‘A commissar – a true believer!’ he gargled in recognisable Low Gothic. ‘Come, little man, meet the reality of belief. Let me show you a vision of the true faith!’
He bounded forward, and the scrum of fighting figures seemed to open up for him and Von Arnim as the commissar leapt to meet him. Ismail ducked the skull-crushing swing of the bladed bolter and rolled, and as he did he sent the chainsword licking out in a swift jab. It bit into the champion’s shin, the blade groaning, screeching as it churned through ceramite – and then Ismail was on his feet again. He snapped off a shot from his laspistol, which missed but threw the champion off balance, and then the chainsword flicked in again, this time slicing at the hand which held the bolter.
The champion roared and lunged forward, his hand lopped off at the wrist, the bolter falling to the ground, and Ismail stepped aside, like a man dodging an angry bull. The chainsword stabbed upwards once more and this time it dug deep, deep into the side of the champion’s neck, and Ismail held it there a moment, savouring the feel of the spine splintering and severing under the busy blades, until he let the sword complete its work and the head fell free.
The great armoured form of the enemy slumped inert, another broken carcass amid thousands, another piece of carrion – and Ismail spat upon it.
He looked around. They were mopping up now, Hanemites and troopers of the Imperial Guard mingled together, tossing grenades into the bunkers, burning out the last stubborn remnants of the enemy in their trenches.
As he watched, a Chimera came to a halt on top of one slit-trench with three cultists in it, and the driver worked the tracks back and forth with great skill so that it almost seemed the heavy machine was pirouetting in place. The slit-trench collapsed, and the cultists were crushed and buried in the same moment. Then the Chimera lurched onwards, vomiting flame, shreds of meat hanging in rags from its tracks.
Ismail thumbed the power button on his sword and knelt there in the blood-mire of the battlefield, and bending his head he said a silent prayer of thanks to the Emperor who watches all, the Guardian of Man.
We will not go gently into that Dark Night, he thought. The Imperium of Man has a flame at its heart which can never be extinguished. Lord of Terra watch over us now, as we do thy bidding, and send to thee a sacrament of blood.
By Your Throne.
He straightened. More vehicles were looming up out of the reek and the tawny dust now, like great antediluvian beasts roaring and farting smoke.
He realised that he had cultist blood stiffening dry across his face and he wiped it off in brown flakes, grimacing. He shook gore from the chainsword blade and hung the weapon at his belt. His personal squad surrounded him again – there were two missing. He nodded at the survivors, and they nodded back. They had that white, wild-eyed look of men who find themselves alive when they did not expect to be.
They were good men, all of them, Hanemites and Imperials alike. It was a privilege to fight beside them.
‘Well, Ismail,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Went the day well?’
He turned, and Dietrich was standing beside him, and beyond, the command Baneblade of the regiment frowned over them both, the turret traversing like the snout of a predator seeking fresh prey.
‘We have scoured the spaceport,’ Commissar Von Arnim said formally, bowing slightly. ‘This was the last of their lines. The citadel and the Armaments District are now connected by our forces once more.’
‘The first ammo convoy is waiting to set out even as we speak,’ Dietrich said, nodding with satisfaction. ‘Now, we must consolidate. The armour will pull out of the front line while the infantry dig in.’
‘The enemy is weakening,’ Ismail said.
‘You think so?’ Dietrich screwed up one eye. ‘I wondered if it was just my own wishful thinking.’
‘His counterattacks are ill-thought-out, and lack heavy troops. He is sending in waves of cultists as if it is all he has left.’
‘He has more than that left,’ Dietrich said. ‘Of that I am sure. And I wonder to myself who he is. Somewhere, possibly still in orbit, a single mind directs all this, Ismail, and until that mind is blinded and broken, we will not have final victory here. The best we can do is survive, until we are relieved. We do not have the resources to mount another attack like today’s. It was our last gamble.’
Von Arnim shrugged. ‘A gamble which succeeded.’ For the moment, he felt it was enough to have won a victory, after so many defeats. It was so tangible to him he could almost taste it. It filled him with new energy, perhaps even a glimmer of hope after the darkness of the last two weeks. But then something else niggled its way to the forefront of his mind.
‘I hear rumours the Imperial governor is dead. Is that true, Pavul?’
Dietrich nodded sombrely. ‘That is what I wanted to talk to you about. Come, Ismail. I need your advice. We are to go to the citadel now, to meet the marshal, and I am not altogether sure what we shall find there.’
As darkness fell, the fighting died down. The battered Hanemite divisions dug in on the rim of the spaceport, and constructed defensive lines that ran all the way back to the Armaments District, six kilometres to the south. At the same time, a squadron of Chimeras donned blades and bulldozed clear a single roadway through the rubble to link up the two strongholds.
They worked into the night, while around them in the choking darkness men constructed bunkers and sangars, digging where they could, and throwing up defensive walls of shattered rockcrete where they could not. They strung wire, laid mines, and conducted dozens of little firefights as they contested a narrow no-man’s-land with the restless patrols of the enemy.
And all the while, the heavy transports of the 387th trundled through the dark, lights off, their drivers wiping their exhausted eyes and cursing as they nursed the heavily laden vehicles north to replenish the exhausted magazines of the citadel.
Feeding the beast, it was called, the replenishment of units still in contact with the enemy.
Eight hundred tons of shells were shifted that first night, and the transports were kept running in shifts all through the hours of darkness, while the multi-barrelled Hydras lined the road which had now become the jugular of the defence, seeking out targets in the torn gaps which came and went in the hovering clouds of dust and smoke above them.
But there were no bombing runs, not even the casual strafing to which they had all become accustomed. The enemy seemed to have pulled back from major contact with the Imperium’s forces, and except for isolated firefights on the perimeter and skirmishes between patrols, the lines were quiet. The Basilisks kept up interdictory fire through the night, but even that low endless crump seemed nothing after the fury of the last fortnight.
Marshal Veigh sent a full company of Hanemite regulars to escort General Dietrich and Commissar Von Arnim into the citadel, as though he were taking no chances they might not make it there. They entered by a low postern door to one side of the main gates. Even this minor entrance was constructed from gleaming adamantium, and despite the fury of the past days there was scarcely a nick on the metal.
Within, the great subterranean generators which pulsed in the heart of the citadel were still running at full power, and they could be felt as an almost constant vibration in the soles of one’s feet.
In the heart of that hollowed-out, man-made mountain the lights were undimmed, and they seemed dazzlingly bright to Dietrich and Von Arnim after days of huddling in the dark, the shadows, the confined interiors of fighting vehicles. Here there was cleaner air, also, as the great filters which were plugged into the sides of the citadel were for the most part in perfect order, despite repeated bombing runs by the enemy fighter-bombers. There was a slight haze hanging in the atmosphere, and it was stiflingly hot, but there was water to be had – water that was not brown or opaque and that did not smell of death. And iron rations, bricks of compressed protein to fuel the body even if they did not entice the appetite.