Angel of Fire

Ahead of us lay an enormous armoured bunker. It was the size of a small hill, reinforced with plascrete and sheets of durasteel. The maws of several very large guns pointed in our direction. A huge turret traversed towards us. I hit the override and took the controls from the New Boy. He tugged at the sticks for a few moments not realising what was happening. It was hard to blame him. The same thing had happened to me the first time I went into battle.

I glanced around at the terrain. Dunes undulated all around us, some of them large enough to provide us with some cover. I picked the most likely looking of them and sent us in that direction a fraction of a second before the lieutenant gave the order to take us hull-down.

Of course, the dune would not provide the slightest smidgeon of protection against the blast from one of those lascannons. That was not the point. The point was not even to hide us from view. It was to make us less visible than all the other tanks around us. If we were less of a target, the enemy would seek somebody else. I would not have wished death on anybody on our side, but our first task was to see that we stayed alive. Dead men win no battles and they certainly do not tell tales about them afterwards.

The lieutenant barked orders into the comm-net. I heard Ivan and Anton and the others respond. The whole Baneblade vibrated as all of our batteries went off at once, thundering at one of those distant guns.

Lines of las-fire stabbed out at us from the smaller emplacements in the bunker. It was stupid. Hitting a Baneblade with a light weapon was like menacing an elephant with a sulphur match. Those weapons would have cut infantrymen down like chaff but were useless against us.

Our fire blasted into one of the larger emplacements, sending shards of broken metal flying. That was one gun silenced. As I watched, smaller Chimera units surged forwards across the dunes. Heavy bolters blazed from the small-looking turrets on top of their hulls. Blasts from the pillbox tore a few of them apart but many more got close, then huge explosions from below sent them hurtling broken skywards.

‘Minefield,’ I heard the lieutenant mutter. ‘Lemuel, take us in, we are going to clear a path.’

There was no point arguing. The commander’s chair was behind mine. He could put a bullet through my brain if he even suspected mutiny, which in truth was not something I had in mind.

As I urged the Indomitable forwards I was thinking more of the possibility that the mines might be powerful enough to breach our hull and that we would be sitting targets for those batteries in the great fortress.

The lieutenant just kept talking into the comm-net. Ahead of us the Chimeras began to reverse, moving out of our paths like a swarm of crypt rats passing round a mastodon. I saw one or two broken bodies in the minefield, one or two men still moving. I did my best to ignore them and the thought that in a few minutes that could be me.

I nudged the Baneblade forwards. Something exploded beneath us. For a moment, I felt as if my heart was going to stop. I heard the New Boy groan and when I looked over his face was white. The hull vibrated like a great drum but held.

‘Keep us moving forwards, Lemuel. Those mines are not strong enough to stop us.’ I wished I was as sure of that as the lieutenant was. He calmly commanded the turrets to keep up a stream of fire into the gun emplacements even as one of those mighty lascannons started to rotate towards us. I knew that if we were directly in its sights then we were dead for sure. Such a powerful, fixed position gun had power enough to take out even a tank like the Indomitable. Another mine went off. For a moment, the Baneblade shuddered and threatened to stop. It felt as if even the massive weight of the ancient tank was not enough to keep it on the ground. For a heartbeat I feared that one of the drive-trains had given way and that we were immobilised. The old monster kept crawling forwards. Our guns raked the nearest positions. Brown-clad infantrymen rose up out of concrete foxholes and scurried away. What might have been a commissar rose to shoot them. A hail of fire from our anti-personnel weapons killed soldier and leader both. The lascannon kept traversing towards us. It would only be a matter of moments now before it had us in its sights.

‘Keep moving, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Just a few more metres.’

Suddenly I understood what he was doing. I fed the engines as much power as they would take and we surged forwards passing under the line of fire of the great lascannon. Its beam scorched the earth behind us but we were safe. The barrel of it could not be depressed any lower. We were under its arc of fire.

