DeViers felt his face grow hot.
“I hope you live through this, Gerard,” he growled, “I really do, because if you ever speak like
that to me again, I’ll see you swing from the gallows. Is that clear? The order stands. Anyone who
fires on The Fortress of Arrogance will answer to me.”
“Fine,” said Bergen bitterly, “and may you answer to the souls of the men you’ve just
condemned. Bergen out.”
“You have got to be bloody joking!” exclaimed Beans.
“I wish I was,” answered Wulfe. He turned to his left and fired on an ork wielding a bulky heavy
flamer as if it were little more than a pistol. It had just finished roasting three Guardsmen to death at
close range. When Wulfe’s stubber-rounds punched into its body, the ork threw up its hands. One of
the rounds punctured the fuel tanks on its back, and it exploded in a fountain of bright fire and
burning meat.
The bastardised Baneblade was almost fully out of the hangar. Wulfe could see an absolutely
massive ork standing on top of it. It had to be the warboss. It wasn’t just the size of the creature,
though it certainly made even the biggest of the black-skinned veterans look almost small. It was the
massive suit of power armour that it wore. Energy crackled in blue arcs along its arms. It flexed
huge blade-like claws and bellowed its war cry through some kind of amplifier attached to its
shoulder.
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The bestial roar swept over the battlefield, and the orks all around began fighting with fresh
reserves of energy and zeal.
“Look,” said Beans, “I might just be a gunner, but I know that order is utter bloody ball-rot,
sarge. If we can’t fire on it, we’re dead men.”
As if to prove his point, the Baneblade’s main gun fired again. The last surviving Leman Russ
Executioner detonated in a spectacular burst of orange fire and glowing blue plasma.
“Throne damn it,” cursed Wulfe. “Listen, Beans, do you think you can hit the warboss without
hitting the tank?”
About twenty metres behind Last Rites II, a Chimera exploded. Wulfe felt the intense heat of the
blast on the back of his neck and turned.
A slavering black ork was hauling its way up the back of his tank with an axe in one hand and a
rusty metal hook in the other. A suing of desiccated human heads bobbed around its waist.
Wulfe dropped down into the turret basket just in time. The beast’s axe clanged on the rim just
as his head disappeared inside.
“By the Throne!” shouted Siegler. He began scrambling to unhook one of the lasguns from the
fixings by his station. In the meantime, the ork had thrust its metal hook into the turret basket and
was slashing backwards and forwards, trying to snag the crewmen it knew were inside.
Wulfe threw both his arms around the ork’s massive wrist, but the damned thing was so
powerful it began battering him off the turret walls. In desperation, Wulfe let go with one hand and
scrambled for his knife. He grasped the handle, drew it from its sheath, and stabbed it hard into the
ork’s forearm.
With a roar of pain, the ork withdrew its arm, taking the knife with it, but the reprieve was only
temporary. Seconds later, it thrust its massive head down into the turret and began snapping at
Wulfe with its razor-toothed jaws. The stink of its foul breath filled the compartment.
“Down,” shouted Siegler, and Wulfe dropped his weight to the floor just in time. Tusks clashed
an inch above his head. Then the ork turned to face the loader, drawn by his shout.
Siegler rammed the barrel of a lasgun into the creature’s mouth and yanked back hard on the
trigger. The blast blew out the back of the ork’s head, spattering the wall of the turret basket and two
of its occupants with blood and brain matter.
“By the bloody Eye of Terror,” shouted Beans. The back of his head was drenched in foulsmelling
gore.
“Good work, Sig,” said Wulfe. He immediately set about trying to clear the cupola, but it wasn’t
easy. Shifting the heavy corpse took all his strength.
When the hatch was free, he poked his head out to check for any other orks waiting to lop his
head off. There were none. He stood and gripped the handles of his heavy stubber again. In the few
seconds it had taken to deal with the hook-wielding ork, yet another Cadian tank had been reduced
to a flaming black skeleton.
Something else had changed, too. There were more Cadians than before. The reinforcements
from the rear had arrived. Chimeras were pouring laser and autocannon fire in every direction but
that of The Fortress of Arrogance, and the foot soldiers were tapping in to some kind of hidden
reserves. They fought back with a renewed sense of purpose. Wulfe decided it must be the sight, or
perhaps the proximity, of the holy tank that had inspired them. If they could only stop it knocking
out their damned armour…
Just as he was thinking this, the disfigured Baneblade fired again.
