Fall of Macharius

Chapter Twenty-Four

And it was cold. Loki had always been cold, wet and cheerless but this was something else. The effect of the moon-strike had dropped the temperature significantly. The dust cloud covering the sky and blocking out all sunlight had changed something. This was the sort of cold that brought snow and blizzards in other worlds. My breath came out in clouds. At least there was a source of heat behind me. The Baneblade had caught fire.

Macharius had pulled himself up through the top of the turret and had turned to aid Drake. The two of them jumped clear. One of Drake’s bodyguards leapt behind him. Anton and Ivan joined me.

‘Get clear,’ I shouted. ‘The thing’s going to brew.’

I did not have to tell anybody twice. I turned and fled over broken ground. The strain of running warmed me against the chill. There was a crawling sensation between my shoulder blades. I was free of the burning tank but I had found something else to be afraid of. The tank might explode or it might not. In any case it was a beacon for incoming fire and the enemy had already proven it had weapons powerful enough to take out a Baneblade. To make matters worse I was running towards a firestorm of explosives. I had bailed out on the side facing the fire zone of the big turrets. They were tearing up the earth ahead with huge explosions.

I dived flat behind a boulder and moments later I was joined by Ivan and Anton. Anton still clutched his sniper rifle in his left hand. He had paused in the middle of bailing out to grab it and had somehow managed to get it through the escape hatch. There was dedication. Or idiocy. Most likely the latter.

‘You showed a clean pair of heels,’ Anton said. ‘Looked like you were trying for the regimental running championships. I’ve never seen anybody flee so fast. I thought there was a dust cloud rising behind you.’

‘You seemed to have kept up,’ I said.

‘Never fancied going up in a brewed-up tank,’ Anton said.

A huge explosion rocked the dark from off to our left. It was not a shell from one of the turrets. Ivan stood up, his lanky form casting a long shadow in the light of its burning.

‘Yep, there she goes,’ he bellowed.

‘Get down, idiot boy,’ I said.

Shrapnel clattered off the rock.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘They are not shooting at me.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but those guys might start.’

Moving downslope was a mass of heretic infantrymen. They had bayonets attached to their lasguns and they looked anything but friendly.

‘Good point,’ Anton said. He brought the rifle up to his shoulder, aimed through the sight, snapped off a shot and dropped back into cover all before I could tell him not to. We were isolated on the slopes of Richter’s citadel with no help in sight and facing off against a regiment of heretics and, of course, he had to draw their attention to us.

‘You had to draw their attention to us, didn’t you?’ I said.

He showed me his idiot grin. ‘Suppressor on the sniper rifle makes it difficult to see, and if they could hear me shooting over this racket they have better hearing than an Anatarean devilhound.’

Something about his confidence made me smile. ‘Sometimes I suspect you might not be as stupid as I thought.’

‘I am touched,’ he said.

‘Sometimes I think you are even stupider.’ He nodded, stood up and took another shot then another and then another. I stood up and risked a glance. In the flickering darkness, at range and without a sniper-scope, it was difficult to see what he was shooting at. It was not difficult to see the enemy though.

A horde of them was out there, thousands upon thousands, armed with every form of man-portable weapon I could think of. They moved to the beat of great solemn drums, with the mindless collective will of insects swarming to defend their hive. I thought of the walking dead we had fought and the truth is I could not see much difference between them and these living soldiers. The heretics might still be breathing but they seemed just as mindless and just as insanely brave.

Of course, that is not necessarily an advantage on the field of battle. There is a time for bravery as there is a time for turning tail and fleeing. The heretics were moving into position to face a battle-line of Leman Russ battle tanks. The tanks’ weapons blazed and cut them down.

‘This is madness,’ Ivan shouted. I thought about it for a second. He was right. Even if the heretics had just a small hope of taking out a Leman Russ, it did not stop some of them advancing and trying to use grenades. ‘They don’t have a chance.’

From above us, the enemy field artillery kept shooting and I realised what was going on. ‘They’re not meant to have a chance. Richter, or whoever is in command here, does not need to keep them alive. They are a distraction. They’re there to keep our lads’ attention focused on killing them while the enemy artillery does its job.’