Along the path we had cleared through the minefield Chimeras raced forwards, guided by the mark of our tracks. The other Bane-blades were doing the same now. Within minutes the minefield was breached and our infantry swarmed over the sides of the pillbox, clearing bunkers and foxholes, breaking through the armoured security doors and swarming into the interior. We sat outside in the sun and provided them with covering fire.

‘That’s our first objective taken,’ said the lieutenant with some satisfaction.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the Understudy. ‘Everything is going according to plan.’

I wondered about that. I really did. Would it really have gone so well if the lieutenant had not been there, and seen the weakness in the minefields. And what if he had been wrong, what if the mines had been able to destroy the Baneblade. You can drive yourself mad thinking about such things. It’s best to stick to the things that actually happen and not what might have been. That’s a good rule when thinking about life in general, as about the wars you have fought in.

By noon the sun, at its highest point, gazed down on our triumph. Prisoners were rounded up and disarmed or shot. We had won a small victory but it was a victory and that is always a good way to open a campaign, as I am sure Macharius and the lieutenant at least understood.

We climbed down from the Baneblade to stretch our legs. We had been given a break and who knew how long it would be before we managed to get out of the tank’s claustrophobic interior.

The air smelled different. We lost the tang of incense and filtered air and cooped up sweaty bodies we had inside. I could smell the desert and explosives and burning and something else disturbing.

Atop a nearby ridge I noticed something. It was a cage, made of metal, resting on a metal platform on a high spot above us. It was an odd shape – not square like most of cages I had seen but curved towards the top. Inside it were a number of X-shaped structures made from metal. I was too far away to make out what exactly these cages contained although I could see that they were blackened and scorched and covered in what appeared to be soot. Curious, I set off up the hill, shouldering my shotgun just in case. Anton and Ivan followed me.

I began to notice something else about the cages. Beneath them was some sort of residue. The bottoms seemed more scorched than the tops as if fires had been lit beneath them and heated the metal framework. As I got closer, I saw that this was exactly the case and I saw something else. There were fire-blackened human skeletons attached to the X-frames within the cages. They had been chained there.

‘What in the name of the Emperor?’ Ivan said and whistled. Anton just let out a high-pitched nervous giggle as if not quite able to come to terms with what he was seeing. I walked closer, thinking there must be some mistake.

There was no mistake. Somebody had chained up a number of men within the cages. They had set them alight. In places the flesh was scorched black, in other places pink meat and charred bone was visible where the flesh had sloughed away. Long metal tentacles descended from the top of the cage. They contacted the scorched skulls. At first I thought they were more chains designed to lift the victims’ heads at an unnatural angle but then I saw they were fire-proof tubes connected to metal rebreather filters over the victims’ mouths.

I stared, not quite able to get to grips with what I was seeing. It was mechanically-minded Anton who figured it out.

‘The tubes kept those poor bastards breathing,’ he said.

‘What?’ Ivan said.

‘The smoke from the flames might have suffocated them. The tubes fed air into their lungs, kept them breathing while the flames burned them alive.’

He paused for a moment and thought for a moment. ‘No. It was worse. They were not just burned alive. There are heating elements in the metal. The bars, the chains, those cross-bars would all be white hot. They would be branded as they burned.’

‘Why?’ I asked, for once not astonished by the fact I was asking Anton the reason for something.

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Discipline maybe?’

‘You mean like a flogging?’

‘More like an execution.’

‘They are a cruel bunch on this world,’ said Ivan. We had lived under Imperial Guard discipline for a decade so you had to plumb impressive depths for Ivan to think you were cruel.

We walked around the cages, looking at them from all angles, trying to make sense of what was going on here. I’ve fought orks and they can be vicious but this was something else. It was calculated and strange and nasty beyond words. Someone had wanted whoever was imprisoned in these cages to suffer in the most profound way, to drag out every second of their blazing agony as their red-hot surroundings consumed their lives.

I stopped and stared at it for a long time.

‘What are you thinking, Leo?’ Anton asked.

‘I am thinking it would be a bad idea to be taken prisoner by whoever did this.’

‘You’ll get no arguments from me,’ said Ivan.

