Fall of Macharius

Chapter Twenty-Five

We moved along the ridgeline, skipping from the tangled remains of one destroyed enemy gun to the next, using them for cover, killing any of the enemy wounded we encountered. As we rounded the bend, we saw more enemy guns emerging from an arch in the hive side as well as more infantrymen. An unending stream of heretics seemed to be coming from that gate.

I took a deep breath. There was no way we could fight our way through so many of them and no way that they could fail to notice us once our attack began. There were thousands of the enemy pouring out from underground. I realised that even if we had killed ninety-five per cent of the population with the moonfall there were still millions of enemy below us. Not all of them would be soldiers but even if it was one in a hundred we were still colossally outnumbered.

I turned to Macharius for guidance. ‘Sir?’ I said.

‘Take the nearest guns,’ he said. ‘Turn them on the gate. Close it.’

All hope left me. Even if we closed the gate there were still thousands of the foes out there on the ridgeline, more than enough to put paid to our small force. All we could do was lay down our lives so that our comrades would live. Our own were already over.

‘Right you are, sir,’ I said.

The one good thing about being such a small force was that nobody noticed us at first. I doubted I would have if our positions had been reversed. I mean it was madness for fewer than a hundred men to attack an enemy with fifty times their number.

Of course, we had some advantages. Most of the enemy ordinance was pointed at ninety degrees to us, firing down into the huge battle going on below, and that’s where most of the enemy attention was going as well.

I saw officers ordering their men to the front line. They were moving in columns through gaps in the ridgeline, heading down into the battle below, an endless line of human sacrifices offered up to the hungry gods of war, by a High Command who did not care whether they lived or died. I felt a sudden flash of sympathy for them that I quickly quashed. That was no attitude to enter a battle with.

Macharius looked up at the sky as if he expected to see something, glanced at the chrono on his wrist and then gestured for us to begin the attack.

We advanced taking advantage of every patch of shadow, every scrap of cover. We did not want that vast army of enemy faces turning in our direction until the absolute last second.

Anton took up position amid the smashed remains of one gun, lying along its twisted barrel, allowing himself to peek out over the top and set his rifle. Anyone looking at him in the bad light would most likely see only wreckage. They would have to be looking directly at his rifle to see the muzzle flash as well, and if they were looking at it that way they were most likely dead anyway. It was a nice choice for a sniper’s nest and it meant that Anton would most likely outlive the rest of us by a couple of minutes. Until he ran out of ammunition. Even if he wasn’t spotted he would be a lone Imperial soldier on a battlefield surrounded by heretics, in sub-zero conditions, on a world where plague was all too common.

I dismissed that thought. It was pointless worrying about Anton. I had my own skin to think about and Ivan’s and Macharius’s.

The Lord High Commander loped forward like a great stalking cat. In the thunder of battle he did not need to creep silently but I knew he was doing so. He moved as if there were every chance of an alerted enemy sentry overhearing him and still managed to outpace the rest of us.

Next to him was Drake. The inquisitor glided forward over the ground, as if his feet did not quite touch the ground, and when I looked I could see no prints in the dust. His cloak fluttered around him, his shadow performed a sinister dance behind him in the flickering, multi-sourced light. His ten remaining bodyguards moved along in his wake, silent as ever. Some ancient techno-magic had darkened the mirrored face-guards of their helmets so they would not give away their positions. They held their weapons ready to use at any moment.

I wondered if they were still the same guards that had followed Drake back on Karsk, back at the start of our adventures with Macharius. I had never really spoken more than a few words to any of them, never seen them off guard, and never got to know them. I thought perhaps the movements of some were familiar, but that might just be the product of similar training. I was most likely going to die without ever knowing them.

Ivan moved along beside me, keeping Macharius in sight. All of his attention was focused on the Lord High Commander. He was ready to throw himself forward and take a bullet for the man if needed. Even with all my doubts, I was prepared to do the same. It takes a lot to alter the habits of a lifetime.

