At the head of the ramps, at the great elevator assemblies which raised the bomb loads into the battery magazines high above them in the hillside, they met the first determined resistance. A massed force of Shriven troops rushed down at them, blasting with lasguns and autorifles. Rawne commanded a fire-team up the left flank and cut into them from the edge, matched by Corbec’s platoons from the right, creating a crossfire that punished them terribly.
In the centre of the Shriven retaliation, Gaunt saw the first of the Chaos Space Marines, a huge horned beast, centuries old and bearing the twisted markings of the Iron Warriors Chapter. The monstrosity exhorted his mutated troops to victory with great howls from his augmented larynx. His ancient, ornate boltgun spat death into the Tanith ranks. Sergeant Grell was vaporised by one of the first hits, two of his fire-team a moment later.
‘Target him!’ Gaunt yelled at Bragg, and the giant turned his huge firepower in the general direction with no particular success. The Chaos Marine proceeded to punch butchering fire into the Vitrian front line. Then he exploded. Headless, armless, his legs and torso rocked for a moment and then fell.
Gaunt nodded his grim thanks to Trooper Melyr and his missile launcher. Lasfire and screaming autogun rounds wailed down from the Shriven units at the elevator assembly. Gaunt ducked behind some freighting pallets and found himself sharing the cover with two Vitrians who were busy changing the power cells of their lasguns.
‘How much ammo have you left?’ Gaunt asked briskly as he swapped the empty drum of his bolt pistol with a fresh sickle-pattern clip of Kraken penetrators.
‘Half gone already,’ responded one, a Vitrian corporal.
Gaunt thumbed his microbead headset. ‘Gaunt to Zoren!’
‘I hear you, commissar-colonel.’
‘Instruct your men to alter their settings to half-power.’
‘Why, commissar?’
‘Because they’re exhausting their ammo! I admire your ethic, colonel, but it doesn’t take a full power shot to kill one of the Shriven and your men are going to be out of clips twice as fast as mine!’
There was a crackling pause over the comm-line before Gaunt heard Zoren give the order.
Gaunt looked across at the two troopers who were adjusting their charge settings.
‘It’ll last longer, and you’ll send more to glory. No point in overkill,’ he said with a smile. ‘What are you called?’
‘Zapol,’ said one.
‘Zeezo,’ said the other, the corporal.
‘Are you with me, boys?’ Gaunt asked with a wolfish grin as he hefted up his pistol and thumbed his chainsword to maximum revs. They nodded back, lasrifles held in strong, ready hands.
Gaunt and the two dragoons burst from cover firing. They were more than halfway up the loading ramp to the elevators. Rawne’s crossfire manoeuvre had fenced the Shriven in around the hazard striped blast doors, which were now fretted and punctured with las-impacts and fusing burns.
As he charged, Gaunt felt the wash of fire behind him as his own units covered and supported.
He could hear the whine of the long-pattern sniper guns, the crack of the regular las-weapons, the rattle of Bragg’s cannons.
‘Keep your aim up, Try Again…’ Gaunt hissed as he and the two dragoons reached the makeshift defences around the enemy.
Zeezo went down, clipped by a las-round. Gaunt and Zapol bounded up to the debris cover and cut into the now-panicked Shriven. Gaunt emptied his boltgun and ditched it, scything with his chainsword. Zapol laid in with his bayonet, stabbing into bodies and firing point blank to emphasise each kill.
It took two minutes. They seemed like a lifetime to Gaunt, each bloody, frenzied second playing out like a year. Then he and Zapol were through to the elevator itself and the Shriven were piled around them. Five or six more Vitri-ans were close behind.
Zapol turned to smile at the commissar.
The smile was premature.
The elevator doors ahead of them parted and a second Iron Warrior Chaos Marine lunged out at them. It was loftier than the tallest guardsman, and clad entirely in an almost insect-like carapace of ancient power armour dotted with insane runes in dedication to its deathless masters. It was preceded by a bow-wave of the most foetid stench, exhaled from its grilled mask, and accompanied by a howl that grazed Gaunt’s hearing and sounded like consumptive lungs exploding under deep pressure.
The beast’s chain fist, squealing like an enraged beast, pulped Zapol with a careless downwards flick. The Vitrian was crushed and liquefied. The creature began to blast wildly, killing at least four more of the supporting Vitrians.