Steel Tread (Warhammer 40,000), page 10
‘Partial match for Lothor Six-Sixty-Four Armoured,’ Vaslav reported. ‘Vehicles are too… debased… for definite ident.’
‘Throne, that sound!’ gasped Captain Fynn.
Etsul heard it, even through the tank’s hull and the roar of their power plant: a cacophony of jarring notes at once atonal and weirdly melodic. It made her skin feel tight and hot. Saliva flooded her mouth, forcing her to breathe hard through her nose as she tried not to vomit. On the feeds, many Cadians had stopped firing and were staring slack-jawed, or else doubled over in puddles of vomit. Others fought on. Between the scant cover, the awful din and the return fire of the traitor tanks, though, their advance had stalled. Bodies strewed no-man’s-land where squads had attempted to bridge the gap.
‘Witchery,’ Etsul snarled. ‘Driver Trieve, your prayers please. All guns, focus fire on their turrets. Let’s do what we can to silence them.’
Trieve rolled them up behind the toppled wreck of a Sentinel combat walker. As he drove, he prayed in the strident peal of a born zealot.
‘Oh Emperor! See your faithful servants as they do battle in your name! See your faithful servants as they suffer, and as they bleed, and as they make offering of their pain unto your blessed being! Witness, oh Emperor, our sufferings and in them we beseech thee to see our piety, our purity, our resolve! Lend us but the merest portion of thy might, oh great God-Emperor, that though we might be all unworthy in our mortal flesh, still we might do thy work upon this mortal stage.’
As Trieve’s oratory filled the vox, Etsul’s gorge settled. She shook her head, feeling her thoughts clear. Evidently the driver’s prayers were steadying her crew, as their fire bit home into the foe. Bolt-shells ripped through silver horns. A lascannon beam punched through the turret of a mutated Leman Russ, killing its main gun in a belch of smoke. A Demolisher shell blew a chunk out of the barricade.
The foe maintained their own fusillade in return. Etsul hissed as a shell skipped off their hull. A second hit home with a deafening bang that caused the lumens to flicker. Demolisher shells rattled in their rack. Verro cursed wordlessly over the vox.
‘Damage report,’ barked Etsul.
‘Tank round to our mantlet,’ reported Vaslav. ‘Hit but didn’t breach. Emperor’s watching over us.’
‘How long for, though?’ breathed Etsul, scanning her screens urgently.
Her vox-bead chimed, the sound giving way to Askerov’s voice, warped by static.
‘Fourth Squadron, be advised, psykana operatives are warning of empyric build-up. Seems those corpse-piles might be more than just decorative flourishes after all. Eyes open for malfeasance.’
Etsul felt a chill at the words, but kept her attention on the troubles at hand.
Moretzin had halted halfway to the breech, bracing a shell in its sling. Now she rattled it forward and slammed it home, rapping her fist thrice against the hull. Steel Tread bucked as Vaslav took his shot and blew apart the turret on an enemy Russ. As the smoke cleared, the remaining enemy tanks were still there, still firing.
A squad of Cadians broke from cover and pelted out across no-man’s-land. A deformed turret wheeled towards them. Its Punisher cannon howled to life. Ten loyal soldiers of the Emperor were chopped into bloody meat before they’d made it a dozen paces.
Etsul ground her teeth. The bridge was in sight, but they couldn’t reach it. The heretics were dug in so well even a Demolisher cannon wasn’t going to dislodge them, while charging the barricade would just get them killed. Any moment the foe might outflank the loyalist position or push troops up through the macro-warehouse to catch them from behind.
‘Captain Fynn, we have to break their line,’ she voxed. ‘There’s a handful of them for Throne’s sakes.’
‘We’re doing all we… hnggg… all we can…’ panted the captain. ‘If you can’t…. can’t… dislodge them with that… guh… gun I don’t know… Suggestions are… hn… welcome.’
‘Options,’ Etsul snapped at her crew.
‘Call up support? Get a platoon into their flank?’ suggested Vaslav.
‘Rear line is half a mile behind us, and the Twenty-First and Twenty-Sixth are pinned down at the bridge,’ replied Etsul.
‘Massed charge, martyrdom or glory,’ suggested Trieve with unseemly eagerness.
