He allowed himself that burst of savage pleasure. It lasted as long as the initial flash of the explosions. Then he faced again the reality of defeat, of humiliation, and of the fact that this was not a tide that could be turned by even a hundred Thunderhawks.
The rate of the ork fire dropped. Four more Battlewagons were burning shells.
The Vindicators were moving more and more slowly, providing cover for the battle-brothers on foot. They no longer had their flank escorts. A group of massive orks evaded the sponson fire of the Olympia and scrambled up onto the roof to Kalkator’s left. Before he could turn, one of them grabbed his left arm with a power claw. It squeezed, cracking the ceramite, crushing servo-motors. It would have broken his arm, had it still been flesh.
It hadn’t been for three hundred years. The change had come upon it, the gods of Chaos visiting him with the gift of a string of grasping mouths from shoulder to wrist. He had taken his chainblade to the arm himself, amputating it in his quarters, taking the time to burn the offending limb while his blood poured onto the ship’s decking before he stormed off, still steady on his feet, to find the Apothecary. The left arm was bionic now, a thing of metal and barbed ridges. When he didn’t buckle, the ork looked surprised.
Kalkator swung his bolter around and shot the ork in the face. The top half of its skull disintegrated, showering the roof of the Olympia with blood and brain matter. The claw released Kalkator as the body slumped. He kicked the corpse off the tank and flexed his arm. It moved in jerks, but was still functional.
To the rear, the gunships were landing. Three of the twelve remained in the air, buying time with rockets and shells. The Vindicators slowed to a crawl. Kalkator looked back and saw the first members of the company embarking. He faced forward again and watched time stolen from them.
The huge walkers and the battle fortresses were close. The walkers redirected their fire at the Thunderhawks. To the autocannon bursts were added missile launches from their shoulders. The attacks vectored onto a single target. The gunship’s pilot tried to evade. Two missiles hit the starboard wing, shells slammed into the nose, and the gunship dropped.
As it fell, a torrent of flame shot from the jaws of the nearest walker and enveloped the cockpit. The Thunderhawk hit the ground with meteoric force. It collided with one of the battle fortresses, the impact fusing the two behemoths together. Embraced by flame, they became a mountain of clashing metal, a single being that was the madness and destruction of war. They lost shape. The blasts came, shaking the ground so hard that Kalkator was almost knocked off his feet.
Above, a second gunship was trailing smoke, though it still fought. The Olympia fired its cannon through the flames of the collision. It hit one of the walkers in the centre of its wide skirt, and the ork titan seemed to stumble, then rocked forwards and came on. Its arms reached towards the Vindicator. Kalkator looked up at the cluster of autocannons aimed at his head.
‘Off!’ he yelled.
He jumped to the right. So did Caesax. Varravo was a beat behind. The cannonade caught him. The Pyres of Olympia fired back — still operational, but its roof was slag. Some of the debris was just recognisable as Varravo’s ruined armour.
The Olympia’s engine whined, but the tank didn’t move. ‘We’ve lost guidance,’ Occillax voxed.
‘Continue the attack,’ Kalkator ordered. He cut his way through more ork infantry. The brutes were stunned by the walker’s bombardment. Kalkator and Caesax made quick progress towards the rear.
‘To what end?’
‘Hold them off as best you can, brother.’
‘This is pointless.’
‘Step outside and I’ll kill you myself. Follow your orders.’
Occillax cursed him, but obeyed. Kalkator and Caesax left the Vindicator behind. The slow beat of its cannon resumed. It hit the walker again, and this time the ork Titan responded with its hammer. It struck the Olympia hard enough to make the ground shake again. The ork machinery roared louder, in triumph and anger. Another blast from the cannon, another hit to the walker, but the orks crewing the monster were focused on victory, not on the casualties they suffered. The hammer came down again and again, and the third time was when Kalkator heard the shriek of compacting metal. The gun fell silent.
He was the last to reach the landing zone, a few steps behind Caesax. They ran up the ramp to the final gunship, the Meratara. Not all of the Thunderhawks had taken off again — the battle fortresses had demolished three of them on the ground. Kalkator didn’t know how many troops he had lost in each one. The reckoning would wait until later, if there was a later.
The ramp raised as he reached the top and the Thunderhawk took off. He made his way forward to the cockpit to witness the end. He saw the Barban Falk join the Olympia in destruction, and another gunship blasted out of the sky. Then they were in the clouds, and though the ship rattled through the turbulence of the atmosphere, there were a few minutes of calm.
They weren’t welcome. They gave him time to think, to feel the humiliation of the loss scrape at his pride.
The Meratara shot up from the clouds. A new vision appeared before Kalkator. Another humiliation, another great power smashing a weaker one. The Scythe of Schravaan was under heavy attack. Squadrons of ork fighters swarmed around it. From the star fortress came an unending stream of rockets. The strike cruiser’s void shields flashed and flashed, surrounding the vessel in an aurora of desperation. Its armaments lit the void with anger. Ork vessels died, and rockets exploded short of their target.
Drops in the ocean. There were so many more orks on the way that the space between the moon and the ship seemed full. The Schravaan’s death was minutes away.
‘Make for the Palimodes,’ Kalkator told Lerontus, the gunship’s pilot. The other strike cruiser, more distant from the star fortress, was holding its own. The orks were amusing themselves with taking down one large prey at a time.
Not all of them were satisfied with the Schravaan. Three fighters came at the Meratara. Their salvoes hit hard. Warning runes lit up as the hull was pierced in multiple places. Kalkator heard the shriek of atmosphere venting. He drowned it out with his own roar of rage. As Lerontus pulled the gunship up sharply, Kalkator grabbed the controls for the weapons systems.
The fighters looped back for a second pass.
‘Straight at them,’ Kalkator told Lerontus.
‘With pleasure.’ The pilot’s anger was the mirror of his own.
Kalkator held his fire. Lerontus turned the Thunderhawk into a head-on course towards the ork ships. The orks misjudged the relative speed of the approach and the smaller profile the gunship now presented. A few shots still hit. Kalkator ignored them. He would hold the vessel together with his will if he had to.
The orks bunched closer together, jockeying for the better angle on their prey.
Kalkator fired all forward armament. Thunderhawk cannon, heavy bolters and lascannons struck the centre fighter. It vaporised. The blast washed over the other two ships. Their pilots overcorrected and collided.
The Meratara slammed through the cloud of debris, and raced on towards the Palimodes.
The other gunships still in flight were following the same path. The mathematics of defeat cascaded through Kalkator’s mind. How many had headed to the Schravaan first? How many had been taken out before reaching either vessel? How many beyond capacity would Attonax try to take on board? Did he even have to make that decision?