‘A masterly summation, Lemuel,’ said Macharius. He and Drake and a group of Drake’s bodyguards dropped into the shell-holes around us. How had the inquisitor summoned them, I wondered? They must have been close by, to have found us in the chaos.

‘Surely you can order our tanks to return fire.’

‘I have,’ said Macharius, ‘but if they do that the infantry will swarm over them. In their numbers, with grenades and melta bombs, they will inflict heavy casualties.’

He was right and there was something he was not saying, which was that no matter how well disciplined a tank crew might be, they were not going to ignore an immediate threat to their own safety in order to concentrate on those distant batteries. Whoever had ordered this suicide attack had known what he was doing. ‘What are we going to do then?’ Drake asked.

‘Whatever we can,’ said Macharius. ‘But our first order of priority must be to silence those guns.’

All around us artillery spoke in voices of thunder and tanks replied by spitting spears of fire. The earth shook. The cold air swirled. The chanting of the heretics throbbed. Macharius continued to speak into the comm-net. I saw figures begin to converge out of the gloom. They wore the green of the Lion Guard, but their uniforms were torn and bloodied. Many of them had been wounded, but they were prepared to fight alongside their commander. If we were lucky there was perhaps a company of us. The Emperor alone knew how many men waited for us up at those gun emplacements.

That was at the moment though. I felt sure we were going to find out.

Macharius gave it five minutes for the crews of the destroyed tanks to converge on our position along with infantry from the brewed-up Chimeras. They came out of the shadows in twos and threes, moving cautiously along the ground, using every scrap of cover. Their caution was warranted. The enemy had other things to do, but if they had noticed those stragglers they would have taken the few seconds required to wipe them from the face of the planet.

We assembled on the edge of a blast crater, and Macharius spoke. His voice carried over the cacophony of the battlefield, clear, precise and thrilling. ‘Our comrades are pinned down and under assault by the foul heretics on the hill,’ he said. ‘We are going to do something about that and then we are going to enter that hive and put an end to this war once and for all.’

His voice held no doubts, only absolute certainty of victory, and I could tell from the faces of the men around me that they all believed him. No matter what doubts they might have had back on Acheron, they had none here. They could not afford to have them. They were under fire and facing superior numbers. They needed to have faith in the man leading them if they were going to come through.

‘We are going to wipe out those heretics in the name of the Emperor, and we are going to cleanse this world of all evil.’ He made it sound so easy. We were just going to march up there and settle the matter. No matter that we were outnumbered ten thousand to one.

‘You are all chosen men – picked by me, selected for your courage and your skill in soldiering. Those deranged madmen up there are no match for true soldiers of the Imperium. And we are going to show them that.’

And we were. All of the men stood taller, breathed more deeply, held their weapons ready to fight. Macharius continued giving out orders and we listened and made ready to obey.

When he gave the command we moved out.

Macharius had read the battlefield as if it were a map. Our route along the flanks of the rising ridgelines kept us away from the bulk of the enemy horde and out of line of sight of the guns. Even if we had been noticed, we would not have seemed like much of a threat to the heretics. They were concentrating all of their attention on the Leman Russ below us. Most of the tanks had withdrawn to use what cover the ridgelines provided. Their lack of mobility would soon leave them easy targets for the oncoming infantry. At close range, grenades could smash the drive-cogs of the tanks. Filter covers could be wrenched away and explosives dropped down the pipes. At very close range a tank without infantry support becomes extremely vulnerable.

As we clambered up the hillside I paused for a moment to look back. Below us the great green and brown stain of the enemy infantry raced downhill. A number of Leman Russ tanks hull down on the broken ridges of the hive’s side blazed away at them. Huge towers of rockcrete dust erupted around the tanks as a human wave of screaming diseased bodies threw themselves forward to die beneath their tracks. Above us, the artillery blazed away from their emplacements.

Macharius led us, crouched low, moving forward and upward with no sign of fatigue. His bolt pistol was in one hand, his chainsword in the other. The ground was broken and churned, the light uncertain, the footing dangerous and yet he picked his way forward with absolute sureness. I advanced as fast as I could to catch up with him and Drake. It was my duty to be there and defend him and to do that I needed to be close.