‘No. Keep praying.’
‘Chuck a shell into that arch, hivequake ’em,’ said Chalenboor.
‘Best suggestion yet, if I understand you correctly, Chalenboor, but if we bring that arch down, we’re not getting through either. The Twenty-First and Twenty-Sixth are on their own,’ said Etsul. She thumped her fist against the hull in frustration.
‘Sir, could we use that?’ Verro brought up a targeting rune, drawing Etsul’s eye to a spot several hundred feet to the left of the enemy barricade. A stack of armoured containers had toppled against the wall and left a spiderweb of fractures. Daylight shone around naked lengths of structural rebar.
‘You’re suggesting we put a shot into that weak point and open a second route of egress on the enemy’s flank?’
‘Yes, sir. We hit the weak spot, blast a breach, then get through and hit them from the side before they can turn to address. We could kill a couple of their machines before they had us in their sights, and if the Cadians attack from the front at the same time…’
Etsul almost dismissed the idea out of hand. It was risky to the point of foolishness. What if they brought the wall down on themselves? What if they rolled out into the open and got blown to bits? What if there were enemies they couldn’t see, waiting behind that wall? Then she looked at the writhing Cadian soldiery, barely able to shoot straight.
‘Captain Fynn, permission to try something risky?’ she voxed.
‘Granted… Throne knows we… yes, anything,’ he replied. The wailing came through the vox and drove needles into Etsul’s ears.
‘Be ready to hit them with everything as soon as I give the word, sir.’
Etsul switched back to her crew channel and issued her orders.
‘Trieve, get us into position thirty feet from the weak spot. The moment you see a big enough gap, you ram through then wheel to address. Sergeant Vaslav, Loader Moretzin, our lives are in your hands. The moment we blast a breach, reload main gun and be ready to lay on enemy armour targets. Moretzin, can you get us reloaded that fast on the move?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Moretzin.
‘Sure, Moretzin? That’s a damned swift reload with a chain-sling.’
‘Yes, sir,’ repeated the loader. There was no additional inflection in her words. She might have been agreeing to wait in line at the commissary. There was nothing more to say.
Etsul sat in her command seat and waited, heart thumping, as Trieve pulled them back and skirted around the back of the container hillock. She felt trapped, as though regretting too late the decision to climb aboard a dangerous ride.
At last, they were in position. Etsul prayed silently. No doubt their retreat from the line had been marked. She just had to hope none of the heretics figured out what they were doing before they did it.
She took a long, slow breath and gripped a grab rail.
‘Main gun, fire.’
Steel Tread lurched with recoil.
The Demolisher shell hit home with a tremendous burst of light and sound, obscuring smoke spewing out in all directions from the impact.
Trieve gunned the engine and charged the breach on blind faith.
Shrapnel clanged from the hull. Smoke shrouded the vid-feeds. They plunged into it, still accelerating.
Moretzin’s sling rattled forward, suicidally fast. Etsul flinched at the thought of the shell slipping loose in the confines of the tank. At least it would be a quicker death than some. The loader got one hand to the wheel of the breech but didn’t spin it. Her augmetic arm locked in place, cradling the fat mass of the shell.
Steel Tread hit something with enough force to rock Etsul forward in her seat.
‘Throne!’ she hissed, and then they were through. Hazy daylight strobed the vid-feeds. The breech wheel spun and the shell rattled home.
Clang clang clang! The signal rapped against the hull.
On Etsul’s auspex she saw the hard returns of enemy armoured vehicles, within engagement range, flank-on. She felt Trieve haul Tread hard about, leaning on the surprising grace of the Leman Russ for all it was worth. They tilted. Etsul held her breath.
The turret rotated even as Moretzin ducked clear of the breech’s recoil.
‘All guns, fire!’ Fear and adrenaline made Etsul shout. ‘Captain Fynn, attack!’
Steel Tread let fly.
The dust was still clearing as the lascannon beam strobed through it, sparkling with particulates, stabbing into the flank of the enemy Punisher. The tank deformed from within as its power plant went up. Its top hatch rocketed skywards. Flames belched from its ruptured hull.
