Oh shit, i thought i updated this fic...sorry. take this chapter barrage!!!
V2 Chapter 4: Come On Then. Let's See Who Hits Harder.
In the cold silence of the void, the orbital defence platforms and starports above Formal Prime shattered like glass toys under the massed fire and lance strikes of the Imperial crusade fleet.
But from the planet's surface, the ground-based anti-ship macro-cannon batteries and planetary defence plasma arrays were firing back into space, throwing killing beams upward at anything in range.
These surface installations had the reach and destructive yield to threaten void shields on even the heaviest Imperial battleships, forcing the fleet to deploy its armoured assets from the margins of the planet's defensive fire envelope.
Marshal Slaydo had issued an absolute prohibition on orbital bombardment of the world's heavy industrial infrastructure. That meant the job of eliminating these anti-ship positions, and clearing the landing corridor for the tens of millions of infantry and the Titan Legions that would follow, had to be done by Imperial ground armour.
In the flagship Northwind's strategic command room, the hololithic star map showed Formal Prime's outline flickering with red warnings. Marshal Slaydo stood with both hands on the cold command console, eyes fixed on the coordinates of those ground-based laser batteries.
"Everything is ready, Marshal." The young staff officer Macaroth reported in a low voice.
"Begin the assault." Slaydo's voice was rough and carrying. "Let every obstruction in our path be ground to ash under our tracks."
On the order, thousands of heavy landing craft and armoured barges tore through Formal Prime's dense toxic cloud layer like burning meteors and slammed down into the ash wasteland below, a landscape paved with industrial waste as far as any horizon could hold.
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"Our orders are to cross the wasteland within six standard Terran hours and destroy the planetary defence arrays deployed near the main hive's outer wall."
Duvette sat in the interior of a command vehicle.
On a wasteland saturated with electromagnetic interference of this intensity, all wideband vox had been drowned out by static noise and the standard auspex arrays were entirely non-functional. The 112th had cut its external broad-spectrum communications immediately and was running its internal tactical network on short-range directional laser links between vehicles.
The Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Armoured Infantry Regiment had been deployed at the extreme forward edge of the wasteland, sixty kilometres from the main hive.
Flanking them on both sides was a combined armoured formation of over thirty separate Astra Militarum armoured regiments, more than two thousand three hundred heavy armoured vehicles forming a wall of steel that blocked out the horizon.
Their formation and an equivalent armoured concentration advancing from the opposite direction would form a pincer, driving through the enemy's outer hive resistance and destroying the ground-based anti-ship platforms.
Outside the vehicle, Formal Prime's sky was a churning mass of yellow cloud that reduced the light to almost nothing. Thousands of years of acid rain had turned this wasteland into a grey, bottomless sludge.
"The Marshal gave us six hours. For the 112th, my requirement is three. Three hours to drive through every defensive line and silence every anti-ship weapon that is threatening the fleet." Duvette's voice carried through the regimental communications channel. "All units, advance."
The instant the order landed, the 112th's hundred-plus armoured vehicles erupted with a roar that shook the air. The surrounding armoured regiments moved simultaneously.
Enormous metal tracks engaged, shredding the industrial waste underfoot, throwing up enormous clouds of grit and ash, driving forward toward the distant hive.
Major Kleist stood in the open hatch of his Leman Russ Demolisher, letting the sulphur-laced gale cut across his face. Winds carrying trace toxins were not a meaningful concern for him anymore. He felt the powerful vibration of the iron machine beneath him and there was nothing in those grey-blue eyes but cold focus.
Finally. A proper armoured engagement against a peer opponent. He closed his hand on the hatch rim and let the thought settle with satisfaction. He was going to prove himself again. He was going to show every person in this formation what the honour of Eisenmark meant, what the Black Cross Armoured still had left in it.
Twenty kilometres into the wasteland, the terrain became complicated.
Running across the armoured formation's line of advance was a refinery district that stretched for several kilometres. Massive pipe networks, reactor housings, and mountains of accumulated scrap created an uneven obstacle field.
A flash in the toxic haze. A high-explosive round hit the side armour of a 112th Leman Russ on the left flank. The sloped armour deflected the warhead, but the physical impact still rocked the tank hard.
As the dense steel shapes materialized through the haze, Kleist's pupils drew together slightly.
Hundreds of corrupted Leman Russ tanks, their hulls welded over with spikes and Chaos blood sigils. And along the ridgelines of the scrap mountains, dozens of xenos-pattern tanks moving on agile mechanical limbs among the ruins, multi-barrel las-weapons flickering with charging light.
"This scale of armoured coordination..." Kleist murmured, allowing himself a rare moment of genuine surprise. He had never seen Chaos garrison forces assemble anything this disciplined or this numerous.
"Kleist. Two o'clock, right flank. Flanking units behind the scrap mountain at fifteen hundred metres. Left front, one thousand metres, enemy heavy armour massing for a strike on our formation."
Duvette's voice came through the vox with no inflection at all. On this wasteland with its severe electromagnetic interference, every armoured regiment's auspex had gone blind. Only Duvette's tactical display was reading clean.
Kleist took zero time to process the warning. He was already commanding.
