Part 12
The Valkyrie screamed towards the ground, knifing through low-hanging clouds like the prow of a ship parting waves, trailing vapour. Its turbines screamed like banshees, painfully loud even through the dampers that Victor wore.
He kept his grip on the heavy bolter mounted on the open door-mount, the tight straps holding him in place through the aircraft's violent manoeuvres. The weapon's sights linked directly to his visual interface, superimposing targeting information onto his vision; ammunition counts, heat status, the exact point the weapon was aimed at.
Behind him, his squad sat in the seats lining the Valkyrie's transport bay. Their weapons were secured above them, all except for Hylar, whose hellgun was implanted onto the end of his left arm, in place of his lost biological forearm. Since surviving that incident, the previously dour veteran had discovered a sarcastic streak, to the annoyance of the rest of the squad.
The Valkyrie banked, and the pilot's voice buzzed over the voxcaster. "Approaching target. ETA six minutes."
Victor glanced back over his shoulder. "Ready Drex?"
The stocky Skitarii nodded grimly. His one remaining organic hand absentmindedly stroked the ammo feed of his heavy stubber as it dangled down beside him. Victor returned the nod, and turned back to the heavy bolter.
The bond between man and weapon was a mystical thing, something close between the spirit of the weapon and the will of its wielder. Weapons had been known to refuse to function in unsuitable hands, their mechanisms seizing up so that only after hours of appeasement through the rituals of maintenance could they be coaxed into function once more. For others, the match was perfect, seamless, a harmony between warrior and machine that extended far beyond the physical.
Victor let himself slide slowly into awareness of the heavy bolter, not forcing the connection, just letting himself become more and more aware of the weapon. He could feel the sharp angles beneath his hands, trace the intricacies of its manufacture, reading the name engraved into its side: Irae Mechanicus. Wrath of the Machine. A fitting name for an instrument of destruction such as this. But there was something more. The Machine Spirit of the heavy bolter was not like that of his hellgun. Instead of the cool, focused hate he was used to, the heavy weapon rumbled with almost feral rage, eager to unleash death upon the enemy from its waiting muzzle. As he turned the weapon's consciousness over in his mind, getting to know it, and letting it know him, he thought he could even hear its thoughts, reverberating through his mechanical augmentations like speech.
-FireWrathDestructionRuinCastDownTheHereticInHisName-
He blinked, the crimson orb of his left optic augment aping the motion, snapping shut, then open once more. He took one hand off the grip of the heavy bolter, and the connection eased. The pilot called back through the intercom as he pulled his deep red greatcoat around him.
"Entering combat range. Weapons free. Touchdown in thirty seconds."
Victor took the heavy bolter in both hands again. He glanced back at his squad. "Containment alpha on landing. Dig in, secure the zone, and then follow the Praetorians in when they land."
He didn't wait for their acknowledgments, and turned back to the open hatch. The activation rune emitted a sharp click as he depressed it, arming the weapon. It brought a targeting reticule up through his optic, ammo counts and heat levels scrolling down his peripheral vision. It whirred slightly in anticipation, spooling ammunition into its chamber from the belt coiled at his feet.
Targets. They had broken through the clouds, and he had a clear view of their drop zone. It was a small town, maybe a few hundred low buildings, all made of the same stone that jutted out from the desert around them. Tiny dots meandered between them, oblivious to the Valkyrie, or the dozen others following behind it.
Victor smiled harshly, and magnified the image with a thought. The tiny dots ballooned into people, dark skinned and wearing loose-fitting white robes, presumably to protect them from the desert heat. Near the centre of the town, where his landing zone was, there was what looked to be a square, with a tall statue in the centre. He couldn't recognise the statue.
His lips twisted in a grimace. Statues to false idols. Whether they were these people's perversions of gods or not, this was heresy, and there was only one punishment for heresy. Death.
He dropped the targeting reticule down over a group of a dozen people, watched as they heard the faint buzzing of the Valkyrie's engines and started to look up in puzzlement. Then he pulled the trigger.
