Chapter 59: The Emperor's Angels Descend
Eighty kilometers behind the front, inside a command tent, the lighting was dim and amber.
A staff officer in a Cadian Shock Troops uniform stood at attention, data-slate in hand. In front of him, a middle-aged man sat at a simple folding table, cutting a piece of synthetic ration steak with a knife and fork. The man's temples had gone grey at the edges. His left eye had been replaced by a mechanical augmetic that glowed a steady dark red. He worked through his meal at an unhurried pace.
"...So according to the latest communications, the evacuated civilian column is now within forty kilometers of our position." The staff officer completed his report.
Major General Anthony Rush lifted a piece on the fork and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly. He picked up the white cloth beside his plate, dabbed the corner of his mouth, and spoke without any particular emphasis. "A remarkably slow-moving collection of civilians. And the Ash Watchers 101st and the Eisenmark 11th Heavy Armoured Regiment that were assigned to support the evacuation?"
"Sir, we have lost contact with both units. The last communication received indicated they intended to intercept the Ork force inside Saint Calais."
"Hm." Anthony set the cloth down. "Brave. But foolish. It appears they sacrificed themselves to buy time for those people. One wonders whether that self-important Kleist managed to make it back to the Golden Throne."
The staff officer said nothing. He knew that Major General Anthony Rush and Colonel Kleist von Ludwig had never been on good terms. Each man's opinion of the other was unflattering. Kleist had made an enemy of the Lord General and been sent to the rear lines; for Anthony, that had been a rare opportunity for satisfaction. Now, evidently, there would be no opportunity to deliver it in person.
"Order the Cadian 365th, 366th, and 367th Artillery Regiments to advance thirty kilometers and establish a forward firing position." Anthony tossed the stained white cloth onto the table. "Once the civilian column has cleared to a safe distance, begin a creeping barrage on the designated coordinates. Immediately."
The staff officer hesitated. "But, sir, the 101st and—"
"Do you genuinely believe they could have survived surrounded by the Ork main force?" Anthony stood, cutting across the man with a short cold sound. "Use your head. They died in the Emperor's service, and their souls have gone to the Golden Throne. Go and transmit my orders."
"Yes, sir."
* * *
Saint Calais, southern district. Dawn's light was making a poor effort to push through the spore fog.
Duvette had successfully used the time the Warboss spent assembling its forces to consolidate every remaining element. He found the last of the Leman Russ and Hydra tanks in a half-collapsed warehouse, and with them Kleist and Volkov. Both men were in a state that would have been unrecognizable from their introductions — uniforms covered in dust and dried blood, faces worn down to whatever was underneath the officer's composure. They were alive.
When Kleist saw the scale of the mixed force standing behind Duvette, something visibly moved through the grey-blue eyes. Surprise, undisguised. Volkov simply nodded, and in the deep grey eyes there was something that might have been measured approval.
Then Duvette told them the Warboss had initiated its main assault, and both men's faces went to stone.
There was no extended discussion. The three of them agreed immediately: break north. Dawn had come. They had bought enough time. Another hour and they would not need the Orks to finish them.
Duvette transferred the Eisenmark regiment's command authority back to Kleist and checked the display.
[Current Command Authority: Ash Watchers 101st, Local PDF, Saint Calais Cathedral Battle Sisters Detachment]
[Total Strength: 1,162 Ash Watchers (including 89 wounded), 612 PDF, 8 Battle Sisters] [Experience: Elite (10%)]
The losses were severe. The 101st had gone into this with over sixteen hundred soldiers. Fewer than twelve hundred remained. The Eisenmark regiment had lost a third of its Leman Russ. Ammunition was low but might hold through the breakout.
"Thank you for your support, Commissar Duvette." Kleist said it without any of the register he had been using since their first meeting. There was nothing qualified in it. "You and your regiment have shown us what the 101st is made of. Now allow us to show you what a heavy armoured regiment looks like when it moves."
Duvette nodded. He turned to the assembled soldiers and his voice went flat and final.
"All units. We break north. The Black Cross Armoured Regiment opens the path. The 101st and PDF cover the flanks. Battle Sisters stay with the command element. Move fast. We have no time."
The orders went through the column in seconds. The force began to move.
Twenty Leman Russ engines opened to full output simultaneously, their exhausts throwing black smoke. They divided into three wedge formations and moved out, their tracks crushing through rubble and the dead, carving a path north. Five Hydra flak tanks held the rear, their quad autocannons traversed flat to sweep the Ork pursuers now beginning to follow.
