"Storm of Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (MvNeill Graham)

THREE

Leonid watched the loping forms of the Warhounds as they circled his position, pouring fire from their Vulcan bolters onto the traitor lines. The men under his command cheered and punched the air at this show of defiance, though Leonid knew that was all it was. The Warhounds would buy them time to regroup, but nothing more.

'All units, this is Colonel Leonid. Regroup and fall back to the rally point immediately. Do it quickly, we don't have much time,' ordered Leonid as the deep throated roar of vehicles swelled from the traitor lines.

Princeps Carlsen jinked his agile Warhound Titan from side to side, frantically evading enemy shots while attempting to manoeuvre into a favourable firing position for his weapons moderati. Lie and Princeps Jancer in the Jure Divinu took it in turns to dart forwards and hose the trenches with their Vulcan bolters and turbo lasers, shredding anything that dared show its face, before rapidly withdrawing to safety in the smoke. Their height made a mockery of the protection offered by the firing step, killing scores of men with each volley, but he knew that the casualties they were inflicting were largely irrelevant.

Without the heavier guns of Battle Group Sword, their efforts here were purely a delaying tactic. Carlsen had not believed his ears when he heard Princeps Lierach give the order to abandon the Jourans in favour of going head to head with an Emperor class Titan, and had listened with growing horror to the vox traffic flashing between the Battle Titans as they fought for their lives.

He and his brother Warhound were too far east to go to the aid of their brethren, and had had to content themselves with following the Jouran armoured attack, though without the Reavers they had been forced to wait until the Imperial Guard either broke through or were repulsed.

Las-bolts and bolter fire flared against his void shields, but he ignored them as irrelevant. It was the enemy tanks that gave Carlsen cause for concern. Each time he'd gone forward, he had seen more and more of them lurking behind the trenches and knew it was only a matter of time until the enemy commander counterattacked.

Three Land Raiders burst from the smoke, followed by a wide line of Rhinos and transports that looked like some bizarre cross between a Chimera and a flatbed truck. The troops crammed into them screamed as they bounced along the ground towards the retreating Guard.

'Princeps Jancer, with me!' shouted Carlsen as he turned his Vulcan bolter on the lighter vehicles following the Land Raiders. Shells tore up the ground, stitching a path towards them and sawing three apart in a burst of flames and blood. All three exploded, the shells ringing from the side of a Land Raider. The heavier vehicle lurched sideways, smashing into one of the Chimera trucks and flattening it with a shriek of tortured metal.

The Jure Divinu appeared at his side, its guns bellowing with thunder and raking the enemy attack with deadly shells. Two Land Raiders skidded away from the Titans, attempting to evade their guns, but Carlsen was quicker, lashing out with his Titan's foot and catching the closest vehicle square in the side panels, buckling its armoured hull with ease and hurling the wreck through the air.

The second slewed around, bringing its sponson mounted lascannon to bear and Carlsen felt the painful sensation of his void shields collapsing as the Land Raider's gunners found their mark.

'Damn you!' yelled Carlsen, hauling backwards as the tank's guns fired again, the deadly beams flashing overhead.

'Moderati Arkian, get those shields back up! Now!'

Carlsen walked his Titan backwards, spraying the traitor vehicles with fire, careful to try and avoid the running soldiers of the Imperial Guard. Sweat ran in runnels from his face as the strain of such precise piloting took its toll.

The Defensor Fidei stumbled as Carlsen brought one of its feet down upon the smashed hulk of a Leman Russ, the pilot's compartment swaying dangerously close to the ground. The Jure Divinu stood sentinel over its brother Titan, firing and moving as the enemy advanced more cautiously now.

'Arkian!' bellowed Carlsen, 'Where are my damn shields?'

'Working on it, princeps!'

'Work faster!' demanded Carlsen as he saw the two surviving Land Raiders emerge from the smoke on a direct course for him.

The Imperator Bellum was dying, but Princeps Fierach was not about to give up just yet. Blood and sweat coated his features and he was sure Moderati Yousen was dead. The Emperor alone knew what was going on in the engineering decks: he had not been able to raise anyone down there. The Dies Irae was taking him apart piece by piece, but Fierach was not going down without a fight, and it was taking terrible damage. The tanks that had accompanied the other enemy Titans had swept past him, content to allow their war god to destroy him.

