The ride is uneventful, boring even, the truck's massive wheels carry us over sodium patches and quicksand without the slightest trouble. They were made here by a guy name Mole, because of his face, when he tried to get Killiane in his bed.
Important thing is that, had we hoofed it, at least one guy was bound to let sweat fall off his cheek in the chalky powder and have both legs blown off.
I stop the truck behind a dune, two hundred meters west of the mortar position. It's not tucked on to of some hill, like satellite recon suggested, it's actually dug in at the meeting point of a dried lake and the equally dry river that used to link it with long gone seas. The river snakes around in a W shape and we're at the left edge of it. The mortars are set up on the right one.
Ferenzky has a long-las, only without hotshot pack. He'll do anyway.
"Get on top of that rock," I order, pointing to a big boulder twenty meters back, "see what we're up against."
He nods and jog off, head low. Plato and Ferenzky are good soldiers, it's a shame that one's a con artist and the other a serial killer, but I still respect both more than any law abiding citizen, because despite the rotten cards life dealt them, they still qualify as human beings.
Plato is already checking his knifes, wondering which one he feels like using today. He finally picks a curved one, barely longer than my finger and with lightweight knuckle guards.
He holds it in an ice pick grip with the blade pointing outward. I've seen him kill Orkz with that weapon, and it's not even mono-carbide or powered, he just has incredibly good taste in blades and takes great care of them.
We're up against humans here, not even well equipped ones, so chainswords would be overkill anyway.
Ferenzky calls in. We have at least two sharpshooters covering the next corner and he's spotted a six men patrol walking around the dried bank.
He also warns us of a locust cloud coming in from the south-east. They'll be on us in twenty minutes, so we'd better be in the truck by then.
So, how do I want to play this?
Lasguns are many great things, but discreet isn't one of those, as soon as he'll take out the shooters, the patrol will haul ass to our position and the mortars might even join the fun.
We could just walk up to the edge of the lake and take the mortars, but you've got to wonder, why guard the river bank so much? Because we can't sneak up from anywhere else. I don't see why they reached that conclusion, but it's their turf, so I'll defer to their judgement and play to their rules.
"We'll move in Dynamic," I announce to the troopers, "Kill fast, kill often, stop for nothing."
Six soldiers with sniper and artillery support are impossible for two Legionnaires to take on in a war of attrition, but if we catch them off guard, keep them from reaching cover, our Flak armors will keep us safe from the retaliation, Plato will destroy them in close combat and Ferenzky will mop up anyone we miss.
So it's basically a case of run, gun and try not to get shot.
My marksman takes the shots and both hostile snipers go down. Might be more, we'll find out soon enough.
My boots slide on the gravel as I take the steep turn and almost plant face-first. I stabilize myself with an arm, Autogun held in the off hand. The patrol's point man raises his stub gun, a positively ancient thing he must have found in an equally ancient weapon cache.
I open up first and a single round is ejected from my gun.
I make them, the slugs, I mean, Kiliane showed me how. Ceramite foils over bronze core with polymer tip and iron expansion ring. The thing hits the target three hundred percent bigger than it was when leaving the weapon and acts the same way as a bolt round when inside the target; the bronze expands, explosively shattering the Iron and turning the victim's insides to ground meat.
The man in front of me has a hole the size of my fist in his chest, but he doubles over and vomits most of his vital organs and bodily fluids in one explosive belch that seem to have been caused by the explosion as much as his body's reaction to it.
Plato's stub pistol barks twice and the cultist's sneaking up on my right loses his frontal lobe.
Dumb skak never had much use for it anyway, tried to summon chaos god Buck Harris because they found some old records in the same cache they found their equipment. From what I understand, which means what I bothered to eavesdrop on, they're wrong and the guy was an actor and a martial artist, nothing more, but their little frakwits band decided to get all violent about it and that means I'm now going to kill the five of them rushing past the bend before me.
I already said it, I'm a Catachan, some of the boys once whipped me a replica of Astarte power armor from resine and scrap metal to give a bunch of whiny civvies a good scare. Two days in the brigs were totally worth the look in their faces.
Same look these guys get now, because not only am I one gakking large motherfrager, I'm also one gakking fast motherfrager and they barely get to take a shot before I'm diving headlong into their ranks.