We had almost reached the first enemy gun. A column of troops moved past it on the far side, still heading for the battlefield. Macharius’s mouth moved and I could see he was still talking into the comm-net, giving orders, keeping commanders’ morale up, doing whatever needed to be done. I prayed to the Emperor that the comm-grid remained functional enough for those on the receiving end of his commands to follow instructions.

Maybe they were. A sudden hail of detonations exploded around the near ridgeline, sending the enemy ducking for cover. Macharius gave the signal for Ivan and me to move forward to the nearest gun. I hooked the shotgun over my shoulder and drew a knife. I was going to try to do this without drawing attention to myself. To my surprise four of Drake’s bodyguards moved with us, blackened wires held in their outstretched hands. Garrottes, I realised.

We scooted forward, holding ourselves low, keeping the bulk of the gun between the enemy column and ourselves. The gunners on the back of the chassis loaded as an officer gave them instructions. They were brave men or uncaring. They somehow managed to ignore the hail of fire raining down near their position as if confident that it would not touch them.

They had faith in their own way, I supposed, and it was, in a strange fashion, justified. They were not going to be hit, save by accident, because Macharius had ordered it so. Of course that did not mean a stray shot could not hit them. I had been on enough battlefields to know that nothing ever goes completely according to plan.

Not waiting to take any more chances I raced forward to the side of the vehicle. It was in firing position, with great armoured legs extruded from its sides to hold it in position despite any recoil. I ran into its shadow, alongside the tracks. I pressed my back against them and waited for Ivan and the others to catch up with me.

There was something at once reassuring and unsettling being so close to the great armoured fighting vehicle. Reassuring because of the metallic smell and the strange incense of the engine emissions, because the vibration of the internal power systems reminded me of other vehicles I had ridden in. Unsettling because there was a strangeness to the scent, an odour of rot and corruption, the like of which I had never quite smelt before. It was as if the metal of the gun itself held some sort of disease. I wondered if that was even possible.

I grabbed my bayonet in my teeth, reached up and caught the top of the track, below the armoured mudguards. I pulled myself up, feet resting on the bolts holding the great drive wheels that powered the tracks when the vehicle was in motion, and I swarmed over the side. Just ahead of me was an officer. I stepped forward, threw an arm over his throat, pulled his head back and stabbed with my knife.

A moment later Ivan and the others were over the sides. Ivan dived on the nearest crewman and the storm troopers leapt forward like shadows, looping their garrottes around the necks of their targets. The officer died beneath my hand, kicking out in frantic agony, his bowels voiding, urine and blood soaking the legs of his tunic. I let him fall and I moved over to the open hatch on top of the gun. I dropped in through it, into the dimly lit interior of the modified Hydra.

In a way it was like coming home. Ever since basic training I have felt comfortable within the hull of an armoured fighting vehicle. I like having metal walls around me, shutting me out from all of the dangers of a battlefield, or at least minimising them.

I had never driven anything quite like this modified Hydra. The fact that it had been manufactured by heretics made it even less familiar. Nonetheless most vehicles of human construction share some common design elements, the ancient templates from which they are worked make it so. Almost invariably the drivers’ sections are at the front of the vehicle so that they can get a clear view of where they are going.

I moved forward in a fighting crouch, knife at the ready. The body of the tank cut off much of the sound of battle. It seemed almost quiet after the hellish clamour outside. I could hear the voices of the heretics up front as they talked to each other in their wheezy, guttural tongue. I heard one man cough, and it was as if a great mass of phlegm moved around within his chest as he did so.

I had no idea what they were saying and no desire to find out. Even as that thought crossed my mind, one of them started to gabble at the other. Perhaps his companion had insulted him or perhaps he was excited by the carnage all around him. It seemed much more likely to me that he had just found out something was going on around him, as if he had received a message about the attack on the gun above.

