SEVEN
Though I wouldn't admit it in front of a Guardsman or officer or an inquisitor or…basically anybody really but if somebody asked me today to place a bet in a one-on-one fight between a Leman Russ tank and a Tau hammerhead, I'd be hard-pressed to find a good reason to side with the Leman Russ. In a straight-up fight, the hammerhead had far better range, firepower, and mobility and made our tanks look like rockrete blocks in comparison. Their main guns could punch holes through our tank's armour even at the most extreme of ranges. Often times our tanks were torn apart before the commander had time to shout an order to the crew. Do not mistaken me for a Tau-lover, though, because I know that very rarely do our tanks meet with the enemy in straight-up fights and what our tanks might lack in finesse and firepower they more than make up for in numbers and resilience. If victory meant losing a few dozen tanks in the process then that would be the game plan.
Of course, before Magnus Viridis I was still pan-eyed naïve about the potential of alien technosorcery and fully-convinced in the unparalleled nature of our war machines. If the run-in with the Tau battlesuit hadn't already jarred my eyes open to just what kind of power I was dealing with, I would have been painfully surprised by what awaited us in the starport central hub. Maybe even a little terrified. With all the buildings we knew that our advancing forces were being watched. What we didn't know was that Tau forces were able to use their technology to sight targets for their tanks with such precision that their first shot punched right through the thin rockrete walls that concealed our approach before blasting a hole through our lead tank. When that happened, the last place I wanted to be was inside the chimera that Grifen's team and I had hitched a ride with to the central hub. As Cain had said earlier, if people were going to try and kill me I at least wanted the opportunity to kill them back.
Within ten minutes of our arrival into the central hub all of the Leman Russ tanks assigned to Captain Sulla had been lost. Only a single annihilator-class tank was left to ward off the remaining Hammerheads.
Any building or wall not more than a few meters thick was being perforated by concealed the Hammerheads. This was particularly notorious at intersections where the Tau fire would fire through a building, destroying a tank and at the same time creating a flaming roadblock. One by one intersections were blocked off, funnelling our ground forces into the Tau killing zone. This was the main tactic for the Tau. By the end of the battle for the starport, almost every building the central hub had at least one corner blasted apart. Thankfully, despite the Tau's supremacy in range and firepower, the urban-like layout of the courtyard and the numerous approaches allowed some of the Leman Russ tanks assigned to the other landing parties to get within range of the enemy without fully exposing themselves…some of the time at least.
"I can see why they were so hard-pressed to keep the peace on Gravalax," I commented idly, having watched some of the ammunition in the burning husk of a Leman Russ cook off and spark several more explosions.
"Cain and the Lord General felt it was the most prudent course of action," Sulla replied, though her tone was more of disgust after witnessing the same display of fireworks. "Apparently it was a tactical unsound theatre of operation." Judging by the slight alteration in her tone, she had mimicked the Lord General's words exactly. Sulla and I had reconvened for a short debrief and to get up-to-speed on the anarchy that was ensuing in the central hub. At the very back our of advance, taking shelter beneath the awning of a large warehouse, things appeared relatively calm if you ignored the constant sounds of explosions and gunfire in the background. Sulla knelt at what remained of the building's corner, peering into the rain and darkness with her amplivisor while I was more than content analyzing the situation via my dataslate. There was slow progress across our fronts with the emphasis on slow. Still, progress was progress and we had the advantage of numbers on our side.
"If we can eliminate the threat from the sky rays we can get our transports landing again. The Kriegans think that they'll probably have them all parked around here," I explained as I pulled Sulla back in order to point to the corresponding area on my dataslate. It was an educated guess as to their location but it made sense that the missile launchers would be as far back in their lines as possible, which meant they were likely located near the main entrance of the starport where they could chuck missiles at any landing transports with impunity. It also meant that getting to them entailed punching our way through a lot of Tau armour, which Sulla was quick to point out.
"Do you think a tank might be able to squeeze through this channel?" I asked, pointing to a small alleyway that ran from our position and along the circumference of the starport. It functioned primarily as a service corridor for passenger vehicles to move quickly from the main terminal to the landing pads and, if the scaling of the map was accurate, probably around four and three-quarter meters across.
