Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [96]
‘How many?’ Maghernus asked. ‘How many knights?’
‘Four. No, five. One is injured. I also see thirty of the enemy, and three tanks that were once our Leman Russes. Now, no more talking. Everybody take aim.’
The dockworkers did as ordered, drawing beads on the melee unfolding below.
‘Aim low,’ Maghernus told his men, drawing a silent smile from Andrej. ‘Aim for legs and torsos.’ No one needed to be told to be careful with their fire and not hit the Templars.
The storm-trooper fired first, his bright lance of laser the signal for the others to join in. Lasguns bucked in increasingly sure hands, focusing lenses burning as they spat their lethal energy into the street below. The tearing laser fire punched into shoulders, legs, backs and arms, and the Imperials had managed three volleys before the beasts ripped their hungry attention from the knights and returned fire up at the men crouching on the warehouse rooftop.
‘Down!’ Andrej ordered the others. They obeyed, sinking back into cover. The storm-trooper hunched lower, but remained where he was. He risked another shot, and another, splitting two aliens through the skull with pinpoint fire.
Around him, around them all, the low wall edging the roof was shredding under the surviving aliens’ fire, but it didn’t matter. The knights were free. Andrej crouched at last, after seeing the figure of one Templar, the knight’s armour more gunmetal grey than black now from battle damage, hurl aside three attackers and lay waste to them with his monstrous, crackling relic hammer.
His last act before falling back was to untrap his last det-pack, and set the timer for six seconds. With a roar of effort, Andrej hurled it down at street towards the tanks. It exploded a half-second after clanging against the lead tank’s turret, decapitating the war machine in a burst of noise and fire.
The Templars could deal with the other two.
‘Back!’ the storm-trooper was laughing. ‘Back across the roof!’
‘What the hell is so funny?’ one of the dockworkers, Jassel, was complaining as they ran in crouches away from the disintegrating roof edge.
‘They weren’t just knights,’ Andrej’s voice was coloured by a sincere grin. ‘That was the Reclusiarch we just saved. Now, quick quick, down to the street again.’
In the calm that followed, the streets gave birth to an atmosphere that was somewhere between serene and funereal. A very different warrior greeted Maghernus this time. The towering figure was far from the regal, impassive statue that merely acknowledged his existence with a nod.
The Reclusiarch’s armour still set his teeth on edge, its active hum making his eyes water if he stood too close. But Maghernus knew machines, even if he didn’t know ancient artefacts of war, and he could hear the faults in the war plate now. Its once-smooth, angry purr had a waspish edge to its tone now, and intermittent clicks told of something internal no longer running at full function. The joints of the battered armour no longer snarled with tensing fibre-cable muscles – they growled, as if reluctant to move.
Five weeks. Five weeks of fighting, night and day, in the same suit of armour, with the dock assault rising as the most punishing week yet. It was a miracle the armour still functioned at all.
The tabard was ripped and stained grey-green with alien blood. The scrolls that had adorned the warrior’s shoulders were gone, with only snapped chains showing they were ever held there at all. The armour itself was still impressive in its violent potential and faceless inhumanity, but where it had been blacker than black before the war, most of the blackness remaining was from scorch marks and laser burns marking the armour like bruises and claw wounds. Much of the war plate was revealed in a dull, unpolished grey now that the paint was lost to a thousand weapon chops and glancing gunshots.
Somehow, it had the inelegant presence of a rifle or tank churned out of an Armageddon factory: plain, simple, but utterly brutal.
The other Templars looked no better. The one who bore the