Anton and Ivan followed in my wake, scuttling along on hands and knees, moving ape-like through the darkness, keeping out of sight. We progressed up the side of the hive, moving from cover to cover, from extruded ventilation tower to impact crater, moving sometimes through fissures and sometimes in the shadow of great leaking sump pipes.

Beneath me the ground shook, and not just from the impact of the shells. It was like being an insect scuttling over the skin of some great beast and feeling the beat of the heart and the rasp of breathing beneath. The hive citadel was still functioning. Systems down there still worked. Sweat stained my tunic. Condensation had begun to form within my rebreather mask – I could feel it running down my cheeks. My lips tasted salty when I licked them.

Guns were firing somewhere off to our left. At first I thought Macharius had misjudged our path as he led us ever higher but then I realised it was not so. He was moving us into a position where we could get to the batteries’ defenders and, hopefully, take them by surprise. We were going to need to do that. It was just about the only advantage we would have.

Macharius stopped. He crouched in the shadow of an industrial pipe, looking down upon the gun batteries below us. He studied them carefully, head tilted to one side as he tried to gauge the weaknesses of the enemy position. It took him only a few heartbeats, then he extended a finger.

‘Lemuel, take those dozen men and attack that gun when you see the signal flare.’ His hand indicated Anton and Ivan and a group of other green uniformed troops. All told there could not have been more than a hundred men with us and we were attacking ten times our number. Macharius never let little things like that stop him, though. His eyes narrowed. ‘Destroy as many other guns as you like but leave that one intact.’ His fingers stabbed out indicating the one second-nearest to our position.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. The others nodded. He gave instructions to the rest of the men and his plan was clear, we would attack the flank of the enemy position closest to us and destroy as much as we could. It would certainly disrupt the battery’s fire on the Leman Russ below but it would probably not do much for our health. That was hardly an objection though. We were doomed unless our tanks broke through and overran the position. The enemy would simply destroy them and at some point they were bound to notice we were here.

Once the orders were given, I looked at my men and gave the signal to move out. We scuttled downslope and headed towards the enemy.

It was dark. The only real illumination came from the muzzle flare of the enemy guns and the huge explosions caused by the turrets above us. They kept firing regardless of the fact that there were no real targets for them to hit. Most of our surviving tanks were in their blind spots. Those that weren’t had not survived. In any case, they did not seem to be suffering from any shortage of ammunition.

The slope was cold and slippery. Some of the rocks were razor-edged. There were trenches and furrows left from the moonfall impact that were invisible until you were almost on top of them. They were only intermittently visible in the flash and glare of the guns and you needed to remember where they were in the periods of darkness as you advanced.

To make matters worse, our own boys were not exactly inactive. The Leman Russ kept up a hail of punishing fire on the heretics. Some of their shells went astray and arced down near our position.

‘It would be just my luck to live through a brew-up and be killed by a shell fired by my own side,’ said Anton. His voice cut through a sudden silence on the battlefield.

‘Some of those boys down there know you’re up here,’ said Ivan. ‘They’re not aiming at the guns at all.’

‘Ha-bloody-ha.’

‘Quiet, idiots,’ I said, making a chopping gesture with my hands.

‘Yeah, because they are going to hear us from down there while they are deafened by their own gunfire.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but they might hear us when we get closer. Anton – find a place where you can cover us. The rest of us are going in. We need to be able to rush the place when we get the signal.’

‘I get the boring job again. It’s not fair.’

‘The Emperor help us all, I am relying on you to give us cover.’

I could tell he was grinning by the way the scar writhed across his forehead.

‘So it’s come to this,’ grumbled Ivan. ‘We are dependent on Anton. We’re doomed.’

The flare rose over the enemy position, lighting everything up in its brilliant glow.

‘Move!’ I said.

We raced downslope, keeping to cover. Ahead a few of the heretics were staring up at the flare, wondering what was going on. Most of them were concentrating on shooting. Gunners stared into sights, fiddled with loading mechanisms, muttered technical prayers over their weapons.

None of them had thought to look behind them and I prayed to the Emperor that none of them decided to do so now. I glanced off along the ridgeline. There were a score of guns there along with their crews. There did not seem to be anybody else. All of the heretics who could be spared were below us, charging under the tracks of our armour.

