‘Arbettan doesn’t strike me as soft. So why is there so much disorder in the ranks?’ Culcis recalled Nacedon, the feeling in his gut as the Blood Pact had closed on them, the sense of something... wrong. These were men but they were also something more and less than that. It was hard to define but he felt it at Sagorrah, too.
The sudden crack of a firing squad rang out, punctuating the lieutenant’s thought. Fourth in the last hour and those were the ones they could hear from their billet.
Before Drado could answer, the shadow of Sergeant Vengo falling across the two men interrupted them. Vengo still had that thousand-yard stare as he waited for Culcis to give him permission to speak.
‘What is it, sergeant?’ the lieutenant asked.
‘Orders from the major, sir,’ he said in a neutral tone.
Faced with the hollow shell that was Vengo, Culcis was reminded of the meat grinder again and the fact that the Volpone, like so many, had been sacrificed upon it for Macaroth’s glory.
Vengo pulled a piece of folded parchment from his jacket pocket and handed it to the lieutenant.
Breaking the wax seal, Culcis read first to himself and then aloud so Drado could hear him.
‘We’re assembling a force to go into the slum-zones at the Sagorrah perimeter,’ he said. ‘Fifty men ready for 18.00 hours in the muster yard.’
Drado checked his chrono. ‘Just under an hour, sir.’
Lieutenant Culcis nodded. ‘Get Sergeant Pillier to draft in the rest. Seems Major Regara wants to get his boots a little dirtier. Can’t blame him.’
Drado was on his feet and heading for the drill sergeant when Culcis stopped him.
‘And pack this up. We’re done drinking.’
Drado couldn’t suppress a disappointed frown but continued about his duties without pause.
‘Very good. Sergeant Vengo,’ said Culcis. ‘You’re dismissed.’
Vengo saluted and marched away.
When he was gone and Culcis was alone, the lieutenant looked to the distant hills. Beyond, he imagined the slum towns. City fighting was brutal. Under the right conditions, it could turn a poorly-armed force into a deadly one. Few Guardsmen relished it over pitched battle. Even trench warfare was preferable.
Culcis brushed the rust-coloured rime from his sleeve. It was tacky and reeked of metal. He was just glad to be getting out of camp.
The thud of automatic weapons fire sounded above Culcis’s head as he crouched behind the wall. The brick was baked white and chipped with bullet holes. Though it was approaching evening, the sun set late on the collection world. The street was swathed in shadow, though. The tight confines of its ruined buildings, the tattered tarps and half-demolished awnings created a sort of urban canopy overhead that promoted claustrophobia and paranoia.
‘Scopes,’ said Culcis.
Drado, squatting next to him, passed them over.
Poking the magnoculars through a gap in the shattered wall, Culcis could see all the way to the end of the street. His squad were pinned in a narrow defile, too much open ground between them and their targets to make a bayonet charge a viable tactic.
Still, they didn’t need to.
Grainy thermal imaging showed Culcis what he needed to see – six insurgents, three with autoguns, another carrying a makeshift burner and a team with a heavy stubber. The cultists were wily enough to hold the cannon in reserve. The autogun fire was desultory, intended to draw the Volpone out.
Culcis’s men were split, half and half, across the street. While he took refuge behind the wall, the others hunkered down behind a broken down trans-loader. The heavy Cargo-X was thick enough to take automatic fire. His squad was in no immediate danger.
‘I have eyes on,’ the lieutenant said into his micro-bead. He was no longer wearing his cap and had on the same type of low-brimmed bowl helmet as his men. He related coordinates to the other side of the street where a blind target marker waited.
‘Light them up, Trooper Korde, if you please.’
The marker aimed the laser sight of his hellgun according to his lieutenant’s direction. A beam flashed into the street darkness. Culcis followed it through the magnoculars and saw one of the cultists look down to the glow against his chest.
A few seconds later and the dense thwump of artillery filled the air. The view through the magnoculars was swarmed with white as the explosions from the mortar barrage overwhelmed its thermal imaging.
Culcis put them down and turned his back as a dust plume billowed down the street towards them. When the roar of explosives had died down and the dust settled, he looked back again. The end of the street was a ruin. A smoking, fire-wreathed crater remained where the cultists had been a few seconds earlier.
‘Way is clear. Squad advance.’ Culcis got to his feet and led them out.
Las-bursts burned through the air between the Volpone and their enemies. Bright beams crisscrossed a space of about fifty metres in a deadly lattice of fire. Hunkered down in doorways and behind clumps of broken rockcrete from the remnants of destroyed buildings, Regara and his squad were holding and returning fire.
The cultists were occupying a fortified position at the end of a T-junction, an upturned hauler-truck and an improvised wall of sandbagging. Their shooting was inaccurate and lazy. The major despised them for it. His Volpone were outnumbered three to one, or so he’d judged, but by little more than a disorganised rabble.
‘Steady fire!’ bellowed Vengo, part of the major’s squad. The men responded with short, sustained bursts, forcing the cultists down. Two even fell, shot through with hellgun beams.
Regara tapped his micro-bead. ‘Corporal, we’re wasting ammunition.’
‘Almost there, sir,’ a breathless Speers replied a few seconds later.
‘See that you are.’
For another thirty seconds the fire exchange continued, both sides at an impasse. Then a line of explosions ripped into the cultists from behind and Vengo screamed the order to charge.
The Volpone ate the metres up the street to the enemy position in seconds, a pall of smoke spilling from behind the makeshift defences which they vaulted with assault-course efficiency. Vengo was at the front and killed a man by thrusting a blade into his neck. A second he smashed with the butt of his hellgun, ramming the man’s nose into his brain and killing the cultist instantly.
Regara wasn’t to be denied. Despatching a fire-blackened enemy survivor with a nonchalant burst from his hellpistol, he went on to kick an onrushing cultist with his bionic leg. The effect was dramatic as the wretch was sent screaming ten metres backwards, crumpling in a heap with his insides a mulched mess.
It was all over in a few seconds. The combination of smoke and frag grenades unleashed by Speers, who then went on to scrag several cultists from behind, had created destruction and a diversion for Vengo to launch the assault.
‘You have a talent, Speers, I’ll give you that,’ Regara conceded as he was reunited with his aide.
‘Thank you, sir,’ the corporal replied, nodding before wiping his knife on the tunic of a dead cultist and sheathing it.
‘Disgusting creatures,’ said Regara, levering one of the dead over with his boot. The cultist was emaciated and filthy. He wore a stitched-together amalgam of flak armour, reused several times judging by the wear, and his footwear was little more than rags. The lascarbine he carried was old and poorly maintained. The sighter was ruined. Regara doubted he could have hit anything unless it was point-blank. Perhaps the grenade diversion had been unnecessary after all.