‘We keep moving,’ said Koorland. ‘We wait for word from Hemisphere.’
The word came when the Last Wall was deep into the dust cloud. And Hemisphere gave Koorland what he needed.
‘Chapter Master,’ the pilot voxed, ‘I managed another pass towards the target position. A portion of the ork army is still there.’
‘Did you see what they’re fighting?’
‘I couldn’t get near. Most of their anti-air is concentrated near that position.’
They really don’t want us to approach, Koorland thought. He opened a channel to the other commanders. ‘Our original target is still viable. The orks are using their full strength because they are desperate to prevent us from reaching it.’
‘They have been successful,’ said Arouar.
‘They have also given us the opportunity to turn that success into failure. They are following us into Laccolith.’
‘How does that help?’ Imren asked.
‘We must hold their army here while a small force makes an aerial insertion up the slope.’
Thane said, ‘The Thunderhawks will await you at the space port.’
‘We’ve defeated these orks before!’ Thane called to his company. ‘We won on Eidolica! Today, a delay is a victory.’
The Fists Exemplar had taken the main avenue cutting through the centre of Laccolith. It was the fastest route to the space port, and the most inviting path for a large force. The ork super-heavies were most likely to take this route, so the avenue was the one most important to deny to the enemy.
‘We don’t know the greenskins have any idea what Koorland is attempting,’ Aquino had said as they set up the ambush.
‘We don’t,’ Thane had agreed. ‘Should we underestimate them yet again?’
Now, Aloysian answered Thane’s shout. ‘Let the delay begin, Chapter Master.’
The Techmarine had worked fast. Under his supervision, it had taken less than five minutes to plant the demolition charges. The greenskin horde thundered down the avenue, lured by the harassing attacks of the Predators. The Adeptus Astartes tanks backed up, still firing, until they crossed the kill-zone. On either side of the street, the foundations of hab-blocks exploded.
Already weakened by the initial fighting in Laccolith, the towers collapsed, falling towards each other. They came down on the front ranks of the orks, crushing them beneath thousands of tonnes of rubble, filling the street with an avalanche of rockcrete and dust. The wall of wreckage was a dozen metres high. The assault squad landed on its peak and rained fire on the orks below. The rest of the company attacked from the structures on either side, trapping the greenskins in a lethal dead end. Gunships flew low on the avenue, raking the enemy with cannons and heavy bolters, missiles tearing into the greenskin tanks.
The orks stopped. The infantry began to pull back.
‘Do they think we’re stupid?’ Aquino voxed.
‘Keep hitting them,’ said Thane. ‘But keep a distance.’ He would not lead his men into a counter-ambush.
‘Only the infantry is pulling back,’ Aloysian said. ‘The heavy guns are moving forwards.’
At the end of the avenue, a walker and three battlefortresses advanced. Before the infantry was fully clear, they opened up. The barrage was monstrous. The Fists Exemplar pulled back as the street erupted, explosions hammering the avenue from a point fifty metres forward of the company, all the way to the barrier. Rockets slammed into the facades of the habs, bringing more buildings down. The collapses forced the Fists Exemplar into the open. Taking to the shelter of the craters, they maintained their fire on the enemy, but Thane could no longer see what effect, if any, they were having. He was shooting into explosions.
‘Pull back to the other side of the barrier,’ Thane ordered. ‘We’ll welcome them again there. Gunships, covering fire. Break this barrage.’
Aloysian slid into the same crater as Thane. ‘They’re concentrating their bombardment on the road.’
‘It’s working for them. They’re making it hard for us to move. Let them amuse themselves. At least they’re not advancing.’
‘If this is victory, it has a displeasing shape.’
‘Our victory conditions are the success of the mission.’ The truth of the words made them no less bitter. Aloysian was right. At this moment, the idea of locating the primarch felt abstract. Compounded humiliation was a reality.
Aloysian’s attention had shifted back to the orks’ tactics. ‘Why the road? The enemy has done nothing without reason.’
Thane looked behind. His battle-brothers were climbing over the rubble. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Aloysian. ‘If they have a reason, it will do them no good in our absence.’
He made for the barrier, running through the barrage. On his left, Brasidas took a direct hit. The Space Marine vanished. The mist of his blood splashed against Thane’s helm. The ground shook with impacts. Fissures spread from crater to crater.
Too late Thane realised what the orks were doing.
With a massive tremor and a howl of shattering rock, the avenue gave way. It fell into the honeycomb of lava tunnels below. Weakened by the pounding of the bombardment, the tunnels collapsed too. The chain reaction spread. A gorge opened up, running through the centre of Laccolith. It swallowed the barrier. The ground vanished beneath Thane’s feet. The Fists Exemplar plunged into the depths.
Thane dropped twenty metres. He bounced off jagged ledges and landed on an uneven field of broken stone. The force of his fall punched through rock. He stood, servo-motors in his armour catching and whining. He looked up at the sheer walls surrounding the company. There was no sure route out.
He heard the bombardment stop. The rumble of engines replaced the roar of guns. The orks were closing in on the trap they had created.
The company drew together. Thane made for the tanks, but the fall had disabled the heavy armour. The tanks were immobilised. Even if they could manoeuvre, none could be extracted from the gorge except by airlift.
However, not all of the vehicles had been wholly destroyed in the fall. Some, at least, still had working guns.
‘Tactical squads,’ Thane voxed, ‘get to street level. Do what you can. Gunships, concentrate on the super-heavies. Hold them off. Destroy them if possible.’ He turned to his brothers. ‘We can fight or we can climb.’
‘Is that a choice?’ Kahagnis asked.
‘Not really.’ Unless they climbed, annihilation was inevitable.
He climbed on top of the nearest functioning turret. It belonged to the Predator Scion of Roma. ‘Let enough of us remain with the tanks to hold the enemy at bay. The rest of you, make for the far wall. Reach the top, then cover our retreat.’
His brothers rapped their fists against their chest-plates in salute and left. There were five guns that could be used. Venerable Brother Otho stayed as welclass="underline" the Dreadnought could not climb, so he became the mobile artillery. The Whirlwind Citadel’s End could still move, and Aloysian took its controls with Scuris operating its rocket launcher. The bulk of the company retreated. The rear of the canyon was five hundred metres to the south. The collapse was deep, narrow and less than a kilometre long in total.
‘We are in a barrel,’ Aloysian voxed.
‘I know it,’ Thane replied.
The orks moved their super-heavies into position. The walker arrived first. It towered over the lip of the canyon. Its squat, conical shape having none of the majesty of the Titans. It was power embodied in its most brutal, savage form. In the excess of its massive cannon and the clusters of turrets, Thane nonetheless saw a mocking kind of genius. The behemoth was the ork spirit of war: crushing feet, crushing limbs, and crushing weaponry. Thane looked up from the perspective of the Imperium trampled beneath the boots of the greenskins.
Hatred fuelled his first shot.
The Predator’s shell exploded against the walker’s armour. The hit would have reduced battlements to powder. A crater smoked in the ork machine’s carapace. The beast’s cannon arm swung downwards as if the blow had meant nothing.