Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [53]
Reports filter in from across the vox-network. The wall is falling to pieces, crumbling under the insane firepower of so many tanks and wreck-Titans. Around me, the smell of fear rises from the human soldiers. It is a foul musk; the sourness of breath, the tangy reek of liquid waste, and the rich, stinging scent of cold sweat. This fear-smell emanates from several of them, and while I do not hold them to the standards of Astartes, while I acknowledge the fact the human body will always react in this way even with the bravest of souls inhabiting it, it is still hard to stand in their presence. Their fear disgusts me.
Above the dust cloud, the head and shoulders of a wreck-Titan emerge, its bulbous head of scrap metal shaped into a roaring alien maw. Throne of the Emperor, it would have towered above the wall even if our insignificant barricade was still there. Glass shatters in every window along the street as its slow march brings it closer.
A moment later, the street thunders beneath our feet. Every one of the human soldiers with us falls to the ground, their curses lost amid the noise. I maintain my balance only because of my armour’s joint stabilisers compensating for the tremors. With the brightness of a flaring sun, the wreck-Titan’s head detonates, showering debris into the dust cloud below.
The cheer that rises around me is the loudest sound yet.
‘Engine kill,’ comes Zarha’s voice over the vox, sounding amused despite the interference. ‘You owe me for that, Grimaldus.’
I do not answer. The shot must have been a truly difficult challenge, but I do not care where Stormherald is, nor that it is retreating. My focus is here and now. Tension burns through my body like superheated blood. I feel it in my brothers, as well. Twenty of us, our breathing fast, our hands clutching weapons that are ritually chained to our armour. Chainswords complain as they rev, cutting only air. Last-minute oaths are whispered, or sworn to the sky.
Emerging from the dust cloud, snorting their porcine war cries, come the hunched silhouettes of the enemy.
Hundreds of them, flooding into the street.
‘Fire at will!’ calls one of the Steel Legion officers.
‘Hold your fire!’ I scream, my helm’s vocalisers piercing the surrounding noise.
‘They’re in range!’ the officer, Major Oros, yells back.
‘Hold your fire!’
I am already running, sprinting, my armour joints snarling as I leave the humans behind. Proximity runes, my brothers’ life-markers, flicker on my retinal display, but I have no need for them. I know who follows me.
‘Sons of Dorn! Knights of the Emperor! Charge!’
The first of the aliens runs from the dust, its green skin plastered grey from the cloud. It raises a junk weapon in its brutish fists, and dies with my crozius annihilating its malformed face a moment later.
The two battle lines meet with a discordant crunch of weapon against weapon and flesh against armour. The sick, fungal stench of ork blood fills the air. Chainswords chew through xenos flesh. Bolters discharge their lethal loads – the crashing bangs of release followed by the muffled thumps of shells detonating within bodies.
The creatures howl and laugh as they die.
My knights remain silent as they slaughter.
Perception fades, as it always does in war, to flickering images that come moment to moment. Concentration is impossible, anathema to the holy rage that fills my senses. I grip my master’s relic weapon in both hands, and swing at three aliens before me. They are hurled back from the mace’s crackling power field, all three slain by the impact with their chests shattered, each of them tumbling