Sulla took a closer look at the map, humming quietly in thought as she drudged up the technical specifications from the older parts of her memory. Being a former quartermaster, she probably knew the exact size and weight of every vehicle in the motor pool. Eventually, though, she let out a quiet sigh. "It's too narrow. It'd tear the sponsons right off if we tried to drive a tank through it."
I was just about to join her in a sigh of resignation when a thought crossed my mind. "Wait, the annihilator doesn't have any sponsons! That would fit, wouldn't it?"
Sulla's eyes lit up like a child's on Emperor's Day, which was all the answer I needed. If we could squeeze the annihilator tank into that channel, we would be able to ride it all the way up to the main entrance and take the sky rays by surprise with an attack from the rear. It was borderline insane, of course, which was supposed to be the kind of plans Cain told me to keep Sulla from hatching but it may very well have been our only option for victory. Whoever went with the tank would attract a lot of attention once they started firing at the Tau rearguard and I didn't doubt that the Tau would have eyes on the back door. Even worse, the annihilator was the only tank we had left in our corner of the central hub, thanks to the inordinate number of hammerheads waiting for us. Once again, the Tau had seemed quite intent on making our advance the most difficult of the three regimental assaults. I figured they would have gone after Broklaw since he was the ranking officer here but I was sort of relieved to know he wasn't facing half the trouble I was.
"Okay then, we'll get the tank to meet us at the entry point and we'll drive all the way around the bluies," Sulla said enthusiastically as she was about to race off to rally her command squad. Since this was the exact kind of behaviour from Sulla that Cain had warned me against, I had to act quickly to keep Sulla put. Acting quickly, though, is not one of those things I was ever very good at. Sure I came to a resolution but they were not always the best ones and in this case I reached and grabbed hold of the Captain. Normally this wouldn't have been an issue except that the only thing I managed to get hold of was that long, blonde ponytail of hers. Her head snapped back with an impressive yelp of surprise before nearly falling over herself from the sudden change in velocity and, suffice to say, she was rightly pissed when he straightened herself out.
"What the frak was that for?" she demanded, unsurprisingly angry. Most people wouldn't dare yell at commissars but any woman will tell you that you never, ever, pull on their hair, not unless you had a death wish.
I managed to maintain my calmness, though. Had this not been a battlefield I would have felt a bit awkward but war had a nice way of putting such trivial social anxieties aside. "Cain would have my head if I let you, a company CO, charge behind enemy lines in a nigh-suicidal attack. You are Captain Sulla, not a lieutenant. You're job is here: leading the entire company. These men and women are depending on you to focus on the big picture. Otherwise, a lot of people are going to get killed, you understand me Sulla?"
Had this encounter happened a few months earlier, I would've just pulled the commissarial trump card and silenced the whole argument but taking a few seconds to reason with Sulla not only got what I wanted but it also imparted the sense that I was not an unreasonable person. It seemed like the sort of thing Cain would do and building a reputation among the soldiers and officers was a necessity at such an early stage in my career. My father never argued with those serving under him, he merely gave them the ultimatum of 'obey or I shoot you' and if you hadn't guessed by now, I took a vow to never end up like my father. Sulla was disappointed, that was to be expected, but I could tell by her reluctant submission that she understood my reasoning.
"Everybody is counting on you to get this job done Sulla," I reassured her, making sure that I didn't leave her feeling dejected. "And we all know you can get this done. Cain himself told me he wouldn't have let me take the first transport down if he didn't have complete faith in the landing party." Okay, those weren't Cain's exact words but a little extrapolation never hurt anyone, especially when it got me what I needed, which in this case was a confident grin from the captain. With the captain squared away, I excused myself and informed her that I was going to meet with the annihilator tank. To be expected, Sulla was puzzled why she was too important to go but for some reason I considered myself expendable.
"It was my crazy idea, might as well accept responsibility for it," I explained with the patented Kriegan fatalistic grin. "Look on the bright side; when I kick it, you'll be free to do whatever you want."
