"The Commissar's transport went down! Fine if you won't co with , but you dare stand in my way?!"
Stroud's eyes were red to the edges. He had both hands locked on his weapon and every gram of air in his lungs behind the words, directed at Kleist who was planted squarely in front of him.
The combined roar of artillery and alien shrieks above the ruins was substantial. Stroud cut through it without apparent effort.
"Will you calm down for one second!" Kleist shouted back with equal force, giving nothing.
The forr armoured commander's instinct had always been to think in terms of the tactical picture first. His voice drove through the surrounding noise with the weight of soone who had spent years making himself heard above engine output.
He raised his arm and pointed at the streets visible behind Stroud.
"Look at what's out there! The swarm has completely flooded every street for blocks in every direction! Charging out now is just dying faster!" He turned to Finn, who had not spoken a word. "Finn! Back up here! We have to hold this fire position!"
The sniper with the chanical eyes and the prosthetic arm stood quietly at Stroud's shoulder.
He did not speak. He ejected his lasrifle's spent power cell, seated a fresh one, and let the clean chanical click of the action closing make the point he didn't need words for.
"Move." Stroud pushed Kleist's arm aside without discussion.
His eyes had the look of a man who has made a decision and finished listening to alternatives. He turned to face the positions behind him and put everything he had into a single roar.
"All 101st Regint veterans, on !"
Nearly a thousand soldiers, the original Ash Watchers who had been with Duvette since Farrak IV, left their individual firing positions across the line without a second's hesitation. They moved with the quiet, coordinated certainty of people who already knew what they were going to do. They ca together around Stroud with weapons raised.
Stroud reached up and pulled off his battered service cap. He threw it at Kleist's feet.
He looked at Kleist and spoke with the deliberate weight of soone saying sothing that is going to stay said.
"You rember this, blondie. Even if what's ahead of us is hell. Even if every last one of us dies in there." He held the eye contact. "We do not leave our commanding officer."
He turned, leveled his weapon at the Tyranid mass pressing at the position's periter, and prepared to lead nearly a thousand veterans into a countercharge that had nothing obviously rational about it.
Then a voice from the forward observation point on a ruined high point at the front of the line broke through everything else.
An Ultramar auxiliary observer, glass to his eye, pitched his words at a volu that communicated that sothing had changed.
"Due south! Sothing coming in from the south! There's a person! A person! A friendly! They're carrying soone!"
Stroud was at the forward edge of the position before the shout had fully faded, eyes forward, scanning.
In the fire and the alien mass covering the approach, he found it.
A shape was moving through the swarm with the particular quality of sothing that has stopped making choices about what to hit and started hitting everything in range. A Tyranid Warrior stepped into its path with a bone sword raised. The sword made contact. The Warrior was driven back with an impact that sent it down and did not get back up. Termagants and Hormagaunts pressing in from the sides connected with a maul swung with no gap in its coverage and were put down as biology rather than threats.
"That's Anderson!"
Stroud's attention moved past Anderson to the shape on his back. Battered and unmistakable. Black commissar's greatcoat. The man was carrying soone.
"The Commissar is alive!"
Stroud turned to face the veterans assembled at his back and raised his weapon.
"With , brothers! Bring the Commissar ho! Tear these bastards apart!"
He drew his monomolecular bayonet and locked it under his rifle in one motion. Then looked back over his shoulder at Kleist, still standing in the position.
"Blondie! Sound the advance! Move!"
And with that, several hundred Ash Watchers veterans crashed into the Tyranid mass ahead of them like a wave that had decided the shore was optional.
Kleist watched their backs as they went.
The vein at his temple was extrely visible.
"These suicidal lunatics!" He said it through his teeth, without pause, and turned back to the command position and took control of the 112th's remaining forces and the heavy weapons teams in the sa breath.
He grabbed the vox unit and put his orders out across every position simultaneously.
"All units, run those barrels red! Crossing fire on both flanks! I do not want a single organism getting around them! Keep those flanks sealed!"
Strapped firmly to Anderson's back in the press of the swarm, Duvette watched several hundred veterans charging toward him without any apparent consideration for whether they would survive it.
He had not anticipated this. He had not anticipated any of this.
He found himself genuinely unable to process the scale of what these soldiers were doing. That his presence in this regint had produced this kind of loyalty, enough to send nearly a thousand people into a countercharge without orders, was sothing he did not have an imdiate frawork for.
He was in no condition to do anything except endure the ride and hope. He looked at the veterans charging toward him and wanted, with a specificity that surprised him, for as many of them as possible to co through this.
Anderson's power maul accelerated.
The large man moved through the swarm like sothing that the swarm had not been built to stop, a roaring engine of impact, crushing anything that stepped into his path and using the recovery from each kill to drive the next step forward. The Unyielding Iron Guard's effect was fully apparent: every hostile organism in range concentrated its attention on him, and every kill gave him back a portion of what it had cost.
When the two forces t, the line straightened.
"Covering withdrawal! Fight on the move!" Stroud directed veterans into protective positions flanking Anderson on both sides, weapons firing continuously, walking backward and pulling the group through.
Under the sustained fire from the position's heavy weapons covering the flanks, and the 101st veterans' complete disregard for their own continued physical integrity, the combined formation broke through the swarm's blockade line.
Duvette was back inside the defended periter.
The mont they cleared the final contact point, Anderson dropped to one knee. The alien blood covering him was thick enough to change the colour of his armour. He breathed in hard, working, and with both hands untied the ropes binding Duvette to his back and set him down against a sandbag with a deliberate care that was very different from how the previous hour had looked.
Duvette leaned against the sandbag and powered down the chainsword. He had not been idle on the ride out: he had used the blade on several organisms that had worked around to Anderson's back and found angles the power maul's arc could not cover.
He breathed the smoke and prothium air of the position and raised his head.
Every soldier close enough to have a view of his arrival was looking at him. The concern in their faces was the kind that does not perform.
He raised his left hand and waved it once, communicating that the wounds had not killed him.
"This ti, I owe all of you..." He coughed twice before he could finish it.
"Boss, heâ€"" Stroud was imdiately in front of him, confirming consciousness with a look, then turning to point at Kleist with the energy of a man who has been waiting for this mont.
"Enough." Duvette's left hand ca up, blood dried into the creases of his palm, and cut the sentence off cleanly.
His eyes moved between Stroud and Kleist. His voice was not strong at the mont. His authority over it had not diminished at all.
"Given the situation, Kleist was not wrong. His judgnt was tactically sound." He let that land, then completed it. "And you were not wrong either. Both of you. No more of this."
He took a breath and put his weight into it, Anderson's arm under him, and got himself upright.
He looked at the battered position around him. The line. The soldiers. His regint.
"Reorganize the line and recount ammunition." He rehung the chainsword at his hip, the blade notched from the work it had done. "We keep fighting. Until every alien is cleared."
User Comments
0 comments from readers