‘If I find the bastards who do this stuff, I’ll show them the sort of burning a lasgun can do,’ said Anton. He meant it to sound mean. It came out frightened.

I turned away from the cage and looked down at the aftermath of the battle. There were tens of thousands of Imperial Guardsmen down there, swarming over the position like ants, and I was suddenly very glad of that.

I could see the Indomitable and Corporal Hesse on top of it, waving up at us.

‘You reckon we ought to report this?’

I glanced around. From up here I could see there were other cages and other groups of soldiers and officers clustered around them, gawping.

‘I don’t think we’ll need to,’ I said. ‘Other people have already noticed.’

The columns of our mechanised force roared southwards, moving as fast as they could. Valkyries and Vultures filled the sky overhead. All around us the landscape began to change. Great pipelines ran to the horizon. Signs of human occupation became more visible: empty irrigation canals and the huge crystalline geodesics of hydroponic farms. There were small pueblos and larger hab-zones.

Sometimes in the distance I caught sight of dust plumes as if refugees were fleeing before us. Sometimes, very far in the distance the clouds seemed to glow, although I had no idea why.

So far, we had not met any real opposition, which was worrying. Karsk was an industrial world – it should have had a mighty army defending it. We had overcome all resistance a little too easily.

I found it suspicious.

I could tell from the chat that I heard on the comm-net that the others were uneasy too. Ivan was making a few slurred jokes about how soft the heretics were. We were all wondering when the real war would begin.

Here and there about the landscape were more of the cages for burning folks alive. Some of them were large enough to hold hundreds. They seemed to become more common as we approached the city.

The ground beneath us was firmer now. We were out of the great ash deserts and on to what was either more solid rock or a foundation of plascrete set there for purposes of construction. The buildings started huddling together to form small towns. We swept by them, heading for our goal. It was swiftly becoming visible on the horizon.

A huge excrescence emerged out from the planet itself, a dense jumble of towers, each thrusting into a polluted sky. The clouds hung so low over the city that they obscured the top of the towers, as if the world was ashamed of Irongrad and sought to hide it beneath a blanket of fog. It took some time for me to realise that the clouds and fog were a product of the city itself, so strong was this initial impression. At the very tip of the hive where it vanished into the clouds, the sky was lighter and flickered as if something was aflame within the toxic fog.

Around the city were what looked to be the cones of small volcanoes. Some of them were. Others were the terminus of pipes for industrial waste. It bubbled up and formed slagheaps and polluted ash fields.

The city had an odd organic look. Effluent from the factorum towers had flowed down like lava from a volcano. It had been caught in prepared frameworks and allowed to harden, forming layers between the buildings, roofs on which other structures had been built. Some of the layers looked like hardened candle wax. Others had been sculpted by builders. The imprint of intelligence was all too clear. Huge greenhouses glittered on the slopes.

Irongrad was as large a hive city as any I have ever seen and Belial was not a world short of giant metropolises. Each of those towers was a small fortress in and of itself. Each was like the bulkhead in a ship – it could be sealed off and defended even if its neighbours were taken or destroyed. And that would only be the beginning. Most of the city was hidden from view. Hives have endless layers, one on top of the other, descending into the very bowels of the planet.

The possibility of fighting street to street and block to block in that vast apparition was not a reassuring one. Of course, we had enough firepower to level the place if the need should arise. I told myself that was an idiotic thought – the whole purpose of the invasion was to take Irongrad and its pyrite processing plants. We needed what they could produce in order to keep the Crusade moving across the stars.

Another thought occurred to me – if they really wanted to cripple us, the inhabitants could simply destroy the city and thus remove all strategic reason for us attacking them. Of course, that would mean sacrificing their homes and seeking refuge in the empty, deadly desert. It would mean the rulers of that great hive city forswearing all of their wealth and possessions and reducing themselves to paupers simply in order to thwart our will and the will of the Imperium.

In my experience few nobles would do such a thing unless they felt they had absolutely no option. At the very least, as a last resort, they could use the destruction of the processing plants as a negotiating tool when and if they surrendered.