The weapon bucked in his hands, and he gave it its head. Explosive bolts thudded down into the square, each one aimed unerringly towards his target. They ripped the group of people to shreds, blasting off limbs and pulverising torsos. Mangled bodies flew like discarded toys, and he tracked the weapon sideways and into a trail of fleeing people.
Their fate was the same as his first targets, smashed into shreds by the power of the weapon. He was too far above to hear their cries, distance rendering the destruction into something less, a game, impersonal. Shrieking children were transformed into scuttling targets for him to hit. Wailing parents became whirling groups of kills.
The heat readout climbed into the redzone, and he released the trigger reluctantly. The pilot banked the Valkyrie down into a harsh descent, bringing them closer in once it became clear that no anti-air fire was about to rise to meet them.
"Kills, Lieutenant?" asked Garek. His voice was edged with competitiveness, one of his less serious biological flaws. Battlegrounds were nothing more than places to rack up numbers to Garek, opportunities to establish himself as the best, most skilled, through body count alone.
"More than you, Garek," Victor replied lightly. "I think… oh, thirty or forty?"
The seat creaked faintly as Garek leaned back. "That's why you're the Lieutenant. Be a different story if you didn't have that gun."
"Yes it would. Which is why I do have the gun, Garek." His eyes flicked over the heat readout. Almost back in the green. The weapon's Machine Spirit was beginning to rear up again, and he felt his own emotions respond to it. A savage anticipation rose in him, the human part of him eager for victims, while the mechanical augments asserted their cool logic upon his actions.
The Valkyrie stabilised again, arcing round in a broad circle around the square. "One more run, Lieutenant," called the pilot. "Then I'm bringing us down for landing. The other Valkyries are beginning their initial runs now."
Victor glanced upwards out of the hatch. Sure enough, the other eleven gunships had entered weapon range. They dove like birds of prey, banking into wide arcs, their flanks spitting high-calibre explosive death down around their landing points. Screams echoed faintly, the collective terror of hundreds, maybe thousands of people overcoming the distance.
He sighted on a group of three people cowering in an arched doorway to the east of the square, and pulled the trigger. They died instantly, and he swept the heavy bolter to the right on its pintle mount, moving with the Valkyrie to track a pair of fleeing shapes. He toyed with them briefly, keeping the bolts mere metres behind them. He let them get to the statue, and then jerked the weapon around. The bolts mowed them down, churning them into unrecognisable chunks of meat.
He tracked it upwards, stitching the statue with craters. Stone blasted from the back as the bolts punched gaping holes through the statue. An upraised arm was shattered at the elbow, and then at the shoulder, falling into countless scything fragments. Its chest shuddered under the impacts, and then finally gave in, exploding backwards. A bolt struck the falling statue cleanly in its carefully-carved face, ripping it from the statue's shoulders and shattering it beyond recognition.
The statue hit the ground, and he kept up the fire, raking it across the building behind. Masonry flew and smoke rose in billowing clouds under the torrent of fire. Blood sprayed in places as his fire found people huddling behind what they had thought would shield them.
The Valkyrie tightened its curve, and he used it to bring the heavy bolter around, strafing the buildings and streets that lead into the square. A group of stragglers were caught in the open down a wide street, and torn to shreds. Shutters splintered under fire, and screams floated up from them.
The heat readout redlined, and he whispered a prayer of apology to the heavy bolter, and released the trigger. He followed it with one of thanks as the pilot pulled the Valkyrie down into the centre of the square, settling it down on its VTOL thrusters.
A wash of smoke and debris billowed out from the gunship, and the seat restraints all snapped off at once. His squad leapt from the Valkyrie almost as one, their linkages allowing each to see sensor data from the others. They spread into a wide circle around the Valkyrie, getting into cover behind smashed stonework and chunks of statue.
