Cleaning the Steel
Fuel hisses and gurgles through the thick hose from the tanker and into the fuel cell of Blood and Steel. The precious fluids are carefully rationed while on campaign and every drop must be measured and accounted for. Sergeant Young sighs with contentment and pats the flank of his tank. The three days since they arrived at the crossroads have been largely quiet with only scattered bands of orks to deal with. The Colonel decided that it was best to only send a platoon or two after every group and bring them down rather than charge all over with the entirety of the regiment. As such a rotating roster was created where every unit is sent out and recalled for resupply in a precisely measured manner.
The mechanized companies of the Vostroyan 98th and additional armsmen of the von Kessels arrive in a tide of Chimeras and soft-topped half-tracks. Long trains of supply trucks dispensing badly needed parts, ammunition, and fuel. An armored regiment devours all three at a prodigious rate making it vital to have secure supply lines and a sizable stockpile of all three necessities at all stages of the campaign.
More and more men and supplies flow into the crossroads and before long the officers turned their men to constructing an outer defensive layer of trenches and earthen walls. The Vostroyans were quick to create firing points for their heavy weapons and shallow pits deep enough to half-cover a Chimera and pile up the earth so that only the turret might show.
The Knights are tended to by their own retinues. Serfs and Tech-Priests descending on them in a tide of blue and red-robed supplicants before metal gods. A constant drone of machine speech and plainsong rises from their encampments and even drown out the screech of grinding metal and hissing welders. Sergeant Young watches as a squad of Vostroyans march past in lockstep, heirloom rifles shouldered and bayonets gleaming silver against their bronze armor and red coats. Their furred hats are well-suited to the chilled weather of the Hydratus autumn and almost make him jealous. Then he remembers that they are infantrymen.
"How can anyone go into combat without a hand's length of armor between them and the enemy?" he wonders to himself and again pats the flank of his tank as though rewarding a faithful horse.
"It is indeed a wonder," a heavily accented, female voice observes wryly from behind the veteran sergeant. The Cadian whirls around and snaps a sharp salute at the handsome woman in an officer's uniform without the rank pins and medals so typical of such accoutrements standing behind him. Her eyes are dark blue like mountain lake waters and set in a heart-shaped face that bears an amused smirk that quirks full lips. Her skin is as pale as any tanker who hasn't spent much time in the sun without thick armor protecting them.
"At ease Sergeant," Captain Marks orders as he returns Young's salute. "May I present Dame Mathilda von Kessel of Knight Sanguine. This is Sergeant Jeremiah Young the commander of this fine piece of Imperial war machine."
"A pleasure ma'am," Young greets uncomfortably. Career enlisted men keep their interactions with the upper echelons of the Imperium's nobility and command structure to a minimum as a general rule of thumb. It is safer for the enlisted to keep their simmering resentment of all the senior decision makers from the presence of polite society. Or so the prancy, over paid monkeys think anyway.
"The pleasure is mine Sergeant. Your crew has performed admirably as the captain has informed me," the noblewoman remarks casting a critical eye over the armored bulk of Blood and Steel. Young feels slightly defensive at the glance, as if the rough exterior of his tank is somehow being critiqued by this woman who has never been inside when the cannons roar and solid shot rattles from the hull like hail.
He crushes that small surge of resentment. The Dame is an Imperial Knight and as such is a much larger target on the field than a simple Leman Russ even one as potent as Blood and Steel.
"Indeed, four shots and four kills throughout the last two engagements against ork armored vehicles and seven more light combatants. Impressive accuracy sergeant. Please pass on my compliments to Gunner Muntley if you would?" the captain inquires and clasps his hands behind his back.
"As soon as he gets back from the quartermaster with the ammo resupply sir."
"Good, now the Dame and I must be off to headquarters for a planning session. Do pass anything you might need up the chain."
"Sir yes sir."
The sergeant shakes his head at their backs in confusion and turns back to his tank. His crew is returning with cans of heavy bolter rounds on their shoulders and a servitor escorted by Enginseer Theas laden with a fat, silver photonic fuel cell. He throws all concerns with the higher ups aside and focuses on getting his crate in ship-shape.
The brass can play their games while he plays his.
((-))
Two days later the entirety of H-Company rolls east kicking up a cloud of dust as high as a hive spire. Blood and Steel roars along on the clanking treads. Exhaust pipes merrily belching smoke as Sergeant Young stands in the turret. Reflective goggles protect his eyes over a scarf wrapped around his lower face against the cold. His legs are warmed by the heat of the tank's interior. The wide-open plains leading towards the ruins of what was once a small fortress are a rolling, peaceful field of gold.
Vostroyan Chimeras suffer in the clouds of dust kicked up by the heavier Leman Russes. Their tundra camouflage dusted brown, and the edges of the camo shapes dulled to near nothing. Four hundred men of the 98th Vostroyan Mechanized infantry regiment follow the ten battle tanks in their armored carriers. The fortress before them must be retaken if the combined forces are to continue moving northwards and link up with the Baron's forces. Young watches numbly as Blood and Steel carries him towards the wrecks of several ork vehicles surrounding the remains of a knight.
The fallen heavy walker is cracked open like an egg. Parts of the armor burnt to slag from the heat of xenos energy weapons, the massive Reaper Chainsword snapped in half and the chain lying in pieces alongside it. Its eyes are cold and dead with its pilot as ashes on the wind.