Of course, Macharius’s plan had taken this into account – one reason for this attack from the north was to seize the parts of the city in which the processing plants were concentrated while all of the defenders were in the southern zones of the city. On paper it was a very clever plan but it has been my experience that plans often encounter practical difficulties in the execution.

Looking at that huge city as it came inexorably closer it was hard not to feel dwarfed by it. Our force, which just a few hours before had seemed so irresistibly mighty, now seemed barely adequate for its purpose. Perhaps Macharius had misjudged things. He would not be the first Imperial General to do such a thing, and surely he would not be the last.

How many people were in that hive, I wondered. Millions? Tens of millions? It did not seem possible that we could subdue them all.

Set amid the outskirts of the city, scattered among the slag heaps and volcanic maws were a number of fortresses, joined by thick walls along whose tops ran communicating roads allowing for the quick movement of reinforcements. Massive batteries of guns spiked out of them, covering the approaches. Tens of thousands of troops were moving into position even though most of the defenders had been drawn off to the south, leaving only a greatly reduced number of guardians on Irongrad’s northern side.

It all looked formidable enough, with enormous turret-topped, armoured towers rising redly out of the desert. From them, guns spoke in voices of thunder. Towering plumes of ash rose all around us. Columns of dust erupted hundreds of metres high, springing into being at the summons of the distant muzzle flashes. The earth shook as if a gang of angry giants stomped a ritual war dance upon it. The beams of giant lascannon fused desert sand to crystalline slag. I prayed that one of them would not come to bear on us. I had the feeling that even a Baneblade might be reduced to fused metal in the blink of an eye by one of those awful weapons.

Our own forces were not slow to respond. Valkyries surged forwards through a hail of anti-aircraft fire and dropped their cargoes of storm troopers on the walls of the forts and the towers of the gates. As I watched dozens of them were hit and spiralled to the earth, belching black smoke. The rest kept coming, a swarm of angry mechanical insects attacking an enemy hive.

At the lieutenant’s command I put us hull-down behind a dune. Our guns began to pound away at the heretics. I could see Chimeras, Manticores and Leman Russes hull-down along the tops of walls, blasting for all they were worth.

I had a view of the clear killing ground around the walls. For brief moments, it was empty of all life, with only buildings and craters and columns of dust rising in front of me. Then our force moved forwards, an inexorable tide staining the desert as it went. Thousands upon thousands of armoured vehicles belched fire at the distant walls behind which the hive towers rose like man-made mountains. The scream of rockets and roar of guns was dimly audible even through the hull of the Baneblade.

Our attacks clawed at the sides of the enemy fortifications pitting and scoring them. A titanic explosion split the side of one massive pillbox. Somehow, by one of those chances that sometimes occur in battle, a magazine had been hit and its contents had exploded in a chain reaction that tore the structure apart.

It was as if the sword of the Emperor had descended from the sky and split the world asunder. There was a flash so bright it was dazzling and the photo-mirrors of the periscope went temporarily black as the spirits reacted to protect our sight. When they became clear again, I could see a gigantic crater where the fortress had been.

‘Bad structural design,’ said the lieutenant, as if that explained everything. Suddenly I had a sense of something badly wrong. Glancing around I could see one of those massive guns was pointing directly at us. I felt the urge to slam the treads of the Indomitable into reverse. It was too late. Time seemed to slow as it sometimes does in moments of maximum danger.

I swear I saw the distant muzzle of that enormous gun flash and something huge blur towards us. A moment later the Baneblade rocked under a massive impact. Somebody somewhere in the cockpit screamed.

It was a natural and understandable fear but the old monster had been built to withstand worse and its front armour was the strongest part of the tank. The lieutenant rapped out orders, calling for damage reports. The all-clear came in from every part of the Indomitable. At the end, the lieutenant said, ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus builds tanks better than the locals build fortresses.’ Everyone laughed in relief and the tension melted away. Our turrets blasted away at their targets. Our ears were still ringing from the hammer blow of the impact.

‘Move us back a couple of hundred metres, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant ordered. ‘Straight back, front facing the enemy at all times.’

