Chief Medic Curis sat on a red crate of tourqinettes in a corner of the first aid tent he had set up in the rear of the Fifteenth's trenches, fidgeting with a scalpel. The tent was a whit rectangle about fifty feet by thirty and hosted over a hundred beds. Outside, his three remaining orderlies were standing under awnings set up against the rain and talking in voices muted by grim anticipation, made worse by the immaculately timed thunder of the artillery just behind them and the distant response of the Heretic's own. Curis glanced around at the linen walls, soaking wet and stained with mud but still visibly white. He hated that color. When the walls were read he had men who needed him, he knew what he'd be facing; he'd be able to do something. Now, he was helpless. The entire regiment could be dying right now from gunfire, or mauled by artillery. Or maybe the heretics had brought some backup in the form of bloodletters and Rubric Marines and any minute they'd be receiving several dozen kids carved up by cursed swords. Anticipation gnawed at him. He slipped, slashing his finger open with the scalpel and sending a faint line of blood drops splattering onto a tiny spot on the tent. He fiddled with a small bandage and applied it, all the while relishing the mark he'd made on the tent.
A steady, jarringly close rumble began and he glanced out the tent flap curiously to see a platoon of ten tanks rumbling past, painted the regiment's navy blue with jungle green trim. Captain Morrisson sitting in the lead tank, a Leman Russ Exterminator, called out to him as it trundled past and he responded with a wave. Up ahead the tanks disappeared where the wide dugout they'd set up shop in narrowed into a support trench. Several platoons of infantry sprinting double time followed, and a flight of marauders swooped in low overhead. He watched them go. Imperial Guard infantry regiments didn't normally get their own tanks and air cover, they also weren't told what the Emperor a Daemon Prince was, or given accurate, unbiased information about every faction the Imperium wanted exterminated, unless some Administratium idiot was corrupted and wanted aforementioned regiment taken by the Inquisition and mind-fracked. Kragar was a rarity: a library world, one of perhaps a dozen, whose clean spires and massive mausoleums housed the knowledge of the Imperium and whose citizens lived smarter, better lives than most. "How bad do you think it is up there?" the short, round Narwin asked him from his seat on an empty crate of hydra flak shells.
"Eighty percent casualties, minimum" he responded faintly. The ground shook as a battery of earthshakers a hundred yards back fired a salvo. He had demanded the guns be moved for the sake of his patients, but he was just the doctor, and artillery Captains tended to be brash, loud, and unmovable.
Narwin chuckled, "ain't you the optimist doc, personally I'd say about thirty."
"True, we do have air support and better tanks" Curis wondered how guard regiments from other worlds operated without self-contained close in support, having to call up other units for aid. "I'd say sixty to eighty percent for the Cadians on our right, that idiot Colonel Flauster seems to think tactics consist of pointing his men forward and clogging the trenches with their bodies."
"Aye, poor Cadians" Narwin agreed.
"Doc, we seem to not have any bone saws" Forgal called from a stack of crates sheltered under an awning.
"They're in the dugout, I figured they'd rust out here" he responded. The early twenties former town physician splashed over to the overturned and abandoned Chimera they'd affectionately named 'The Bunker' and used for sleeping and storing sensitive equipment. A moment later he called that he'd found them, then wondered why they were stacked on top of his sleeping bag.
"Do you have something against him?" Narwin questioned, shaking his head.
"Yeah, getting drunk last night and spending until midday to sleep it off, the attack could have come while he was snoozing" Curis responded gruffly.