Having voxed the tank commander to the rendezvous point at an entrance to the side channel, the only other decision was who else to send with it. If need be we would have the infantry follow along on foot but I recalled seeing some intact passenger carriers when we passed by into the central hub. They weren't exactly armoured personnel carriers but a chimera wouldn't fit into those narrow channels even if we hacked one of the treads off. Eventually, we decided upon two squads to escort the annihilator; the first being Grifen's squad as they had performed so admirably before so I trusted their abilities; and the second was a veteran squad led by a Sgt. Jydais, who I reluctantly chose due to his close proximity to the entry point. The reason for my reluctance was primarily over the squad leader.
Isaac Jydais was probably about as much of a disciplinary case for Cain as Magot but for all the wrong reasons. Under any other commissar the man would probably have been shot for insubordination and, to be honest, I sometimes wish Cain had shot him. The man made it his mission in life to be as much of a pain to Cain as humanly possible. Cain's reluctance to apply any sort of capital punishment was because Jydais was a damn good soldier when he was on the field with enemies to unload his anger upon and were it not for his discipline problems he would have been leading a whole company rather than just a squad. Alas, that was the main problem with the man to begin with – he used to lead second platoon back in the 301st and was a shoe-in for becoming a major and then even higher. Back then, Jydais was described as one of the bravest men on the field who stood against whole Ork mobs without even so much as a twitch of apprehension. His brother in the 315th, however, was not so brave and was executed for cowardice in the line of duty by the regimental commissar. Since the killing of his kid brother wasn't considered enough of a punishment to the man, as continued penance the commissariat had Captain Jydais demoted all the way back to trooper with the advice that if he wanted his gold bars back then from now until further notice he had to kill twice as hard as any other guardsman in the field.
That was nearly ten years ago and Jydais had been killing pretty much anything in his way in order to get his old job back. He almost had it too, several times, but every time he got close to his goal he did something to get knocked down a couple of ranks. Broklaw and Kasteen supposedly did everything they could to help the man but the death of his brother apparently hit harder than any of us imagined and the stalwart leader had degraded into a booze-drinking, belligerent husk of a human being. He was angry and bitter and he pretty much blamed it all on the commissariat. Cain told me to give Jydais and his squad (as they were all of similar mind with regards to the commissariat though not as extreme) a wide berth no matter what. To be fair, the man had damn good reason to be angry - I just didn't like how it was sometimes directed at me.
I was, unfortunately, the last one to arrive at the entry point and I noticed Grifen and Jydais already consulting a map in order to better coordinate their efforts. Jydais may have had little more than contempt for commissars but he seemed quite professional with his fellow guardsmen and women, if only a bit on the surly side. Next to Jydais' squad, Grifen and her team looked like a bunch of children and even the youngest on the veteran's squad had sixteen years of combat experience under his belt. I would have slipped in unnoticed had it not been for Magot's cheerful greeting, which brought the two sergeants' attention over to me.
"Commissar Abel," Grifen welcomed me as Jydais could barely get a hello past his contempt. "We're all set to go whenever you're ready."
"Or not," Jydais interrupted, weathered blue eyes gazing sternly at me. "This plan doesn't need you commissar. You can go 'take shelter' in the command chimera while we handle the fighting." I could tell by his tone on the shelter part that he was just barely hiding his disdain.
"Incredibly risky, high-priority mission," I answered plainly. "I'd feel far more confidant about things looking after the matter personally."
"We know our duty," Jydais insisted, a slight hint of malice slipping through his words. He was probably using the plural in order to try and draw Grifen to his side for support but I doubt the younger sergeant, of whom I had heard a great many good things of from Cain, would side against a commissar. "You should just go back to waving flags and making speeches and leave the fighting to the soldiers."
If I hadn't been trying so hard to build a reputation as being fair and even-handed, I would've put a lasbolt through the man's head right then and there. As a result, though, I had no choice but to take a more verbally aggressive stance with the sergeant; I had to assert my dominance in the matter, lest I forever plague myself with the reputation as the commissar who got talked down to by a non-com (non-commissioned officer).