"That's a grim sight and no mistake," Corporal Matts remarks over the squadron vox.
"Lock it up, keep up that visual scanning," Young admonishes with a grunt. Blood and Steel mans the flank of the small wedge of three tanks formed with the two standard variant Leman Russ New Glory and Loyal Spirit. Corporal Victor Matts nods his head in compliance from the cupola of New Glory, the younger tanker and less experienced but possessing of some talent. Something of a protégé to the sergeant. Corporal Halga Vintra, commander of Loyal Spirit, leans on the pintle mounted heavy stubber in her own turret hatch like a big game hunter posing for a photo. Relying on the small plate of steel attached to the pintle mount rather than the deeper cover of the turret proper.
Loyal Spirit's standard chassis is made bulkier by the addition of extra armor plating welded over its frontal facings across both body and turret cheeks making it more suited to the point position. Heavy bolters grace its sides and the charred spout of a heavy flamer juts from the bow.
The machine is aggressive, and battle scarred like its commander. Like all of them by now.
The fortress ahead of them is of standard Imperial design with star-pattern walls and a single large gate, smashed open by the orks and then clogged with scrapped vehicles after the remains of the warband made it back. The walls are scorched black and battered from repeated shell strikes. The reinforced ferrocrete crumbling in places and a great big hole is punched through one section of the walls. Bodies decorate the rubble slope like flakes ground from a mill.
Gun barrels still jut from the turrets, but their graceful lengths are spread open by sabotage as the fortress was breached. Better to have the guns ruined than allow them to fall into the hands of the infamously resourceful and immoral orks. Massive green bodies litter the ground beyond the fortress walls, bloating with the rot after sitting in the sun and elements for days. The stink is powerful.
A burst of flame and a plume of smoke makes Young flinch back and down into the safety of the turret. Like a rat into his burrow. A rocket screams overhead and detonates harmlessly in the sod between two Chimeras.
"Taking fire! Rocket teams on the walls!" Young barks and pops back up to take his heavy stubber in hand by the butterfly grips. More rockets scream through the air on sizzling contrails to land among the Imperial vehicles which return fire with everything in their arsenal. Heavy bolters chug in great sweeping lines along the battlements while lascannons and Multilasers stab out with crimson light. Young grits his teeth and unleashes a controlled burst that turns a crenellation to powder and the ork behind it into bloody chunks.
More vox-chatter clogs the channels as the Vostroyans deploy in textbook fashion behind the covering fire of their vehicles. Young remains silent but for clipped corrections to his crew as Captain Marks begins to put the company back into some semblance of order. The initial surge of adrenaline fades to near nothing quickly leaving only a cold, professional mindset bred into him by generations of Cadian warrior ethos and a lifetime of combat.
Streams of tracer fire lash out from the battlements in reply. Most is simple solid shot made by ork hands and fired by ork guns. Inaccurate, but in such volume that it doesn't really matter. It adds to the chaos as Vostroyans are punched from their feet by massive slugs that drilled melon-sized holes through their armor and bodies. A salvaged autocannon roars out sending thirty-millimeter high-velocity rounds through the air to smash into thick Imperial armor.
"Alright listen up!" the captain's irritated voice cuts through the chaos like a hot knife through butter. "I want high-ex rounds on the walls to take pressure off of the infantry. Close ranks by squadron. Squadron leaders focus on breaching one section of wall at a time and suppressing those shooters! Spear move towards the main gate; you are primary breach."
"Aye sir. You heard him ladies, move up and clear that hole. Hilton roll us up by that wrecked Knight," Young orders flatly. Blood and Steel lurches forward keeping just ten meters away from Loyal Spirit allowing the other tank to soak up most of the heavy fire. New Glory follows suit, her gunner putting accurate fire on the battered gatehouse and the autocannon firing there.
Vostroyan lasfire begins lashing at the walls in well-disciplined volleys sending ork-shaped bodies tumbling from the walls between the crenellations. The gateway is blocked off by a pile of scrap steel and twisted chassis of ork vehicles. A leering ork head glyph is set before the wreckage in a crude imitation of an Imperial Aquila. Enough of a barrier to deter an infantry assault or a tank simply shoving it aside.
Not enough to resist a Plasma Destroyer.
Blood and Steel rings like a gong. Rapid impacts slamming into her frontal glacis where autocannon slugs smash themselves to pieces against the heavy armor of the Leman Russ. Young snarls at the abuse being directed at his tank.
"Muntley take out those autocannons on the gatehouse then adjust for a shot at the gate!"
"Yes sergeant!" Electric motors whine beneath the tooth-throbbing thrum of the Destroyer's charged coils. Tybalt throws the breakers with a sharp snap.
"Relays open!"
"Gun is lit, flows open, firing!" Brilliant light flashes in the vision blocks and then the gatehouse detonates in a ball of superheated gas. Orks caught too close to the blast are turned to ash in an instant. Others are burnt to black husks of carbon on the walls around the glowing wound where the autocannons used to be.
"Good hit, adjust fire to the gate and keep an eye on the temp gauges!" The second blast clears the way for Loyal Spirit to roll into the fortress with an escort of Vostroyan infantrymen. Half an hour later the last ork is gunned down by a squad of Firstborn in the command center and the Imperial Aquila is flown from the ramparts once more.