As if he had to tell me that. It seemed that even the lieutenant preferred not to have a repeat of another direct hit. A few seconds later another shell landed where we had been. It blasted a crater a hundred metres wide in the earth but we were not there to enjoy it.

As we retreated other Baneblades hove into view on either side of us. I studied the rear monitor, making sure we did not run into anything or back off a precipice. Men have been killed and tanks destroyed by stupider things in the heat of battle.

As we moved the gunner got the distance once again. Another mighty blow smashed into us. Such was its force that the front of the Indomitable rose into the air a metre or so and then fell back to earth.

I felt the crash through the padding of my seat. Ikons swung on their chains above me. I heard the New Boy groan as if he had banged his head on something. When I looked over he was bleeding from where his head had hit the ‘scope.

Our turrets kept blasting. The lieutenant kept issuing clipped orders and I kept us moving out of the arc of enemy fire. We were lucky – after the initial burst none of the really big guns targeted us and the smaller enemy weapons simply were not powerful enough to harm Number Ten. I saw one of our brother Baneblades brewed up, oily black smoke pouring from its broken chassis. The dead bodies of some of the crew sprawled out of emergency hatches while the rest of its crew stood forlornly in the sand beside their former home.

Shadowswords erupted through one of the city gates, moving with great speed. They looked surprisingly long and lean for such large vehicles. As mighty as our own mightiest vehicles, their long guns could take out even a Baneblade or a Titan; they were mobile and deadly, great predators of the battlefield capable of destroying anything that they encountered. Supported by the heavy batteries within the city they might just turn the fight against us, if there were enough of them. I counted five emerging through the monster gate.

I have no idea where they came from. Perhaps they were a reserve unit swiftly rushed to the north of the city, perhaps they had simply been in the area. Their volcano cannons smashed into our smaller tanks and destroyed them with one shot.

A couple of them blew the treads of another Baneblade, immobilising it. I studied them through the periscope feeling the first surge of apprehension as opposed to fear. Those mighty tanks in their brown and red paint jobs and their low sleek silhouettes represented really worthy foes.

They raced right out at us, determined to find targets. The sheer boldness of it gave them a brief advantage. They destroyed a dozen or so of our Leman Russ before anyone responded. Those volcano cannons were capable of wreaking terrible havoc on even the heaviest chassis. Tension twisted in my gut as I saw the harm they were causing.

Someone on our side realised what was happening. I heard the background buzz of orders on the lieutenant’s channel and then he rapped out commands. Our heavy turrets spoke. I saw one of our shells land next to the leading heretic heavy tank. It chewed up the tread, sending it snapping off, leaving the Shadowsword rotating on the spot, going round and round on one tread until its driver cut the power, leaving it a sitting duck.

A curtain of heavy weapons fire descended on it, obscuring it from sight. When the dust cleared the red Shadowsword was burning from end to end, its rear quarters mangled, its long barrelled killing gun twisted and useless.

The lieutenant calmly called out some more coordinates. I looked in the direction he indicated and another company of Shadowswords swept into view, coming over the dunes from the south-west. The lieutenant told me to turn and I brought the Baneblade round to face the new foes. Other heavy vehicles on our side joined us.

We got off the first shots and once again immobilised the leading Shadowsword, forcing the others to come round. I did not like this one little bit. If more and more heretic tanks arrived on our flanks they might be able to roll along our line and do terrible damage. Caught between the anvil of the incoming heavy tanks and the hammer of those heavy batteries we would be smashed to bits. I felt a moment of stark fear. I had no idea what we were facing, how many more enemies might descend on our flanks, whether I would be dead in the next few minutes. My mouth felt dry. My heartbeat raced. All it would take was one shot from one of those long-barrelled tank-destroyers and we would be gone.

More and more tanks hove into view till I gave up counting them. I had no idea how many more of the heretics were still to come. On the front line it really does not matter how much bigger your force is if the enemy has local superiority.

Our tanks were hitting their targets. The enemy as often as not would miss. Their formations were sloppy. They did not go hull-down until it was too late.