Fierach just hoped that the survivors of Battle Group Sword were able to protect the Jourans and allow them to escape.

Another hammer blow fell upon him and shooting bolts of fire lanced through his skull in sympathetic pain. What the Imperator Bellum felt, he felt.

He brought up his chainblade, the now dulled edge scoring across the barrel of the Dies Irae's plasma annihilator. Gouts of searing plasma energy spurted from the enormous gun, hissing clouds of superheated vapour geysering downwards and vaporising a hundred men in its fury.

The Dies Irae stepped in and smashed its leg against Fierach's, buckling the knee joint and destroying it in an explosion of sparks. Warning klaxons blared and thick ropes of blood ran from Fierach's mouth as he bit down hard on his tongue, the pain almost unbearable. He vainly tried to step away from the enemy Titan, but the Imperator Helium's left leg was fused solid and he could not escape.

The Dies Irae advanced again and hammered one of its weapon arms against the Imperator Bellum s torso. Fierach's Titan was slammed sideways by the thunderous blow and yet more warning lights flared into life as systems failed all over his war machine. He fought for balance, but the external gyros were smashed and he was forced to rely on his own reeling senses rather than those of the Titan.

Amazingly, he was able to recover his balance and faced die Dies Irae once more, swinging his chainfist, the one system he knew he could rely on.

The blade shrieked across the Dies Irae's midsection, tearing away great chunks from the beast's armour. Fierach knew an Emperor class Titan's reactor was buried deep within its belly and if he could but hack through enough of its armour, then others might later have a chance to slay the monster. The Dies Irae stepped aside and batted away the chainblade with the barrels of its hellstorm cannon, planting the muzzle of its weapon flat against the top of his hissing leg joint.

Incandescent fire erupted from the weapon, explosive shells bursting at point blank range against his already damaged leg. The joint exploded, the metal running molten like mercurial blood down the war machine's leg. Fierach screamed as he felt his Titan's pain as his own, the feedback along the mind impulse unit frying much of his cerebral cortex.

The mighty war machine slumped sideways, the Titan's groin hammering into the severed leg, wedging the Imperator Bellum there at an angle.

Fierach laughed hysterically as his fall was arrested.

'Thank you, old friend!' he screamed, and with one last herculean effort, forced his dying brain to command the Titan in one last act of defiance.

The Imperator Bellum pushed off with its one good leg, lurching forward to smash its bridge section against the Dies Irae's head with terrifying force.

The impact smashed the armoured front of the Imperial Titan's cockpit and Fierach's last sight before the Imperator Bellum's reactor went critical was of a single, burning green eye as he was crushed against its surface.

Forrix watched the Warhound in front of them back off through the smoke, realising its shields must have been knocked down.

'Follow it! Go after it!' he bellowed. The Titan was not just an enemy war machine to him now, it was a beast from the Olympian legends and he felt a burning, primal desire to slay it. He almost laughed aloud at the passions seething within him. Emotions and desires once thought lost forever rushed to the surface of his mind like a drowning man clawing for oxygen. He felt hate, bright and keen, battle-lust hot and urgent, and desire as fervent as anything he had ever felt in his long life.

His new-found purpose was reawakening in all its visceral glory.

Forrix fixed his eyes on the viewing holo, watching the chaos of the battle before him. Another Land Raider roared alongside his own, its lascannon stabbing into the smoke. He could see enemy infantry falling back towards the citadel, some carried on vehicles or grabbing onto their running boards. Here and there, pockets of resistance fired on their attackers, buying time for their comrades to escape.

A ringing impact slammed into the Land Raider, throwing Forrix sideways and he knew they had been hit badly. Smoke and flames spewed into the crew compartment and as he looked back, Forrix saw a great hole torn in the side of the vehicle's side armour. Through the ragged tear, he could see the red sky and the looming form of another Warhound Titan coming for them. Its snarling face was carved in an expression of fury and Forrix was again seized by the desire to slay one of these beasts.

'Disembark now!' bellowed Forrix, as the frontal ramp dropped and four giant warriors, similarly clad in Terminator armour, debarked from the Land Raider after their leader.

