V3 Chapter 49: Listen to the Roar of Your Flesh and Machine Spirit
"Hey, hey, hey, this is the 112th Combat Cluster, Fourth Direct Reconnaissance Infantry Regiment, Colonel Stroud—"
"Hey, hey, hey, are you receiving?"
On the 112th Combat Cluster's encrypted internal vox channel, Stroud's voice carried heavy static. In the background came the sound of tracks grinding over rubble, along with the muffled thud of explosions high overhead in the distance.
"Stop shouting, damn it!"
Elias's voice cut in immediately after.
"Don't you know one report is enough?"
"Ha. I nearly thought those disgusting xenos fighters had gotten you killed."
Stroud's tone sounded thoroughly punchable.
"Pity you're still alive," Elias shot back.
Colonel Kleist, overall commander of the 112th Combat Cluster's Eisenmark Armoured Regiment, paid the bickering on the channel no attention.
He simply gave his procedural report confirming his unit's safe landing on the surface, along with its current position. Then he climbed up out of the hatch of the super-heavy tank Fury of Balhaut.
The super-heavy tank had only just rolled out of the heavy landing transport, coolant vapour from the transport pod still clinging to its treads.
Behind it, the Eisenmark Armoured Regiment's Leman Russ tanks, a handful of Rogal Dorn heavy tanks, Chimera transports, ammunition carriers, repair vehicles, and other armoured vehicles rolled down the ramps one after another.
The ground of the ash plains crumbled beneath their treads.
Kleist drew his gaze back, raising his field scope toward the distant horizon. No sign of enemy ground units had appeared yet, only heaps of scrap overturned by the orbital bombardment and collapsed mineshafts still pouring smoke.
Overhead, the fight for air superiority continued.
Every time a green beam split the sky, a violent explosion followed it. Imperial Thunderbolt and Lightning fighters cut through the clouds in formation, while Mechanicus aircraft provided fire-control corrections from higher altitude.
Kleist looked up at the sky.
The shriek that came as those crescent-shaped xenos fighters cut through the toxic clouds made his brow furrow. The sound was piercing and cold, as though it drilled straight into the skull.
He felt irritated and sick.
But that was all.
Kleist let out a breath.
"Those things in the air are disgusting enough." On the channel, Stroud's voice was still chattering away. "We're advancing toward the designated position alongside the Tanith recon team. No enemy targets spotted so far. Those Battle Sisters look..."
His words cut off abruptly.
Another low voice cut in.
It was Colonel Anderson of the 112th Combat Cluster's Second Assault Infantry Regiment.
"Something big's coming in."
Sensing something, Kleist looked up at the sky again.
Amid the clouds torn apart by both sides' fighters, several glowing red "meteors" appeared in his field of view. They were cutting through the high toxic mist, falling toward the ash plains with a heavy roar.
Six castles of steel were falling from the sky.
Retro-thruster fire scorched the clouds red, and enormous banners unfurled in the heat haze. Those castle-like landing structures bore down on the surface with terrible mass, coming to rest behind the armoured assembly point where Kleist stood.
One of them slammed down onto a hillside just behind him.
The ground shook violently, and several Chimeras' suspension systems let out sharp protests. Ash and rubble were thrown up by the shockwave, then pulled back down by gravity.
Kleist gazed at the steel fortress.
He thought of Formal Prime.
That time, the three drop pods that had fallen from the sky had been even larger, carrying what was said to be a legendary divine war machine. The memory was still etched in his mind, like some miracle of steel a mortal could never truly touch.
Great gouts of white steam vented from the fortress's side hatches.
Ten massive silhouettes emerged slowly from within.
Kleist, who liked to think of himself as a knight of steel, of course recognised what these were.
True Knights.
Six five-metre-tall Armiger Knights stepped out through the white steam first, their weapon systems already unlocked, the house heraldry on their frames standing out sharply in the grey light.
Behind them came the true Knight suits.