I stuck my head around the corner and saw what I expected. Two men sat together in the traditional drivers’ bucket seats. Before them was a command altar with the standard controls one would expect on a vehicle like this. The one who I assumed to be the driver looked up as I came in and reached for his sidearm. I stepped back, angled the shotgun around the corner, pulled the trigger and stepped away.

The roar of the gun was deafeningly loud within the close confines of the tank’s interior. Even so I could hear the screams. The pellets of the shotgun blast ricocheted within the cockpit like thousands of small angry metal wasps, bouncing off the metal surfaces until they came to rest in something soft and massive enough to stop them or until they lost all momentum.

I had chosen to fire at an angle that reduced the chances of the pellets flying back to hit me. Even so some of them did. It was difficult to imagine the convoluted course they must have followed, but if you fire enough of something, dumb luck dictates you have a chance of hitting anything, including yourself, even when you are standing around a corner. I took a pellet in my hand. It drew blood. Another gashed my cheek. Another tore a strip from my leg. None of the wounds were serious. I waited for a second and risked a glance around the corner again.

I put my head lower this time so that if the driver was aiming for where I had been it would take him a fraction of a second to alter his aim. I need not have bothered. The two heretics were a mess. One of them had lost an eye and his face was covered in blood. So was his neck, as the flesh had been torn and an artery had been hit. Blood pumped between the fingers he was using to try to hold the wound closed. It was not going to do him much good – he would bleed out in a minute at most.

His companion looked worse. He was clutching his stomach. It had been perforated in a hundred places. He too was splattered in blood, his own and his companion’s. He had absorbed most of the blast. His sidearm lay on the cockpit floor. His mouth was open and blood ran from it. The shots had smashed his teeth in a score of places. One of them had buried itself in a molar and glittered at me.

I was not going to risk another blast at close range in this tightly enclosed space. The cockpit was too small to risk it. Instead I stepped forward and slammed the butt of the shotgun into the driver’s face. Bones snapped, and so did his neck. He had been strapped into his chair and braced and the force of my strike pushed his head back at an unnatural angle.

His companion said something in a terrified, pain-filled voice. I felt something like guilt and that made me hit him all the harder, smashing his skull until it was little more than jelly.

When I was sure they were both dead, I pulled the driver from his chair. There was no time to wipe it clean of blood or other stuff. It squelched as I sat down. The place smelt like the inside of an abattoir but all the time there was that strange, sickly sweet, mould-like smell I had come to associate with the battlefields of Loki.

I wiped the blood off the driver’s periscope with the sleeve of my tunic. The seat of my trousers felt wet and I knew it was because of the blood there. My boots squelched when I moved my feet on the control pedals. I made a few invocations experimentally as my hands danced over the controls. The Hydra still followed the patterns of the old rituals and the vehicle roared to life beneath my hands. I glanced into the periscope and studied the battlefield.

The enemy troops flowed past us, heading down into the battlefield. They had not yet realised that the tank was under enemy control. Hopefully they would not for a few seconds yet. A shudder on the ceiling above me told me that the turret had started to traverse. I had no idea what it was aiming for. All I could hope was that Ivan had managed to take over the controls. He had always been a better than competent gunner.

The thought struck me that even if Ivan was not in charge of the guns there was still something I could do, even if it cost me my life. I hit the controls, heard the engines roar to life and got the great vehicle into gear.

I won’t say that driving the heretic Hydra was exactly like driving an Imperial vehicle but it was close enough. The basic principles of guiding a tank or anything else with tracks remain the same no matter what it is you are in. If you put forward power on both treads you go forwards. If you put both treads into reverse, you go backwards. If you put one tread into forward gear and the other into reverse you rotate. That’s what I did now. When I heard a grinding sound from the sides of the tank I realised I had forgotten to retract the stabilisers.

