The elements ambushed on the road to the city were holding, and in many places driving the tyranids back. Given time, Rabelaq guessed they could probably fight their way behind the walls. But time was the one thing they did not have.
The soldiers of Krieg could not hope to hold the tyranid advance long enough.
There was only one thing to do.
He marched to the centre of his command bridge and buttoned his frock coat, pulling the collar straight and brushing a piece of lint from his epaulettes.
'General advance, ready main gun,' he ordered.
'Sir?' queried his adjutant.
'You heard me, damn you! General advance, I'll not leave those brave lads to fight and die on their own. That's not the Logres way. Now do as I order!'
'Aye, aye, sir,' nodded the man, hurrying to obey.
Colonel Octavius Rabelaq came to attention as he felt the rumbling vibrations of the gigantic tracks and the Capitol Imperialis began its ponderous advance.
The ground shook, the charge of hundreds of alien monsters dislodging snow, ice and timber from the walls of the trenches. Konarski grabbed whatever men he could find through the stinking clouds of alien fumes, hauling them back towards the city wall. They had done as much as they could, and it was time to get his men to safety.
Huge vibrations rumbled through the ground, and briefly he wondered if they were in the grip of an earthquake. A screeching roar behind him echoed with alien hunger and he turned to raise his lasgun in a final show of defiance.
Suddenly the earth heaved and a thunderous string of explosions filled the world with noise. Bright light flared behind him and the crack of displaced air threatened to deafen him. He felt himself flying through the air as massive tremors split the ground before him. He hit hard and rolled, swallowing snow as stars burst before his eyes.
Flames leaped before him and he pushed himself dizzily to his knees.
What the hell had just happened?
Then the smoke parted and he saw a towering cliff of steel rising before him. Grinding forward on lumbering tracks that crushed the earth, it split the very bedrock with its mass, throwing up tank-sized chunks of ice and rock. The blessed sight of the aquila was emblazoned on the soaring leviathan, just below the gigantic, smoking barrel of the Behemoth cannon mounted on the Capitol Imperialis. Konarski laughed as the mammoth war-machine rumbled past him, his cry of exultation snatched away as its cannon fired again, the concussive force hurling him through the air once more.
The landing knocked the breath out of his body, but fuelled by adrenalin, he quickly staggered to his feet and lurched off in the direction of the city.
Colonel Rabelaq had bought them time and he wasn't about to waste it.
Colonel Stagler kept the compress bandage tight against his stomach, dizzy from blood loss, but unwilling to accept medical attention until he knew the fate of his men. Even from his vantage point on a snow-capped gun tower atop the main wall, billowing clouds of smoke and fumes obscured his view of the trenches. He could get nothing from the vox-caster, simply screams and alien howls. His men were probably lost, but they had died in the Krieg manner: fighting hard and dying well.
The fool Rabelaq had surprised him, pushing his precious mobile command post into the alien mass. He'd bought the men fighting the ambushing aliens enough time to break free of the noose and escape to the transient safety of the city. Entire broods of aliens had circumvented the walls, dropping from the high cliffs and into the depths of the city, but he couldn't worry about them right now.
The Capitol Imperialis fired again and more snow tumbled from the highest peaks of the mountains. Hundreds of aliens swarmed up the flanks of the mighty vehicle, many more slamming their bulk into its tracks. Electrical discharges erupted around its hull and bright explosions surrounded it. Its close-in defences stripped away whole swathes of attacking aliens, but could not cope with the sheer volume of attackers.
Stagler snapped his fingers in the direction of his vox-operator.
'Get me Colonel Rabelaq,' he ordered as he saw a sight that would stay with him until his dying day.
'Why are we slowing, damn you?' demanded Colonel Rabelaq.
'Sir, the track units are jammed. We can't move,' came the reply.
The commander of the Logres regiment rushed to the surveyor station, where dozens of small pict-slates displayed images from the external viewers. Flickering scenes of carnage filled every one, thousands of tyranid brood creatures swarming around the Capitol Imperialis. Hundreds of short-range bolters fired a continuous stream of explosive shells into the alien horde, but could not stop them all.
He felt the recoil-dampened vibration of the main gun and even through the thick hull of his command vehicle, he could hear the shrieks of the deadly aliens as they fought to get at the humans inside his armoured behemoth.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of aliens had thrown themselves into the mighty tracks of the Capitol Imperialis to prevent it from escaping, and the scale of such unthinking devotion terrified Rabelaq to the soles of his boots. Not even the ruthlessly driven Macharius or the charismatic Slaydo had inspired such obedience from their warriors.
A horrified intake of breath lifted him from his reverie and he looked up to see the gargantuan beast emerge from the billowing clouds of ice and poisonous clouds, crushing everything before it.
Multiple mandibles slavered around a cavern-sized sphincter mouth ringed with thousands of thick fangs. Dripping ichor spilled from the orifice in thick ropes of corrosive drool. Chitinous legs, reverse jointed like a spider's, dragged its bloated body across the ice, hundreds of scuttling organisms crawling across the thick bony plates of its upper armour.
'Great saints,' whispered Rabelaq. 'All power to the auto loaders! Fire the main gun, for the Emperor's sake. Now!'
'Sir! Colonel Stagler on the vox!'
'I don't have time for that fanatic now,' he snapped. 'Fire the main gun!'
Even through metres of adamantium deck and noise suppressors, he felt the thunderous recoil of the Behemoth cannon. The monster rocked under the impact and a huge cheer filled the command bridge. Huge chunks of excised flesh sailed through the air and parade-ground sized sheets of blood sprayed from a huge crater in the beast's flank.
It sagged to one, side, its foreleg hanging by gory ribbons of torn muscle. Dark blood gouted from the wound, flooding the trenches below and melting the ice with its heat. A split opened along the sac of its belly, tearing wider as the screaming monster continued to drag itself towards the Capitol Imperialis. Thousands of leaping, snapping creatures and bloated egg sacs tumbled from the wound, only to be crushed beneath the massive beast's weight.
'Come on, come on,' hissed Rabelaq as he watched the indicator lights on the main panel charting the reloading process far below on the gun decks. He willed the gunnery overseer to whip his men harder and get the damn gun loaded. Forcing himself to look away from the panel, he watched in horror as the tyranid monster reared up again, the flesh already reknitting where their shells had struck it. Ichor no longer spilled from its belly and already new strands of muscle and tissue were slithering along the wounded leg to reconnect severed tendons and bone.
'Sir, hull breaches on decks two, three and five!'
'Sir, engine room reports intruders!'
'Colonel, close-in defences are out of ammunition!'
Rabelaq listened to more incoming reports, each more damning than the last, and knew that his career as a soldier in the Emperor's armies was finally over. This was one battle he would not walk away from and raise a toast to in the officers' mess in years to come.