THE WARMASTER Read online

  A second and third wave of rockets spat from the roadblock line. More of the advancing tanks exploded or were brought to a standstill. The road was littered with wrecks. Big AT70s could have piled through, but the light SteGs and the delicate stalk-tanks had to slow down and steer around and through the burning hulls. The Ghosts’ support weapons opened up, punishing the slower targets with .30 cal hose-fire. Armour shuddered and buckled under the sustained hits. Melyr swung the spade grips of his tripod-mounted .30 and poured a stream of fire into the body of a stalk-tank, ripping it open and shredding the pilot. The stalk-tank remained upright, but began to burn: spider legs frozen, supporting a fierce ball of flame, one leg lifted to take another step that would never come. Seena and Arilla focused their .30 on a SteG that was trying to turn past a blazing wreck, and shot out its engine. Fuel loads and hydraulics gushed out of the punctured hull like blood, and the vehicle shuddered to a halt. Its turret was still live, and it traversed, pumping two shots in the direction of the roadblock.

  Arilla, small and scrawny, tried to retrain to finish the job, then cursed. Her weapon had suffered a feed-jam. Seena, twice her size and all muscle, reached in and cleared the jam with a fierce wrench of her fist, then fit a fresh box to the feed.

  ‘Go!’ she roared.

  Arilla squeezed the paddles, and the weapon kicked into life. Her torrent of shots mangled the SteG’s turret, and sheared off its gun mount. The impact sparks touched off the fuel gushing out of its ruptured tanks, and it went up like a feast day bonfire.

  On the roadway, Archenemy crews were dismounting from damaged and burning vehicles, and trying to advance through the smoke and billowing flames. The Ghosts on the makeshift line now had human targets their rifles could take. Las-fire rattled from the jumbled row of trucks, chopping down men before they could move more than a few metres.

  Smoke and haze from the killzone blocked any decent view.

  ‘Advise!’ Pasha yelled into her mic.

  ‘Another pack of SteGs about two minutes out,’ Kolosim voxed back. He had a better view from the right-hand edge of the sea road. ‘We can hold them off with the launchers. Major, stand by.’

  Kolosim scurried along the line of the sea wall to get a clearer angle. He could feel the heat on his face from the burning tanks.

  He touched his microbead.

  ‘Pasha, I think at least two of the big treads have got past the bombardment. They’re coming in, four minutes maximum.’

  Pasha acknowledged. AT70s. They would swing things. The big tanks were robust and heavily armoured. They could shrug off the support fire and only the luckiest hit with a launcher would make a dent. Chances were the big treads would blow straight through the wreckage belt, and they’d have the meat and firepower to punch through the roadblock too.

  Pasha had fought in the scratch companies during the Zoican War. Far too many times, she and under-equipped partisan fighters had been forced to hunt big enemy armour and woe machines that had massively outclassed them.

  ‘Remember Hass South?’ she asked Konjic.

  ‘Is that a joke?’ Konjic asked.

  ‘No. Grenades. Fast. Not loose, boxes.’

  ‘Gak!’ said a young trooper in her first squad, ‘Which unlucky bastard gets to do that?’

  Pasha grinned. ‘For that remark, Trooper Oksan Galashia, you do. But don’t worry. I’ll come teach you how we did it in the People’s War.’

  Galashia, a very short, thick-set young woman, turned pale.

  Konjic returned with six men lugging metal crates of grenades.

  ‘All right, lucky ones,’ said Pasha, ‘you’re with me.’

  She led them out, past the roadblock and onto the open road. Rockets whooshed over them, striking from the line at the next pack of SteGs.

  Heads down, they began to run towards the burning enemy wrecks.

  ‘Feth!’ said Rawne. ‘Is that Pasha? The feth is she doing?’

  The batteries had fallen quiet. There was nothing left they could hit. From the roof of the packing plant, Rawne had a good view of the sea road and the resistance line of the roadblock. He could see figures – Ghosts – sprinting out from the cover of the roadblock into the open.

  ‘Criid’s calling, sir,’ said Oysten.

  Rawne cursed again, put away his field glasses, and hurried back into the street.

