He knew they did not have much time. The commander of the garrison above would know by now how devastating die artillery of the Iron Warriors was, and that unless he destroyed it quickly, his fortress was lost. It followed that he would now deploy his hidden guns and this was just what Forrix wanted. Honsou waited in the forward parallel with forty of his warriors and nearly six thousand human soldiers spread along the extent of the trench.
The timing would need to be precise. Too early and the Imperials would seal the tunnels leading to the guns; too late and his artillery would be bombed out of existence.
Forrix stalked through the cratered wasteland and secreted himself less than fifty metres from the entrance to the concealed artillery pits. His veteran warriors filed into position alongside him and waited, the noise of the shelling swallowing the thump of their heavy footfalls.
They did not have long to wait. A sliver of light and rumbling of heavy rolling stock grinding along rails announced that the guns were indeed moving into position.
'Honsou,' hissed Forrix, rising to his feet and charging towards the guns, 'go now!'
Honsou snarled in anticipation as he heard Forrix's words echo within his helm and kicked down the sandbagged barricade that led from the forward parallel onto the plain. He sprinted forward, the Iron Warriors fanning out behind him as they raced across the uneven ground towards the base of the steep, rocky slope. Behind him thousands of red-clad soldiers climbed from the trench and the guns continued to fire, pounding the walls to breach the central bastion.
The augmented fibre bundle muscles of their armour powered the Iron Warriors upwards, leaving the human soldiers floundering in their wake, stumbling around in the strobing, shell-lit twilight.
He and his warriors would be first to reach the fortress. This type of action had once been known as a Forlorn Hope, because the first men into the breach would invariably be the first men to die. It was the duty of the Hope to draw the enemy fire as the remainder of the force closed with the fortress. The men of the Hope would storm the breach and buy time with their lives for the following troops to push through. Hundreds of men might be sacrificed in this way simply to get a handful through the breach.
Storming a breach was always a bloody affair, because the enemy knew exactly where the attack would be coming from, though Honsou hoped the constant bombardment from the batteries would keep the Imperial defenders' heads down.
He clambered swiftly up the jagged rocks, each powerful thrust of his thighs pushing him closer to the top. As the noise of shell impacts intensified, he looked up into the darkening sky, seeing the broken top of the ramparts and a huge tear ripped in the side of the bastion. Tonnes of rabble spilled down its flanks and provided a ready-made ramp to the defenders above.
'Battery guns, cease fire,' ordered Honsou as he cleared the top of the slope.
Shouts of alarm echoed from the top of the walls and a handful of las-blasts stabbed towards him, but they were poorly aimed and flew high.
Honsou muttered the Iron Warriors' catechism of battle: ''Iron within, iron without'' as his men pulled themselves onto the ground before Tor Christo and charged with him towards the breach.
Forrix swept his power glove through the chest of a man wearing a gunner's reinforced flak vest, his upper body exploding in blood and bone. Roaring reaper cannon fire ripped through the Imperial gunners and soldiers, spraying the flanks of their artillery with blood.
'Protect the guns!' screamed a junior officer before Forrix tore his head off.
Fools. Did they really think the guns were their target, that the Iron Warriors did not already have a surfeit of guns?
Their attack had hit without warning and the first Imperial troops had died without knowing what had killed them. Their guards tried to fight back, but within seconds had realised the fight was hopeless and fled before Forrix and his Terminators. But the old veteran was not about to let his prey escape him so easily. Three of his warriors levelled their reaper cannons, the barrels studded with spikes, and unleashed a deadly hail of shots that felled men by the dozen.
Forrix lumbered forward, ignoring the Imperial guns and charging as fast as he could towards the wide doors in the mountainside. Already the alarm had been raised and they were rumbling closed, but too slowly. Forrix and his retinue burst through into the space beyond.
A volley of las-fire greeted them, hissing harmlessly from the thick armour of the Terminators. Scores of Guardsmen were spread through the cavernous chamber, but Forrix ignored the bright flashes of weapons fire as he searched for the door mechanism. Thick rails ran across the rockcrete floor from three enormous bays and ordnance magazines, each with cranes and pulley chains filling the space above them.
He could see stairs ahead leading upwards carved through the rock. The majority of the cavern's defenders were gathered at their base behind hurriedly constructed barricades of crates and barrels. Another group was clustered behind a pair of giant bulldozers, firing from behind their yellow bulk at the invaders. Guessing the controls for the door were housed here, Forrix charged forwards through the hail of shots, his armour easily deflecting the defenders' pitiful fire. He and his Terminators fired their combi-bolters across the flanks of the bulldozers, explosive shells killing a dozen soldiers and ricocheting from the dozers' flanks with flaring detonations.
More Terminators headed for the soldiers guarding the stairs as Forrix rounded the forward edge of the closest bulldozer and hosed the men there with bolter fire. Grenades burst harmlessly around the Terminators as one man dived aside and swung a heavy rifle with a ribbed barrel towards Forrix.
A white-hot beam of plasma energy slammed into his chest, instantly obliterating the blasted iconography there and searing through layers of ceramite armour. Forrix felt the heat of the plasma scorch his skin and he staggered under the force of the impact. His Terminator armour had been forged on the Anvil of Holades on Olympia itself and its ancient spirit was as corrupt as he, and not yet willing to fall. Forrix recovered his balance and punched his power fist through the plasma gunner's chest in a shower of bone splinters, lifting the impaled body from the ground and hurling it through the air in a bloody arc.
Bursts of bolter fire and disembowelling sweeps of lightning claws silenced the resistance. Forrix strode to the access door controls on the far wall and wrenched the release lever into the ''open'' position. The doors screeched, the mechanisms protesting as their motors suddenly reversed and began to rumble open again. Forrix backed away and put three bolts through the control mechanism.
Satisfied the gun bay doors would not be closing any time soon, Forrix rounded the blood-splattered bulldozer, watching as his warriors with reaper cannons began slaughtering the remaining defenders of the cavern in controlled bursts of gunfire.
As the slaughter continued, the Guardsmen broke and ran for the steps. Those not quick enough to reach the cover of the stairs were shredded by the Iron Warriors' firepower, their screams drowned in the deafening roar of the cannons. Any not killed in the initial bursts were soon torn apart as the shells destroyed their barricade in an instant. Within seconds the entire defence was gone, only chewed up crates and mangled corpses remaining.
A single, terrified soldier suddenly broke from cover, sprinting for the stairs. Three cannons tracked him as he ran, but Forrix said, 'No, this one is mine.'
Forrix let the man get within a hair's breadth of safety before he fired his weapon.
Shells tore great chunks from the wall behind his victim, shattering several control panels.
As fast as the soldier had run, it was not fast enough. A single shell clipped his thigh as he twisted out of the line of fire, instantly shearing his leg from his body just below the hip.