The difference between veterans of half a dozen campaigns and untested troops from the planetary defence levies was starting to show. I noticed too that green blobs on the holo-screen were circling round to the north of us. It would not be long before the flanking force of the enemy would find itself outflanked. All we had to do was hold our ground. Their vehicles did not seem as strong as they ought to be either. Obviously they had been constructed in-system and most likely from corrupted templates.

Shots clanged off our hull. Every time I heard that horrific clamour I thought for a second that I was going to die. I held my breath, as if by doing so I could somehow postpone the moment when I took my last lungful of air. I prayed the Indomitable would not catch fire. It is every tankman’s worst nightmare, to be trapped within a burning vehicle.

At last our own flanking force was in position. I could not see what was happening but the heretics in front of us began to reverse, moving away from us. The lieutenant ordered us forwards in pursuit. We passed the burned out shells of those red-and-brown tanks. Our anti-personnel gunners mowed down their fleeing crews. I crushed one screaming man beneath our treads. Soon we were on the reverse side of another slope.

Our own forces were hammering in from the north-west. The retreating heretics had been caught in the flank, hit where their armour was weakest. A few had turned to face these new attackers and were now presenting sides and rear to us. The lieutenant was not slow to take advantage of this, nor were the Baneblades of our formation. Soon what had looked like a threatening force had been reduced to smoking slag. We looked down on a graveyard of broken tanks and fleeing crew who swiftly fell victim to our heavy bolters.

Looking east, I could see the same thing as the lieutenant saw. One of the gates in the city wall was open. Obviously the attacking force had come through it. It was not yet shut. I wondered whether something had gone wrong with the closing mechanism. It was either a huge opportunity or a deadly trap. I heard the lieutenant make a swift call up the open command channel. I was very surprised by what I heard next.

‘This is General Sejanus! Advance and capture the gate. Hold it for as long as you can. Reinforcements are on their way.’

I thought it was all very well for the general to give those orders. He was not the one heading straight to his death if it should prove to be a trap. Nonetheless the lieutenant did not hesitate.

‘You heard the general, Lemuel! Make for the gate.’ He sounded as if he was on a training manoeuvre.

‘As you wish, sir,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from quaking. The walls of the city came ever closer. I kept my eyes focused on the gate, not certain whether to hope or be afraid that it was going to slide shut in front of us. I half expected us to be targeted by the city defence but most of the defenders’ attention seemed to be focused on the battle raging on the far side of the ridge. Was it really possible that no one had noticed us?

A shot from something massive answered my question for me. The Baneblade shook, a rivet dropped from the ceiling above me. I heard what sounded like shrieks of fear echoing along the corridor.

‘Hull breach,’ I heard the lieutenant say. What in the name of the Emperor could have done that, I wondered? Maybe one of the Shadowswords had caught us unawares.

‘Keep us moving forwards, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Hard right five degrees.’ That correction would put us off-course for the gate. But a second later another blast impacted the ground where we had been. The earth shook as if a daemon-god were stamping his foot. It seemed whatever was shooting at us had got the range.

‘Hard left eight degrees, emergency speed,’ said the lieutenant. I did as I was told. The Baneblade picked up speed and shuddered as the same titanic impact split the ground behind us. I felt sick to my stomach, thinking about the sort of weapon that could hole a Baneblade and the fact that we were being targeted by it. The lieutenant gave no sign of nerves.

‘Steady all,’ he said into the internal comm-net. ‘We’ll soon be below the angle of fire.’ That could not happen a moment too soon, I thought.

Through the periscope I could see tiny figures in the gateway. They looked like tech-priests and they were working frantically on some exposed mechanism. The lieutenant spoke. Our guns roared. Anton and Ivan placed shells right in the opening, tearing those distant tiny figures to bloody pulp.

Maybe this was not a trap. Maybe this was a chance to be the first into the city, to cover ourselves in glory. As the lieutenant spoke, I was already revving the drives to the max, sending us ploughing across the wastelands towards the gateway, huge dust columns sloughing skywards in our wake. Figures on the wall had noticed us now. Tiny people gesticulated frantically in our direction. Another maintenance team rushed into the gateway and died just as quickly as their predecessors.