Kroeger charged through the smoke, screaming a bloodcurdling battle cry as he scythed the head from an Imperial Guardsman with a single stroke of his chainsword. He kicked another soldier in the gut, rupturing his belly and shattering his spine. Terrified faces surrounded him, some screaming, some begging for mercy. Kroeger laughed at them all, killing anything that came within reach with equal impartiality.

Kroeger's warriors hacked a bloody path through the men of the Jouran Dragoons, their blades soaked in gore. This was no battle any more, it was simple butchery and Kroeger revelled in the slaughter, feeling the surge of satisfaction hammer in his blood as he slew. His senses contracted until he could see nothing beyond the arterial spray and hear nothing beyond the screams of the dying.

A man fell to his knees before him, weeping and screaming, but Kroeger spun low, slashing his sword across the man's neck. He dropped his sword and reached down to pluck the dying man from the ground. Kroeger tore off his helmet, raising his victim up and allowing the spray of the man's lifeblood to spatter his face. Blood streamed down his face in thick rivulets and Kroeger tipped his head back to allow the life-giving fluid to fill his throat.

The hot blood tasted sublime, infused with terror and pain.

Kroeger roared with a monstrous lust, ripping the corpse in two then raising his sword high. His senses screamed at him, every nerve alive with hunger for more.

Always more. There could never be enough blood.

The red mist dropped over his eyes and Kroeger set off once more into battle.

Honsou fired as he ran, leading his warriors forward. He dived forward as a disciplined volley of las-fire blasted overhead, rolling to his knees and firing bursts at the source of the shots. Distorted screams echoed through the smoke as his bolts found homes in human flesh. His warriors darted forwards in groups, each covering the other's advance with carefully placed fire.

Men and tanks roared through the smoke, swirling banks of white clouds belching from the vehicles' smoke dispensers.

Honsou cursed as one of Forrix's Land Raiders rumbled past him, its sponson-mounted lascannon missing him by less than a metre. His auto-senses kicked in as the powerful weapon fired, flaring the smoke to vapour as it speared into the distance.

A massive burst of light from ahead told Honsou that there was a Titan there, one of its void shields now stripped away. He grinned as he imagined the desperate crew within, frantically trying to raise that shield as the Iron Warriors continued their attack. The soldiers pressed into their service sprinted alongside Honsou, the Warsmith deeming his company in need of support from such rabble. It angered Honsou that these scum fought beside his men, but he would not lower himself to voicing his outrage at this latest insult.

He worked the fire of his bolter left and right, deliberately catching a few of the red-clad soldiers in his volley, and rose to his feet. He sprinted forward, joining a firing squad of Iron Warriors. They had a large number of Imperial Guardsmen pinned in a dusty crater, its lip wreathed in barbed razorwire. A missile slashed from the crater, slamming into a rumbling transport vehicle behind him and blasting it open with a ringing clang.

Seconds later another missile streaked from the crater, but foolishly, the weapon team had not displaced before firing again and an answering volley of gunfire ripped the two-man team apart in a hail of bullets.

Keeping low, Honsou ran over to where a rabble of men in crimson overalls squatted behind shattered rockcrete tank traps. They fired crude, bolt-action rifles over their tops towards the crater. Honsou gripped the back of the nearest man's overalls and hauled him level with his helm.

'You are wasting ammunition, fool! Dig them out with your blades.'

The man nodded frantically, too terrified of Honsou to reply. Honsou hurled the wretch aside, wiping his gauntlet against his thigh armour and returned to his squad.

Lieutenant Colonel Leonid lay on the slopes of a cratered ridge, firing his lasgun as the first platoon sprinted back to the next rally point. His face was blackened and lined with fear-induced fatigue, but he was still alive and fighting, which was something given the confused nature of this battle. Sergeant Ellard lay beside him, pumping shot after shot into the indistinct shadows running through the smoke. The terror and threat of being surrounded, cut off and overwhelmed was a physical thing, and Leonid had to consciously fight to remain calm.

He had to lead by example, and though his chest was a knotted mass of pain, he fought it to set a good one to his men.