"My duty, sergeant, is to ensure the combat effectiveness of this regiment, most of which is stuck in orbit until we can silence those damnable missile launchers and by the Emperor I will see to it that the rest of those soldiers can get down on the ground and fight in His name. This mission is critical sergeant so I am making it my duty to ensure those things are destroyed even if I have to strap a melta-bomb to your chest and throw you at those tanks! Is that clear?"
I probably looked more foolish than I realized at the time, a barely 5'6" young woman trying to win a yelling match with a sergeant twice her size and experience. He'd probably been yelled at by far scarier things than the likes of me so I shouldn't have been surprised that he didn't even flinch at my remarks. "Good luck with that then," he said simply, malice and venom surprisingly absent from his tone but I realized soon afterwards that he was basically daring me to even try and pull such a stunt. To be honest, he was right. After facing orks, tyranids, and heretics, what chance did I have on getting the better of him? If he really wanted me dead, he could have probably killed me before anybody would be able to object.
"If you lot are done bickering, can we get this show on the road? I'd rather die by the enemy's hand than by boredom sitting here," shouted the tank commander from the nearby annihilator. Thank the Emperor somebody had their priorities in order. With one last parting glare, Jydais ushered his team off to one of the passenger carriers, which Grifen's team had taken the liberty to procure while they had waited for me. Each carrier, almost like a miniature bus, could fit six passengers along with the driver. However, somebody apparently failed basic mathematics as we had only procured two vehicles. That meant we had enough room for fourteen soldiers, despite the fact that there was quite clearly fifteen of us (myself, Grifen and her seven troopers, and Jydais plus his five). Once again, Jydais suggested that I hide out in the command chimera but I promptly dismissed his remarks and climbed onto the tank. Sure I was going to get wet but for a brief moment I felt a bit calmer knowing that a Kriegan tank commander was sitting in the turret a few feet from me.
"Commissar Waffans would never let anybody take that kind of attitude with him," the tank commander commented as our three-vehicle convoy started down the narrow channel. Tight didn't begin to describe the situation but whoever was driving the tank did a remarkable job and his experience with the vehicle showed as he skilfully navigated us down the entire length of the corridor without even grazing the rockrete walls. After comparing the risks, I decided to have the vehicles follow behind – the carriers were simply too tall to sit out in front and would've blocked the annihilator's line of fire if we ran into trouble.
By this point, the fight for the starport had been raging on for almost an hour and the downpour had soaked every layer of clothing I had on, making my commissarial greatcoat a solid ten or fifteen pounds heavier. The Valhallans were probably in even worse condition as their longcoats could absorb quite bit of water. Though nobody made a complaint, we were all relieved to be able to sit down for a few minutes. The tank commander, Rummel, and I kept watch as we headed on our way, the high retaining walls of the corridor masking us from sight, though I worried that the noise would attract their attention. I listened over the vox channels to keep tabs on how the battle was progressing and caught a few garbled reports of Cain's transport touching down somewhere in the city. I even chatted briefly with Ruput, who was having a wonderful time 'putting the xenos in their place.' His soldier-at-heart mannerisms were a refreshing change from the usual hoity-toity upper class officer attitude that had almost become a norm in my life. To be honest, I still think about him quite a bit to this day but given everything we have been through together that shouldn't be too surprising. Of course, I reminisce about my days in the 597th all the time, given that they were arguably the most enjoyable years of my career even if they almost killed me on numerous occasions.
However, in Vertens the realization that these would be the best years of my life had yet to dawn upon me. Instead, I merely shivered and held my soaked greatcoat close to my chest, hoping that I could muster some comfort from it. Alas, it had none left to part with. I also muttered various things under my breath about how putting up with Haeg might have been the better course of action compared to soaking on a distant planet with the ever-present threat of being vaporized by Tau weaponry.
"Hey mom, dad, are we there yet?" Magot jokingly chimed through the comm bead.