We were almost within the arch now. We were going to be the first into the city. I was excited in spite of myself, as were the others. They cheered and whooped over the comm-net. It was idiotic. For all we knew we were about to be blown to the Throne of the Emperor by heretic heavy weapons, but we could not help ourselves.

On the wall, soldiers opened fire, blazing away pitifully with lasguns and heavy bolters. A few of them threw frag grenades at us. They might as well have used the airguns we had for toys during our childhood back on Belial.

Our return fire swept them from the wall. Some were cut in half. Others had their heads blown apart. The lucky few managed to duck down behind the plascrete and get out of sight.

I heard the lieutenant report that we were in. More vehicles were moving into position behind us and more Chimera-mounted troops were being diverted our way to take advantage of this sudden gap in the defences.

Following the lieutenant’s orders I drove a few hundred metres down the street and brought us to a halt at an intersection where we could block the way and keep the heretics from retaking the gate. I felt as if it was only a matter of time before someone realised what was going on and began to make the effort.

‘That was fortunate,’ I heard the lieutenant say. There was a certain understandable satisfaction in his voice. It had been lucky but there still needed to be someone who understood the opportunity and took advantage of it on the spot and he had been the man. There would be decorations in it for him and most likely a promotion. I did not grudge him it. He was a better commander and a better man by far than many officers in the regiment.

The Understudy could hardly disagree. ‘You are correct, sir.’

‘Now all we have to do is make sure the enemy don’t retake the gate and try not to get killed while we are doing so,’ said the lieutenant. ‘What do you think, Private Lemuel?’

His voice was calm but I could tell he was in a good mood from the fact he had chosen to talk to me at such a crucial moment.

‘I think that’s a good idea, sir,’ I said. ‘If we can hold on for an hour or so, we’ll take the city for sure.’

‘We were always going to take the city, private,’ he said. ‘This has just made it a little quicker, that’s all.’

I nodded so he could see the back of my head going up and down. Speaking again would be leaving a hostage to fortune. Looking at the tactical map I could see our forces were rushing ever closer.

Darkness was starting to fall as we rumbled through the outskirts of Irongrad, crushing parked groundcars beneath our treads. Our way was lit by the glow of giant flames of industrial gases vented from the sides of the factorum towers. In the distance, something even brighter illuminated the underbelly of the clouds in the sky over the central hive.

Resistance was very light. Macharius’s plan had succeeded. Ahead of us was an entire factorum zone filled with the pyrite production facilities that we needed. In a matter of hours we had seized all of them and taken up defensive positions to prevent the troops of Irongrad from retaking them.

The lieutenant ordered me to put the Baneblade hull-down behind a factorum wall so that our guns would still be able to rake the approaches. I did as I was told and the great armoured beast came to rest. We sat there at our controls studying the empty streets and the mighty towers surrounding us and waited for the enemy to approach. It had been many hours since we had had any sleep. I munched on a stimm tab and protein bar combination washed down by a swig of brackish water from my canteen.

I glanced out through the periscope, studying the long shadows. I was not unduly troubled. I would be able to see anything that approached and mechanised infantry were starting to deploy on foot around us, taking up positions on top of the walls, setting up heavy bolters to rake the streets. One or two of them were already snatching some sleep where they lay. It was nice to know we had some veterans with us. The two-tailed airframe of a Valkyrie hovered above some huts while storm troopers swarmed down a fibre-rope ladder descending into the clouds of trash and dust raised by the aircraft’s drives. They deployed by squad; their heavy carapace armour made them look bulkier than a normal man, and their outsize lasguns did nothing to make them look less formidable.

A line of fire darted out from its nose-mounted cannon. I wondered whether the gunner was firing at hidden heretics or just practising on some of the local giant rats. Such things have been known to happen.