Vaslav’s Demolisher shot was nothing short of sublime. The shell skimmed mere inches over the sloped rear hull plates of the Punisher and slammed into the side of the next enemy tank along. The ferocious explosion tore the machine open and flipped it sideways. Something else beyond it exploded in turn with a satisfying whump.
‘Have some o’ that!’ howled Chalenboor.
‘Know the Emperor’s wrath!’ cried Trieve at the same time.
Something hit them from above like a sledgehammer.
‘Is that incoming fire?’ snapped Etsul. ‘Damage report someone!’
Another impact followed, then another. The lumens died then flickered back to life. Half the vid-feeds cut out. The rest filled with dust. The power plant gave a strangled roar then cut out too.
The silence was cavernous and awful.
‘What the bloody Throne was that?’ asked Vaslav. It took Etsul’s stunned mind a moment to process why he sounded wrong. In the ear-ringing quiet, she could hear her sergeant without the vox.
Verro peered hard at his remaining vid-feeds then hissed in frustration.
‘Rubble. Cadia’s blood, I think we dislodged one of those statues from its alcove. It’s come down right on top of us.’
‘Can we wriggle out, yeah?’ asked Chalenboor. Trieve gave a mirthless laugh.
‘The air-exchanger shrines are choked. Tread’s machine-spirit just got beaten over the head with a stone cudgel. How long shall she languish in her blessed sufferings?’
‘Check hatches and get me a damage report,’ barked Etsul. ‘How’s our motive force?’
‘Reserve battery casket is enlivened,’ replied Trieve. ‘Even locked in sublime agonies, the tank retains two hours’ motive force.’
‘Yeah, can’t open my hatch,’ called Chalenboor.
‘I’ve got mine a few inches open, but there’s a damned great chunk of rock in the way,’ said Verro, clanging metal against stone as though to prove it.
Etsul didn’t bother to correct the gunners’ lack of a ‘sir’. They had bigger fish on the line right now.
Etsul recognised her mind was wandering as shock tried to smother her. She fought the feeling, bit the inside of her cheek. Pain brought focus. Hoisting herself upward, she tried the top hatch but found it buckled slightly inward. The release ring wouldn’t turn all the way.
‘No go here,’ she reported.
‘Damage is light, considering,’ reported Vaslav. ‘We’ve lost some vid-feeds, and it looks like most of what we had lashed to the outer hull is a write-off. Armour’s held though, nothing we can’t beat out with a lump hammer.’
Throne alive, how tough is this tank? thought Etsul, grateful and amazed. Even a standard Russ might well have been crushed under that rubble fall. They were pinned, half buried and trapped, but by the Emperor they were alive.
Her relief faded as she checked her remaining feeds and saw a traitor tank lumbering around the burning wrecks of its comrades. Its lascannon swung their way. Its turret gun depressed, lining up a killing shot. Etsul clenched her teeth.
Explosions rocked the enemy machine and it yawed off course before shuddering to a halt. Cadian soldiers spilled past it, the Fifth Company Leman Russ leading them out of the macro-warehouse. Etsul breathed a sigh of relief, then vox-hailed the tank.
‘Hammers, this is Lieutenant Etsul of Steel Tread. Do you have time to haul us out of this trap?’ she voxed.
‘Sorry, Steel Tread,’ came the response, a man’s voice with a nasal accent. ‘This is Lieutenant Brogva of Lion Rampant. Captain Fynn’s ordered us forward to the bridge without delay. You already got your share of the glory! We’ll get this done, then be back to drag you clear.’
‘Don’t be too long about it, lieutenant, we’ve only got two hours of motive force,’ Etsul replied.
‘Watch us work, Tread. We’ll be with you in less than half that.’
‘Good hunting, and Throne’s sakes don’t forget we’re back here,’ said Etsul, and cut the connection.
Quiet descended upon them, congealing until it filled the tank. The plan had been foolhardy, its execution glorious. Somehow, thought Etsul, that only made the ignominy of its conclusion worse.
‘Perhaps it is the continual blasphemy and unworthiness of this crew that has brought us to this pass?’ opined Trieve, shattering the silence with the tact of a drunk at a funeral.
‘I’ve got a gun, yeah? I can actually shoot him,’ Chalenboor suggested.
