Ismail was leading the first wave. Four Baneblades and thirty-six Russes, the heaviest metal remaining to the 387th. Upon each tank, a squad of Hanemite infantry were clinging, and to their rear, battalions of militia trickled along in the wake of the armour.
All told, some six thousand men were attacking, along a frontage of a kilometre. And that was only the first wave.
In the second echelon came the Chimeras, filled with more infantry – many of them ex-tankers who had lost their vehicles – and striding in their midst came Sentinels, Hydras with their multi-barrelled guns depressed for ground-fire, and a few more Leman Russes with minor mechanical failure and battle damage which were doing their best to keep up with the advance. The Basilisk companies had been left behind to help defend the Armaments District, and the forces remaining there were stretched dangerously thin. Dietrich had staked all on this single assault.
The vox crackled, and the general heard his commissar’s voice on the encrypted battle frequency, slightly distorted by the encoding process, but perfectly clear.
‘Zero, this is Granite One. Initial objectives achieved. Casualties minimal, enemy resistance breaking. We’re running them down, over.’
Dietrich smiled, and took the vox receiver from his signaller. ‘Granite One, move on secondaries. We are following up with Granite Two, over.’
‘Acknowledged. The Emperor is with us today, Pavul. Out.’
Dietrich turned to his adjutant, Lars Dyson.
‘Get on the vox to Gresbach and Toveson. Tell them to move up the Sentinels to the flanks of Granite One and look out for infiltrators.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s too easy, Lars.’
‘Sir?’
‘We’re missing something. Where are their reserves? We should have been counterattacked by now.’
Dyson bent to the comms bench, frowning, and Dietrich stared at the monitor once more. Orderly lines of blue, and red markers flicking out in sequence as his armour rolled over them. They were pounding across the rubble-strewn permacrete of the landing pads now, and even in the insulated interior of the command compartment, the raging thunder of the battle was something which threatened to overwhelm the senses.
He was standing inside a hundred-ton armoured vehicle, the finest that Mars could make, and yet he felt utterly exposed.
Von Arnim breathed in the foetid air. Cordite, the burned emissions of energy bolts, ashen dust, and the ever-present miasma of decay. He had known that particular reek all his life, and it meant nothing to him. It was just one more element to the battlefield, one that was never absent, save in vacuum.
He ducked behind the open hatch of the Leman Russ as a shell landed fifty metres to his front. Shrapnel peppered the glacis plate of the tank, rattling like gravel in a tin. A piece came to rest beside him, still smoking, the edges glowing red. He flicked it off the roof of the tank and stared into the billowing, flame-shot darkness ahead.
Las-bolts peppering the smoke in stuttering lines, and here and there the brighter flash as a melta-gun went off. He raised the vox to his mouth. It was hot against his lips.
‘Second Company, bear to your left. You’re bunching, Lemuel–’ He ducked instinctively as a heavy bolt of melta fire sizzled close past his head, close enough to tighten his skin. He flicked the vox to the vehicle comms.
‘Gunner, melta gun emplacement at fifteen degrees, at the base of the ruined silo. Seen?’
‘Seen,’ the laconic reply came back.
‘Take it out, Gannich. He has our range.’
The Russ’s main armament traversed, the turret moving under Von Arnim. He opened his mouth deliberately as the main gun went off, feeling the concussion in his skull, his chest, in his very bowels. He grunted in satisfaction.
‘Good shot, Gannich. Don’t go to sleep on me now.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.’
It was like riding the prow of a boat on a choppy sea. The huge vehicle rose and fell under Von Arnim as it powered forward at some fifteen kilometres an hour. His mouth was full of dust, and he had not even the moisture left in it to spit.
Then there was the tiny urgent red light on the vox of the command frequency. He thumbed it.
‘Granite One, send, over.’
‘Ismail, halt your line. Repeat, halt your line at once. Do you acknowledge?’
He stared at the mike as though it must have more to say. Halt the attack – now – at this moment? They were in full career, driving the enemy like birds before a line of beaters.
‘Zero, say again your last.’
‘Ismail, this is Dietrich. Halt your line and go firm on your current positions. That is a direct order. Acknowledge at once, over.’
Von Arnim blinked, baffled and alarmed. It was a direct order, and it was Dietrich’s voice, no doubt of that.
He looked out at the wide expanse of the spaceport, lying in battered ruin before him. They were a kilometre from the base of the citadel, no more – the fortress-mountain towered over him, its shadow looming out of the smoke and the hanging dust. He could be there in minutes, if they kept to their current rate of advance. The enemy to his front was beaten – surely Dietrich must know that.
‘Zero, this is Granite One. We are almost at the main objective. If I had thirty more minutes we would have it! Over.’
‘Obey my order, commissar.’
It was ingrained in him, buried deep in his marrow: the habit of obedience. He could not ignore a direct command, no matter how strange – nay, insane – it might seem. And he had known Dietrich for twenty years. That counted for something also.
‘Roger that. Am going firm on my current location.’ He changed frequencies. ‘All Granite callsigns, this is Granite One, go firm, I say again, go firm. Hold your present location and wait for further orders. Acknowledge by company, over.’
A moment’s delay, as his commanders processed the order as he had done. Then they came on the net one by one.
‘Granite Three, acknowledged.’
‘Granite Six, acknowledged.’
‘Hanem Four-two, acknowledged.’
One by one they reported in, and he could hear the doubt and disbelief in their voices. But they obeyed.
Pavul, this had better be good, he thought.
The red light again. ‘All Granite call signs, this is Zero, close all hatches and take best cover. Heavy ordnance inbound. This is friendly fire, I repeat, this is friendly fire to your front.’
At once, Von Arnim slid down into the hatch, pulling it closed after him with a clang. He spun the lock, and for a second was blind in the dark fighting-compartment of the tank. It was suffocatingly hot, and red and green lights winked on dials all about him. The main gun took up almost all the space in the turret and in bins along the walls the sleek shells sat racked in perfect sharp-nosed array. The sight steadied him, did away with his doubts.
‘Brace yourselves,’ he said to the crew. ‘I believe it’s going to rain.’
The entire offensive had ground to a halt, and across several square kilometres of the battle-torn city, the ranks of tanks and vehicles sat immobile, covered in the quaking dust, their exhausts pumping black smoke out into the thick, hot polluted air.
All around them, the infantry crouched in shell holes and ruins or under the very bellies of the tanks themselves. The men were white-faced and dull-eyed under their masking filth, and their officers hunched with them, waiting, fighting off confusion and stark fear, keeping it out of their eyes so the men might not see it.
Dietrich stood to one side of his Baneblade with his signaller at his back. The vox receiver was clenched in one fist so hard the plastic creaked.