I glanced around the command cabin. The lieutenant was cat-napping while the Understudy watched the tactical grids. Our commander still had his headpiece in and I knew from long experience that any incoming signal would wake him. Looking at him with his head slumped on his chest I felt something like affection. Once again, he had brought us through the firestorm of battle. At the end of the day we were still alive and in the Imperial Guard that is all you can reasonably ask.

I offered up a prayer of thanks to the spirit of old Number Ten. The Indomitable, as much as the lieutenant, had brought us through the battle. No drives had failed at a critical moment, no guns had misfired. The armour had held. We still enjoyed the great beast’s blessing. At the time, foolishly, I can recall thinking that maybe Macharius’s presence on the Baneblade’s side had blessed us too. Perhaps some of his luck, or the Blessing of the Emperor or whatever it was he had enjoyed had rubbed off on us too.

I wondered how much longer it could last.

It seemed I had barely closed my eyes when the lieutenant was barking orders at me. I glanced at the chronometer. A couple of hours had passed since I last looked. Even the stimm tabs had not been able to keep me awake. I glanced into the periscope. It was still night out. The infernal flames of the factorum towers still illuminated the area.

I looked down the long street and saw a number of small vehicles moving closer. Our guns spoke, tearing a huge crater out of the plascrete of the roadway as they destroyed the first of the oncoming Leman Russ. The others swerved around it and kept coming, fire blazing from their main turrets, belly mounted lascannon and side-sponson bolters. They were on killing ground. Our battle cannon swiftly reduced them to burned-out shells. Bailing out of their metal carapaces, their crews had no chance of survival in the wave of fire that descended on them.

While this was going on, heretic infantry had taken up position in the nearby buildings. They had set up their heavy weapons on balconies and along the external piping of the buildings where it was broad enough for scores of men to stand.

Among the troops, giving orders as if they were officers, were a number of robed and cowled figures. The thing that made them so visible was that someone seemed to have set fire to them. Around their heads flames rose, so bright and intense that they should have spread and burned but they did not. Instead they merely outlined their bearers like halos seen in religious pictures.

‘Sir, have you seen this, the burning men?’ I said, just in case the lieutenant had not noticed.

‘They are priests of the Angel of Fire cult, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. There was an undercurrent of disquiet in his voice and I wondered if he, like me, was thinking about the cages we had seen with all those burned bodies within them.

‘Is it some sort of heretical trick, with the burning?’ the New Boy asked. It was a reasonable guess. Many times in my career fighting heretics I had seen very strange things that turned out to be products of some ancient dark technology

Before the lieutenant could reply one of the priests raised his hands. The aura of flame spread from his head to surround his entire body. It blazed up around his hands as if he was carrying a flamer. He made a gesture at the walls and waves of flame surrounded a squad of our troops, setting their uniforms alight and then consuming their flesh.

It was not the burning that was so horrific. I had seen many men burn to death before. It was the suggestion of something otherworldly about it, as if it were not just their bodies that were being consumed but their souls too. Some of our lads were shooting back, but their las-bolts simply disappeared when they hit the priest. The flaming shield surrounding him grew brighter as if it fed on their energy.

I think the horror of it left us paralysed for a moment. I was very glad I was within the ancient, warded hull of the Indomitable at that moment. The prospect of being outside and facing those burning zealots held no appeal whatsoever.

The priest spread his arms wider and his aura blazed ever brighter, twin columns of flame erupting from his back until it seemed as if he had wings of fire, as if he was becoming the living embodiment of the supernatural being he worshipped. He was a living flame, vibrant with a terrible power. The blaze of energy around him should have consumed those with him but it did not. It left the heretics untouched even as the fires he had invoked consumed our soldiers.

‘Enough,’ said the lieutenant savagely. ‘Antoniev, Saranin. Kill the bastard.’

Anton and Ivan did not need to be told twice. Our main guns sent an enormous shell into the heretic position. It was overkill. Whatever protected the zealot from small arms fire, it was not enough to stop an explosion that could shatter a main battle tank. The whole vast web of piping the heretics perched on exploded, sending blazing, smashed bodies tumbling through the air to land on the ground below.

‘Keep firing till you have cleared the streets,’ said the lieutenant.

They did.