Chapter 228: The Rebel Camp
The auspex contacts were thinning — the red cluster breaking apart, the far contacts streaming away from the engagement. Kian keyed the vox.
"Cease fire, you trigger-happy lot. Every round costs money."
The firing wound down across the line.
"All armour — combat formation, slow advance. Powered suits dismount and escort the vehicles. Forward."
The Chimeras rumbled ahead, tracks clanking through the cornfield. The forty-odd powered suit operators moved out alongside the vehicles on foot — a line of armoured figures carrying heavy lasrifles, walking at vehicle pace through crushed stalks and the occasional unpleasant sound from beneath the tracks.
The cornfield ended. Open wheat farmland spread ahead — flat, clear sight lines, and several thousand rebel soldiers running in various directions across it.
"Precision fire. Scatter them completely."
Lasfire and solid rounds crossed the open ground. The fleeing rebels in the open had nothing to hide behind. The firing was methodical rather than frantic — aimed shots, conserving ammunition, breaking the formation rather than chasing every individual.
Most broke and ran. A fraction dropped prone and returned fire with locally-made weapons. The rounds that reached the Chimeras and powered suits left marks roughly equivalent to someone throwing gravel.
The 40mm autocannon on the nearest Chimera replied to the prone shooters once.
Kian was watching the auspex when the fast-movers appeared — hundreds of contacts closing rapidly on his left flank. Cavalry, at speed.
He remembered Elder Silas's riders detonating a Chimera with a suicide charge. That had worked once.
"All powered suits — left flank, now. Stop the cavalry before they reach the vehicles."
The suited soldiers broke left at a run. The rebel cavalry were already inside three hundred metres — riders carrying explosive packs, committed.
Forty heavy lasrifles at close range produced a density of fire equivalent to forty heavy stubbers. The energy beams hit horses and riders alike, burning through both, detonating several of the explosive packs in secondary blasts. The charge took roughly ten seconds to reduce to scattered bodies.
"Continue advance."
Kian noticed that some of the routing rebels were heading toward the objective — the direction of the underground installation. That suggested a rebel camp near the facility.
He tightened the formation and issued updated guidance.
"Expect an enemy position near the objective. Big Kae — full attention on the road, keep scanning. Everyone else, eyes on your sectors."
The last thirty kilometres were harder. Guerrilla teams in irrigation ditches, treeline positions, shallow scrapes — groups of a hundred firing and relocating. The auspex found them before they could initiate effectively, the grenade launchers walking indirect fire onto the coordinates, the powered suits clearing the positions afterward.
The improvised device density increased — nearly one per kilometre. Big Kae's detection capability and the stand-off detonation method kept the column moving without losses.
Then the infantry found rocket launchers on the rebel bodies. Cylindrical, 120mm bore, six-kilogram projectile with a shaped-charge warhead capable of killing a Chimera outright.
Military equipment. Some PDF units outside the Hive had joined the rebellion early and brought their weapons with them — but concentration of anti-armour assets like this near one location suggested the rebels had a specific objective here.
They wanted what was in that mountain.
Kian updated his infantry to watch for launch signatures and pushed the powered suits further out on the flanks.
The marble hill appeared through the haze — low, solid, the kind of geological feature that looks as though it's been there since before the planet had a name. At its base, a rebel camp of considerable size had grown up around what was clearly a failed decade-long attempt to excavate the facility entrance.
Antonius's voice came through at high volume.
"That's it! The access gate is in the mountain face behind that camp! These miserable heretics — daring to covet the works of the Omnissiah! Destroy them!"
The rebels in the camp had spotted the column. Soldiers were moving to prepared positions — a network of trenches encircling the camp and the mountain behind it — with autogun militia taking up fighting positions and a smaller number with the heavy anti-armour weapons following them.
Kian looked at the trench network on the auspex. Direct assault into prepared trenches with anti-armour weapons was not the preferred approach.
"Infantry dismount. Establish fire positions at standoff range — outside their effective anti-armour envelope. Grenade systems, begin suppression fire. We don't rush this."
[End of Chapter 228]
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