Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [93]
More and more Steel Legion infantry units were reaching the docks, but it was like holding the sea back with a bucket. The Guardsmen being sent in did little but bolster the general retreat. Reclaiming ground was a distant fiction.
‘Sir?’ the vox-officer called out. Sarren looked over to him, drawn from his reverie, not realising the man had been trying to get his attention for almost a minute.
‘Yes?’
‘Word from orbit. The Imperial fleet is reengaging again.’
Sarren made the sign of the aquila – at least, he tried to, and ended with a grunt of pain as his bound arm flared up in pained protest. One-handed, he made a single wing of the Imperial eagle instead.
‘Acknowledged. May the Emperor be with them all.’
This scarce acknowledgement made, he lapsed back into watching the deployment of his forces throughout the city. Around him, the tank’s crew worked at their stations.
So the Imperial fleet was reengaging.
Again.
Every few days, the same story played out. The joint Astartes and Naval fleet would break from the warp close to the planet, and hurl themselves at the ork vessels ringing the embattled world. The engagement would hold for several hours as both sides inflicted horrendous losses on the other, but the Imperials would inevitably be hurled back into a fighting retreat by the immense opposition.
Once they’d fallen back to the safety of a nearby system, they’d regroup over time, under the command of Admiral Parol and High Marshal Helbrecht, and make ready for another assault. It was blunt, and crudely effective. In a void war of such magnitude, there was little place for finesse. Sarren wasn’t blind to the tactics at play – lance strikes into the heart of the enemy fleet, bleed them for all that was possible before a retreat back to safety. It was a necessary grind, a war of attrition.
It was also hardly inspiring. The hive cities were on the edge now. Without reinforcements in the coming weeks, many would fall outright. The infrequent transmissions from Tartarus, Infernus and Acheron were all increasingly grim, as were Sarren’s reports of Helsreach to them.
If there was no–
‘Sir?’
Sarren glanced to his left, to where the vox-officer sat at his station. The man held his headphone receivers to his ear with one hand. He looked pale.
‘Emergency signal from the Serpentine in orbit. She requests immediate cessation of all anti-air weaponry in the docks district.’
Sarren sat forward in his chair. There was barely any anti-air firepower left in the docks district, but that wasn’t the point.
‘What did you say?’
‘The Serpentine, Astartes strike cruiser, sir. She requests–’
‘Throne, send the order. Send the order! Deactivate all remaining anti-air turrets in the docks district!’
Around him, the tank’s crew was silent. Waiting, watching.
Sarren breathed a single word, almost fearful giving voice to it would shatter the possibility it was true.
‘Reinforcements…’
One ship.
The Serpentine.
Sea green and charcoal black, it dived like a dragon of myth through the enemy fleet while the rest of the Imperial warships hammered into the orkish invaders, breaking against the ring of alien cruisers surrounding the planet.
One ship broke through, running a gauntlet of enemy fire, its shields crackling into lifelessness and its hull aflame. The Serpentine hadn’t come to fight. As the Astartes vessel tore through the upper atmosphere, drop-pods and Thunderhawks rained from its ironclad belly, streaming down to the world below.
Its duty complete, the Serpentine powered its way back into the fight. Its captain gritted his teeth against a screed of damage reports signalling the death of his beloved ship, but there was no shame in dying with such a vital duty done. He had acted under the orders of the highest authority – a warrior on the surface below whose deeds were already inscribed in a hundred annals of Imperial glory. That warrior had demanded this risk be taken, and that reinforcements be hurled down to the Armageddon