The infantry moved behind the tanks, weapons trained on the ruins on both sides. Wounded soldiers were supported by their companions or loaded onto the Trojan transport vehicles. The entire formation moved through the morning fog like a scarred iron serpent, grinding north.
The Orks reacted faster than anyone expected.
They were barely five hundred meters clear of the warehouse district when the first intercepting elements came at them from both sides. Several dozen war bikes and a handful of crude tracked vehicles, all of them in aggressive red, engines roaring.
"Contact left!" Duvette drove the call through the command channel.
The 101st squads on the left flank deployed and opened fire. Las beams hit the lead bikes. The Ork drivers went down. The vehicles following did not have time to avoid the wrecks and the pile-up produced a sequence of explosions that dealt with several more in one event.
More Orks were converging from other directions.
"Keep moving!" Kleist's voice came from an external speaker on one of the lead Leman Russ, pressed down hard by barely-controlled fury. "Maintain forward speed! Use the main guns to clear the way!"
Three lead Leman Russ fired in the same moment. High-explosive rounds detonated at the end of the street ahead, reducing a half-standing building to rubble and closing that approach. But the Orks on other bearings kept coming.
The fighting escalated fast.
The Orks were moving as though they had been specifically ordered to stop the breakout at any cost. They charged with blades and crude firearms and didn't stop for their own dead.
Every meter the column gained was paid for.
One hour later they reached the northern city wall. The wall had collapsed in this section, opening onto a grey plain beyond. The morning light was stronger out here. The spore fog had thinned noticeably.
The plain was not safe.
Ork mobile elements had flanked around both sides of the city and were positioning ahead of them, establishing a loose interception line across their route. War trucks, hundreds of bikes, several crude heavy armored vehicles, spread across the plain in a ragged formation.
"Straight through!" Kleist's voice cracked out. "All tanks, full speed! Run them down!"
The Leman Russ engines reached their maximum. Tracks hammered over broken stone and through the gap in the city wall, and the wedges drove into the Ork interception line like steel blades entering flesh. Main guns fired. Coaxial weapons swept the infantry. Ork vehicles exploded across the plain in sequence, their burning wreckage falling behind the advancing column.
But there were too many, and casualties meant nothing to them. More Orks converged from every angle, trying to bury the breakout force under numbers.
"Don't stop! Hold formation! North!" Duvette matched his voice to Kleist's volume.
The column drove through the encirclement. The tip of the wedge punched out the other side and the force came through behind it.
The Orks did not stop coming.
Duvette looked back. Across the plain behind them, a green tide was pouring through the city's breaches, the leading elements already on the open ground. Ten times their number, at minimum. War truck engines roaring. Bikes screaming. Ork voices merging into a wall of sound. And in the center of it all, standing on the cab of an enormous war truck, a massively armored Warboss with a power klaw raised.
Ammunition was nearly gone. Duvette checked the display.
[Current Command Authority: Ash Watchers 101st, Local PDF, Saint Calais Cathedral Battle Sisters Detachment]
[Total Strength: 1,091 Ash Watchers (including 92 wounded), 361 PDF, 8 Battle Sisters] [Experience: Elite (10%)]
[Overall Supply: 23%] [Overall Morale: 70%] [Overall Loyalty: 70%] [Overall Sanity: 70%] [Chaos Corruption: 3%]
"Our ammunition will not last much longer," Volkov's voice came through the channel. Even and measured, and heavy underneath.
Duvette locked his jaw. He looked at the Strategic Display. Seventy kilometers to the next defensive position. At their current speed and in their current state, they would not reach it before the Orks closed the gap.
Were they really going to die here.
Then from the north came a sound that reached him before he had named it. Low, sustained, the sound of something large tearing through air.
He thought: friendly fire support. He did not know how they had gotten the coordinates, but any fire from their own side was welcome. His chest rose briefly.
He looked north.
The next moment the earth moved.
The shells did not land in the Ork formation behind them.
They detonated ahead. First volley, ten kilometers north.
The sound hit like a physical event — a sustained thunder that kept going and going rather than resolving into silence. The plain shook under their feet. Everything in Duvette's chest vibrated. The northern horizon was swallowed by orange-red light.
The light was moving. Steadily. Coming south.
He recognized it in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
A creeping barrage. Not supporting fire. A pre-planned artillery advance, a wall of fire moving toward them at a hundred meters per minute across a front well over ten kilometers wide. On the Strategic Display, a deep red warning band was already visible, advancing steadily south. They were directly in its path.
A turret hatch on the nearest Leman Russ slammed open.
Kleist pulled himself through it. His face was covered in grime. His short golden hair, which had been neat when they had first shaken hands, was disordered and dark with sweat. He turned to the north and screamed with everything his throat still had.
