Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [64]
The tanks were another matter. The first shell crashed into the gunship’s side with a storm’s force, and Ryken flinched back from the detonation. It spun the gunship on its axis, sending burning wind breathing from its boosters as it turned. In reaction to the attack, the avian shape gained altitude in a sudden thrust, banked over the first of the tanks, and at last dropped its cargo.
Dark figures clanged onto the surface of the tanks, as black as beetles crawling on the metal skin.
The first to fall – a figure on the roof of the lead tank – wore a silver-faced helm and wielded a mace with a sparking power field around its eagle-winged head. The weapon descended in a slice to shatter the vehicle’s turret. It broke clean off and fell into the horde of aliens that mobbed the tanks from below.
‘Good morning, Reclusiarch,’ Ryken’s voice was breathless with relief.
The knight didn’t answer at first. He and his standard bearer were already engaged by the greenskins swarming up over the useless tank’s hull, clambering higher in a desperate need to shed the blood of the black knights.
Artarion’s bolter emitted its stuttering crash, blowing the aliens back down to the street. With the brilliance of a sun-flare, Grimaldus’s plasma pistol disintegrated two of the climbing beasts, letting their burning skeletal remains tumble in pieces back into the horde.
The second tank was dead in its tracks, smoke pouring from vents and cracks in its armour. The Templars had dropped grenades into the interior, and Ryken saw two knights leaping clear, ignoring the slain vehicle as they waded into the aliens massing on the street.
‘Forgive the delay, major.’ The Reclusiarch wasn’t even out of breath. ‘We were required at the barricade breaches in south section ninety-two.’
‘Better late than never,’ Ryken replied. ‘The last word from central command suggested that Sarren’s plan in this sector was working better than almost all hololithic estimations. Are we getting redeployed for a counterattack?’
On top of the tank, Grimaldus swung his mace in a vicious arc, pummelling an ork into ruined biological matter.
‘You are still breathing, major. Let that be enough for now.’
Dawn brought nothing more than a continuation of the night’s bloodshed.
The Helsreach Crusade begins its first bloody day. Across the city, millions of us now fight for our lives.
The noise is like no other sound I have ever heard. In two centuries of life, I have waged war at the heels of god-machines whose weapons were louder than the death-cries of stars. I have stood against armies of thousands, while every soul that stood against us screamed their hatred. I have seen a ship the size of a hive tower crash into the open ocean on a far distant world. The plume of water it threw into the sky and the tidal wave that followed were like some divine judgement come to flood the land and erase all humanity beneath its salt-rich depths.
Yet nothing has matched the sound of Helsreach’s defiance.
In every street, humans and aliens clash, with their weapons and voices merging into a gestalt wave of senseless noise. On every rooftop, turrets and multi-barrelled defence cannons bark into the sky, their loaders never ceasing, their rate of fire never slowing. The machine-roars of Titans duelling can be heard from entire districts away.
Never before have I heard an entire city fighting a war.
As we fight to clear the streets of Major Ryken’s besiegers – and as the Legionnaires themselves leave their havens and join us in the slaughter – I keep an edge of focus for the general vox-channels.
Ryken was not wrong. While we are locked in our planned fighting withdrawal across the entire hive, precious few sectors are in unplanned retreat.
The wreck-Titans are in the city now. Coldly delivered kill ratios from Invigilata commanders are a recent addition to the chaos of communication traffic, but they are a welcome one. Helsreach stands defiant as the sun rides the sky into noon.
My brothers remain scattered across