gentlemen, we will ensure that The Fortress of Arrogance is taken from the orks and turned over to
the Adeptus Mechanicus. Yarrick will have his tank back, and our expedition will be forever
remembered in the proud annals of the Imperial Guard. As you have just witnessed, I will kill any
man who stands in the way of that, for he is an enemy of the Emperor and no true son of Cadia.”
Those last words struck out at the officers like a lash. Bergen saw von Holden physically
steadying himself against their impact. They affected the speaker, however, in quite a different way.
As he finished his pronouncement, the general stood noticeably taller and prouder, his chest
expanding until Bergen thought the buttons of his tunic might actually fly off.
The mad old bastard had really lost it, now.
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The other officers were frozen. No one else dared speak. No one, that is, except the tall, hooded
figure who approached from the bottom of the slope, his fluttering robes as red as the rocks on
which he trod.
As red as blood, thought Bergen, eyes narrowing.
Magos Sennesdiar’s toneless voice seemed to echo from the near hillsides as he said, “A rousing
speech, general. And I believe you will soon fulfil your destiny. My adepts have just completed
consultations with the spirits of our auspex scanners. We have every reason to believe that the tank
you seek is indeed located in the ork base up ahead. It is time for you to earn your place in history,
and the Adeptus Mechanicus stands ready to offer our support.”
His hopes confirmed, a broad grin spread across the general’s face, creasing the skin around his
eyes. Bergen, however, saw all too clearly that the old fool was being manipulated. His desperation,
his need to leave some mark on the Imperium, had made him a willing pawn of greater forces.
Perhaps it wasn’t entirely his fault. He had been great once, before the disaster on Palmeros had
unhinged him. Most men, men of the aristocracy in particular, sought to leave something behind,
though in the main this was achieved by the continuation of their bloodlines. DeViers had been
denied that path to immortality, so he’d found another.
The poet Michelos had said something about fools writing history in the blood of better men, but
Bergen couldn’t remember the exact words.
Suddenly, Magos Sennesdiar turned his head southwards. Something had caught his attention.
“We must move at once,” he said. “Quickly. Back to the vehicles. We have to hurry.” Though
his vocaliser couldn’t convey a sense of urgency through tone, his words were adequate to the task.
Everyone turned to face the same direction.
“What do you hear?” demanded Rennkamp, but the magos didn’t need to answer. The officers
could hear it for themselves now, the roar of an engine getting louder all the time until it was almost
deafening.
“Above us,” shouted Colonel von Holden over the noise.
Bergen looked up just in time to see a chunky, snub-nosed jet fighter scream past them only a
few dozen metres above the ridge line. It was painted red with some kind of shark’s tooth pattern
around the air intake at the front. There were rocket-pods and bombs fixed to the pylons under its
wings. For the very briefest instant, Bergen thought he saw the leering face of the pilot, a hideous
goggled ork with slavering, tusk-filled jaws.
“Move!” shouted deViers, and everyone broke into a sliding run that carried them to the bottom
of the slope in a torrent of rolling rocks and dust.
The pilot must have reported their presence over some kind of greenskin vox device because,
from the ork settlement at the centre of the crater, the thunder of war drums began.
The Cadians’ chance to properly plan an assault was gone. Any advantage was lost. The beasts
were already spilling out to meet them.
It was time to kill or be killed.
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CHAPTER THIRTY
They clashed halfway towards the ork settlement with a violence that shattered iron and bone.
Things descended into madness almost immediately. There was no cover. It was open ground all the
way in. The Cadians dropped hundreds of the foe at range, their Basilisk artillery pieces taking a
terrible toll from about five kilometres back, but the orks had numbers to spare. They were a
roaring, seething storm front of blades and guns, tusks and muscle, and they had gone a long time
without a fight. At last, war had returned to Golgotha. The greenskins roared and laughed as longrange
fighting quickly gave way to mutual slaughter at close-quarters, and the bloodletting began in
earnest.
Sheet lighting began to flash regularly in the sky above, almost as if the excitement of the orks
was somehow charging the atmosphere.