'Front rank fire! Rear rank withdraw!' he shouted as Ellard pushed himself to his feet and began chivvying the rear rank back towards the next rally point. Volley after volley of las-gun fire hammered through the ranks of the red-coated troopers charging through the madness of the battle, who were dropping by the dozen. So far he was holding the retreat together, but it was balancing on a knife-edge. The men were stretched to the limits of their courage and they had performed as well as he could ever have asked. But they were nearing the end of their reserves and could not hold forever.

It was a race against time as much as anything as to whether they could get back within the cover of the citadel's guns before that courage was exhausted.

Guardsman Corde crawled over to him, yelling over the crack of gunfire and rumble of tanks and explosions. The vox slithered around on his back as he crawled and he carried a hissing plasma gun, steam drifting from the coolant coils on its barrel.

'Sergeant Ellard reports they're at the rally point, sir!'

'Very good, Corde,' said Leonid, slinging his rifle and shouting, 'Front rank, let's get the hell out of here!'

The Jourans did not need to be told twice. They scrambled back down the slope as covering volleys of lasgun fire from Ellard's section stabbed into the smoke. Leonid waited until the last of his men had withdrawn before he and Corde moved to join the rest of the platoon.

A roar, like that of a Jouran carnosaur, came from the slope behind him and Leonid turned to see a legion of horrifying iron behemoths lurch over the ridge, slamming down with teeth-loosening force. The tanks were huge, perverted Leman Russ variants, their armoured flanks daubed with obscene symbols and their turrets grinding with the squeal of ancient gears. A wide-barrelled gun mounted on the nearest tank's forward hull chattered, spewing high velocity shells down the slope and ripping across the blasted ground. Leonid grabbed Corde and dropped, bullets sawing through the air above them.

He raised his head and terror flooded him as the tank rumbled forwards, ready to crush him under its bronze tracks. More bullets filled the air and the main gun fired with an ear-splitting crack, followed seconds later by a distant explosion. The track rumbled towards Leonid and he rolled in the only direction he could.

He rolled beneath the hull of the tank, its roaring metal underside passing a whisper from his head. Hot gasses and stinking exhaust fumes belched and he gagged. Something splashed him and he felt warm wetness cover his face and arms. He covered his ears and pressed his face into the dust, flattening his body as much as he could.

'Emperor protect me…' he whispered as the monstrous tank rumbled overhead. A protruding hook of metal caught on a fold of his uniform jacket and Leonid grunted in pain as he was dragged along the rough ground beneath the tank for several metres before he was able to work himself free.

Suddenly he was clear and the tank rumbled onwards, leaving him shaking with fear and relief. He took a deep breath and crawled back to Corde, who lay unmoving behind him.

Leonid felt his stomach rise and vomited explosively at the sight of Corde's mangled corpse. Corde had not been as lucky as he had, his lower body crushed to an unrecognisable pulp by the tank's mass. Blood still flooded from his mouth and Leonid dry-heaved, realising what the wetness that had splashed him under the tank had been.

The vox was crashed, but Corde's weapon was still intact and Leonid snatched it from the dead trooper's hands. A towering rage filled him at the thought that Corde's murderers probably didn't even know that they had killed someone. Leonid pushed himself to his feet and staggered drankenly after the iron monster.

The thing wasn't hard to find; it was rumbling slowly after his men, slaughtering them with bursts of gunfire and shells from its main gun. Leonid screamed himself hoarse at the traitors within, skidding to a halt less than ten metres from the rear of the tank and raising Corde's plasma gun.

He squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession, sending bolts of white-hot plasma energy towards the tank. The shots impacted squarely on the thin rear armour and punched through it easily, instantaneously igniting the tank's fuel and ammo. The tank exploded in a red fireball, the turret buckling from the pressure of internal detonations. The Shockwave swatted Leonid down, his chest searing in pain as he fell.

Black smoke plumed from the ruptured tank and Leonid screamed in fury as another shape came running towards him through the battle. He swung the plasma gun up, but it was still recharging. Angrily, he tossed the weapon aside and reached for his lasgun as Sergeant Ellard emerged from the smoke.

The sergeant didn't waste any time, hauling his commanding officer to his feet and dragging him away from the blazing wreck.