There was a shout up ahead, and he saw shapes moving in the distance, wobbling and dragging slowly towards them. "Wounded coming" he called, dropping the scalpel into his pocket and stepping outside, letting the freezing downpour soak refreshingly over him. The three orderlies: Narwin, Forgal and Glanner grabbed their gear and sprinted forward to aide whoever was bearing the stretchers and bodies. He had had six orderlies originally, but Jannin had stepped on a landmine and Hellir and Rane were filling for frontline medics who had been selfish enough to die. The train of wounded slowly became visible: mud stained, shell shocked men with expressions ranging from vacant to tearful tottered forward, slathered head to toe in dark brown sludge and mud. A few with only superficial wounds were walking among them, blood dripping from them as any bandages had been given to more severely damaged. The ones on the stretchers were moaning or unconscious, rain and mud pouring off of them in bloody rivulets. These were the artillery victims, the soldiers lacerated by shrapnel or impaled by larger flying debris, the boys and girls with smashed heads and ruptured bellies, blood pouring out of every orifice as the conscious ones tried to scream. He ran forward to help two men bearing a stretcher with a young female Kragarian with twentieth platoon dog tags whose scalp and upper back had been fractured. Her hair was soaked in a bloody soup, her body spasming faintly with ever step. As he splashed up to his knees, he felt a sense of duty rise up inside of him. This was his fight now, his war against death for their souls.
"Get her inside, now, all of you, find a bed and if none is available use the floor and awnings, Narwin an Glanner set up additional shelter if needed!" He barked in a loud, strong voice as he grabbed the stretcher and lead it inside. They reached the first bed and gently lifted the girl into it. "Get me some anesthetics, blue crate," he said to one of the two soldiers, who stumbled off. The other had a fractured hand. He gently flipped the now faintly moaning soldier and began to probe her wound with the scalpel and a long metal rod. By the time he got the painkillers he had removed several jagged pieces of shrapnel and the stream of wounded was pouring in, with a third of the beds already full. The girl sighed and passed mercifully into unconsciousness as he jabbed the needle into her arm. "Needle and thread; cloth bag." He threaded the largest gash, running in a jagged line from the base of her neck halfway down her spine, and began to sew in swift, calculated strokes, blood splattering his hands and navy blue sleeves.
"I got a phosphorous wound here, its still burning him!" Forgal called frantically from ten beds down on the other side.
"Remain calm, use a tarp to cut off the oxygen supply and then apply an antiseptic" Curis called over the steadily rising moan. As he finished that gash and began to clean her skull, Forgal reported success, but then a medic who'd arrived with the remains of his platoon, Gurren if he recalled correctly, needed help wih a collapsed lung and internal aneurysm. The wounded poured in, soaking the tent all shades of red with gore.
By the time the first gunfire casualties had arrived ten minutes later he was running up and down the jam-packed tent, cycling rapidly through his gear. Forgal and Glanner were sloshing through the mud to treat those who wouldn't fit inside; all he had were Gurren and Narwin. A bearded demo trooper missing his stomach, a pleading teenager with blood pouring from where the left half of his face had been ripped off, a female Lieutenant of sixteenth platoon who had taken four rounds to her legs and had bone fragments tearing through her skin. He patched each one up and gave them a quiet "you're going to be okay" before continuing. Fortunately there were no daemonic wounds, though he kept the holy water and inquisitorial supplies on hand just in case. "Sounds like the Colonel went for a full frontal assault, we could get over a thousand people here" Narwin reported as they passed each other.
Within the hour, there were almost three hundred people crammed in, many of them never to leave. Curis ad been numbed to the horrors of war long ago and Narwin who had been on his staff for several years less so, but Forgal and Glanner were on their first campaign, and could barely keep their lunch down.
"Doc over here!" Glanner suddenly shouted. From the terrified tone in his voice Curis knew this wasn't simply an injury he couldn't handle. Grabbing a bottle of holy water, he sprinted across the room, leaping across the bodies lying on the floor.
"What is-" he stopped when he saw the boy. He was a Private, long and lanky and at least six feet tall with red hair and bright eyes. He had taken a bullet to the lungs and every breath he took sprayed out globs of blood as he slowly drowned in it. More than that, he was a Cadian. "Seems like there was some intermingling on the flanks" Glanner whispered. Curis shushed him and got to work.
