Hard to argue with that.
Commodus drove the Chimera up an incline of rubble. Something – metal on metal – passed under the tank’s hull with a sickening grind.
‘Don’t ask,’ Commodus called back to the others, ‘because I don’t know.’
The old man leaned back down into the dim, sweat-smelling interior. ‘It was wreckage,’ he said. ‘Leman Russ. One of theirs.’
Commodus trundled on through the palace grounds, tank treads crunching over rubble. What was once an immense botanical garden stretched out in all directions, blackened and starved. The palace’s cracked battlements rose ahead, while around them was nothing but a sea of advancing Imperial troop carriers.
A shot clanked against the hull, making every man tense.
‘We’re in range,’ said Yael, in the back.
‘Thanks, genius,’ said one of the others.
The shot was the first of many. Hailstone-loud, the others started arriving moments later.
The turret hatch slammed closed, and the old man descended the ladder with a cackle.
‘First in, my boys,’ he grinned as he primed his laspistol. ‘And last out. Let’s win this war.’
Commodus laughed, even under fire. ‘Good to see you back, sir.’
The old man’s eyes gleamed. ‘He’s close now, my boy. I can smell him.’
The Chimeras skidded to halts, churning the garden’s soil beneath their tracks.
Ramps crashed down. Men ran from the scorched and battered hulls of their transports, seeking cover in the statuary and rockeries of the botanical garden. Getting through the outer walls had been simple enough. Now came the true test: fighting chamber to chamber, hallway to hallway, into the palace’s heart.
Time to abandon the tanks, then.
Commodus hunched into cover behind the statue of an angel with its face shot off. Thirty metres away, his Chimera leapt into the air, performing a tortured half-spin, before its left track exploded along with half the hull. Steel rained down around him, clanging off already-broken angels and breaking several more.
More rockets streaked down from balconies and windows above, inflicting similar punishment on the Imperial Guard tanks clustered in the garden. One of the Warmaster’s flags, emblazoned with the laurel-wreathed skull he wore as a personal emblem, fluttered down to drape itself over the head of a nearby angel, hiding its face like a funeral shroud.
Commodus didn’t exactly find the comparison touching.
Next to him, breathing in something between a laugh and a wheeze, Yael clutched his hellgun tight to his chest.
‘I’ll miss our tank,’ he said.
Commodus ignored the weak attempt at humour. ‘I counted seven emplacements on balconies. The Emperor only knows how many of the bastards are squatted at windows up there. I got to twenty before it was too dangerous to keep looking.’
‘Should’ve counted faster, sarge.’
‘Funny.’ Commodus tightened his vambrace. ‘Voxing for Vulture support is going to be like pissing into the wind, isn’t it?’
‘Into a storm, more like.’ Yael raised his head, and his rifle, between the angel’s stone wings. ‘No saviours from the sky are coming to blast us out of this one for a while yet.’
Commodus hunched lower as a solid shot cracked off the angel’s shoulder. He blinked stone dust from his eyes. This was going nowhere.
‘Where’s Carron?’ he asked.
Yael snapped off a shot. His hellgun whined for the half-second it took to power up, and spat a spear of hissing energy skywards. Both men heard the scream as one of the red-clad enemy soldiers toppled from the window above. The panicked shout ended with a wet smack. Something that had once been human was smeared across the stone tiles.
Yael sniggered. ‘He won’t be going home to his mother’s farm.’
Commodus was still scanning the view from ground-level. ‘I said where’s Carron?’
‘Not a clue, sarge. No, wait – there he is. Pinned down behind the primarch.’
‘The primarch’ was a statue of a robed figure, towering above all others around it, depicting one of the Emperor’s blessed sons. In better days, it had doubtless been a beautiful piece. The weeks it had suffered under the tender mercies of the Archenemy invaders had not been kind. It now stood deprived of one arm, its face annihilated by hammers, and fresh bullet-scars appearing on its stone flesh with each moment.
With several of the Argentum using it as cover, it was drawing a withering hail of fire from above.
Carron crouched beneath the statue’s plinth, firing up at the walls with his pistol.
‘I see him,’ said Commodus. ‘Not a good place to hide.’
‘Not at all,’ Yael agreed.
Carron rose up to take another shot. He was immediately lanced by three separate snipers. The first shot was enough to kill him outright, blowing mess from the back of his head before it even snapped his neck back. Carron collapsed in a heap that didn’t even twitch.
‘Dead at Rogal Dorn’s feet,’ Yael remarked. ‘Now there’s an honour not many can claim.’
Commodus added his fire to Yael’s, shooting up at the windows. ‘That’s Guilliman,’ he said. Another body turned end-over-end as it fell from above.
‘How do you know it’s Guilliman?’
Apparently, their return fire was drawing notice. A spray of solid slugs cracked around them, defacing their angelic protector all the more. Both Yael and Commodus ducked, using the respite to recharge their weapons.
‘Are you blind? It’s holding a book in its hand.’
Yael recharged first. He cracked off a shot in the direction their most recent attackers were firing from. ‘So? I’m sure Rogal Dorn could read, sarge.’
‘It’s the Adeptus Astartes holy book.’ Throne, what an idiot. ‘The one with all their laws.’
‘If you say so.’ Yael didn’t stop firing. ‘Always hated mythology classes.’
Another of their squad hunkered down into hiding with them, breathless from the sprint into cover.
‘Grunner,’ both of them greeted him. He looked as tired as Commodus felt, all sickly and hollow-eyed. When he reloaded, it was with clumsy hands.
‘Shit, why are you two so happy?’
‘Born this way,’ Yael replied, still shooting up at the balconies.
Commodus answered with a question of his own. ‘You tired, Grunner?’
‘Been a long week, sarge.’ Grunner forced a smile onto a face lined by middle-age, too many close calls, and one hell of a sleep debt. ‘All over soon, though. Even the old man says so.’
Commodus nodded. The old man knew best.
Vulture air support arrived almost two hours later, and annihilated the western face of the Golcir Battlement with strafing runs and rocket barrages. The Argentum had been pinned the entire time, taking casualties from the Archenemy’s last-ditch efforts – with no way to advance, and suicide to retreat. Such was the price paid by the Slaydo’s Own for ‘first in, last out’.
Each man and woman in the uniform was a veteran storm-trooper, hand-chosen by the Warmaster himself. With grenade and hellgun, every soldier accounted for themselves, raking the windows and walls with unrelenting firepower. Bodies tumbled and toppled from their gun-nests, though more of the ragged enemy took the places of the fallen. Resistance was forever fed from the garrison within.
On beast-loud engines with turbines sucking in air, the Vulture gunships banked over the battlements to unleash their payloads. The horrendous fire being spat down at the Argentum ceased, hurling itself into the skies to repel this newest threat. Seven gunships died, hulls burning and spinning, only to hammer into the same walls and rooftops they were already attacking. Even in death, they still served.