
“I have it, sarge,” he said.
“Take the shot,” said Wulfe.
“Brace!” called Beans, and stamped on the floor trigger.
The shot hit the ork machine exactly where it was supposed to, and Beans let out a whoop of
joy, but there was no explosion, no sudden burst of flame, just a neat black hole the size of a
grapefruit right in the centre of the skull-glyph’s forehead. The ork tank’s turret stopped moving. It
stopped firing, too.
“That’s a kill,” said Wulfe, slapping Beans on the back. Quickly, he turned his attention to the
machines Metzger had reported. Bright spears of lascannon fire were blazing out from Last Rites
II’s hull-mounted weapon. The Cadian tanks on either side had also turned their attention to the
newcomers, while others blasted the last monster in the avenue to the north, reducing it to twisted,
blazing metal.
Wulfe was impressed. Beans was doing well. That last kill had been a fine shot. His men were
functioning as a unit. This was the way it was supposed to be. Nothing else weighed on his mind but
the heat of battle and the drive to win. No ghosts. No gangers. He felt less burdened than he had in a
long time.
One of the orks’ looted Leman Russ tanks soaked up a lascannon blast and lurched forward,
coughing flame from its main gun. Dirt and smoke exploded into the air just a few metres to the
right of Wulfe’s machine.
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“Gunner, traverse right,” Wulfe barked over the intercom. “Ork armour, eight hundred metres
and closing. Armour-piercing. Fire at will!”
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CHAPTER TWENTY
“Say again, Eagle Three,” said Bergen into the mouthpiece of his vox-set. “Say again.”
“Eagle Three to Command,” said the sharp, high voice of the female pilot. “Eagles One, Two
and Four are down. Where the hell is that Hydra support? I can’t outrun the damned ork jets. And I
can’t keep them off the Angel on my own.”
“The Hydras are almost there,” said Bergen. “Listen, Eagle Three. I know you’re up against it
out there, but just hold on. We’ll have triple-A support for you in a few seconds. You should be able
to see them now.”
“Two on my tail. Can’t shake them. Wait… By the Golden Throne!”
“What is it, Eagle Three?”
“Command, I have visual on a massive ork horde closing in from the south. A huge number of
vehicles. The land is black with them, sir.”
“Confirm, Eagle Three. Significant enemy force advancing from the south.”
The vox hissed.
“Eagle Three,” said Bergen, already sensing she wasn’t there, “confirm enemy force in the
south. Eagle Three, respond. Oh, for frak’s sake!”
Anger welled up inside him. Bergen had fought alongside women before. There were Cadian
regiments entirely composed of the so-called fairer sex, though they tended to serve on Cadia’s
Interior Guard rather than off-world. They were as tough and ruthless as any male soldiers he had
known, but his attitudes were still old-fashioned in some respects. The knowledge that a woman
attached to Operation Thunderstorm had just been killed by orks stung him with unusual sharpness.
Eagle Three was Navy, and there was no love lost between the Navy and the Guard, but she had
hung on bravely to the end, as brave as any of his tankers.
If he lived through this, he swore he would try to find out her name, to make sure she and her
fellow Vulcan crews were honoured.
Commodore Galbraithe will have to be told, he thought. Throne help the poor bastard tasked
with that.
Of more immediate concern, of course, was Eagle Three’s last report: a significant ork force
moving north towards their position. It had to be the host that Stromm and van Droi had reported.
How fast were they moving? When would they arrive? He couldn’t know. And all the forces at his
disposal were already engaged with the orks on and inside the wall. He had to tell deViers. But
first…
“10th Division Command to Armour,” he voxed. “Are you there, Kochatkis?”
“I’m here, sir,” said Vinnemann. “Go ahead.”
“You just lost close support from the Vulcans. Thought you should know.”
“I saw that, sir. The fuselage hit just a few hundred metres away. Looks like those bombers are
swinging around for a run on us.”
“Can you see those Hydras? They should be all around you by now.”
“They’ve just joined us, sir,” said Vinnemann. “We lost two, but four of them are still in the
game. The wind is stripping our smoke cover off and the ork artillery isn’t missing us by much. But
the Hydras will be a real surprise for those bombers the next time they make a pass.”
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“Let’s hope so,” said Bergen, “but there’s something else I have to tell you. We’re being flanked
from the south.”
“Flanked, sir?” asked Vinnemann. “What kind of numbers?”
“Can’t confirm that, but from the sounds of it, far more than we can reasonably handle.”
“Our forces have breached, sir,” said Vinnemann. “There’s no way we can fight on two fronts
and still push through to reach The Fortress of Arrogance. What does the general say?”
“I’m going to report to him now, Kochatkis,” said Bergen. “Just wanted you to know.”
“Appreciate that, sir. Armour, out.”
DeViers exploded when Bergen told him the news.
“They’re bloody what? he demanded.
“They’re flanking us from the south, sir,” replied Bergen. “Last transmission from Eagle Three
stated the land was black with them. Serious numbers, sir. We’re about to find ourselves between a
rock and a hard place.”
“By the blasted Eye of Terror!” raged deViers. “Why now? We’ve just gained the breach.”
“If I might suggest something, sir,” said Major General Killian.