  ‘You were right,’ said Criid. ‘Obel’s scouts have spotted enemy infantry moving up through Millgate.’

  ‘Let’s go welcome them,’ said Rawne.

  They started to move through the narrow streets, fanning out in fire-teams.

  ‘Marksmen in position?’ Rawne voxed.

  ‘Affirmative,’ Larkin replied. ‘Main force seems to be coming in along Turnabout Lane.’

  Still moving, Rawne found it on the map.

  ‘Can we box them in, Larks?’ he asked.

  ‘We can try, but the locals have proofed this area against snipers.’

  Rawne frowned. Overhead, carpets and drapes hung limp over the street in the smokey air.

  ‘Varl!’ he said.

  Varl came up. Rawne showed him the map.

  ‘This is Turnabout Lane. We want to clear back to about here. Here at least. Give each long-las as much range as possible.’

  ‘We’ll be giving them range too,’ said Varl.

  ‘Yeah, but they’re moving and we’re dug in. Get to it.’

  Varl nodded.

  ‘Brostin! Mkhet! Lubba! Shake your tails!’

  Varl and the three flame troopers moved ahead, with Nomis and Cardass in support.

  ‘Are we gonna burn something?’ Brostin asked as they hurried along.

  ‘Yup,’ said Varl.

  ‘People?’ asked Brostin.

  ‘No,’ said Varl. ‘Fething carpets.’

  Over by the sea wall, at the right-hand end of the roadblock, Zhukova found Mkoll staring out at the graveyard of rusting agriboats.

  ‘Signal from Cardass,’ she said. ‘Confirmation – enemy infantry extending up Millgate towards Rawne’s position.’

  Mkoll glanced across the broad road towards the dark maze of habs and mills south west of the batteries.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Rawne was on the money,’ he said quietly. ‘Armour push on the road, infantry in the cover of the streets. That would have been my call too. The armour’s the distraction.’

  ‘The tanks are still coming,’ said Zhukova. ‘They’re going to be more than a distraction.’

  ‘To an extent, but the infantry’s the big problem, if there’s enough of them, and there will be. In those streets, it’ll be the worst kind of fighting. House-to-house, tight. With numbers, they could break, force an overrun. Maybe even take the batteries.’

  ‘Rawne’s on it, sir,’ she replied.

  He nodded. He kept looking at the flaking metal waste of the industrial barges.

  ‘You seem distracted,’ she said.

  He looked at her, surprised by her frankness.

  ‘Just thinking,’ he said.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m trying to think like an etogaur,’ he said. ‘Like a Son of Sek.’

  Her expression clearly showed her alarm at the idea.

  ‘They’re not stupid, Zhukova. They are the worst breed of monsters, but they’re not stupid. And that fact makes them even worse monsters. This isn’t an opportunist assault. It’s been planned and coordinated in advance. There is strategy here, we just can’t see it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if the Sons of Sek are working to a plan–’

  ‘If the Sons of Sek are working to a plan, then we define their scheme and deny it.’

  He nodded.

  ‘An opportunist assault is hard to fight because it has no pattern,’ he said. ‘This has a pattern. So, you put yourself in their boots, Zhukova. If you were at the other end of this road, what would you be trying to do?’

  ‘Uh… blindside the main obstacles. Get around them. The Ghosts, the Helixid, t
he batteries.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Isn’t that what they’re doing? Pushing troops up through the packing district, the hardest area to defend?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mkoll. He didn’t sound sure.

  ‘What are you thinking now?’ she asked.

  ‘I think we should take a walk,’ he said.

  Pasha led her crew through the fires and wreckage of the SteGs and the stalk-tanks. On the wind, through the crackle of flames, she could hear the clattering rumble of the big treads moving towards them. Despite the cover of the smoke, she felt exposed. She felt nostalgia. She felt the edge-of-death rush she’d known as a young woman at Vervunhive.

  ‘Move fast,’ she ordered. ‘Keep those crates away from the fires or they’ll torch off.’

  ‘They’re about a minute away,’ called Konjic.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two. AT-seventies. They’re not slowing. They’re going to pile through here.’

