Chapter 56: Hand Over Command!
Duvette did not panic.
The Ork tide around them was close to swallowing the whole formation. The Waaagh battle cry came in successive waves, each louder than the last. The soldiers' breathing had shortened and the fingers on the trigger guards were not entirely steady.
But they had Duvette.
The figure at the center of the column in the black commissar's coat stood straight. He assessed the ground around him with a calm that had nothing performed in it, occasionally firing his bolt pistol at the Orks screaming from the sides.
His presence alone was an anchor.
"Hold formation," Duvette said, his voice carrying through the battle cry without effort. "Follow me."
The soldiers looked at him. The face under the blood and dust carried no fear, only absolute focus. Those eyes were half-closed, fixed on something only he could see.
They trusted those eyes.
Under his guidance, the hundred-strong force began moving through the Ork tide. They did not stand and fight. They did not hold a single position. They moved like eels through the gaps, threading through the encirclement again and again. Whenever a concentration of red contacts appeared ahead on the Strategic Display, Duvette changed direction. They slipped out of situations that should have ended them.
Along the way, they found other soldiers.
The first group was twelve men of 2nd Company, 3rd Squad, pinned inside a warehouse with more than twenty Orks pressing the perimeter. Duvette brought the column in from the flank and the crossfire cleared the threat quickly.
"Commissar!" The squad sergeant shouted, something raw in his voice. "We thought we'd—"
"Fall in," Duvette said. There was no time for anything else. "We're heading to Saint Liviel Avenue to link up with the armoured regiment."
The second group was what remained of the recon platoon. Seven men, every one of them carrying a wound. They had run into a Kommando ambush during their withdrawal and lost half their number getting clear.
"Where's Stroud?" Duvette asked, tying off a field dressing around a deep tear in one soldier's arm while he worked.
"The platoon sergeant took the main element north," a scout answered between shallow breaths. "Said he was going to establish a comms relay node. Our group was the decoy. We drew the pursuit away from them."
Duvette nodded. "Good work. You're back in the column now."
Third group. Fourth group.
As they kept moving, the force snowballed. Scattered soldiers who had been cut off from their units — 101st, PDF, and Eisenmark auxiliary infantry alike — saw the commissar's coat and moved toward it with the single-mindedness of drowning men finding something solid to hold onto.
By the time they had crossed the fourth street, the force had grown from barely a hundred to over three hundred.
Duvette leaned against a section of broken wall for a brief moment and checked the Soul of the Legion's display.
[Current Command Authority: Ash Watchers 101st]
[Total Strength: 1,342 (including 31 wounded), 146 PDF] [Experience: Veteran (90%)]
[Overall Supply: 46%] [Overall Morale: 76%] [Overall Loyalty: 91%] [Overall Sanity: 83%] [Chaos Corruption: 3%]
He drew a long breath, reloaded the bolt pistol.
"Keep moving!" His voice cut through the gunfire with no apparent effort.
The next stretch was harder. The Orks seemed to have identified the direction of movement. Their battle cry came from all sides with no indication of distance, the sound having lost the directional quality that made it useful for gauging threat position. The soldiers pushed through another street of close-range fighting.
Then the sound of main guns became distinct.
The particular low thunder of Leman Russ battle cannon fire. Close.
Duvette checked the Strategic Display. Four blue markers, Sixth Squadron, two hundred meters ahead, surrounded on all sides by dense red contacts.
And those six anomalous red markers were still moving. Third Squadron's position was gone entirely, every blue marker extinguished. The anomalous contacts had resumed their straight-line advance and were now pointing directly toward Sixth Squadron's position.
There was no time.
"Full speed!" Duvette ordered.
Saint Liviel Avenue resolved out of the fog. A wide main thoroughfare, buildings of three-story stone construction on both sides, most of them now torn open by the fighting. In the center of the street, four Leman Russ had formed a back-to-back circular defense, turrets rotating continuously, cannon fire going out in every direction. Their hull-mounted weapons and sponson heavy bolters added to the output, filling the street in every direction with overlapping fire that left very few angles unaccounted for.