"Don't make me come back there," Rummel replied, joining in on the humour. There were a few chuckle and a couple other joined in on the antics, such as Gorr who whined about how Villhon was sitting on his side of the seat, and Grifen carried out an impromptu game of 'I spy,' though everything was basically grey at this point, which made the game rather difficult. Of course, nobody forgot the reason they were sitting where they were and once the tank commander sounded that we were nearing our destination the joking immediately ceased and we became soldiers once more.
"Okay kids, out of the pool," Grifen instructed as the two carriers emptied.
"Lalee, take a look," Jydais instructed, sending forth one of his veterans, a lanky looking fellow who carried a long-las and had all the markings of a seasoned sniper.
After climbing over the tank, Lalee hurried to the edge of an opening in the inner wall, which marked our exit and, hopefully, the rear line of the Tau formations. He only got halfway there when we all heard the distinctive hum of charging energy cells and a number of Tau drones appeared from over the walls. Any element of surprise we may have had was lost as we exchanged fire with the sentry drones, plasma fire and lasbolts lighting up the air above us in a vibrant display that should've attracted everybody's attention. Thanks to the massed firepower from a trio of hellguns from Jydais' team, we were able to swat the bothersome drones without any difficulty but it didn't take long for infantry to start entering the channel. The first bunch were PDF, though, and were quite surprised to see a Leman Russ wedged between the rockrete walls; a sentiment that didn't last very long as its heavy bolter opened up on them, reducing most of them to a bloody paste.
"Pop smokes and advance," Jydais shouted and on cue a bunch of smoke grenades landed in the entryway, masking our position in a thick grey cloud and giving the veteran team a chance to advance to the opposite side of the opening.
"Right then, nice chatting with you commissar but we've got killing to do," Rummel said whimsically as he disappeared into his tank. Driving the tank into the opening, we finally had the elbow room to engage the enemy in full with Grifen and Jydais' teams flanking the tank. I took control of the heavy stubber and once the smoke cleared enough for people to differentiate walls from people, we opened fire with everything we had. As it turned out, we were right on top of the enemy's rearguard The PDF troopers left to watch over the area, falsely secured in the knowledge that no tank could get behind them, were woefully outmatched by the annihilator. In addition there were a handful of Tau soldiers but most of them were unarmed and likely responsible for loading and co-ordinating the half-dozen sky rays that were lobbing missiles into the distance.
Now even the annihilator on our side and the enemy caught unprepared did not mean that we had an easy fight ahead of us. Any one of the six sky rays could easily turn its missile payload against us and all of them were armed with smaller anti-infantry cannons and rocket pods. With a lightning-like flash, the annihilator fired its twin-link lascannons into the nearest sky ray, tearing a hole through its engines and sending the vehicle slamming into its neighbour. The skimmers tried to orientate themselves to bring their weapons to bear against us but with the tight quarters of the central hub's streets, only the closest ones could act quickly and by the time any of the Tau armour could return fire another two had been taken down by lascannon fire and krak rockets from Jydais' men. With the road clogged by wreckage, the remaining sky rays took the opportunity to make a run for it and since we didn't want to try and fight our way through the enemy's rear lines, which were no doubt fully aware of our attack, we decided to let them go. With the sky rays too busy running to fire missiles, we voxed our success to Sulla, who could then pass the message on to start landing transports as our window of opportunity could be very brief.
"What's our status sergeant?" I asked when the last of the enemies retreated and our guns fell silent.
"Avruch and Seppala are dead and Villhon is wounded but she's not critical," Grifen reported. Two dead and one wounded was a lot better than I had expected but I had also expected to face a lot more resistance. It was as though the Tau had barely enough forces to keep the starport under control, which left me wondering why they were attempting such a risky tactic. Everything I had heard about Tau military tactics gave me a sense of them being somewhat cautious and meticulous in planning. It just seemed…too easy.