"We took the trenches, buried them in our bodies." The private said with remarkable clarity. Curis glanced at the dogtag he clutched in a death grip: Samm Gorin. "They just kept coming though, and those guns kept firing, our tanks couldn't get through." Curis nodded. "I gotta get back there" he coughed, spraying blood over Curis's face. He didn't stop to wipe it away. "My brother, when that fracker shot me our squad was fighting towards the nearest gun, he had three guys coming at him, I can't leave him," he whispered, voice fading. "Tell me I'm going to be okay doc, tell me," he pleaded, the light in his eyes dimming. "I can't die now, they need me." Curis didn't respond, he couldn't. There was a drawback to knowing secrets no one else could. Before leaving, every Kragar trooper swore a blood oath, carrying the scars with them as a reminder, to, out of fear of the secrets getting out, never speak to an ordinary offworlder, ever. He did what he could for Samm, but he was gone within ten minutes as an artery flooded his lungs. Curis closed his eyes as he moved onto the next patient, the defeat stinging him. Just another kid gone.
…..
Time seemed to slow as Krane fired a couple of loose rounds in the general direction of the enemy, then lunged through the cloud as bolter rounds began to fall around him. Carnigan leapt up, shouting and firing wildly, drawing the bolter's attention. Krane felt his fingers wrap around a leg, and yanked Curze through the mud to cover. He laid him out, desperation rising as he observed the amount of blood streaming down his friend's face and began calling desperately for a medic A hand stopped him, and he turned back to see Curze groaning and wiping away the blood. "Why am I still breathing?" he asked faintly, holding his hand over a gash on his forehead. To Krane's untrained eye it was not immediately fatal, which would do for now.
"No idea, you alright?"
"Apart from feeling like a space marine punched me in the chest I am, but that fracker wont be, he busted my lasgun" he held up a twisted piece of metal with a fractured scope dangling from it. It must've taken most of the impact and been driven back into his chest shattered stock first. Krane was so relieved he couldn't help but chuckle.
"Gardner, you're above him, take that bastard out" Carnigan growled over his bead.
"Cover me" Gardner said simply, and withdrew from his webbing another grenade. An idea formed as he took aim at it and examined the two gunners: one a tiny waiflike girl in a jarringly familiar dress his own sister would've worn, the other a boy, about his age aiming the gun itself, sighting with cybernetic eyes. Maybe they had been lovers before chaos had descended on them. He put that thought out of his mind as he swept his gaze up and down the battlefield. There were still two bolters firing on Koll, and another four within accurate range on the right. "I got a better idea," he said.
"Better be good, Koll's waiting on us."
"I hope it is." Gardner's legs tensed and coiled. With a shout he leapt into the air and crashed down on top of the two gunners, knife drawn. The girl's back was broken as the crashed own on top of her and her partner snarled and swung the gun around, swatting him away. Gardner ducked under his line of fire and grapple at him, pulling himself up and plunging the knife straight into his chest. Gardner cut his hands off the trigger as he collapsed and kicked the body aside.
"Nice one" Krane said as he watched Gardner grab the gun and open fire down the line. Something moved behind him. He shouted a warning and raised his autocannon.
Gardner let out a small gasp of pain as he felt a knife slide into his back. Struggling against the iron grip on his back, he managed to turn around and saw the girl pulling herself almost on top of him with her hands, her tattooed face twisted into a silent howl. "Frack you" he coughed, blood spewing from his mouth, and grabbed the knife. The girl tore at his face with her free hand; a long claw with warp infused serrated talons, lacerating his nose and cheeks. Gardner kicked her away snarling and plunged the knife into her neck. She slid down, and came crawling back up. Gardner tried to grab his lasgun, but his hands weren't responding as he hacked and coughed up blood. She blew apart under the impact of several dozen lasbolts and autocannon shells. He felt a huge hand on his shoulder as he collapsed, and Krane's blurred face was suddenly peering down at him. He was shouting something, as Carnigan and Private Torian grabbed the bolter, but it was muffled.
"Stay conscious private, stay with me!" Krane shouted. Gardner looked at him once, then his eyes closed. Rane dropped down next to the boy and drew out a medikit.
"Krane, we need that autocannon on the left!" Carnigan bellowed. Krane leapt up. Twenty odd cultists were advancing on their tentative position from the left while their newly acquired bolter was preoccupied by thirty more on the right and two remaining bolters.
