Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [63]
In the street, a riot of alien flesh was taking place. Only the most foolish or bloodthirsty orks were seeking to race across the road and scale the building’s walls. Most of the xenos – and Ryken thanked the Emperor for small mercies – possessed enough intelligence to remain in cover themselves, behind their own junk-transports or shooting from windows of adjacent habitation blocks. They laughed and jeered as the barrage continued, and great howls of porcine laughter would rise up when another pack of baying aliens would charge across the street only to be cut down by the Steel Legion’s defences. Raucous enjoyment of their own kin’s death was a barbarous madness Ryken had long come to associate with this accursed xenos breed.
There was no understanding such creatures.
‘We can’t hold here,’ Vantine crouched under cover again, whispering a rapid litany of devotion as she reloaded her rifle. ‘You hear those engines? More are coming, major.’
‘We’re not breaking out anytime soon,’ he spoke the words as a bitter curse, setting his rebreather straight. ‘So we will hold.’
‘Or we die.’
‘That’s not an option, and I’ll shoot you the next time you give voice to it.’
She smiled behind her own gas mask, but Ryken saw none of it. He had risen to his feet and was leaning against the wall, his lasgun braced against his chest. He kept close to the wall, risking a look out of the window. What he saw made him curse more colourfully than Vantine had ever heard before.
‘So,’ she rose close to him, taking position on the other side of the window, ‘not good news, then?’
‘Tanks. The bastards are rolling armour up the road.’
Vantine chanced a look herself. Three tanks, Imperial Leman Russ chassis looted and ‘improved’ with crooked armour panels bolted on and painted in mismatched hues. The jagged fronts of the three tanks showed alien glyphs of allegiance that meant nothing to human eyes.
‘We’re dead,’ she shook her head. ‘And there’s no need to shoot me. They’ll shell this block to rubble and do it for you.’
Ryken ignored her. ‘Nikov,’ he keyed his vox-bead live. ‘Nikov, how’s the launcher coming?’
Nikov was on the hab-block’s top floor, where he’d retreated with his missile launcher ten minutes before. The weapon had taken a beating when the barricade had fallen earlier.
‘It’s still jammed,’ Nikov’s reply came over the vox in a crackling hiss. After a pause of several moments, he added, ‘Did I hear you shouting about reinforcements again?’
‘They’re coming! Throne, why is everyone whining about that?’
‘I think it’s because we’d rather not die, sir.’
The west wall chose that moment to explode. Debris burst into the room, filling it with stone dust. Through his goggles, Ryken stared at a hole the size of three grown men in hab-block’s wall. Most of the soldiers nearby picked themselves up off the floor. Two stayed where they were, mangled and unmoving.
‘Get that launcher working,’ Ryken said in the moment of eerie calm. Vantine scrambled to her feet and ran from the gaping hole in the wall.
Outside offered alien laughter, the grinding of tank treads and a distant thrum of racing engines.
‘More?’ Vantine called out.
‘That’s not the enemy,’ Ryken said. ‘Those aren’t tank engines.’
And they weren’t. His vox-bead screeched a distorted chatter of mixed channels, but one voice broke through. ‘Your request for reinforcement,’ it said, much too deep to be human, ‘is acknowledged.’
The room darkened as the gunship rattled past on whining turbines. It swooped low, strafing the street, opening up with its weapons. From its cruising angle, it clearly didn’t intend to stay long, but the pilot was inflicting all the punishment he could while the Thunderhawk remained.
Heavy bolters mounted on its wings and cheeks spat a torrent of lethal shells into the visible groups of enemy warriors. Inhuman blood misted the air as packs of the creatures burst under the explosive ammunition. Snarling, the diminishing groups of survivors returned fire – their stubbers chattering,