Leman Russ Exterminators and Conquerors, Chimera APCs and Heracles halftracks all pushed
in to support the out-muscled Cadian infantry with sheets of blistering fire, opening temporary gaps
that allowed the footsloggers to employ their lasguns briefly before the enemy surged forward again,
trampling the bodies of the dead. Sentinels stalked the far left and right flanks charged with
preventing the fast, light ork bikes and buggies from circling around the main force and striking
from the rear. Their autocannon blazed, spewing brass casings on the sand. Those sections of the
battlefield soon became littered with smoking machines from both sides.
In the centre, the air burned and throbbed, filled with scorching las- and plasma-fire. Solid
rounds whipped and whined in every direction. Streams of liquid flame turned men and orks alike
into roasted black marionettes that fell as if their strings had been cut. Shelling from both sides made
the floor of the crater shake as if it might give way any second and plunge everyone into a sea of
orange magma.
Outside the buttoned-up turret of Last Rites II, the world had descended into deafening, dustchoked
mayhem.
Lesser men might have lost their minds in the face of such ferocity, for nothing could match the
savagery, the gleeful brutality, of the orks. Cadians, however, were not lesser men. They were born
and bred for war. This was their duty, and Wulfe was not afraid. His years of training and
experience took over from the start, moving to the fore of his consciousness. His senses felt sharper,
his movements faster and more assured, and his scar was itching, a reminder of all the hate he
carried within him.
Whether or not he died today, he intended to take a heavy toll on the race that had killed so
many of the men he’d known.
He heard van Droi on the vox. “Take it to them, Gunheads. Show those bastards what it means
to unleash the Emperor’s wrath!”
FOOM!
The sound of cannon fire cut across everything else as the Cadian tanks loosed round after round
into the melee.
Beans stamped his foot trigger and added to the fusillade.
Major General Bergen had ordered all the regiment’s Vanquishers, standard Leman Russ,
Executioners and Destroyers to race straight forward through the xenos lines, guns blazing, with the
objective of knocking out the enemy armour and artillery pieces lined up on the settlement’s western
edge. From there, they could wheel around and strike at the orks’ rear.
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It wouldn’t be easy. They were already drawing massive amounts of fire. Ploughing straight
through the ork horde would put them at even greater risk, but the long-guns had to be taken out if
the infantry were to push forward. There was simply no other way.
Bergen thumbed the trigger of his autocannon, strafing the orks from the turret of Pride of Caedus,
sending a row of them to the ground as lifeless heaps. All around him, the men of the 71st Caedus
Infantry fought like rabid dogs. They were inspiring, even as their numbers dropped lower and
lower. They made him proud. He was doing his best to support them, as was their commander,
Colonel Graves, but if Immrich’s tanks couldn’t gain the advantage soon, all would be lost. General
deViers’ holy quest would end here.
The general was raging over the vox at anyone and everyone who was listening, demanding that
they gain ground and break the ork charge. Bergen might normally have cursed him or ignored him,
but not this time. This time, the old man was right in among them, in the eye of the storm, pouring
out a hailstorm of multi-laser fire from the turret of his own Chimera. No one, he had insisted, could
sit this one out. The odds were too great, and too much was riding on victory.
That suited Bergen. He figured it was about time the mad old bastard got his hands dirty.
From left to right, the battlefield was a sea of monstrous brown bodies clad in black iron plate.
Gaudily painted dreadnoughts waddled alongside them, almost comical in their clumsy movements.
There was nothing comical, though, in the torrents of death they spewed from hip-mounted stubbers
and flame-throwers. Cadians went down in great screaming lines, their bodies cooked or ripped to
pieces by sprays of heavy enfilading fire.
The 8th Mechanised Division and 12th Heavy Infantry Divisions were pressing the enemy from
the north-west and south-west quarters, hemming them in and forcing them to fight on three fronts.
The 10th Armoured Division had the middle ground. In terms of strategy, it was hardly elegant, but
there hadn’t been time for much else.
Van Droi heard Captain Immrich cutting across the 10th Company command channel with a
priority message. “Immrich to spearhead. Drive straight over their infantry. Crush them under you.
Once you’re through, I want you to light up that damned artillery. Destroyers, focus on their tanks.
Everyone else, targets of opportunity. We can make all the difference here. Do it for Vinnemann!”
For Vinnemann, thought van Droi resolutely. Throne, yes!