‘Folly is the first resort of the fool,’ retorted Trieve.
‘Yeah, think we all know whose folly we’ve been stuck with, don’t we?’
‘Nix, shut up.’ This from Verro and Vaslav both at once.
‘Hold your nerve,’ Etsul said, trying to reassert control before she lost it entirely. ‘Shut your mouths and stand by your stations. Emperor’s vessel, are you Cadians or penal legionnaires? Attend the remaining vid-feeds. If we can do no more than watch as our comrades secure the bridge then we will do that much, and–’
‘Sir.’ Vaslav’s voice was a croak.
‘Sergeant?’ she snapped.
‘Front-right vid-feed, sir,’ he breathed. She looked, and felt fear grip her anew.
There was the bridge, all towering arches and fluttering banners over the fern-choked floodwaters of the canal. There were the Cadians, several platoons’ worth of soldiers advancing with banners flying and armoured vehicles in their midst. And there, barring their passage like a monster from the darkest Imperial scripture, was a towering bipedal war engine. Looming over the loyalist soldiery, the engine boasted a hunched and armoured carapace, jutting exhaust stacks, tattered pennants and a telltale tilting shield emblazoned with an obscene device.
A Heretic Knight.
Etsul had only ever seen such super-heavy walkers once before, advancing into the breach during the siege of Jaegoh. Those had been distant, a trio of loyalist war engines with fluttering pennants and silver-and-blue panoply. Even at a great remove, and knowing they were on her side, the size and fury of the Knights had scared her as much as it inspired.
This machine was infinitely worse.
It might have stood fifty feet tall, had it raised itself to its full height. Instead, it stooped forward like a beast. Its armour was pearlescent white edged with shimmering silver. This only served to highlight the wet muscle and exposed tendons stretched across its spiked hull. Where its arms should have supported cannons or blades, they instead tapered to gleaming metal points, like impossibly huge needles. Its feet were the same, their points driven into the ground so that it balanced on them in a way that didn’t look possible for something so big.
The armoured plates of the Knight’s helm were splayed open, each hauled painfully back by lengths of hooked chain. They exposed a wet mass of flesh and eyes, drooling maws and shuddering cilia. It took Etsul a moment to realise she was emitting a low moan of horror.
The traitor Knight swung a dreadful pin-limb in a scything arc. Cadian soldiers were torn apart at its passing. A Chimera flipped off the side of the bridge trailing flame. The thing threw back its head and screamed, and it took everything Etsul had not to slip from her seat and cower.
It waded into the Cadians. Blood and bodies fountained. Weapons fire flashed from a shield of lurid green energy that shimmered about it. The Knight stamped and stabbed, now tottering on two spear-feet, now falling forward to skitter on all four blade-points. Each time it ripped one of its limbs skyward again, trails of gore spattered in its wake.
‘What is it?’ Chalenboor’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it was enough to drag Etsul from her reverie. She fumbled, hit the vox-rune on the third try, tore her eyes from the vid-feed.
‘First Lieutenant Askerov… anyone who can hear this… there is a super-heavy enemy asset engaging on Seryph Bridge. It’s a Knight, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. First Lieutenant Askerov, First Lieutenant Aswold, Captain Brezyk, anyone… please acknowledge.’
‘Throne, now what?’
Etsul forced her eyes back to the feed, not liking the fear in Verro’s voice. The Knight had waded deep into the Imperial lines, but the Cadians were fighting back with the desperation of cornered prey. Beyond them, rolling up the line of the canal from deeper in the Costmarus sprawl came a thick bank of mauve fog. It moved fast, swallowing up the ruined buildings, smothering everything.
‘It’s travelling against the wind,’ said Vaslav.
The fog rolled over the battle on the bridge and surged hungrily up the banks towards Steel Tread.
When the vox squawked, everyone in the tank jumped.
‘Hammer blow, repeat, hammer blow,’ barked First Lieutenant Askerov. ‘Visual confirmation of Baraghor in sector seven-five-three. Repeat, visual on primary. Be advised, Geskans report the target is Heretic Astartes, and is engaged in some manner of heathen ritual. We’ve got a crimson-class maledictum warning from the psykana. Maintain your prayers!’