  Pasha knelt down with one of the crates, opened the lid, and took out a grenade.

  ‘Do what I do,’ she told Galashia. Konjic was already working on the third crate. ‘Slide the lid shut,’ she said, working steadily and with practised hands. ‘Wedge the grenade upright at the end. Slide the lid in tight to hold it in place. Now, fuse wire or det tape. You’ll need about two metres. Loosen the pin of the wedge grenade. Not too loose! Tie the wire tight to the pin. Now play it out, back under the box. Leave a trailing end.’

  Galashia watched what Pasha and Konjic were doing, and tried to copy it as best she could. Her hands were shaking.

  The clatter of the advancing tanks was growing louder.

  ‘All right!’ said Pasha. ‘One man to a box, grenade towards you. One man on each wire, keeping it under the box. Don’t gakking pull. Lift them up, keep them steady. The real trick is placement.’

  Pasha hefted her box up. Trooper Stavik held the end of her wire. Konjic lifted his box, with Kurnau on the end of the wire. Galashia got her wire wound in place, and lifted her box. Aust took up the end of her trailing thread.

  ‘All right,’ said Pasha. ‘This is how this madness works…’

  The two AT70s were approaching the burning wreckage clogging the highway. They were moving at full throttle, one ahead of the other. Neither slowed down. They were going to ram their armoured bulks through the wrecks, and charge the roadblock. No amount of small-arms or support fire would be able to slow them then.

  The first AT70 smashed into the wreckage. It crushed the flaming ruin of a stalk-tank under its treads, then shoved a burned-out SteG out of its path in a shiver of sparks. Visibility in the smoke and flames was almost zero.

  Pasha and Stavik ran out in front of it, Pasha struggling with the weight of the box. They had been waiting behind another wrecked SteG, concealed by the fires spewing out of it. This close to the front of the speeding battle tank, they were outside the driver’s very limited line of sight. Both were sweating from the heat, and they were covered in soot.

  Timing and placement were everything. Too hasty and you missed the line. Too slow, and the tank simply ran you down and churned you to paste.

  Pasha slammed the box down in front of the advancing tank’s left tread section. Stavik kept the wire straight so when the box came down, the wire was trapped under it and lying in a line running directly towards the whirring tracks. To do this, he had to keep his back to the tank about to run him down. The roar of it was deafening. The ground shook. It was as if it were falling on him.

  Pasha and Stavik released, and threw themselves clear. The tank crew didn’t even know two people had been in their path for a moment.

  The left tread section rolled over the wire. The weight of the tank ground the wire between track and road, and pulled on it, drawing it back and dragging the box with it. Less than a second later, the track met the back of the placed box and began to push it forwards.

  Less than a second after that, the track assembly would have crushed the box or, more likely, smashed it out of the way.

  But by then, the draw on the wire and the pressure on the end of the box had combined to pull the pin from the wedged grenade.

  The grenade exploded, detonating all the other grenades in the box. By placing the box in front of the treads, Pasha had made sure that the violent blast was channelled up under the tank’s armoured skirts and into the wheel housing, instead of bursting uselessly under the armoured treads. The box went off like a free-standing mine.

  The searing explosion rushed up under the skirt, shredding drive sprockets and axle hubs. The blast actually lifted the corner of the AT70 for a second. Torsion bars, segments of track and parts of the skirt armour went flying. With one tread section entirely disabled, the tank slewed around hard, driven by its one, still-working, track. It crashed headlong into a wrecked SteG and came to a halt, coughing clouds of dirty exhaust.

  The second AT70 was on them. Glimpsing its partner lurching aside through the flames, the tank slowed slightly, opening up with a futile burst of its coaxial gun. The shots chewed up empty roadway. Konjic and Kurnau dropped their box in its path, and sprinted clear, but the tank was turning to evade. Its tracks chewed over the wire sideways, yanking out the pin, but the box was still clear of the track and the blast, an impressive rush of dirty flame, washed up its skirt armour without doing any damage.

  Galashia and Aust ran through the flames and smoke. Galashia had never been so scared in her life. This was the behaviour of lunatics.