I regretted muttering the assessment of things being too easy as Gorr immediately shouted something about a hammerhead before he was reduced to an unsightly mess across the road and the rockrete wall next to him shattered into dust. One of their hovering death machines came into full view, flanked by a pair of similarly-shaped armoured transports, all of which began to rain plasma bolts on our position. Rummel's gunner managed to fire the lascannons and punched a hole through the hovertank's starboard engine port, which caused the hammerhead's right side to crash into the ground. Even partially debilitated, though, the hammerhead's railgun let out a thunderclap and the next thing I knew I was laying on the rockrete, completely out of it, being dragged off by…Drere, I think it was. When the ringing in my ears stopped and the world came back into focus, I had been propped up against the inner wall and Grifen was still trying to get my attention.
"Come on Abel, wake up already!" Grifen shouted, which were the first words I was to discern. A cold wetness against my face worked well to bring me back to my sense as somebody had pulled off my mask, no doubt to make sure that I was still breathing.
"Am I dead?" I muttered weakly, my head and back aching.
"No but that could change if you don't get up and help us," she explained and a quick glance to my surroundings informed me that our situation had gotten a whole lot worse during my bout of disorientation. Apparently, I got knocked off the tank when the railgun lanced the entire vehicle and we retreated back into the channel, only to get cut off by Tau forces approaching us in from the rear. Jydais and his team managed to arrange the passenger carriers to give us cover from both directions but we were now getting hammered from both directions by plasma and laser fire.
Since the walls weren't being blasted apart by a railgun I could assume that the damage to the hammerhead prevented it from continuing the fight and the Tau APCs were probably holding back in fear of additional rocket strikes. It didn't improve our situation by much but at least we didn't have to worry about being smashed across the front grill of Tau transport.
"I don't suppose the cavalry is on its way," I said, groaning slightly as Grifen helped me back to my feet. She said something about contacting Sulla but with the last of our tanks a smouldering heap of twisted metal there wasn't much chance of help coming to us soon. It would only be a matter of time before another hovertank showed up and made interpretive artwork across the walls with our pulped guts and that's if the infantry didn't finish us off first.
Following Grifen, I joined her and a half-dozen other troopers who were exchanging fire with a group of Tau soldiers who were using our former tank as cover. What fire we could send back to the Tau was always brief and ineffective as being flanked on two sides meant we couldn't keep our heads up for very long, lest we wished to catch a round in the back.
"I see you're finally back from your nap commissar," Jydais quipped as he let loose a burst from his hellgun. "If you're not too busy how about giving us a hand."
"Keep up the sarcasm and you'll hope the Tau kill you first sergeant," I replied. Perhaps it was the stress we were all under as I normally would've held my tongue against such remarks and I soon wished I had as I saw Jydais swing his hellgun right towards me. I thought I was about to get my face blown off when his free hand shot out and shoved me to the side with a shout of 'move it!' As I hit the rockrete, his hellgun let loose, catching a trio of kroot warriors that had scaled the walls. For a second, I thought the man had just saved my life but I realized that he had merely been saving his fellow troopers, who would've been hacked to pieces had the kroot gotten in range. Saving my ass was just an unfortunate side-effect of the act. He didn't even bother to help me up and simply went back to focusing on the Tau in the distance.
Since we weren't going to get anywhere with our current strategy, I tried contacting our allies on the vox channels. At the very least, I wanted to know if our airborne allies were landing. When I got in touch with Sulla, she was delighted to inform us that our tactic had worked as planned and fresh transports had just unloaded. I breathed a sigh of relief, though for whatever reasons I wasn't sure. Perhaps just the knowledge that our inevitable deaths weren't in vain was a comforting thought for me. However, my conversation with Sulla was hijacked by, of all people, Major Broklaw. Somehow he had caught wind of one of Grifen's sit-reps and got the impression that I had been seriously hurt. It was awfully nice of him to check up on me but I was more concerned with the potential help he could redirect to my location.
"How bad is the situation there?" Broklaw asked.
"Just stuck between a rock and a hard place and they've both got plasma guns," I replied as calmly as though I were reporting the day's weather. If Broklaw said something in response I never heard it as a section of wall up ahead was blasted through, creating an opening wide enough for the PDF traitors to drive a full-sized Leman Russ into the corridor. "Didn't catch any of that Broklaw, PDF armour just showed up."