"Anthony! You treacherous bastard! I know this is you!"
Every surviving soldier within earshot understood at the same moment.
They looked north. The horizon was consumed by orange-red fire. A wall of absolute destruction made of flame, earth, and shrapnel, advancing at a steady and indifferent pace from the north. Behind them, the green tide. In front of them, their own side's artillery.
Between the hammer and the anvil.
The Orks had slowed their pursuit deliberately. They were howling and snarling in a way that suggested they understood what was happening and were savoring it — driving the humans forward meter by meter into the fire of their own guns.
Despair moved through the formation like something physical.
A young PDF soldier went to his knees on the plain and pressed his hands to the sides of his helmet, lips moving. Several Eisenmark auxiliary infantrymen stared at the northern horizon with their weapons hanging at their sides. Even the most seasoned 101st veterans had something vacant in their eyes.
They had fought through a full night to protect those civilians. They had bled for every hour of delay. They had bought the evacuation the time it needed. And now they were going to be killed by their own artillery.
Duvette found Volkov and Kleist. Volkov's face had gone the color of old iron, lips pressed together. Kleist had come apart at the edges — he was hitting the tank's armor plating with his bare fists, knuckles already torn open and bleeding, still hitting.
"We have been abandoned." Volkov said it without inflection.
"Anthony has always had it in for me." Kleist's voice was raw. The grey-blue eyes were burning. "But to do this — his own people — how could he dare—"
"That conversation is not useful right now." Duvette cut across him.
He waited a moment. Then he said: "I have a suggestion."
Volkov turned to look at him.
"We turn around," Duvette said. "We charge straight into the Ork main force. We find the Warboss. We kill it. If we take out the Warboss, the Ork assault may collapse. If it does, we may have a chance."
Kleist made a sound that was nearly a laugh. "You've lost your mind. That's suicide."
"Staying here is also suicide," Duvette said. "At least charging gives us a chance. And at least we die like soldiers, not idiots shredded by their own guns."
Volkov was quiet for several seconds. Then he nodded, slowly. "I agree. It is the only option that gives us anything."
Duvette let the fury he had been holding back find his voice for a moment. "If I survive this, I am going to put my bolt pistol in that treacherous commander's mouth."
Kleist looked at him. Then at the advancing fire wall to the north. Something settled in his face.
"Then I will pull the trigger. But right now — let those Ork bastards see what the Eisenmark's pride looks like."
The orders went out.
The soldiers lifted their heads. When the word came to turn and charge, something replaced the blankness — hard and set. Dying in a final charge against the enemy was a better death than being blown apart by their own side's guns. Teeth were bitten down. Faces found their resolution.
The column reversed. Tanks traversed their turrets to the south. Infantry checked and reloaded whatever they still had. The wounded were moved to the best available cover, a few soldiers assigned to stay with them. Everyone else prepared for a final charge.
Duvette climbed the hull of the nearest Leman Russ and stood beside the turret. He raised the bolt pistol and drove his voice across the plain.
"Soldiers! We have been betrayed! But the Emperor has not abandoned us! Today, we will show those Ork bastards what the fury of mankind looks like! We will survive this — and we will make the man who sold us out answer for it!"
He drew one breath.
"CHARGE!"
The engines opened to maximum. The tracks hit the plain and the column drove south, straight into the green tide. The infantry ran behind the tanks, weapons aimed forward, every step deliberate.
The Orks had not expected the humans to turn and charge. There was a fraction of a second where the advance stalled. Then they erupted — this was exactly what they had wanted, a proper collision. They charged in response, howling.
The distance between the two forces closed at speed.
Then Duvette heard something else.
An engine sound. Not the crude, over-fueled bellow of Ork machinery. This sound was different.
He looked up at the sky.
A blue aircraft came down through the cloud cover in a steep dive. The lines of it were clean and purposeful in a way that nothing on this battlefield had been. Heavy weapons hung under the wings. In the morning light the hull was the blue of deep water, the edges of the wings trimmed in gold. On the fuselage, a white marking was clearly visible.
A single white "U."
A Thunderhawk gunship.
Ultramarines.
Duvette went still for one moment. Then he laughed. It started low, and before he had counted three breaths it had become something full and unrestrained, the kind of laughter that comes when the arithmetic of survival suddenly changes faster than the mind can process it.
He raised the bolt pistol and turned to face his soldiers.
"Soldiers! The Emperor's Angels have arrived! Death comes now for the Orks! Show them our fury! Let the Emperor hear our loyalty!"
****
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