Foe-Breaker bounced and shook as she rolled over scores of screaming greenskins, pulping their
meaty bodies under her treads. They turned on each other to get out of her way, hacking in fevered
panic at the backs of their kin, but they were too slow. More fell with every metre she gained. In her
wake, the sand became a blood-sodden bog.
Something slapped the turret hard, ringing the tank like a bell. The loader, Waller, cried out,
“We’re hit.”
“Damage report,” van Droi called back.
“No breach, no breach,” reported Bullseye Dietz. “Anybody hurt? Any spalling?”
They had been lucky. Looking through the vision blocks, van Droi saw a spiral trail of smoke
hanging in the air between his tank and a rusty-looking dreadnought that was clanking its way
towards him kicking ork infantry from its path. A rocket had struck Foe-Breaker’s gun mantlet,
detonating with enough power to give the crew a nasty headache, but little else. Without needing to
be told, Dietz traversed the turret and lined her up.
“Brace!” he shouted.
Foe-Breaker rocked. Her turret basket filled with stinking smoke. The dreadnought seemed
frozen in time for a split second. A melon-sized black hole had appeared in its armour, transfixing it.
Then it exploded outwards in a burst of white fire, raining debris on the howling orks around its feet.
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“Keep pushing her, Nails,” said van Droi to his driver. “If we let them slow us down, we’re done
for.”
Orks were clamouring at her hull as she rolled on, hacking futilely at her armoured sides with
their big chipped blades. Another rocket arced in and smacked the hull. Van Droi saw a different
dreadnought, this one almost twice as big as the last.
“Damn it, Bullseye,” he called to his gunner. “Take that bastard out.”
“I can only shoot one at a time, sir,” snapped Dietz, but he stamped on the floor trigger a second
later. The breech slid back, dumping an empty brass shell casing. The dreadnought had its right leg
blown off. It fell forward and landed on its face, bladed arms wheeling frantically, dicing ork foot
soldiers on either side.
“Nice shot,” said van Droi. He scanned the battlefield for the rest of his company. It was hard to
see anything. Dark, billowing smoke rose everywhere and the horde was still pressing towards him
on every side. Blades clanged relentlessly on the hull.
“Foe-Breaker to all Gunheads,” voxed van Droi. “Call in.” Three of his tank commanders
responded. One did not.
“Van Droi to Holtz, respond.” Still nothing.
“Old Smashbones, respond.”
Van Droi knew Wulfe would be listening. They all knew what that silence would mean: another
veteran dead. If van Droi had just let him stay on Wulfe’s crew…
No, there was no use in thinking like that. A man could go mad on what ifs.
Go with the Emperor, corporal, van Droi thought. From the looks of it, the rest of us will be
following you soon. I don’t think anyone will be left to grieve, but we’ll hurt the bastards on the
way out. I promise you that.
“Nails,” he yelled over the intercom. “We need more speed, damn it. Give her all she’s got.
Let’s get our treads bloody!”
Pressing in on the orks from the south, the infantrymen of the 303rd Skellas Rifles fought valiantly
without Colonel Meyers. The word was that he had been shot for cowardice. The remains of his
regiment — some four hundred and sixty men — set out to prove that they were made of sterner
stuff. They achieved exactly that, though there was little opportunity for anyone near them to truly
notice in the dust-choked maelstrom of battle.
Under their newly appointed commander, Major Gehrer, who led from the very front, waving
the regimental banner in one hand and brandishing a bloodstained chainsword in the other, the 303rd
railed hard against the ork infantry and momentarily managed to drive them back. It didn’t last long.
At such close quarters and without adequate armour support, the Cadian troopers were simply outmuscled,
and, all too soon, the orks closed around them and butchered them with heavy, rusting
blades.
Gehrer was the last to fall, protected to the bitter end by a swiftly shrinking circle of his
strongest men. Even as the orks hacked him down and chopped at his fallen body, he fought to keep
the banner upright, to stop its sacred cloth from touching the ground.
Seconds later, greenskin feet trampled it into the dust.
“Shore up the southern flank,” screamed General deViers. “Where the devil are the 303rd? And
what’s wrong with our artillery? Gruber! Tell them to increase their rate of fire. That’s the worst
excuse for a sustained barrage I’ve ever seen. Our men are getting slaughtered out there!”
He sat high in the turret of his Chimera, hatch locked above his head, firing rapid multi-laser
