The gun barrel was as long as a Rhino. The shot was like a meteor impact. The shell struck the ground just ahead of Scion of Roma and the explosion lifted the front of the tank up, flipping the Predator onto its roof. Thane leapt from the turret in mid-arc. He landed and scrambled out of the way of its fall.
Thunderhawks and Xiphon interceptors strafed the ork machines. Secondary turrets on the walker retaliated, while the primary arms remained pointed down. The massive totemic head, its eyes lit crimson, appeared to gaze into the canyon, unperturbed by the aerial assaults. Imperial autocannon fire took out smaller tanks. The battlefortresses and the walker maintained their positions and the steady bombardment. Dense clusters of anti-aircraft fire reached for the gunships.
Scuris unleashed the Whirlwind’s battery of rockets, enveloping the head of the walker in flame. Its next shot went wild. As pulverised rock rained down on him, Thane pounded over the floor of the canyon. He jumped on top of Citadel’s End as Aloysian drove forwards. The Techmarine headed for the cliff nearest the orks, below the range of the walker’s cannon.
Battlefortresses and the smaller battlewagons arrived at the lip of the gorge. Infantry set up mortar positions and a deluge of fire fell upon the Fists Exemplar. The canyon became the boiling crater of a volcano. Identification runes flashed red and then black in Thane’s retinal lenses. More brothers dying. A double explosion to the rear was another tank, blown up by a direct hit from the walker’s huge cannon.
‘Brother Aquino, what is your progress?’ Thane voxed.
At the head of the battle-brothers climbing the south wall, Aquino said, ‘Halfway there, Chapter Master. They haven’t—’
Thunder and static howl cut him off. Electrical arcs fired across the gorge, stabbing at the vertical face. Thane heard the rumble of further rock falls. Another rune blinked and died.
Citadel’s End fired again, but this time Aloysian targeted the top of the cliff instead of the ork machines. He created his own avalanche. The walker rocked forwards as the ground fell away, but its operators moved one of its huge legs in a great dragging step backwards and it staggered away from the edge. One of the battlefortresses wasn’t fast enough. It pitched down, engine screaming, treads spinning uselessly as it fell. It turned on its side, then into a ponderous roll, hauled by its own tremendous mass. It fired again in mid-flight. The shell hit the cliff wall just above Citadel’s End. Aloysian reversed, jouncing the Whirlwind off boulders and a cloud of dust billowed over the tank.
Thane left the roof. He ran through the dust to the darker mass of the battlefortress. It had landed upright. The treads were destroyed and its wheels threw up sparks as they tried to find traction on rubble, but its three layered turrets rotated southwards. They roared. Thane stared straight ahead. He refused to acknowledge further losses. He would not permit them.
Behind him, Citadel’s End fired again, eating at the ground of the ork positions, forcing them back. An energy gun exploded, filling the night with an emerald glare.
Thane pulled a melta bomb from his belt and ducked beneath the lowest cannon, scrambled over the spiked cylinder the fortress used as a siege shield, and climbed its hull. Firing his bolt pistol through a viewing slit, he was rewarded with a whining snarl of pain. He slapped the melta bomb to the top cannon, the largest, where the barrel met the turret. Then he jumped to the ground in front of the tank, daring the greenskins to take their anger out on a single enemy.
They took the bait.
The melta bomb flared then ate through the turret and barrel. The gun fired, and the battlefortress self-immolated. Molten heat reached for Thane. Burning chunks of hull spun past him.
This was a much better shape of victory.
He turned back towards Citadel’s End. Even as he did, the orks settled into new positions and hit the canyon with another massive salvo.
‘Aquino!’ he shouted.
No answer.
He called again. Aquino answered, his voice tight with suppressed pain. ‘They’re blasting the cliff away from us, Chapter Master. Progress is slow. We are taking losses.’
‘I have faith in you, brother.’
But he didn’t in the situation. The orks were bringing forwards even more mortars, even more large guns. The foot soldiers lined the circumference of the gorge, shouting with laughter. Thane only saw them in glimpses between the eruptions and the flames. They were celebrants exulting over the pyre of their foe.
Thane would fight. Aloysian would fight. Aquino and the others would fight.
And they would die.
The vox scratched for his attention — a transmission on the wider command network. He caught up to the Whirlwind once more and opened the channel.
‘Tynora 7-Galliax,’ a mechanical voice said. ‘We are approaching your position, Chapter Master Thane.’
‘Your news is welcome, princeps.’
‘Our manoeuvre is thanks to yours, Chapter Master. The principal strength of the Veridi giganticus was drawn to you. The pressure on us was relieved. We come to return the favour.’
She spoke, and then new light tore the night. Blinding phosphor blasts illuminated the ork positions and burned the infantry. The perfect razor yellow of eradicator beams cut in from east and west, burning through the flanks of the enemy armour. Two battlewagons disintegrated. Their blasts took out the energy cannons nearby. The destruction spread.
‘All guns target the cliff top,’ Thane ordered.
Citadel’s End, Brother Otho and the immobilised Predators fired within seconds of each other. Concussive hammer blows tore a huge chunk of the ground away. The new avalanche stole the road surface from beneath the orks. The battlefortresses ceased fire as they reversed course, backing over the retreating infantry.
The walker took another step back. This time, it was too slow. The surface of the road collapsed beneath it. The walker plunged head-first, firing one more time as it dropped. The wild shell punched another crater behind Thane.
The canyon roared and echoed as the leviathan’s fall triggered another avalanche of rock and gravel. The monster came to a stop at the base of the canyon, half-buried by the slide. Its cannon arm was immobile. The left arm waved its gigantic saw. The blade buzzed in the air, hungry for targets. The body shook with internal explosions, but still lived.
‘Finish it,’ Thane ordered.
The guns of the Fists Exemplar lowered their aim. They fired as one, a choir of rage and vengeance. They targeted the head, which protruded well beyond the rock fall. The walker’s armour could not withstand such a concentrated assault, and the head blew apart. The devastated neck opened into an abyss of darkness and monstrous engineering. An inferno billowed out of the chasm as the machinery tore itself apart. The walker shook harder and harder as something vital and tremendously powerful was breached. Thane took cover behind a boulder.
The monster’s death shattered the night of the gorge, killing the dark with burning day. It pulverised the rock that had buried the walker. Stone shards flew across the canyon with hurricane velocity. They whined over Thane’s position like a swarm of insects.
Thane rose when the glow of the blast faded. Still more of the cliff face had collapsed. There was a slope now to the north. Too steep for Citadel’s End, but not, perhaps, for the Dreadnought.
‘Venerable Brother Otho,’ Thane called.
‘I am with you, Chapter Master.’
Aloysian and the other battle-brothers who had manned the guns left the vehicles. Together with Thane, they mounted the slope. When they reached the top, they found the rest of the company already engaged. In the midst of the broken city, the Fists Exemplar hammered the front ranks of the orks while the Mechanicus attacked the flanks. The orks pulled back, infantry falling, vehicles destroyed. The battlefortresses were more powerful than any single one of the Imperial vehicles deployed on Caldera, but they were not invulnerable. A line of Kataphron Breachers closed with the fortress on the eastern side of the avenue. Their torsion cannons turned the matter of its armour against itself, three simultaneous hits tearing its flank open. Brother Scaevola launched a rocket through the gap. The battlefortress died, fire pouring from the viewing slits of its turrets.