  She was screaming as she got the box in place. The tank was starting to turn and accelerate again, but she’d made a good line.

  Aust tripped. He went down on his face, and the tank’s right treads went over him before he could even yell for help. His death, though swift, was the most horrible thing Galashia had ever seen. He was ground apart with industrial fury.

  Facing it, she saw it all. She fell backwards. She could evade neither the blast nor the onrushing tracks.

  The tank suddenly lurched into reverse. Fearing mines or sub-surface munitions, it backed out hard, smashing a burning SteG wreck out of its way. It left Aust and the box behind it. Nothing remained of Aust except a grume of blood and his spread-eagled arms and legs. The box was intact.

  The tank halted and began to traverse its turret with a whine of servos. The .30 mount started coughing again.

  Pasha reached Galashia, and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Grab it! Grab it, girl!’ Pasha yelled.

  They scooped up the box. Pasha had to peel the wire out of the jelly slick of Aust’s remains, carefully, to stop it sticking and pulling the pin.

  Together, they ran behind the tank. Pasha kept so close to the tank’s hull she might as well have been leaning on it. It was counter-intuitive to be so close to such a terrifyingly indomitable enemy object, but staying tight kept them out of sight and out of the line of its coaxial fire.

  ‘Here! Here!’ Pasha yelled.

  They placed the box behind the right-hand tread.

  ‘It’s stopped moving!’ Galashia yelled.

  Pasha bent down. Holding the wired grenade in place, she slid the lip open, and fished out one of the other hand-bombs.

  ‘What the gak are you doing?’ Galashia screeched.

  Pasha ignored her, and slid the lid shut, bracing the wired grenade.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  They started to run. Pasha pulled the pin on the grenade she’d lifted, and hurled it high over the tank. It landed on the road in front of the AT70, and went off with a gritty crump.

  ‘What–’ Galashia stammered.

  Pasha threw her flat.

  The AT70 driver assumed the grenade blast in front of him was evidence of a frontal attack or another mine. He threw the transmission into reverse. With a jolt and a roar of its engines, the tank backed over the box-mine.

  The blast took out its back skirts and wheel-blocks. Galashia felt grit and debris rain down on her. Shrapnel from the blast penetrated the tank’s engine house, and
in seconds, the rear end of the massive vehicle was engulfed in fire.

  Two members of the crew tried to escape, bailing from the hatches. Pasha was calmly waiting for them, pistol in hand. She cut them both down.

  ‘Let’s get clear,’ she said, hurrying Galashia away from the burning tank. ‘The fire will reach the magazine.’

  The first AT70, crippled and immobile, was trying to train its main gun on the roadblock. Konjic, Stavik and Kurnau rushed it. Konjic fired his lasrifle repeatedly into the armoured glass of the gunner’s sighting slot, blinding the machine. It fired the main gun anyway, but the shell fired wild, wide over the roadblock line.

  There was no way to crack the hatches from the outside. Konjic hoped that the commander would pop the hatch to get a target sighting. If that happened, he’d be ready to hose the interior with full auto. But then tanks often had auspex. It didn’t need to see in order to aim. They’d stopped it, but they hadn’t killed it.

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Kurnau frantically.

  ‘Get the feth clear,’ said Chiria.

  She had run from cover at the roadblock to join them, her tread fether over her broad shoulder.

  ‘Shit!’ said Konjic.

  ‘Can’t miss at this range,’ said Chiria, and didn’t.

  Even AT70 hull plating couldn’t stop a tread fether at less than six metres. The rocket punched a hole in its side, and there was a dull, brutal thump from within. The tank didn’t explode. It simply died, smoke gusting from the rocket wound, its crew pulverised by the overpressure of the blast trapped inside the hull.

  Chiria turned and grinned at the others.

  She was about to say something when a colossal blast knocked them all off their feet. The second AT70’s magazine had detonated.

  Debris and burning scraps fluttered down on them. They got up, coughing and dazed. The centre of the road where the second AT70 had been was a large crater full of leaping flames. Pasha limped towards them, her arm around Galashia’s shoulders.

  She was smiling.

  ‘Back into cover, lucky ones,’ she said.