The entrance to the mines was also rigged to blow, this time remotely, and Fornix kept the remote detonator which linked to the charges on his belt. He knew how many people were down there, and what it would mean to touch that button and seal them off in the blackness.
This is the price that war exacts from us, he thought.
He did not mind paying a personal price for victory, or the hope of it, but it turned his stomach to consign all those thousands who were still underground to a horrible death.
A horrible death – but a better fate than they would enjoy at the hands of the Punishers, all the same. He kept that thought in his mind.
An hour before dawn. The convoys had been running all night, and apart from a few skirmishes out to the west, it would seem that the operation was about to pass off almost bloodlessly.
But in that last cold hour before sunrise, the enemy finally seemed to catch wind of what was going on, and in the space of a few minutes they attacked all along the line, a dozen companies of their heavy armoured infantry leading the advance. Finding no resistance, they came on with a will, enraged to find that they had been tricked. Their sudden rush brought them through the deserted Imperial positions all the way up to the walls of the district itself, and there they raged, foiled by the looming defences.
More and more of the enemy were being roused out of their positions all over the west of the city, and being sent forward by their champions in teeming masses. They came on in their thousands, a massive, beetling surge of roaring warriors hell-bent on murder.
On top of the district blast walls, a squad of Haradai began picking them off with their sniper rifles, but it was like throwing pebbles at the sea.
‘Brother Laufey, withdraw from the walls and make your way to my position,’ Fornix ordered over the vox.
‘Acknowledged, brother. They have a Land Raider with them, and they mean to charge the gates with it, I believe.’
The gates were already rigged to blow. The Punisher vehicle would breach them, but it would be the last thing it did.
Fornix strode along the last of the heavy haulers, which were covered with desperate people scrabbling for a handhold. They could hear, now, the attack going on beyond the walls, and they set up a wail which no threat of violence could silence. It was immaterial now anyway.
‘Captain, this is Fornix – the enemy will be within my perimeter in minutes. Sending the last vehicles north to you now.’
‘I hear you, Fornix,’ Kerne’s voice came back. ‘I will meet them outside the citadel with Septus Squad, and some of Dietrich’s armour. We are pulling everything back within the fortress. They’re assaulting on every front with everything they’ve got, and augur tells us they have bombers inbound.’
‘Yes, captain. Estimate our arrival in forty minutes, if we have some luck on our side.’ Then, ‘Get these vehicles moving!’ Fornix bellowed, augmenting the order with his helm’s vox-enhancer. ‘Do not stop for anything or anyone – drivers – spool them up.’
The big engines on the haulers roared, and the lead vehicle set off. People fell from its sides, screaming, and were crushed by the second hauler in the convoy. There could be no halting or slowing down, not now.
Brother Laufey appeared with four other Scout Marines, breathing hard.
‘They’re trying to scale the district walls,’ he said.
‘Stay with me,’ Fornix told him. ‘We are the rearguard, brothers. We must buy some time for the convoy.’
There was a massive explosion, and a towering mushroom of smoke and flame rose up into the air, blotting out the dawn.
‘That will be our friends at the gate,’ Fornix said. He consulted the chrono in his display. ‘Time to move, brothers – the other charges will begin to go off soon.’
He let them go ahead. The air was full of the sound of the Punisher horde, a noise which brought back old memories. The gate was down, and they would be coming through it as soon as the smoke cleared and they had stumbled through the other booby-traps set down there. Fornix lifted the remote detonator from his belt.
‘Forgive me, my Emperor, for I know what it is I do.’
He pressed the button, heard the muffled thunder as the charges went off down at the mine entrance, and saw the second pillar of black smoke boil up into the lightening sky. Three seconds he stood there, watching it, then he tossed the detonator aside and took off in the wake of the Haradai.
The vehicles were powering along some three hundred metres ahead, lurching over the debris on the road, their exhausts vomiting smoke. Every so often they swerved violently to avoid a shell-hole, and more people were flung off them like discarded trash. The drivers never paused or slowed – they were as eager to get to the safety of the citadel as their cargoes were.
Other booming detonations within the manufactoria. Fornix was running out of the northern gate now, leaving the Armaments District behind at last, and behind him it was erupting in a sea of flame. Tons of munitions had been left behind back there, and they were all cooking off as the Punishers poured into the area, setting off scores of booby-traps. Fornix afforded himself a grim smile as he ran along.
Well, you wanted it, he thought. Now you have it.
The rambling, staggered detonations boiled up into a single great pall of smoke which rose above that region of the city, towering into the morning sky and flattening out into a great mushroom of fire-veined darkness. Thousands of the enemy died in that shadow, consumed by the explosions and crushed as the heavily built manufactoria were brought down around them.
It would be a long time before the armour of Titans was ever built on Ras Hanem again, longer still before the mines could ever be reopened and set in use once more. A few minutes of calculated destruction had undone the labour of centuries.
But better that than let the enemy have it intact.
Fornix and the Haradai halted, went to ground and assessed the situation. The convoy still had at least three kilometres to go, and was losing speed, the big vehicles picking their way carefully over the broken ground and shattered roadway. Firefights were sparking into life all along the northern lines as Mortai withdrew, supported by the eldar and a battalion of General Dietrich’s militia. The city was lit up with energy beams and tracer, and the sound of the growing battle was deafening.
‘It’s beginning to look like a hot morning’s work,’ Fornix said.
‘Hotter for some than others,’ Brother Laufey said with a grin, jerking his head at the conflagration which covered the southern sky. Then his eyes narrowed.
‘Enemy in sight, range six hundred metres. Armoured squads. Brothers, pick your targets left to right.’
The Haradai sighted down the long rifles, and began firing single shots one after the other. With his enhanced sight, Fornix could see that every round found a home. The leading Punisher squad was torn apart, and the rest went to ground and began firing wildly. A heavy bolter started up, rippling along their front and kicking up dirt and stone.
‘Move,’ he said. ‘Fire and manoeuvre, brothers. Keep them off balance.’
‘They’re on our right, first sergeant,’ one of the Scout Marines said, consulting an auspex. ‘I make out at least two full companies heading round the flank to the west.’
‘Damn them.’ Fornix glanced back at the convoy, and cursed once more. ‘Incoming aircraft. Take cover, brothers!’
A flight of Doomfires swooped in low out of the sun, chain-guns blazing, churning up a lane of fire below them. They turned in a graceful arc to the north, and then spread out, still firing.
‘Convoy, this is Fornix – pick up speed – you are under air attack,’ Fornix said into the vox. ‘Captain, can you give anti-air cover to the convoy?’