This time, the victim was Hal Keissler and The Damascine. The 2nd Company leader died
instantly, blown apart with the rest of his crew. Wulfe swore, realising that he could count the
number of surviving tanks on the fingers of two hands. To the right he saw New Champion of
Cerbera and was amazed that she had stayed in the fight for this long.
Perhaps he had underestimated Lenck’s skill as a commander.
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It hardly mattered. If The Fortress of Arrogance kept picking them off like this, none of it would
mean a damned thing.
“Beans, you never answered my question.”
Having been denied the only armoured target on the field, Beans was strafing ork infantry with
the co-ax. “What question?”
“Do you think you can hit the damned warboss?”
“I can try,” said Beans, “but if I hit his ride instead, the general will have me shot!”
“Do it anyway,” barked Wulfe. “I’ll answer for it, but you have to take the shot. That damned
thing is getting ready to fire again, and we might just be the next target. Siegler? Load her up. Highexplosive.
Let’s blow that greenskin bastard into the next life.”
“We’re out of high-ex, sarge,” replied Siegler. “Only armour-piercing left, and not many of
’em.”
“Damn it,” spat Wulfe. “AP it is. Load her up. Aim well, Beans.”
“Locked and lit,” shouted Siegler.
“Do it,” said Wulfe, “and may the Emperor guide your shot!”
Beans stamped on the floor trigger.
Last Rites II shuddered as exploding propellant burst from her muzzle brake. The shot zipped
straight in towards The Fortress of Arrogance. Wulfe held his breath, praying that the ork leader
would disintegrate in a shower of blood and bone shards.
The shot curved low and smacked straight into the Baneblade’s turret instead.
Another massive armoured plate fell away, revealing more of the black and gold that lay
underneath.
The reaction on the vox was immediate. Wulfe heard General deViers screeching at the top of
his voice. “Who fired that shot? Identify yourself at once. You are disobeying a direct order from
your general!”
Wulfe was about to respond when another voice cut in. It was Major General Bergen.
“Frak it!” said Bergen. “This is a direct order from 10th Division Command. All tanks, open up
on that monstrosity with everything you have. We won’t lose anyone else to it. You hear me? Fire at
will.”
Wulfe knew that the general’s orders overrode Bergen’s, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.
“Siegler, load. Beans, do what you do best, son!”
Thunderclaps echoed from the rusting metal walls all around as the surviving tanks of the 10th
Armoured Division blasted the bastardised Baneblade with everything they had. Fire blossomed all
over it and heavy pieces of armour spun away in all directions.
“Stop!” yelled deViers over the vox, but nobody was listening. “I command you to stop!”
The Adeptus Mechanicus also added their protestations, overriding the Cadian vox-comms to
issue warnings of their own, but to no avail.
Again and again, the tanks fired. More and more of the true shape of The Fortress of Arrogance
was revealed. Then one shot struck the raging warboss that stood atop the turret. There was a sudden
burst of bright blue light and a loud cracking sound as the energy field generated by the warboss’
armour straggled to absorb the blast. Against lesser weapons like lascannons, it might have held
indefinitely, but it simply wasn’t powerful enough to repel the sheer force of a tank round impacting
at full velocity. The field collapsed and the beast’s right arm vanished completely in a fine red mist.
The warboss staggered and looked sideways at the ragged, bleeding stump of flesh with an
expression of slack-jawed disbelief. That was when a second round, an armour-piercing shell from
Captain Immrich’s Vanquisher, Firemane, struck it dead centre in the torso. The round punched
straight through the ork’s power armour, blew its guts out its back, and blasted it from its feet.
A great cheer went up from the Cadian soldiers, and they rallied for the third time that day.
Wulfe marvelled at them. He knew how tired they were, but they were Cadians, all of them. They
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would rather die of exhaustion than give up the fight. It was their planetary heritage, this discipline
and strength.
“Cease fire,” shouted deViers again. “Cease fire, at once!”
