Daur reached the bore hole. He glanced up at the ragged tear around the rim, the silver split of metal that had just compromised Strike Gamma’s effectiveness, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.
He activated his lamp pack.
Holofurnace waded into the Sons of Sek. He had harnessed his boltgun and, with spear and shield, was laying waste to them. Body parts and fragments of severed weapons flew out from his spinning blade.
Shields up, Sar Af and Eadwine continued the advance into the withering enemy fire. Firing over their shields, they were trying to break the Sons holding the next hatchway section. Their boarding shields quaked and shook under the deluge of fire. Most of the surface decoration, markings and the purity seals had been seared off.
Eadwine reloaded. He issued quick vox commands that brought the gun servitors in at their flank.
‘Rush them?’ he suggested to the White Scar.
‘While the Snake is holding our left flank? Why not?’ Sar Af replied.
‘We need weight behind us,’ said Eadwine. ‘The damn Guard are slow. Adequate supporting fire would allow us to push ahead.’
‘They will get here in their own sweet time,’ replied Sar Af.
‘Their own sweet time is not good enough,’ said Eadwine.
Kolea was pinned behind a processor unit, enduring some of the worst crossfire he had ever known. It whined and streaked around him, slamming off the metal casing of the unit, puncturing and buckling it. Two Ghosts had already died trying to cross the open depot floor to join him. The Sons of Sek were intent on containing the invasion force in the outer compartments that the Caestus had penetrated. They were positioning to block them, shut them out, and then drive them back into the hard vacuum. Kolea had several company strengths behind him, but none was in any kind of position to advance and deliver firepower.
As for the Space Marines, they had plunged ahead regardless. Kolea was physically unable to render them any support. Indomitable as they were, the Space Marines would soon be cut off, surrounded and ultimately overwhelmed. They were the spearhead of the weapon, the tip of the sword. It didn’t matter how sharp it was, a sword still needed a strong arm behind it.
Kolea had no doubt the Space Marines would pile body on body before they finally fell.
But in the end, they would still die.
Electromagnetic distortion from the torrential gunfire, especially the hellguns and plasma weapons fielded by the Sons, was chopping all vox exchanges. Kolea could barely coordinate with the other squad and company leaders. He’d lost sight of Rerval during a particularly fierce barrage, and he hadn’t got a reply from Eadwine or the other Space Marines for twenty minutes.
The focus of the enemy fire shifted away from him, like a rainstorm passing overhead. He looked to his left, across the burning litter and destruction of the ravaged depot space, and saw Ferdy Kolosim’s company being driven back into cover behind a row of huge steel bunkers. They left their dead on the deck behind them.
‘Kolea!’ his vox crackled.
‘Go!’ Kolea responded.
The vox burbled something else indistinct. He looked to his right in time to see a couple of shoulder-launched rockets whoosh up from the Guard lines into the upper part of the depot chamber. They blew out a row of generator pumps and hurled the bodies of several Sons into the air. Heavy, clacking fire, some of tracer rounds, zipped from .30s and .50s. Baskevyl’s company, D, was attempting to push forwards from the hangar space. They hadn’t come through the hole the ram had punched. They’d forced the internal hatches and surged through under the cover of gantries and service walkways.
The Archenemy line taking D Company’s fire withered slightly and tried to retrain. Kolea saw Baskevyl get up and lead a rush towards some heavy manufactory engines that stood in a row across the centre of the depot’s decking.
Plasma fire streaked into them immediately. Kolea winced, head down, as he saw three or four Ghosts cut down. Then some rockets fell too, screeching down out of the vault, and the gritty blast wash knocked Kolea back.
The last thing he glimpsed was Baskevyl’s burning body thrown, headless, into the air.
Blinking, dizzy from the concussion, Kolea looked around. Fury was filling him, rage at the losses and the helpless state of their situation. He saw Meryn and some of his force pinned around another row of processors.
‘Move up. Move up!’ he yelled. ‘Into the fethers, captain!’
Meryn didn’t appear to be able to hear him over the roar of the firefight. His men were pinking off shots in a feeble manner, their heads down.
Something snapped.
No longer really thinking rationally, Kolea got up. He hefted up his shield and ran at the Archenemy position, leaping debris and bodies, firing his lasrifle through the shield’s slot.
Somehow, he didn’t die.
Afterwards, he could not account for it. It was a story he would tell, when suitably persuaded and after an amasec or two, for the rest of his life. Kolea was destined to live out a soldier’s life, so that wasn’t a terribly long time, but it was long enough to make that day, that moment, an old story. Others told it in turn, after his death: Kolea, running the line like a madman, shield up, gun blasting. He was yelling something as he went and, depending who was telling the tale, what he yelled varied.
Some said it was the Vervunhive battle cry, others the Founding Oath. Some said he was cursing the names of Daur and Rawne, and everyone else who’d drawn the easy option of the Gamma and Beta insertions.
The truth was he was probably yelling the name of his friend Baskevyl.
It was a wild action, and utterly lacking in discipline, especially given that Kolea was the force commander and should have been setting a measured and sober example to the ranks. Caober said it was exactly the sort of fething idiot stunt Colonel Corbec used to pull.
That was why Caober got up and followed him. Derin did too, and Lyse, Neith and Starck… and Irvin, Bewl, Veddekin, Wersun and Vanette. Ludd, who should have been ready to reprimand Kolea for reckless deportment, got up and charged as well.
‘Men of Tanith!’ Ludd yelled. ‘Straight silver!’
Most of C Company broke and charged after their commanding officer, and so did a decent section of D Company and Kolosim’s H Company. Meryn’s company was mostly pinned, but a chunk of that also broke and sprinted after Kolea. Dalin led these men, bayonet fixed.
Some versions of the story, later ones, insisted that not a single Ghost who took part in that gloriously foolish and improvised charge – Kolea’s Charge – fell or took so much as a scratch. This was not true. Plenty died or were maimed. The Sons of Sek were not so astonished that they forgot to keep shooting. The charge left almost forty dead or injured on the depot floor.
Nevertheless, it hit the Sons like a tidal wave and broke their line. Kolea was first over the barricades. In his mindless haste, he had forgotten even to fix his silver, so he shot the enemy instead, point-blank, smashing with his shield, clubbing with his stock. The men behind him were slightly more composed. They came in with bayonets up, stabbing and spearing the Sons of Sek from behind their pock-marked shields. Some lobbed grenades over the front row into the support groups, blowing yellow uniformed brutes off their feet. A couple of flamers belched spears of liquid fire into the Archenemy ranks. Figures staggered, on fire, like ritual straw doll offerings, shuddered, fell.