Chapter 53: Bait Taken, Orks in the Net
Duvette crouched below the windowsill of a second-floor residential room and watched the churning green fog outside.
Beside him was a reinforced company of 101st soldiers, one hundred and thirty-three in total, distributed across three connected buildings. Las barrels extended from the windows, trained on the main street below, which was already swallowed by spore fog.
The regiment's other elements were deployed across the southern district in squad formation, occupying key junctions, elevated positions, and the access points leading down into the underground pipe network. They were the eyes. They were also the trap.
Duvette drew a long breath. The Grand Strategic Display opened across his vision in clean detail. The southern district's structure was outlined in blue-white lines. Green markers indicated his own squad positions. Blue markers showed the designated tank positions. Yellow marked the Battle Sisters' locations. Beyond the southern edge of the map, there was nothing yet. A blank.
He cycled through the comms channels. Three independent bands were now synchronized: the 101st's command channel, the Eisenmark armoured regiment's command channel, and the shared line for the PDF and Battle Sisters. His voice would carry to every ear in the operation.
"All units, final comms check. Report status."
"First squad, in position."
"Second squad, in position."
"Third squad..."
The confirmations came in sequence. Then the armoured regiment's channel: Kleist's voice, flat and precise. "All units on our end are ready."
Last came Sister Olivia's voice, cool and even. "Battle Sisters element, ready."
"Received." Duvette switched back to the 101st's command channel.
He checked the time in the upper left of his vision. Seventeen forty-seven. The light was dropping fast. The spore clouds had consumed the last of the daylight, and the entire southern district had sunk into a crawling, greenish dark that made every shadow feel inhabited.
Night. Urban warfare. The ground the 101st knew best.
"Maintain silence. Wait for the bait to come in." Duvette's voice was steady and flat. "No one opens fire without my order. No one."
Brief confirmations came through the channel.
They waited.
The spore clouds had swallowed the better half of the southern district. Visibility was under thirty meters. Beyond that, nothing but rolling green fog and the vague outlines of buildings. Duvette could hear the controlled breathing of the soldiers beside him. Anderson sat with his back to the wall, eyes closed, but his ears were moving in small adjustments, pulling in every sound from outside.
Time passed.
Duvette watched the Strategic Display. The southern edge was still blank.
Then it changed.
Red contacts appeared in the fog.
One. Two. Three. The number climbed rapidly, the red markers moving fast across the display, pulling disordered tracks across the map, some of them overlapping and colliding. No formation. No coordination. Exactly what Orks looked like when they were moving fast and excited about what was ahead of them.
The first wave. Duvette counted. Approximately a hundred contacts, coming in from three directions, all of them converging on the city. And ahead of them, three blue markers moving at high speed toward the wall, pulling back hard.
The bait.
Earlier, while reviewing the PDF's supply depots through the Strategic Display, Duvette had identified three Taurus Rapid Assault Vehicles gathering dust in a local stockpile. Light, fast, designed for all-terrain movement, thin armor that made them completely unsuited to a direct engagement. He had brought this to Kleist and proposed a plan: get them to the armoured regiment's maintenance detachment for urgent work, then send a 101st squad out in them to draw the Orks into the city.
Kleist had resisted. He called it pointless. Duvette held his position: the Orks needed to believe that the humans intended to hold this city and fight for it. Without that conviction, they would not commit their main strength to an assault. Kleist had eventually agreed.
Now the bait was working.
The channel erupted with noise. Engines at their limit, the heavy crack of large-caliber weapons, the raw howling of Orks in full pursuit.
"This is decoy squad!" A young, taut voice cut through the noise. "Enemy has taken the bait! Repeat, enemy has taken the bait! Entering the attack corridor in thirty seconds! Stand by!"
"Received." Finn's voice came back, entirely calm. The marksman was on the city wall, commanding the pre-positioned heavy weapons squads. "Thirty-second countdown begins. All units, prepare."
Duvette switched between channels.
"All units, attention. The decoy is in its final approach. Wall fire opens in thirty seconds. All squads hold concealment and wait for further orders."
He checked the map. The three blue markers were moving at over a hundred kilometers per hour, driving hard toward the gap in the wall, with a dense mass of red behind them and the gap between them shrinking visibly.
Twenty seconds.
Fifteen seconds.
The scream of engines reached them from the direction of the wall, rising fast.
Ten seconds.
The first Taurus came through the gap at full speed. The body was covered in impact craters. The left wheel assembly was trailing smoke. It was still moving. The second came through right behind it, the roof-mounted heavy stubber sweeping a continuous burst backward as it came.
The third vehicle did not appear. On the map, the blue marker representing it went dark.
"Third vehicle destroyed!" The decoy squad's voice burst through the channel, raw with fury. "We're inside! Open fire! Open fire!"
The wall came alive.
Autocannon fire tore through the stillness of the fog. Shells went out at hundreds of rounds per minute, filling the air with a sustained metal storm. Then the rocket launchers, the warheads shrieking outward trailing fire, going deep into the Ork column.
Detonations flickered in the fog, throwing fragments of twisted metal and the shapes of broken vehicles briefly visible against the green murk.
On the Strategic Display, red contacts began disappearing.
One. Two. Five. But there were too many. The first salvo accounted for approximately ten vehicles. The Orks that survived it did not pull back. They accelerated. Their howling grew louder and the rate of fire coming back at Finn's position increased dramatically.
Finn did not stay. One drum fired. That was all. His voice came through the channel, sharp and final. "Fall back to the second defensive line. All heavy weapons squads, off the wall immediately. Repeat, off the wall now."
The spore fog had closed the distance faster than expected. The Orks had been very close before the wall fired, and staying any longer risked losing the withdrawal route entirely.
The wall fire cut off. Within seconds, the squads were moving back into the city interior, the heavy weapons teams withdrawing on schedule.
The Ork vehicles poured through the gap.
The Waaagh battle cry that came with them was not simply sound. A force that large, in the grip of that level of combat frenzy, was generating something that existed below the acoustic register, a resonance produced by thousands of minds entirely consumed by violence and the Warp energy their collective rage generated. The soldiers in the surrounding buildings felt it arrive in their chests and work outward from there, a sensation that had no mechanical explanation: organs shifting, limbs losing their solidity, the body's confidence in itself becoming briefly uncertain.
"Colonel Kleist, this is Duvette." He kept his voice even. "Orks are inside the southern district. The main body is advancing toward Junction Seven. The remainder is splitting, approximately toward Junctions Three and Four. Enemy is projected to enter your kill zone in two minutes."
A short silence, then Kleist's voice came back, carrying a note of suppressed tension that had not been there before. "Received. I hope your visibility is as reliable as you claimed, Commissar."
"It is." Duvette cut the connection and switched back to the 101st's tactical channel.
"All units, final word." He kept his voice unhurried. "Our objective is delay. Make them pay for every meter. But do not stand and fight to the end. When the pressure becomes too much, withdraw along your pre-planned routes immediately. I do not need heroes. I need people who are still alive tomorrow."
Through the channel, the veterans answered with quiet, low laughter. They understood their commissar by now. With him, keeping yourself alive mattered more than any piece of Imperial doctrine.
The meatgrinder began.
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