"Is he going to make it?" he asked Rane as he took aim.
"Assuming that ruptured lung doesn't collapse, probably" he replied shakily, bandaging up the back wound. The twenty-year old Rane had only been an orderly Curis, when he had been called up to the front lines to replace their previous platoon medic when the woman had gotten friendly with an earthshaker round two weeks prior. Incoming fire was a jarring new experience, and it showed on him.
"We'll have to hope so." Krane opened fire. Half the cultists were killed almost immediately and the other half driven to cover. Over his head Curze swung the last heavy bolter around and blew away the final bolter aimed at Koll.
"Koll, Gardner is badly cut up but we've got you covered, you're clear to go." Krane barked.
"Acknowledged." Koll lifted his head out of the trench and spotted the fierce firefight sixty yards away. "Best of luck to you." He slotted another grenade in his launcher. "The path is clear, let's go get them" he said to the men and women ducked low behind him. Fury's chainsaw revved.
"Men of the Imperium, prepare for glory!" he called, charging forward. They scrambled after him. Staying off the main path and using wooden beams protruding from the trench as handholds, the managed to avoid attracting the attention of the preoccupied one-eyed heretic on the six-barreled autocannon until Koll was directly underneath his rotating barrels. Drawing the jagged knife, he reached over to the hand the heretic had on the stabilizer and sliced. The heretic looked down in shock as the monomolecular blade slid effortlessly through his grip, leaving half his hand attached to the weapon. Then Koll seized him and flipped him over the parapet, taking care to hold out the knife for his flailing body to cut itself nearly in two on in a flash of blood as it felt to the trench floor and the flowing water carried it past the ragtag squad. Allis and Shoeggoth leapt up next, firing off steady streams of lasers into the unsuspecting gunners and late-arriving heretic infantry clustered on the flooding plain behind the front line, awaiting orders to advance. The rest of the squad vaulted the parapet and took cover in the rear trenches and behind the emptied ammo trolleys, Private Selwin and Corporal Anin getting kicked back over as they were hit by multiple las bolts. As the volume of incoming fire increased, Koll realized how badly they needed a heavy hitter and grabbed at the autocannon. The tripod mount only swung until the weapon was parallel with the parapet, so he removed the restraining bolts with a couple of nicks from his knife, then swung the gun around to point at its former owners and squeezed the trigger. For a moment there was a pause as the barrels revved up again, giving the nearest heretics time for their eyes to go wide and jaws to drop into immensely satisfying expressions of oh crap on their faces. Then it gave a bloodthirsty roar and vomited a flaming tongue of explosive death. The rearward trenches and their swarming occupants simply vanished into a holocaust of exploding earthworks and sprays of body parts. Koll felt the gun vibrate fiercely in his hands as he swept it up and down their positions with a resounding thunder of disintegrating terrain and men and the hiss of vaporizing runoff. As heretic upon heretic vaporized into a pulpy mass, he felt his heart rise, and as a grin spread across his face a boisterous battle cry bubbled up from his throat and exploded into a gleeful shout. "Where's your gods now motherfrackers!" he roared, emptying the weapon. Vinncen targeted the furthest loaded ammo trolley, detonating it and a dozen heretics in a forty-foot pillar of flame that rained burning embers down upon them and illuminated every raindrop into a striking cascade of orange baubles. Donnel and Garman exchanged worried looks as every cultist with two hundred yards (a considerable number) spun and charged towards their little group. Shoeggoth put reassuring hand on their shoulders one at a time as behind him Fury exhorted Koll on.
"It's going to be alright" he said quietly, and then returned to firing. Somehow they believed him.
….
