Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [62]
The enemy scrap-Titan was grotesque – unappealing on a level that went far beyond mere design distaste to Valian. Its junk metal appearance showed no reverence, no respect, no care in its construction. Stormherald’s iron bones were thrice-blessed by tech-ministers even before they were brought together as the skeleton of a god-machine. Each of the million cogs, gears, rivets and plates of armour used in the Imperator’s birth was honed to perfection and blessed before becoming part of the Titan’s body.
This avatar of perfection incarnate faced its hideous opposite, and every crewmember piloting the Titan felt disgust flow through them. The enemy engine was fat, big-belled to hold troops and ammunition loaders for its random array of torso cannons. Its head, in opposition to the Gothic-style machine skull worn by Stormherald, was stunted and flat, with cracked eye lenses and a heavy-jawed underbite. It stared pugnaciously down the street at the larger Imperial walker, its cannons covering its body like spines, and roared a challenge of its own.
It sounded exactly like what it was: an alien warleader within the cockpit head blaring into a vox-caster. Stormherald laughed in response, its warning sirens slamming back with a wall of sound.
In her tank of fluids, Zarha raised her arms, her handless stumps facing forward.
In the street, with an immense grinding of gear joints, Stormherald mirrored the motion.
It never fired. The trap, as crude and simple as it was, exploded around the great Titan.
‘Your request for reinforcement is acknowledged,’ the voice crackled.
Ryken lowered the vox-mic, readying his lasrifle again.
‘They’re coming,’ he hissed to Vantine. The other trooper was with him, crouched with her back to the wall, sharing his slice of cover. Her expression was unreadable, masked by her goggles and rebreather, but she gave the major a nod.
‘You said that half an hour ago.’
‘I know.’ Ryken slammed a fresh cell into his lasgun. ‘But they’re coming.’
The wall behind them buckled as it took the brunt of another shell. Debris from the ceiling clattered down onto their helmets.
Ryken’s platoon was up to their necks in trouble, and no amount of hard fighting alone was going to get them out of it. Most of his men, the ones that weren’t bleeding to death on the ground, were at the windows on the various floors of this hab-block, pouring their fire into the street outside. The rooms were still full of furniture, left by the families who were taking shelter in local underground bunkers. It was, as last stands went, a pretty terrible place to be holed up in, but their barricade had fallen half an hour before, and it was every squad for themselves until they could regroup at the next junction.
The problem was that Ryken’s platoon was cut off much too fast when the last bastion fell. As rearguard covering the other squads’ escapes, they’d been encircled and forced to find whatever cover they could.
‘They’re climbing the damn walls!’ someone cried out. Ryken scrambled to the nearest window, keeping low and bracing to fire into the street again. As he rose to fire, he found himself face to face with a green-skinned creature hauling its way through the second-storey window. It reeked of mould and gunsmoke, and its piggish eyes were glazed by whatever alien emotions it felt in the heat of battle.
Ryken bayoneted the beast in the throat, firing three shots even as he stabbed. The alien was hurled back from the window to fall on its companions below.
They were indeed climbing the damn walls.
Ryken ordered three of his men to cover the window, and raced for the stairs leading down to the ground floor. The snapping crack of lasrifles firing was even louder from downstairs, where the bulk of the platoon was entrenched.
‘Reinforcements are en route!’ he called down the stairs.
‘You said that half an hour ago!’ Sergeant Kalas called back up.
Ryken caught a glimpse of the sergeant, his bolt pistol clutched in a two-handed grip, kneeling at a window and firing booming shots out into the road. He