I charged forward, shotgun at the ready, followed by Ivan and the rest of my improvised squad. No one paid any attention. No one expected such an attack and certainly not by such a tiny group of men. We had almost reached the enemy gun when someone looked up. He did not pay any attention to us at first, probably assuming that we were heretics like himself, but then he did a double take. It was the last thing he did before I turned his head into bloody mush and removed it from his shoulders.

I pumped the action of my weapon and readied another shot. Anton opened fire and one of the enemy gunners slumped forward over the side of the weapon. His companion turned and said something to him, then pushed him, shaking him by the shoulder as you would a companion who has fallen suddenly asleep, then he noticed the blood on his hand…

Anton’s next shot took him in the head and send him tumbling backwards. Most of his companions continued to fire but one or two of them had noticed something was wrong. An officer turned to glare at us and reached for his sidearm. I pulled the trigger and he collapsed in a welter of blood and entrails.

The rest of my squad opened up and more of the enemy went down. Then we were among them, carried by the momentum of our rush and our enthusiasm for killing. It might have been my imagination but I thought I heard the sound of more shots being fired in the distance. It was difficult to tell over the roar of the guns and the thunder of battle.

A man jumped at me, screaming, aiming a heavy metal power tool at my head. As he did so, another heretic raced towards me, raising an autogun.

I sprang to one side and aimed the shotgun as I fell. Autogun fire chewed up the ground where I was standing. The jumper, worse luck, landed on the far side of the trace of fire and came towards me.

I aimed the shotgun at the man with the rifle and pulled the trigger. The weapon kicked against my shoulder. The shooter fell, his legs cut off at the knees. He screamed and let go of his gun. I twisted, pumping the shotgun as the man with the huge spanner swung it down, intending to shatter my skull.

I wasn’t fast enough. Even as I swivelled the shotgun to bear on him, the power tool had begun its downward arc. I tried to twist myself to one side but slipped in the blood and dust.

My attacker’s head exploded, covering me in brains and body fluids. It happened as if by magic and I wondered for a moment whether Drake had used his psyker powers. Then the same thing happened to another member of the gun-crew who was drawing a bead on Ivan with his sidearm and I realised that my saviour had been Anton.

On his own he seemed to be doing as much damage as the rest of us. I realised that in our own way, on a smaller scale, we were doing what those heretic fanatics down in the valley were doing, providing a distraction while a distant lethal attacker wiped out the people fighting against us.

Bodies fell and we surged up to the gun. Even as we did so, a line of blazing fire cut in front of us. An enemy Hydra, deeper in the position, went up in a ball of hellfire. I glanced over at the gun on the extreme left of the battery and it had wheeled on its mount and was firing across the emplacement and into the other heretic guns. Macharius had seized the first gun and turned it on our enemies. I could see him standing on its side, partially covered by its armoured shield, directing fire deeper into the enemy position.

I laughed and ordered my men to get behind the controls of the weapon we had seized. Soon it too had been turned on the enemy position. It was part of Macharius’s plan that we would not be discovered too soon. The enemy were concentrating their fire on the Leman Russ below and any of their own weapons that went up would be taken as victims of the tank’s response, at least to begin with.

Our captured gun roared as we joined in, sending bursts of armour-piercing shells tearing through the enemy position. In the rage and confusion of battle, we managed to take out all of the enemy guns in our line of sight before anyone noticed us. There were still guns firing at our troops down below but they were out of sight, hidden from us by the curve and roughness of the ridgeline.

A moment later, Macharius came racing up with the rest of his bodyguard. ‘Very good, Lemuel,’ he said. ‘Now we must repeat this at the other side of the emplacement.’

‘Nothing is ever easy,’ muttered Ivan from my side. Anton came loping down from the hillside to join us. He had a satisfied air about him, that of a man with a job well done.

‘I got twelve of them,’ he said as he reached my side.

‘Only a few million more and we’re done then,’ I said. He nodded pleasantly, as if he had no doubt in his ability to kill that many and it was just another day at work. It was all right for him, I thought sourly. He did not have to get into close combat with these heretic frakkers.

‘Soonest done, soonest we get some beer,’ he said.

‘And where the hell are we going to get beer in this forsaken place?’ I asked.

‘Maybe the heretics will have some,’ Anton said, ever hopeful.