Colonel Garm Wolfe hunkered down in what had until recently been an artillery dugout until the gun had been melted by a misfiring inferno shell, amap of the battle spread out before him as second line infantry from the Fourth Battalion and additional tanks drove past on their way to the meat grinder that had become their attack. An artillery shell whistled overhead and detonated amid a squad, dismembering the lot. Wolfe cursed; this wasn't what he had planned. He had anticipated the enemy's defenses after the first spy plane not to get shot down reported enemy reinforcements moving to the front two days ago and decided that the artillery would, through several days of prolonged fire make a wide ditch from the line through the heretics positions and cover it, but no, Lord-General Buelle had demanded that thee entire front advance in a human wave when it turned out that the soon arriving reinforcements were in fact close to a million in number. As he watched a tank lose a tread in another explosion and slide into a communications dugout, crushing several guardsmen with a scream Wolfe promised to make Buelle into a servitor and use it to murder the Munitorium fracker that had decided to put the general known for killing more of his own than the enemy in charge of the finest tactical unit in the Imperium. "Colonel, Major Werner reports that he's taken thirty yards of trenches but has been stopped by a fire lane and is requesting air support" his aide, the dark-skinned Captain Dorlan reported in a deep, guttural voice from his seat beside him.
"Good, grant him anything we have left in reserve and allocate the third artillery and six platoons of the fifth battallion to support his push" he said, then glanced down at the map as Dorlan complied. Five regiments had been ordered to batter the heretic's out of their positions protecting the second largest city on the planet twenty kilometers behind their lines: The Salvian twenty-second penal regiment on the extreme left, west actually, then the hitherto untried Airys thirty-fifth, then his beloved Kragarian fifteenth. The Cadian Four-hundred second was being butchered as they crashed into the high cliffs on their right, and finally, the Kragarian ninth. The only one of the bunch with a chance to leave the day with under fifty percent casualties, the ninth, under the command of erstwhile glory-hunter Colonel Demnin had been given a nice, flat and wide valley to assault that doubled as a road straight through the corner of the heretic's lines and towards the city, divided three miles back by a small town. It would be a hard day.
On the right, James Werner had the first battalion while Captain Leo Surrin lead the second up the middle and Colonel Kardin Avard took the right. True to tradition of fighting tactically in the rear, Wolfe was leading the fourth and fifth battalions forward to hopefully exploit any gains. There was nothing else he could do really. His staff Chimera, undecorated to avoid attracting unwanted attention abruptly pulled up. "I see you got that engine fixed!" Wolfe called as he stood up, brushed himself up, and walked around to the open hatchway in the back.
"Barely, a couple of bullets through the casing and we're stuck" the driver, techpriest Viado said in an emotionless voice. Wolfe and Dorlan climbed into the back, and dropped their collection of maps onto the table in the center. "Lets move then." Dorlan's vox squawked, reporting that Werner's air support was taking a beating from enemy flak cannon. Wolfe set about directing the battle as the Chimera rolled off, joining the second wave of vehicles and men pushing through.
Below Carnigan glanced up at the firefight brewing, stray las bolts and bullets flying over the ridge-top. The slope was clear, and the Fifteenth was moving up though the tanks were still held up. "Think they need us?" Krane asked. Below, Gardner was being borne away by lightly wounded Private Joune, as Corporal Gaskin took his place; one of the growing tide of mud-soaked soldiers advancing through the remaining enemy fire.
"Koll and a couple others versus several thousand heretics and possible armor?" Carnigan asked.
"I think we can take a nap" Curze said.
"What, are you afraid of death?" Carnigan demanded incredulously. "Forward! Krane on point."
Krin's group hit the crest of the ridge a minute later and sliced through the flank of the unaware heretics. Gerring and Orwin lead off. Gerring dropped into the trench rapidly and began firing, Orwin however waited a second longer and took a las bolt to the side, knocking him backwards against the dugout wall where he lay soaking in a slowly reddening puddle screaming for his mother. Algar dropped his stubber onto a bipod and lay down a curtain of fire while the rest of the squad went over the top. Krin took one last glance behind him before leaping: incredibly enough the troopers were making headway through the storm of infantry fire and fire from the tanks that were beginning to show up, clawing their way up the ridge by their teeth with long range tank shells and the occasional successful Valkyrie strike carving out handholds. Then he leapt and his view was replaced by a tangle of dying heretic bodies. "Harzan, take out any gun on the right you can reach, Hawk start wiring the ones on the left to go, Wallin and Avery cover him!"