It was difficult to hold a conversation during a firefight and even harder when a tank decides to crash the party. Grifen grabbed me by the arm to pull me into a run as we sprinted away from the passenger carrier just moments before the tank reduced it to a flaming wreck. A piece of metal must've struck me in the back because I went face-down into the rockrete, my ears ringing slightly and Broklaw still shouting into my ear.
Maybe it was the concussion or maybe it was the prospect of my immanent death but figuring I was probably only going to have a few seconds left to speak in my life, I just said whatever floated to the surface. "Listen Ruput…a-about what I said…back at the governor's palace on Adumbria, I know I said never to bring it up again but…well, I just w-wanted to say…"
Apparently I couldn't even get my last words right because another explosion drowned out everything I had planned to say. However, when the dust settled I realized I was very much alive and the Leman Russ threatening to stomp all our heads in was now a smoking crater in the rockrete. Dazed and panicked PDF troopers scrambled for cover only to be cut down by heavy bolter and lasgun fire. I could hear some cheers rising from the troopers behind me, one of whom pulled me back to my feet and helped me along to join our rescuers.
"The Major told me you could use a hand," Waffans voice greeted me through my comm bead as there was no way I would've been able to hear him as he rested atop the gargantuan mass of death and metal known as the Traitor's Lament. Kriegan troopers hurried me and the wounded Valhallans into the shelter of a chimera where a medic insisted on examining me despite my insistence that I was fine (apparently, though, I was bleeding from the forehead). I deferred the medic to look after the wounded troopers instead and popped my head through the chimera's top hatch. The Traitor's Lament was tearing apart the remaining PDF and Tau forces, letting another monstrous belch of plasma fire that blew apart an enemy chimera and its sentinel escort. Waffans was using the tank's vox amplifier to spit out malevolent taunts and rallying calls for everyone nearby to hear. I particularly liked his one remark to the PDF traitors that there was no point in trying to surrender and they should just put a lasbolt through their heads because he was going to carve out their skulls and use them to build a monument to His Divine Majesty.
It took me a while to realize that I had left Broklaw hanging in mid-conversation and since I didn't want him to get the impression that I had forgotten about him (or worse, got killed), I quickly contacted him on the chimera's vox.
"I think it's safe to say we've got control of the starport now," I said. There was still a pocket or two of resistance left but with the main exit in our control the Tau didn't stick around and, befitting of those who sided with the xenos, left behind the PDF traitors who didn't have the fortune of possessing skimmers to hop the walls in.
"That's all well and good but we're getting reports from Cain and the unit he's with. It seems like the whole damn city is coming down on top of them," Broklaw replied.
"Guess our plan to wait for the rest of the team and take the city on one long front is going to have to wait, huh?" I said and sighed in defeat.
"We still don't have enough troops on the ground for a coordinated offensive but Sulla's already volunteered to lead a detachment of her soldiers to try and link up with Commissar Cain."
That sounded just like something Sulla would do and were I not so exhausted I probably would've tried to argue against it. However, if Sulla was going to go gallivanting around the city at the lead of an armoured column, I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines. Besides, Cain would probably gut me if he found out I had left Sulla to run free through the city. I had a request for a pick-up relayed to Sulla and, despite their insistence, I told Grifen and her squad to stay put – she had already lost almost half her team today and I wasn't going to push their luck.
"Ariel," Broklaw began, catching my attention immediately through the use of my given name, "you were saying something earlier. Something about Adumrbia but you got cut off at the end."
I figured an astute man like Broklaw wouldn't have let that go so I quickly came up with an excuse to deflect the issue. "Oh, um…I just…uh, wanted to thank you for the dance. That's all. Oh, gotta run – my ride's here!"
Shutting off my comm bead and stuffing it into my pocket was an easy way to avoid unwanted conversations, though Broklaw was probably smart enough to know a deflection when he saw it and would know well enough to let things go at that point. When I stepped out of the chimera, I noticed that Waffans, atop his mighty tank, seemed to be waiting for me.
"Going my way?" he mused coyly.