I'm not stupid, though, I still shoot my gun on the way in. Not sure how many I get, but there's enough blood and flesh and skak around to confirm I hit someone. The girl I tackle to the floor dies before I do anything about it, her chest crushed by my weight. Well, she doesn't die right away, but I register her as dead nonetheless because she simply didn't realize it yet and certainly isn't a threat anymore.
My knife is… Not what you expect from a Catachan; it's thin, double edged and short, meant for slashing and plunging between ribs, not hacking off limbs.
I angle it up, under a soldier's elbow and right into his ribcage, two fingers width under his armpit. The steel stops his heart in the blink of an eye and I rip the blade free, slashing a throat open in the same movement.
A knife flashes in the corner of my eye and I roll away before bringing my gun up. Plato, his eyes are dark, filled with bloodlust, but he recognizes me and the spark fades out of existence.
It's over, everyone else is dead. Ferenzky confirms zero movement and I get him to link up with us.
Nothing to loot on the corpses, their uniforms are skakky mesh armors half rotting away and their weapons are either jury rigged stub guns or shivs. Even the snipers had nothing of interest; they used crossbows with explosive warheads.
Don't ask me why, but Ferenzky decides to loot one.
We disarm a bunch of very sloppy bobby traps and detection systems and reach the mortar camp without a hitch.
The crew is waiting for us, but they are all behind cover; two ducking on the other side of food crates, two are flat on their stomachs, right in our line of fire, and one tried to dig a foxhole in the rocky floor. Plato is on top of the food crates and then, on top of the poor bastards in no time, I brain the guy in the foxhole with a single slug and our marksman deals with the two sleepy heads.
Plan was to move this mortar to another location in the hills, but since there are no hills, we decide to leave it there. As I said; Imperial intelligence at its finest. At least there actually is a mortar in this place.
In the Legion, if you don't know how to use just about everything you come across, you'll die in a month, so although that tube hooked to a bipod looks nothing like what we're used to, the boys quickly get the idea and I get to climb the far edge of the lake with Ferenzky's rifle to direct their fire. The sand crumbles under my boots and I sink to the knees. Pushing with my arms does free me, but now I have sands in my boots and up my sleeves.
Lasgun shouldered, I crawl up the steep slope, the warm cushion of sand begging for me to just take a break and lie down. Seems stupid, but you go for days with little sleep, little food and searing heat, you'll feel like somebody replaced the bones in your body with steel and the floor with one massive magnet. I actually saw guys lie down spread eagle in the desert and stay there until a dune buried them in its warm embrace.
But they were weak, I'm strong, I keep climbing and eventually drag myself on what used to be a beach.
I see the stronghold in the distance alright, barely more than a black dot on the skyline, but the scope makes it a bit better.
It's cracked in the middle and dirty on the inside, but it does the job.
You'll have guessed by now, I'm no crack at maths or physics, but I know better than to just blurt incantations to the mortar's machine spirit in hope that it will magically divert the shells to our target.
It's not heresy, not really, since the whole machine spirit thing came from the Adeptus Mechanicus, not the Emperor. I'd never say that out loud, however. Many people think I'm a quiet guy. I'm not, I have plenty to say, it's just that most of it would get me shot.
When we call in, the Commissar is back on her feet and quite pleased at my initiative. She does mention that she'll shoot me next time we meet, but she sounds pleased. The troops are in position and waiting for us to soften up the stronghold.
Plato warns us that locusts are ten minutes out and I repeat that to the Commissar, who doesn't know what I'm talking about but knows better than to ask about it. We have eight minutes to do as much damage as possible then run back to the truck, best make it count.
"Set it at Four-nine vertically and two-two-five horizontally." These must have actual names, military jargon to make it easier on the grunts, but I don't know it, I just look at that round thing they issue along with our maps, a ruler and a compass, to calculate angles. It rests upright, its base buried in the sand and gold numbers shining through the plastic.
"Set!" Plato doesn't know much either, but he keeps it short, he knows how to make things short and clear.
"Fire!"
The shot misses entirely, so much I doubt the stronghold even realizes it was aimed at them. If we had a bird's eye on the battlefield, I could give more accurate instructions, but we must make due with ground perspective and rough estimates.
Phosphorous rounds explode over the target and spray their payload down like an incontinent falcon. How they know when they're above something worth skaking on is beyond me.
Next shot looks dead on target, but once the smoke clears, it's obvious we fell short. The Commissar confirms it on the Vox.