Carlsen crushed another vehicle beneath his heavy tread and sidestepped as another tried to ram him. He groaned with effort as he spun the agile Warhound on its central axis and unleashed a short volley into the tank's rear. The ammo requirements for his main guns were eating into the reserve hoppers and he knew that, at this current level of engagement, his guns would be empty in minutes.

And then this battle would be all over. Moderati Arkian had worked miracles, coaxing the Machine Spirit to invest their shields once more, and without a second to spare as that damned Land Raider had come at them again. Once again it had stripped him of his protective shields before the Jure Divinu had flanked it and blown it back to the warp. Some warriors had gotten out, but before he could bring his weapons to bear and finish them off, they were swallowed up in the smoke and confusion.

If they could just hold on a little longer, then they would be back within the visual range of the citadel and its guns. Then they would be safe.

Forrix charged across a crater, a loop of razor wire trailing from his leg, and worked the fire of his storm bolter across the backs of some cowering Guardsmen sheltering in its base. Across the battlefield he could see Kroeger slaughtering a clutch of soldiers unlucky enough to have been outpaced and cut off.

Forrix paused in his charge and his eyes narrowed as he watched the slaughter-maddened frenzy with which the young-blood butchered the enemy soldiers. His silver armour, gleaming and pristine before the battle, was now soaked in gore, its iconography obscured by glistening blood. Kroeger was going too far now, the call of the Blood God too strong for him to resist.

Honsou appeared on his right flank, leading his men forward in good order, firing and moving, firing and moving. Much as he hated to admit it, the half-breed was an adept commander, despite his mixed blood.

The battle had devolved into a series of smaller engagements now that the main Imperial offensive had been routed. There was little point in continuing the pursuit, those units that had escaped were so badly mauled that they were unlikely ever to regain field readiness.

All that remained was to slay the Titan.

With blissful synchronicity, the smoke parted and there it was before him, its red and yellow carapace blazing in the sunlight. Its snarling face challenged him to fight it.

'You task me…' he whispered, 'You task me,' and set off to meet this armoured monster, but as suddenly as it had appeared, it turned and set off at speed into the smoke.

Cheated of his prey, Forrix halted and whispered, 'Another time, beast…'

Leonid stumbled and lurched across the wasteland before the citadel, each breath hot in his chest. Were it not for Sergeant Ellard's support, he would surely have collapsed.

He could hear the cries of the enemy close behind, and the screams of those they had caught.

Suddenly he caught sight of three massive forms standing just at the edge of sight before him and, as Ellard continued pushing him forward, he almost laughed with relief as the shapes resolved themselves into the welcome form of two Reaver Battle Titans and a Warlord.

But as he drew nearer he saw, with a mounting sense of horror, that the Titans were horrendously damaged. Their carapaces were buckled and scorched by repeated weapon impacts. What had happened to these war machines? As he took in the scale of the damage he realised again the terrible nature of the foe they faced here and the folly of underestimating them. Flow many lives had been lost today because of such a mistake?

Two Warhounds lurched backwards through the smoke and dust, their weapons firing controlled bursts into the ranks of the enemy. Both were damaged, their armoured flanks scored and burned, but both were still fighting.

He watched as the Reavers and the Warlord opened fire and the air exploded with the shocking noise. The Warhounds gratefully took shelter in the shadow of their larger cousins, adding their own gunfire to the barrage.

Leonid stumbled forward, past the Titans and into the cover of the guns of the Primus Ravelin, relieved beyond words that he had made it back alive. Fresh troops manned the firing step at the edge of the forward ditch and Ellard passed him off to a frightened-looking soldier before returning to the battlefield to see to his men. Leonid leant against the wall of the parapet, cradling his head in his hands as the full horror of the battle crashed down upon him.

With those Dragoons who could escape now under the protection of the Titans of the Legio Ignatum and the citadel's gunners, the majority of the enemy did not appear too keen to continue the massacre, turning back to their own lines with raucous cries and taunts on their lips. Some could not contain their lust for killing and tried in vain to catch their victims, only to be mown down by close range fire from the Titans and the columns of fire from the ravelin and bastions.

Leonid felt an unbelievable exhaustion smother him. He put a hand out to steady himself, but the world spun crazily and he slid down the wall and collapsed before the soldiers next to him could catch him.