Our return fire swept them from the wall. Some were cut in half. Others had their heads blown apart. The lucky few managed to duck down behind the plascrete and get out of sight.
I heard the lieutenant report that we were in. More vehicles were moving into position behind us and more Chimera-mounted troops were being diverted our way to take advantage of this sudden gap in the defences.
Following the lieutenant’s orders I drove a few hundred metres down the street and brought us to a halt at an intersection where we could block the way and keep the heretics from retaking the gate. I felt as if it was only a matter of time before someone realised what was going on and began to make the effort.
‘That was fortunate,’ I heard the lieutenant say. There was a certain understandable satisfaction in his voice. It had been lucky but there still needed to be someone who understood the opportunity and took advantage of it on the spot and he had been the man. There would be decorations in it for him and most likely a promotion. I did not grudge him it. He was a better commander and a better man by far than many officers in the regiment.
The Understudy could hardly disagree. ‘You are correct, sir.’
‘Now all we have to do is make sure the enemy don’t retake the gate and try not to get killed while we are doing so,’ said the lieutenant. ‘What do you think, Private Lemuel?’
His voice was calm but I could tell he was in a good mood from the fact he had chosen to talk to me at such a crucial moment.
‘I think that’s a good idea, sir,’ I said. ‘If we can hold on for an hour or so, we’ll take the city for sure.’
‘We were always going to take the city, private,’ he said. ‘This has just made it a little quicker, that’s all.’
I nodded so he could see the back of my head going up and down. Speaking again would be leaving a hostage to fortune. Looking at the tactical map I could see our forces were rushing ever closer.
Darkness was starting to fall as we rumbled through the outskirts of Irongrad, crushing parked groundcars beneath our treads. Our way was lit by the glow of giant flames of industrial gases vented from the sides of the factorum towers. In the distance, something even brighter illuminated the underbelly of the clouds in the sky over the central hive.
Resistance was very light. Macharius’s plan had succeeded. Ahead of us was an entire factorum zone filled with the pyrite production facilities that we needed. In a matter of hours we had seized all of them and taken up defensive positions to prevent the troops of Irongrad from retaking them.
The lieutenant ordered me to put the Baneblade hull-down behind a factorum wall so that our guns would still be able to rake the approaches. I did as I was told and the great armoured beast came to rest. We sat there at our controls studying the empty streets and the mighty towers surrounding us and waited for the enemy to approach. It had been many hours since we had had any sleep. I munched on a stimm tab and protein bar combination washed down by a swig of brackish water from my canteen.
I glanced out through the periscope, studying the long shadows. I was not unduly troubled. I would be able to see anything that approached and mechanised infantry were starting to deploy on foot around us, taking up positions on top of the walls, setting up heavy bolters to rake the streets. One or two of them were already snatching some sleep where they lay. It was nice to know we had some veterans with us. The two-tailed airframe of a Valkyrie hovered above some huts while storm troopers swarmed down a fibre-rope ladder descending into the clouds of trash and dust raised by the aircraft’s drives. They deployed by squad; their heavy carapace armour made them look bulkier than a normal man, and their outsize lasguns did nothing to make them look less formidable.
A line of fire darted out from its nose-mounted cannon. I wondered whether the gunner was firing at hidden heretics or just practising on some of the local giant rats. Such things have been known to happen.
I glanced around the command cabin. The lieutenant was cat-napping while the Understudy watched the tactical grids. Our commander still had his headpiece in and I knew from long experience that any incoming signal would wake him. Looking at him with his head slumped on his chest I felt something like affection. Once again, he had brought us through the firestorm of battle. At the end of the day we were still alive and in the Imperial Guard that is all you can reasonably ask.
I offered up a prayer of thanks to the spirit of old Number Ten. The Indomitable, as much as the lieutenant, had brought us through the battle. No drives had failed at a critical moment, no guns had misfired. The armour had held. We still enjoyed the great beast’s blessing. At the time, foolishly, I can recall thinking that maybe Macharius’s presence on the Baneblade’s side had blessed us too. Perhaps some of his luck, or the Blessing of the Emperor or whatever it was he had enjoyed had rubbed off on us too.
I wondered how much longer it could last.
It seemed I had barely closed my eyes when the lieutenant was barking orders at me. I glanced at the chronometer. A couple of hours had passed since I last looked. Even the stimm tabs had not been able to keep me awake. I glanced into the periscope. It was still night out. The infernal flames of the factorum towers still illuminated the area.
I looked down the long street and saw a number of small vehicles moving closer. Our guns spoke, tearing a huge crater out of the plascrete of the roadway as they destroyed the first of the oncoming Leman Russ. The others swerved around it and kept coming, fire blazing from their main turrets, belly mounted lascannon and side-sponson bolters. They were on killing ground. Our battle cannon swiftly reduced them to burned-out shells. Bailing out of their metal carapaces, their crews had no chance of survival in the wave of fire that descended on them.
While this was going on, heretic infantry had taken up position in the nearby buildings. They had set up their heavy weapons on balconies and along the external piping of the buildings where it was broad enough for scores of men to stand.
Among the troops, giving orders as if they were officers, were a number of robed and cowled figures. The thing that made them so visible was that someone seemed to have set fire to them. Around their heads flames rose, so bright and intense that they should have spread and burned but they did not. Instead they merely outlined their bearers like halos seen in religious pictures.
‘Sir, have you seen this, the burning men?’ I said, just in case the lieutenant had not noticed.
‘They are priests of the Angel of Fire cult, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. There was an undercurrent of disquiet in his voice and I wondered if he, like me, was thinking about the cages we had seen with all those burned bodies within them.
‘Is it some sort of heretical trick, with the burning?’ the New Boy asked. It was a reasonable guess. Many times in my career fighting heretics I had seen very strange things that turned out to be products of some ancient dark technology
Before the lieutenant could reply one of the priests raised his hands. The aura of flame spread from his head to surround his entire body. It blazed up around his hands as if he was carrying a flamer. He made a gesture at the walls and waves of flame surrounded a squad of our troops, setting their uniforms alight and then consuming their flesh.
It was not the burning that was so horrific. I had seen many men burn to death before. It was the suggestion of something otherworldly about it, as if it were not just their bodies that were being consumed but their souls too. Some of our lads were shooting back, but their las-bolts simply disappeared when they hit the priest. The flaming shield surrounding him grew brighter as if it fed on their energy.