Around the tanks, several dozen Black Cross auxiliary infantry held positions behind rubble and sandbags, lasrifles and heavy stubbers engaging the Ork infantry flooding the approach from every street.
The situation was deteriorating. A dozen Tank Bustas were closing from the ruins on the flanking approach, moving with the specific patient intent of creatures focused entirely on the track assemblies of the vehicles ahead of them. Behind the main Ork line, a cluster of Bomb Squigs was being driven toward the perimeter by Ork handlers, the creatures lurching forward with the erratic urgency of animals that had been wired past their natural sense of self-preservation.
"Cover the tanks!" Duvette drove the order through the column frequency. "Tank Bustas and the Bomb Squigs first. Priority. Now."
More than three hundred 101st soldiers came in from the flank.
The sudden concentrated fire broke the Tank Bustas' approach before they had time to react. Las beams hit three in rapid succession. The rocket launchers they were carrying cooked off against their bodies, and the resulting secondary detonations took out everything in the immediate vicinity.
The Bomb Squigs received the same concentrated attention. Under crossfire from multiple directions, they detonated in sequence, each explosion producing a spray of organic matter and Ork debris that was not pleasant and was also not a tactical problem anymore.
The pressure on the tank perimeter dropped sharply.
One of the Leman Russ turret hatches came open. An officer pulled himself up to his shoulders through the opening. His face was covered in hydraulic fluid and dried blood, but Duvette recognized the features.
Captain Ronan. The officer who had called the 101st rats that rolled in the mud.
The arrogance was gone from his face entirely. When he registered who was coming toward him, the expression went through several stages of adjustment that did not find a comfortable resting point. He looked at Anderson and the others, who were watching him with expressions that did not have to say anything out loud to make their meaning clear.
Ronan opened his mouth. Something appeared to be building there. Then the fighting going on around him and the ongoing Waaagh roar pulled the moment apart before it could form, and what came out of him instead was simply the loudest thing he could produce toward Duvette:
"Thank you for the support, Commissar!"
Duvette was not interested in the subtext. He crossed to the tank at a quick pace and looked up at Ronan from beside the hull.
"We have lost contact with all other units." His voice left no space for discussion. "Captain Ronan, I am assuming command of this position under the emergency authority of an Imperial Commissar. Your tanks are under my orders as of this moment."
Ronan froze for a moment. He looked around at the situation. Another wave of Waaagh battle cry arrived from somewhere in the fog. He came to attention, heels together, and his voice was entirely correct when it came.
"As you command, Commissar. The Eisenmark 11th Sixth Squadron reports to your authority."
Duvette nodded. The display updated immediately.
[Current Command Authority: Ash Watchers 101st, Eisenmark 11th Armoured Regiment (Sixth Squadron)]
[Total Strength: 1,331 Ash Watchers (including 35 wounded), 121 PDF, 43 Eisenmark 11th auxiliary infantry, 4 Leman Russ]
He checked the Strategic Display. The anomalous red contacts were inside five hundred meters now, still traveling in a straight line through every obstacle in their path, still pointed directly here.
He was running out of time.
"Captain Ronan!" Duvette turned and pointed down the street toward the eight o'clock position. "Every tank that still has a functioning gun — traverse and train your main armament on that bearing. You wait for my order to fire."
Ronan followed the direction Duvette was pointing. Fog. Nothing visible. No obvious threat.
"Sir, that direction looks..." Ronan started.
"Execute the order," Duvette cut across him. "Now."
"Yes, sir."
Duvette turned back to the formation and went to work on the Orks still pressing the perimeter, while the larger part of his attention remained fixed on those anomalous red contacts closing the distance.
Whatever they were, he was going to stop them here.
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