Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [110]
‘Where are the Salamanders?’ he voxed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
‘They’re holding.’
‘They’re what?’
Bastilan’s fist vibrated with the crashing judder of his bolter. Streaks of alien blood painted his battered armour yet again.
Recriminations spilled out over the vox. The Salamanders weren’t advancing with the Templars. The Templars were pushing ahead too far, too fast.
‘Follow us, in the name of the Throne!’ Bastilan added his voice to the vox-chatter.
‘Fall back,’ came the staid voice of Sergeant V’reth. ‘Fall back to the eastern platform and be ready to engage the second wave.’
‘Advance! If we strike now, there will be no second wave. We’re at the warlord’s throat!’
‘Salamanders,’ V’reth spoke calmly, ‘Hold and be ready. Cut down any stragglers that seek to breach the shelter.’
Bastilan kicked a hunched alien in the chest, breaking whatever passed for its rib structure. In the moment’s respite, he ejected his spent bolt magazine and slammed a fresh one home.
They were advancing unsupported, away from the shelter, in pursuit of the fleeing orks. Ahead, through the crowd of panicking beasts, Bastilan could see the armoured warlord of this wretched tribe, its staggering gait made all the more pronounced by the ablative armour plating that seemed surgically bolted to its nerveless flesh.
Bolts slashed after the retreating warleader, roaring from the muzzles of Templars fighting their way through a bestial and ferocious rearguard. Several shells detonated against the creature’s armour, while others smacked into the backs and shoulders of fleeing orks around their commander.
‘He’s getting away,’ Bastilan grunted. The words shamed him even to speak them.
‘Fall back,’ came the Reclusiarch’s growl.
‘Sir,’ Bastilan began, coupled with Priamus’s decidedly more annoyed ‘No!’
‘Fall back. This is not worth dying over. We do not have the numbers to spill the warlord’s blood now.’
V’reth, to his credit, nods.
‘I see. You consider this a stain on your personal honour.’
He does not see. ‘No, brother. I consider it a waste of time, ammunition, and life. Two of your own squad were killed in the successive waves that followed. Brother Kaedus and Brother Madoc from my own force were slain. If we had pursued in unity, we could have broken through to the enemy leader and taken his head. The rest of the beasts would have scattered, and the bulk could easily have been purged by kill-teams in the aftermath.’
‘It is tactically unsound, Reclusiarch. Pursuit would have left the shelter undefended and vulnerable to regrouping waves attacking from other sectors. Three thousand lives were saved by our defiance last night.’
‘There were no attacks from other sectors.’
‘There may have been, had we pursued. And there was still no guarantee we would have overpowered the rearguard quickly enough to reach the warlord.’
‘We weathered six further assaults, wasted seven hours, lost four warriors, and expended a hoard of ammunition that my knights can ill-afford to throw away.’
‘That is one way of seeing the final cost. I see it more simply: we won.’
‘I am finished with this… debate, Salamander.’ Again, I recall the grinding cut of Nero’s medicae-saw, and the puncturing retrieval of cutting tools extracting glistening gene-seed organs from the chests of the slain.
‘It grieves me to hear you speak this way, Reclusiarch.’
Listen to him. So patient. So calm.
So blind.
‘Get out of my city.’
CHAPTER XIX
Fate
The giant stood above its worshippers in silence.
Its skin and bones were harvested from crashed and salvaged ships, each column, gear, pylon, girder and plate of armour that went into its birth stolen from something else. Although the giant was not alive, living creatures served it in place of blood and organs. They clambered through the god’s form, insulated by the armour, hanging from the metal bones, moving like the blood cells in sluggish arteries.