“Out with it, Klotus,” snapped deViers.
“Well, sir. It seems to me that the only place we can hope to fight them and win would be Red
Gorge. We’d be cutting it fine in terms of the time left to us, but, if we could effect a retreat to the
canyon just before the second ork force arrives, we could fight them on a much smaller single
front.”
Rennkamp nodded. “Straight out of the Tactica. Engage a superior force at a bottleneck. It
would give us more control.”
DeViers eyes were so wide and bug-like with anger that Bergen thought they might pop out of
his head. “Retreat to the canyon? And turn this whole thing into a protracted fight? I suppose you
think we should just let the orks patch their wall up, too, so we can waste time and resources
attacking it all over again? You bloody clods!”
Killian and Rennkamp each took a step backwards. “You can’t mean to fight it out on open land,
sir,” said Killian. “It’ll be a bloody whitewash. A massacre.”
“I’m afraid I agree with them on that count, sir,” said Bergen. “Our expedition will end here if
we engage in a stand up fight. You can forget your place in the history books if that happens.”
The last sentence seemed to surprise deViers. He looked like he had been slapped. He turned on
Bergen, hissing, “What would you have me do, Gerard? Call a general retreat? Should we run back
to Balkar with our tails between our legs? No holy tank? No glory of any kind? I’ll die before I let
that happen. Nothing will get in the way of my success here. Do you understand? Do you all get it?”
Bergen thought he understood only too well. Whatever happened, it was deViers’ obsession with
glory that would decide their fate. For a long moment, no one said anything. It was a metallic voice
from the entrance to the tent that broke the spell of silence. Tech-Magos Sennesdiar stood there, his
huge, angular bulk a dark silhouette. Just beyond him, standing outside in the daylight, Tech-Adepts
Armadron and Xephous waited patiently.
“There will be no retreat,” Sennesdiar boomed at them in Gothic. “There will be no going back
to Balkan.”
Bergen turned.
“With respect, magos,” he said. “That decision rests with the general.”
Sennesdiar stooped a little so that he could fully enter the tent. Then he moved towards them,
stopping a few metres away, dominating them with his size, causing them all to look up at him.
“I did not mean to suggest otherwise, gentlemen. But some moments ago, Adept Armadron
received a land-line transmission from Balkar. Our forward base is under assault. The orks have
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managed to breach Balkar’s walls. The garrison commander does not expert his forces to last
another hour.”
“They what?” gasped deViers. “Balkar is under siege?”
“As are our bases at Hadron, Karavassa and Tyrellis, if word from Balkar is to be believed.
Great numbers of orks have assaulted our outposts from the north and south. It is clear that the orks
have found a way to communicate effectively over long range and are coordinating their attacks.”
DeViers looked ready to fall down. For all his rejuvenat treatments, he suddenly seemed every
bit the ninety-one-year-old man he was. “Coordinated attacks?” he muttered. “By orks?”
“I think our current dilemma confirms the possibility quite solidly,” said Killian. “The orks on
the wall called in fighter-bombers, after all.”
“Yes,” said Sennesdiar. “The attacks are most certainly coordinated. The question I wish to have
answered, however, is what the good general intends to do next.”
“We should go to Balkar’s aid at once,” said Rennkamp. “How can we even consider going on
with our supply lines interrupted?”
Bergen shook his head. “By the time we get back to Balkar, it’ll be too late to make a difference
anyway.”
Killian agreed. “There’ll be no one left, not if the outpost walls have already been compromised.
Damn it all. All those medicae personnel, the sick and wounded…”
Bergen scowled. He knew good men back there, men who had been too sick to go on, and
women, too. He didn’t want to think about all those gentle medicae nurses left to face the savagery
of the orks without hope of salvation.
“There will be no retreat,” said General deViers icily. “Understand that now.”
“We of the Adeptus Mechanicus,” said Sennesdiar, “wish to recommend that this expeditionary
force continues to push east. The Fortress of Arrogance has never been closer. The general’s
glorious quest is still well within acceptable feasibility parameters.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” said Rennkamp. “General, please. I think Klotus is right. If we can’t
go back to Balkar, at the very least we need to fall back to Red Gorge and dig in there. Fight the
orks on our own terms.”
Killian nodded emphatically. He looked at the magos. “Once we’ve secured the gorge, we could
send up one of the orbital beacons to call for evacuation.”
“Absolutely not,” raged General deViers. “Magos, the beacons must only be used if and when
we secure The Fortress of Arrogance. Is that clear?”
Bergen studied the general’s face, thinking how disappointed he was that the man he had once
looked up to had become so self-serving and obsessive. Despite all that, however, he felt that the
general was right. To get bogged down in a long-term engagement at Red Gorge would do them no
good.
“Neither I nor my adepts have any intention of utilising the beacons until the moment is right,
general. You may be assured of that. You do not intend to leave without your prize. So, too, it is
with us. No one will be lifted from Golgotha until our objective is met.”
Bergen read between the lines. He heard the unspoken words. At no time had the magos said
that his objectives were the same as the general’s, but whatever the tech-priests wanted, it suited
them to support deViers. He saw that fact give strength to the general now. The old man stood taller,
