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.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I crushed more of the heretics. The gun destroyed more enemy vehicles and, at last, they started to respond. Men lobbed grenades at us. The Hydra shook with the impact. Some of the grenades were fragmentation and their shrapnel pattered on the sides like rain. I worried about the gunners exposed in the turrets but there was nothing I could do for them, except try to keep us moving and thus make us a harder target. I offered up a prayer to the Emperor that Ivan was safe and I brought the vehicle round hard. I was trying to keep the forward armour, always the strongest part of a tank, towards the enemy as much as possible.
Something hurtled into us from the side. I caught a flash from the corner of my eye. There was a detonation and the whole vehicle shook. For a moment I wondered if I was dead. Sparks flickered from the Hydra’s systems, but the engine kept roaring as the power-core fed it energy. Then I heard a strange slithering, scraping, knocking sound like someone drawing steel against steel with a great deal of power. There was a metallic screaming noise. The vehicle juddered as if it were rolling over very bumpy ground on one side. The weirdest thing was that the other side was stable and the area around us was quite flat. The Hydra began to circle. The left control stick fought against my grip as if the spirit of the machine itself had decided to disobey me.