"Third, fourth, fifth, sixth squadrons, swing to two o'clock, establish interlocking fire using the refinery for cover. First, second, seventh, eighth squadrons, hold the centre, armour-piercing loaded. All remaining squadrons, watch the left flank."
Under Kleist's precise coordination, the 112th's tanks operated like a wolf pack that had run together long enough to read each other without signals. They drove into the enemy tank concentration head-on.
Then Duvette activated the Eye of Judgement.
In the same instant, every gunner and commander in the 112th saw it: every enemy vehicle hiding behind pipe clusters or in other shadows, engine cores, ammunition racks, and armour joint points all resolved to sharp red markers on their vision.
"Fire!"
Kleist's roar. Dozens of main guns answered simultaneously. Guided by the markers, shells drove through the xenos tanks' mechanical joint points with precision, or hit the corrupted Leman Russ hulls and detonated their internal ammunition loads.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, the other Astra Militarum armoured formations were in serious difficulty.
A Cadian armoured regiment was being taken apart by the defenders' combination of static firepower and the unusually mobile xenos tanks, which were picking them off from the flanks and proving nearly impossible to hit in return. Their advance had ground to a halt.
"How are they doing that?" A regiment commander on the flank looked through his vision block at the 112th with undisguised shock.
From where he was watching, the 112th's tanks showed almost no hesitation. Every shot connected, from angles that should have been impossible through the ruins. "In this environment, can those people see through walls?"
The high-intensity armoured engagement continued for close to an hour. The enemy's response grew steadily more savage.
These Chaos soldiers genuinely felt no pain. When their tanks were already on fire, Chaos commanders would climb out of burning hatches and charge the 112th's vehicles with melta charges, trying to blow the tracks. The degree of coordinated suicidal resistance was something that wore at the advance.
The 112th's ammunition expenditure was enormous. Main gun barrels were glowing red from sustained fire. And they were not the only formation at the limit: the entire armoured formation's advance line had slowed broadly under the enemy's suicidal blocking actions.
We cannot stay stuck here. Duvette registered the shift in the engagement and narrowed his eyes. Armoured formations are fastest when they are moving. Standing still in this, with enemy reinforcements feeding in, and the only alternative becomes calling in air support to take the risk of operating in this environment.
The order came immediately. "Kleist. Abandon ammunition discipline. Full-speed straight-line assault."
"Understood, Commissar." Kleist did not ask for the reason. The order passed straight through. "Full regiment, release fire control. Maximum speed, charge."
The next instant, Duvette activated the Blessing of the Omnissiah.
A strange pulse moved through the regiment. Engines and gun barrels that had been screaming near their overload thresholds settled with an uncanny smoothness. The autoloaders were chambering rounds that should not have existed at a rate that no mechanical system was designed to produce.
The 112th's tank formation erupted in what could only be described as a miraculous weight of fire. It was no longer point shooting. It was continuous bombardment, delivered at something approaching a heavy weapon's rate.
Every piece of steel, concrete, or flesh within several kilometres of the front dissolved under the Machine Spirit's fury.
Under that weight of fire, the 112th drove through the Chaos defensive line like a blade heated to white — burning, unstoppable, final.
"In the Emperor's name..." The other formations' commanders were entirely speechless.
They watched the 112th's vehicles take everything the enemy had and accelerate, tearing corrupted tank after corrupted tank apart like scrap paper. That weight of fire, that sustained rate from vehicle main guns, produced a quality of self-doubt that is difficult to recover from when you are operating your own regiment alongside them.
The 112th's breakthrough dissolved the deadlock across the entire battlefront. As the defensive line broke, every friendly heavy vehicle in range poured through the gap in a flood that did not stop.
When the tracks rolled over the last ruins of the final enemy position, the toxic haze directly ahead was torn apart by the muzzle blasts.
The planetary defence laser batteries stood like iron mountains. The garrison troops inside them tried a last resistance. Concentrated coaxial fire and high-explosive rounds reduced the defenders to fragments.
"Lock onto the energy cores. Full regiment, simultaneous fire." Kleist gave the final order.
Every main gun fired at the same moment. The armour-piercing rounds went through the great power reactors like a single steel whip.
The other armoured formations had reached their assigned coordinates simultaneously. Every remaining major anti-ship platform received its targeted destruction.
A brief silence. Then a detonation that shook the planet's crust.
Blinding white light consumed everything in range. With a sound that cracked the sky, the great laser defence towers came apart in the shockwave, and the fire that erupted from the obliterated reactors tore through Formal Prime's toxic cloud layer, the overcast that had not broken once in thousands of years.
Duvette checked the timer.
Two hours, forty-five minutes.
The orbital threat had been neutralised. The southern armoured formation, led by the 112th, had broken through ahead of schedule and driven the landing corridor for the infantry open.
The northern armoured formation completed its own work three hours later, eliminating the anti-ship platforms on their side.
Duvette found no particular satisfaction in the timeline. The enemy's main force was entirely inside the main hive, sheltered behind its void shields. In there, every living thing was an enemy, and every shadow was a potential fire position.
The infantry's battle was the real contest.
He put his head out of the vehicle hatch and looked across at the enormous structure in the near distance, and said nothing.