Harzan dropped his launcher into a helpful 'V' formed by a shattered cart axel, checked to make sure his backwash wouldn't roast his own men, then took aim at the Earthshaker; six cannon down. He let out a shout as he pulled the trigger and with an even louder roar the rocket winged away. The entire gun platform vanished in a fireball as it hit home, kicking the gun high in the air through a halo of human and inorganic matter. A second, larger fireball consumed the guns on either side of it as its ammunition was touched off by the heat. Harzan pumped a fist in celebration, and then loaded a second rocket. His next missile didn't cause as big an explosion, but was still more than enough to rip the breach of the 150 millimeter cannon open and send red-hot shrapnel slicing through the nearest heretics. Harzan ducked down and loaded again as on the other side Hawk began setting up demolition charges. Koll elevated the barrel of the minigun and eased off the trigger as he sprinted past. To his dismay, Harzan's next shot went wide, soaring high over the cannon to vanish into the misery. He cursed and checked his ammo: three rockets.
Koll heard the explosion as Harzan's next round hit home and let out a victory cry that was rendered premature immediately after as the minigun coughed and slowed to a standstill: empty. "I'm out" he called, and then dropped into the trench, searching for another magazine as the volume of gunfire began to pick up. A rocket whipped overhead, demolishing the minigun position for good measure. Koll cursed and ducked low. He was joined as Private Airen and Sergeant Panner crawled through the crater. A third man, who's face he'd never see dropped halfway through as autocannon rounds blew his head and shoulders off in a red and white spray.
"Charges are armed, get-" Hawk disintegrated three guns down, hit by a volley of flak rounds. A truck-mounted Hydra battery trundled forward, a traitor tank on either side. Avery slid into a ditch as a tank round whistled in overhead. Behind him Wallin, caught between two stacks of ammunition, didn't make it all the way and his left leg was torn clean off by the blast. Screaming and sobbing, he plunged into the mud, clutching at the profusely bleeding stump. Avery could do nothing but lay down wild fire at the steadily growing mob of cultists.
"Hawk is gone, I can't get the charges!" he yelled frantically over the line.
Koll looked up from his white-hot lasgun. He could see a faint red light on the limpet mine glinting through the rain. "Garman, set those bombs off!" he ordered. Garman crawled forward to the edge of the trench and raised his rifle over the shattered wooden parapet. He sighted down the scope. This was it, his one big chance to be a hero. He squeezed the trigger-and simply splattered into the wind along with a chunk of the ridge in a maelstrom of forty-millimeter flak rounds as the opened fire. Donnel screamed his name, and became the next victim as a wooden splinter an inch thick impaled him through his left shoulder. Allis dragged him clear. Sergeant Tellir's entire squad met a similar fate as they crested the ridge.
"Harzan, take that warp-blasted scum out!" Krin bellowed, ducking into the bottom of the trench as the Hydra opened up on his group next. A tank round whistled overhead but went wide and bolters rounds began detonating, blowing chunks out of the earth. Harzan snapped up and fired off his last rocket. It was a blind shot at best, but much to everyone's surprise, as if guided by an angel the krak-missile whipped through the air-and hit the flank of the Leman Russ advancing to blast them out of their hiding spots, bouncing off and flipping through the air before detonating harmlessly overhead. Harzan groaned. The looming tank's next shot turned his upper half into a severed stump trailing strands of meat.
"Anyone out there!" Krin demanded. A pair of Valkyries, seeing their plight swooped in. The Hydra, nimbly piloted, simply swung around and blew one out of the sky. The other managed to demolish the steadily bearing down Russ just meters from his trench with a burst of fire from its twin-linked laser emitters and flew off. Krin drew another flare and desperately fired it. "Anyone?"