Four Knight Errants walked out at a measured pace.
Every step sent rubble tumbling down the hillside.
Kleist lowered his scope and murmured, "House Vornhel..."
He recognised that Knight house's heraldry.
Or rather, he recognised the heraldry of most of the well-known Knight houses. In his youth, he had even dreamed of becoming a Knight pilot, of sitting in that throne and joining his own nerves to a great war machine.
But he knew it was never going to happen.
A Knight's throne would never open for a tanker like him.
Still, his current mount was nothing to scoff at either.
Kleist glanced down at the Fury of Balhaut.
The super-heavy steel beast sat quietly on the ash plains, its main gun raised slightly, the campaign markings on its turret still clearly legible.
Thanks to Commissar Duvette.
What surprised him, though, was that the figure walking at the very centre of the formation was not one of House Vornhel's Knights, but a golden Knight bearing a spider crest, an Errant-class Paladin-pattern Knight that belonged to no house at all.
The legendary Blade Unbound. The Golden Tarantula.
"Hey, are you an idiot?!" Stroud's voice snapped him back to reality. "We're under attack! What in the actual hell is this weapon?"
Rapid gunfire and clipped reports from the Tanith recon team came through the channel at once.
Kleist dropped straight back to the edge of the hatch and said to the vox-officer, "Reply to Colonel Stroud. My unit has completed assembly and is moving to support their flank immediately."
"Yes, Colonel!"
No sooner had he spoken than an Avenger strike fighter streaked past at low altitude, trailing black smoke.
It tried to pull up, but a green beam punched through its belly. In the next instant, the fighter slammed into the distant horizon out of control, vanishing in a violent explosion of flame.
Immediately after, countless green beams cut through the grey mist, streaking toward the Eisenmark Armoured Regiment's assembly point.
One beam struck the side armour of the foremost Leman Russ. The tank did not explode immediately; instead its armour peeled away layer by layer, the hull stripped as though by an invisible blade, and its crew let out sharp shouts over the vox channel.
Kleist looked into the distance.
Silhouettes of hovering vehicles appeared beyond the heavy mist.
They made no sound of treads, only the glow of green weapon arrays lighting up within the grey mist. Farther out, several slender xenos gun emplacements rose from the edge of the scrap sea, as though they had been waiting there all along.
The xenos ground forces had finally appeared.
"Knights of steel of Eisenmark, prepare to engage!"
Kleist roared the order and dropped back into the cabin of the Fury of Balhaut.
"Charge!"
"In the name of Eisenmark, we will not fail the Emperor's glory!"
The Baneblade's cabin lighting switched to combat red.
The gunner finished calibration, the loader began shouting, and the driver pushed the engine to combat power. In the next second, the great beast let out a low roar, its treads crushing the ash ground as it drove the entire armoured regiment forward.
The Leman Russ formation deployed in its wake.
The Rogal Dorn heavy tanks held the second line, with the remaining armoured units following on both flanks. House Vornhel's Armiger Knights charged down from the hillside, and the four Knight Errants turned slowly toward the battlefield.
The Imperium's sharpest spearhead of steel crashed into the xenos host within the grey mist.
Aboard the Macragge's Honour, Duvette watched the single strategic map in his field of vision.
The blue markers across Vulcantia's surface had all made contact with the enemy. Stroud's recon line, Kleist's armoured regiment, Anderson's assault infantry, the Vornhel Knight detachment, and every other combat cluster lit up across his field of vision.
Red hostile markers were spreading rapidly as well.
Duvette's smile turned cold and grim.
[Blessing of the Omnissiah] activated!
[Iron Crusade] activated!
[Flesh Engine] activated!
[Eye of Judgement] activated!
[King of War] activated!
Before his eyes, the entire theatre seemed to ignite anew.
Duvette watched the blue markers pushing forward, and said quietly:
"Listen well, all of you, to the roar of your flesh and your machine spirits. You're going to love this feeling..."
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