Why isn't she the one directing our fire anyway?
Next round hits and I swear I can hear the wounded scream from all the way over here. Phosphorous shells are nasty, but then, they used it on our camp willingly enough.
I'm not one to hold grudges, mostly because I kill people who wrong me before I get to have a grudge, but when they do get away with making me mad, it's not a grudge, it's not pet peeve, it's a major psychotic fraking hatred, so all I feel now is the heat on my helmet and the wind on my face.
And a skak-load of satisfaction.
The changes in coordinates are minimal from that point, only enough to make sure we cook anything standing out in the open. We miss many, that's certain, I've been on the receiving end of those shells and they are fairly easy to survive with a good foxhole, but anyone above ground level caught within twenty meters of the blast is bound to feel the heat and maybe loose a few body hairs.
Mine just started growing back.
I used to wonder why even those behind cover got cooked, their burnt corpses fused to whatever they were cowering behind, no matter how thick the cover, now I know; the shells rain fire, they don't explode. Fraking brilliant.
Then the eight minutes are up and the mortar is glowing hot. The guys are not stupid enough to try and haul it back to the truck, but they still bring back ammo crates and water barrels. Having packed the truck full in the minute and a half I take to cross the lake. My metal fingers clasp around the glowing barrel and I bring the small artillery piece with me to the truck. It clatters in the bed and the guys take off as soon as my boot is in the cabin. It's not meant to house three people, so Plato sits on the console with the handbrake stuck up his ass.
He squirms a bit to salvage some comfort and dignity, but we're all crammed tighter than canned food rations, so he quits moving and starts growling.
By the time we reach the others, they're already mopping up and the Commissar is planning our next move.
When she sees me leaving the transport, she just ditches the suite of officers surrounding and praising her and stomps up to me.
The camp burns, giving an all new meaning to the word campfire, but we're moving in nonetheless, fortifying anything that still stands and piling the corpses in a patch of quicksand outside. Somebody asks why we don't put out the fire and I openly laugh at them. Put out phosphorous fire, why not pee on napalm while you're there?
The commissar gives me a once over; I'm covered in mud, blood and bodily fluids, laughing evilly. Her own uniform barely has a dust layer on it. Not sure which one of us should feel bad, but she salutes me first, so I guess she does. Truth be told, I expected a shot to the face.
The officers, a Lieutenant, two Captains and a Major, seem rather unhappy with that, so I quickly salute her back and stand at attention.
"Private Mal reporting in, sir."
"At ease."
I'll be at ease as soon as those idiots there quit looking at me like they want to stab my head on a pike. What's their problem? Did I do their job or something? They're not Legion, that's for damned sure; black uniforms, sparkling new lasguns, a glorious assortment of grenades and knives…
"Damned fine work there, Guardsman, damn fine," she nods to the bunch of idiots and whispers, "But some are unhappy with it."
"Why?"
"They are from the Sixty-sixth Special Warfare, they had troops preparing to take this stronghold, elite troops." I don't like where this is going. "They were about to spring in action when we beat them to it and now their feelings are hurt…" The look in her face says everything about how much she cares, "They want to know who's responsible."
Wow, I didn't expect the good Commissar to throw me to the wolves that easily… But it's not over and she keeps talking. "I told them I was and they asked me to join their regiment…"
Wait, what? Special Warfare? For stealing an artillery gun and using it on some sorry excuse of a fort?
She nods at my doubts, but my part was not the whole operation, she led the troops in the camp and swept remaining defenders in record time, whereas the sixty-sixth's experts said taking this place would require, at least, armored support and elite troops.
There were over ten thousand men camping in the courtyard I'm standing on, all killed by the first few shells. Lucky shots, but still, that's the first time I take credit for a five digit death toll.
"Well, what's the problem? Go for it!" I shouldn't be telling my Commissar what to do, but for crying out loud, she's been given a free ticket out of here!
"They don't want you to come along." It's deadpan fact and I already knew that. Why would they want me to come along? I'm Legion! A waste of skin and time.
Thing is, without me, she most likely would have died in the desert long before this attack could start, she doesn't feel up for it, she's afraid to fail the Emperor.
I shrug, "Then say no." What difference does it make? They were targeting the same fort we were, it's not like their objectives are any more important than ours, they just have better toys.
Ever seen a Commissar smile? Me neither.