The tankers stopped firing. The Baneblade still rumbled forward, but without their commander,
the crew were confused and lost. The ork foot soldiers were distracted by the sound of the Cadian
cheer and turned to find that their warboss had been slain. Without his overwhelming strength and
dominance, the unity of the ork force collapsed. Old factions that had once been rivals were
suddenly free to wage war against each other again, and the entire force fell into absolute and
immediate disarray. Greenskins began hacking and firing at other greenskins just as fiercely as they
were fighting with the Cadians. It didn’t take the Guardsmen long to capitalise on this.
The clashing of heavy blades and the barking of large calibre stubbers and pistols gradually gave
way to the ordered crack of las and hellgun volleys.
Within the hour, the sounds of fighting died off altogether.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Get those men down from there,” deViers stormed. “Get back all of you. Damn your eyes, I’d have
some of you shot but for the fact that we have our prize at last. Gruber, give me that vox-amp unit.
And you there! Yes, you. Help me up at once.”
A young trooper bearing the insignia of the 110th Mechanised Regiment gave General deViers a
boost up onto the track-guards of The Fortress of Arrogance.
Kasrkin storm troopers had already popped her hatches and slaughtered her greenskin crew, and
her engines had stopped rumbling. She stood still and silent as the general climbed up to stand on
the top of the turret. It had been a pulpit once, a place from which Commissar Yarrick had given his
rousing speeches to Imperial troops before leading them into battle. DeViers could feel it now, all
that glory settling on his shoulders like a fine heavy cloak. He glanced down at the body of the
warboss where it lay on its back.
Disgusting beast, he thought.
The stench from its innards made his nose crinkle, but it would take much more than that to ruin
the moment. He turned and faced out towards the ordered ranks of troopers. There were so damned
few of them. Had he really started all this with over twenty thousand men? The losses seemed
incredible, but Yarrick had demanded victory at any cost. DeViers had held to that remark, and now
he had his victory.
He saw Magos Sennesdiar and his tech-adepts moving towards the front, their robes stained dark
at the hem by all the blood that soaked the ground.
DeViers lifted the microphone of his vox-amp unit and began, “Men of Exolon and of the
Adeptus Mechanicus, let us always remember this day. It has taken time, resources and the sacrifice
of many of our Cadian brothers to make this dream a reality. But here we stand, victorious, and the
greatest prize in all the Imperium of Man is finally in our hands. I stand upon it, and I feel its holy
spirit all around me: The Fortress of Arrogance, a holy relic the likes of which few men could ever
hope to see. Come forward if you wish. Lay your hands on it. Feel its holy spirit wash over you and
inspire you. Even in this wretched state, desecrated by our enemies, robbed of its true glory, it still
exudes a power that surely embodies something of the Emperor Himself.”
On he went, talking of a glory that would never be forgotten. He believed every word that came
out of his mouth, and the strength of his conviction convinced many of the men who listened.
Caught up in the moment with all those eyes fixed on him, all those ears hanging on his every
word, General deViers didn’t hear the scrape of metal on metal.
He didn’t know anything was wrong until he felt hot, stinking breath on the back of his neck.
His blood ran cold as ice and he moved to turn, but it was a motion he never finished. The ork
warboss was barely alive, able to stand only by virtue of a central nervous system that had been
developed to work through indescribable levels of physical pain; that, and the all-consuming hatred
it felt for weak, pathetic humans.
It closed its remaining power claw around the general’s middle and, with the briefest twitch of
its fingers, cut the man in half.
Colonel Stromm of The Fighting 98th was in the front row, standing just a few metres in front of
the Baneblade’s hull. He was moving before the general’s upper body tumbled sideways from the
turret.
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“Kasrkin!” he yelled to his men as he tore his hellpistol from its holster. Together, he and his
storm troopers began blazing away at the giant swaying ork.
It shuddered as it was peppered with searing shots. Then it fell backwards again.
The firing stopped.
Magos Sennesdiar wasted no time. He surged forward, leaping onto the front of the Baneblade
with an agility that was totally at odds with his bulk. His adepts immediately climbed up after him.
As they hurried onto the top of the turret, Armadron said, <They may have damaged the fragment,
magos.>
<Or destroyed it completely,> said Xephous. <The fools.>
Sennesdiar was the first to reach the body of the ork. The creature was breathing no more. There,
around its tree-trunk neck, he saw a glimmer of green and gold.
The fragments he told his adepts. <It is intact. We have it at last>