Victor released his hold on the heavy bolter, letting the fingers of his mechanical right hand trail across the warm metal. He grabbed his hellgun from its rack, and leapt out to join his squad.
He scanned the square. There was nothing left alive in sight. "Junt," he said, "anything on the auspex?"
Junt looked up from the small device. "Already there, lieutenant." He swept the auspex around full circle, staring at its display. He raised his head. "Nothing in the immediate area. A whole bunch of large groups at extreme range, but extreme range for this thing is about two hundred metres."
Victor nodded. "Right." He glanced around the square. "There's not much in the way of cover around here, and pretty much nothing that has all avenues covered, but our best bet is that one the statue used to be facing." He indicated the large building with his free hand. "Judging by the columns out front, and the amount of decoration all over it, it's got to be a government building of some kind. Six of us are going in there, two to a window; one in the centre and one on each side."
"The other four, sir?" asked Hylar.
"You and Rox get inside the building to the left, the one without as many bolt craters in it. Kraff and Drex, you do the same, but on the other side. Top floor for you two, so take the tallest. I want everyone's fire lanes clear of friendlies."
"Sir." The nine Skitarii saluted, and moved out. Victor followed after, heading towards the centre of the government building. The Valkyrie lifted off on the deafening whine of its thrusters, angling its nose up at a sharp angle that would have been impossible with any passengers still inside. It clicked its main engines on, and accelerated sharply upwards on a scalding hot backwash.
They'd landed safely, a task made infinitely easier by the complete lack of any defences or military organisation from the town, and now all they had to do was hold the square for the heavier troop transports to get down and unload the Praetorians and other heavies. Tanks would come in later, once the initial resistance had been cleared, and a more detailed ground map could be drawn up, since it was a lot easier to outflank a Leman Russ than an infantry platoon, and a lot more deadly. Sending tanks into unknown streets was tantamount to suicide.
The building was dark inside, except for narrow shafts of light that lanced through impact craters and the occasional open window-shutter. A handful of bodies were clustered near the doors. Victor stepped over them, and gestured to Garek. "You're with me, in the centre." The other four split off in opposite directions, heading up stairs to the first floor.
Victor scanned the entryway. He had originally said windows, but the solid stone doorframe, and what looked like real wood doors that were shod with shining, albeit bloodstained, steel.
Opposite the door was a large desk, and mounted on the wall behind that was a huge metal map. He couldn't be sure, but it looked like real, naturally-occurring silver, and inlaid with real gold. He walked over to it, and ran one mechanical finger over it, testing it with the microsensors built into his fingertip. Real silver, real gold, but around a solid iron core. It was going to be heavy, but…
"Help me get this," he said to Garek. He came up beside Victor, on the far side of the map-plaque, and the two Skitarii managed to drag it from the wall. Garek blew out a long breath, and Victor heard him mutter a curse on his weak biological limbs.
"In front of the door?" Garek asked.
"Yeah. Then the desk behind it. If we still have time, we'll rip out a few floor tiles and board the windows up with them. They look big enough."
Once it was down on the ground, the map-plaque proved easier to move, and the two Skitarii, with the aid of their augmetics, were able to shift it into position without trouble. The desk was lighter than it looked, and if it wasn't for the metal sheeting across it, Victor wouldn't have considered it. As it was, it might give a few extra layers of protection. He'd known las rounds burn straight through carapace armour and then be stopped by a shirt on the other side. Granted, in that kind of situation, the shirt mostly just lessened a mild burn, but still…
A crackling sounded in his ears, and he activated the comm with a thought. "Lieutenant?" came Junt's voice, "enemy contact approaching from the north. And fast. It's only just registered, and it's nearly here already."
"Acknowledged," he replied. He switched the comm to the squad channel. "Incoming hostile. Get down, and wait for it to show itself. As soon as it hits the centre of the square, hit it with everything. It's coming in fast, and that means it's probably aerial. Junt, get on the comm, and see if you can get the Valkyrie back for a pass. Everyone else, stay covered, stay ready."