The four guns to Koll's left detonated one after the other in a glorious plume of fire and molten metal that singed the stubble off his face and vaporized the rain into a thick fog. Avery died, immolated by the conflagration and Wallin was badly singed. Through the pain clouding his vision he spotted the white-hot rim of a cannon barrel splash down nearby, instantly vaporizing several dozen liters of water. With a scream through his tears and clenched teeth, he dragged himself forward over the bodies of a pair of female heretics and shoved the stump of his leg into it, cauterizing the wound with a sickening hiss and a fresh explosion of pain that finally caused him to black out, collapsing onto a pillow of festering flesh.
"Thought you could use a hand" Krane said as he emptied the rest of his autocannon's contents into the heretics, then ducked in to reload. Carnigan led his squad through the flaming wreckage, shielded temporarily from view of the Hydra. They dropped into the trenches whooping and proceeded to eat the heretics alive with las bolts. As if to counterbalance this an Annihilator, patrolling the top of the ridge spotted them and rumbled forward. Fuller and tarring were fried by its first shot. The hydra rolled forward to finish the job-and blew apart spectacularly. On his right, Koll saw a vast, indecipherable something looming out of the smoke. It solidified into a Conqueror thrashing forward to taste its enemies. A demolisher emerged on Koll's left and swiveled around to face the annihalator. Both fired, dieing together in mutual conflagration. The guardsmen began to cheer as additional tanks poured over the ridgeline, demolishing the remaining defenses and tanks as they tried to make a stand. The footsoldiers followed, first a trickle prodded along by Captain Surring and Fury's shouts, then a steady stream. Koll and Fury led the charge into the trenches, a full platoon of tanks on his flanks.
"Lieutenant" Krin glanced up from slotting a frech clip into his lasgun to see Surring staring down at them from a jaunty perch on the smoldering remains of the nearest heretic Leman Russ.
"Pleased to report foothold is secure" Krin reported automatically.
"I know, good job, now lets finish them." They joined the blue and brown tide, barking orders.
….
"General, Surring reports he's punched a whole and his men are moving in en masse, fifth platoon in the lead. He's requesting all available support to carry the battle," Dorlan said. Wolfe's eyes, steadily grown darker with each setback into the past twenty minutes, lit up.
"Order fourth battalion to support him, tell Morrisson to hit them on the flank and roll them up" Wolfe barked.
"We're not sending him everything?"
Wolfe shook his head, sighing; Surring could never see the entire battlefield, just his own little war. "No, fifth is to back up Werner, make sure he doesn't lose anymore ground." The Chimera jolted but kept going while Viado uttered several prayers to the machine-god in the front.
"Should I inform the Lord-General?"
"Not yet" Wolfe grinned. "Wait till we've advanced half a mile, I don't wnt to waste any more men."
"Good thinking." The fifteenth was ever so slowly pounding a hole in the heretic's line, waves of infantry washing resistance away. He might just have a relatively operational unit on his hands by nightfall, a first under 'butcher' Buelle.
….
Tzet-Rhen surveyed the battlefield, watching the countless minions and their war machines he had tricked into joining him dying by the hundreds as the corpse-god worshippers overran them, screaming vicious war cries, maneuvering through the defense networks with a tactical skill uncommon for such mortals. Nonetheless, Tzet had counted on them getting through, though not this soon. He adjusted his plan. "All according to plan" he whispered before teleporting away, savoring the way the words rolled in his mouths and felt on his fanged tongues. "Al according to plan."
As he advanced, now reunited with his squad, Gerring squinted into the fog with his newly acquired scoped las rifle. In the distance, he saw a faint shape, of an odd design that put him uneasy. It solidified for an instant, then vanished. Gerring, a man who had faced down tyranid lictors with nothing but a pistol and had been faced by Ork gargants, collapsed to the ground writhing and screaming in the mud as his squad gathered around in confusion and desperately tried to calm him.
In the center of fourth battalion, now at the original front lines, men keeled over with putrid blood pouring from their eyes and noses and tanks ground to a halt and rusted on the spot. With a deafening shriek of bloodlust, fifteen Khornate berserkers, five rubric marines and a host of daemons led by a Bloodletter teleported into the battle.