Gibbering, wheezing noises came from the comm-net. There was an angry, interrogative sound to them. Given their volume and the fact they were coming from the ear bead of the nearest corpse I could only assume that someone was asking me what I was doing. I kept my attention focused on the periscope even as I fumbled for the controls that would retract the stabilisers. I did not want anything to slow us down once we started to move.

Pistons hissed and there was a clanging sound from the sides and rear of the tank as the stabilisers retracted. I had guessed correctly. In the periscope I saw the faces of a few heretic soldiers turn to look at me. Most of them kept marching with the strange, drugged discipline that had been so common in the trenches.

I fed full power into both tracks and the tank raced forward, almost leaping from the pit in which it had been hull down. I prayed to the Emperor that one of the Leman Russ down there did not choose this exact moment to aim an accurate shot at us. My heart was in my mouth until the Hydra was on the other side of the slope heading right down into the marching army emerging from the hive side.

I saw eyes open wide in panic and men turn to scramble away as they realised what was happening. Only a few had and as they turned they barged into their annoyed companions and were tripped and fouled, their flight impeded by all the marching men around them. By then I had the tank in their line. It bumped and juddered. Faint gurgling screams came from outside.

I had seen enough men run over by tanks to be able to picture the results of my driving in my mind’s eye. I was leaving bloody smears and jellied bones on the rocky surface of the hive.

An officer held up his hand palm outward in the universal gesture that means stop. Perhaps he thought that the Hydra’s driver had just made a mistake, taken a wrong turn, and needed someone to tell him what to do. I ran him over along with the company behind him that was already turning and starting to flee.

The chaos increased as they ran into the men behind them who had not yet realised what was happening. I fed the engines more power, trying to move as far and fast as possible and kill as many of the heretics as I could before order was restored, but they realised what was happening and someone set up an anti-tank weapon.

The tank left a trail of mangled flesh in its wake. The gun above me barked, sending a high-powered shell smashing into the top of the gateway through which the enemy marched. The rockcrete above the entrance cracked. A huge piece of statuary dropped, crushing the men below it, partially blocking the way through, disrupting the smooth flow of enemy soldiers emerging to do battle. It looked like Ivan had taken control of the Hydra’s primary armament.

The gun fired again and once more the shot smashed into the arch of the gateway. To any outside observer it looked as if the gun was being fired wildly but I knew better. At least I hoped I did. The third shot convinced me that the gunner knew his business. The arch finally cracked and sent tens of tons of stonework dropping onto the soldiers below, sealing the exit from the hive until heavy equipment could be brought up to clear it. At least the murderous army below us on the slope would be getting no reinforcements. That only left the thousands of them already on the surface to deal with.

I threw the Hydra into reverse and increased the speed as I brought it round in a great arc, feeding slightly more power to the left track than the right. It was a simple evasive manoeuvre, intended to make it more difficult for anyone to draw a bead on us. I realised that less than a minute had passed and that the enemy were still struggling to understand what was going on. That would not last – even if they were still assuming it was incompetence or madness that was responsible for our actions, there was going to be a response soon. In the meantime…

I sent the Hydra forward again, crushing more heretics. The gun above me spoke in a voice of thunder. One of the enemy guns along the ridgeline went up in a pillar of fire and smoke.

‘Well done, Lemuel,’ Macharius’s voice said over the comm-net ear bead. ‘You somewhat exceeded your orders, but good thinking.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

‘Keep them busy for another two minutes and thirty seconds. Help is on its way.’

I wondered what he meant by that. It did not seem possible that the Leman Russ had made so much progress against the enemy below us. I knew the tanks could not cover so much ground in so short a time. Perhaps he was only talking to keep morale up but that was not like Macharius. Perhaps he knew something that we did not.

I heard another gun opening up from behind us and saw another of the enemy weapons go up. It looked like Macharius’s other bodyguards had captured a second mobile gun.

Of course, now that meant there were two of us facing off against the enemy. I hoped doubling our firepower was not the full extent of Macharius’s plan.