V2 Chapter 19: Don't Try to Stop the Wind
The battle for the lower hive opened again.
This time, under Marshal Slaydo's strict directive, the Astra Militarum command had finally abandoned the tactic of feeding soldiers into a bottomless pit room by room and building by building.
In its place: four extremely clear, knife-sharp assault lines. These four lines ran along the great main passages connecting the hive city's four gates directly to the upper levels.
These passages had originally served as the industrial transportation arteries for moving starship-scale components through the lower hive, built from heavy auramite and ferrocrete, more than a hundred metres wide, enough for substantial armoured formations and super-heavy vehicles to advance in parallel.
The enemy commanders were not fools. The rebel main force had almost entirely concentrated its strength onto these four passages, deploying extremely dense heavy fire barricades and their most veteran troops.
Duvette and the 112th's task was straightforward. As the absolute spearhead of the main assault, their job was to smash through the defensive line ahead, clear all enemies and heavy obstacles on their passage, and eliminate threatening fire positions in the buildings on both sides. For the 112th, which had just fought a close-quarters blood battle against a Daemon Engine, this kind of conventional positional breakthrough was barely worth the warmup. Even with the Blood Pact elite defending ahead, none of it held any mysteries for Duvette.
The lower hive's main passages were covered in heavy barricades welded together from scrapped vehicles and ferrocrete.
Blood Pact and Penitent infantry sheltered behind the barricades. Crossed fire networks sealed every inch of advance space. Toxic gas and gunsmoke filled the lower hive's already murky air.
None of it meant anything to Duvette. His vision moved straight through the heavy cover — those heretics radiating Chaos corruption appeared in his field of view like torches burning in darkness.
Under his precise direction, the 112th's warriors operated like a killing machine, executing every instruction with cold efficiency.
They divided the enemy's originally tight defensive line into isolated fragments and blind spots, then eliminated each one mercilessly, like hunters closing around separated prey.
They did not need to concern themselves with anything else — no flank harassment required splitting their attention, no sending detachments to occupy strategically worthless ruins.
They simply drove forward, a blade driving hard through the enemy's defensive line. The conventional infantry legions pressing behind them surged into each gap as it opened, holding the positions and consolidating.
Duvette looked at the strategic map: clusters of green piercing through the red-dot defensive lines, blue friendly forces holding the breaches behind. He raised his head, looked at the thundering armour formations advancing around him, and let a quiet thought escape.
"These Imperial commanders have finally learned to use Second World War tactics."
He said nothing more, and led the 112th to keep pushing forward.
Every blast door, bunker, and fire position that tried to block their advance was eliminated one by one.
The equipment freshly extorted from the logistics department demonstrated terrifying suppressive power. The new Demolisher-type Leman Russ tanks rolled up to the front line with a roar, their enormous tracks crushing the rubble underfoot.
Fire control locked. The dual lascannons on the turret unleashed blinding high-energy beams simultaneously.
Those heavy plasteel fortresses that would normally require hundreds of lives to take down, under the Demolishers' fire, together with the Blood Pact officers inside them, were instantly reduced to boiling molten metal and cinders.
The enemy clearly registered what was different about this assault. Their commanders quickly judged that the Astra Militarum was abandoning the peripheral street-fighting quagmire and attempting to force through to the upper hive.
The number of enemy troops and heavy equipment concentrated on the main passages began increasing geometrically in response.
The Blood Pact's stealth tanks, their chilling multi-limbed mechanical legs moving through the ruins' shadows, appeared and vanished at the edges of visibility. Heavy anti-armour weapons fired at a rate as dense as driving rain.
The air filled with the acrid smell of plasma melting metal. The 112th's rate of advance inevitably slowed. Even stopped. Trying to push forward against that weight of fire was genuinely difficult, even for Duvette's people.
This was entirely to be expected. The main passages carried the heaviest fire in the hive — precisely why the Imperial commanders before had retreated to the surrounding side streets in the first place. The 112th could only use the tanks' heavy armour as shelter and force themselves forward through the storm of fire, metre by contested metre.
Then, without warning, Duvette registered something.
A sound overrode every artillery report on the battlefield, coming from the flank. From his elevated observation position he snapped his head around toward the distant side passages.
He heard the furious howl of ultra-high-RPM engines echoing and amplifying through the lower hive's metal structures. Blinding exhaust flames and showers of sparks. A squadron of Land Speeders broke out first, skimming along the deck, their mounted heavy bolters tearing a bloody corridor instantly through the Blood Pact's flank defensive line.
Then, like white lightning splitting a storm sky, dozens of Astartes attack bikes flooded into the battle at a speed that cracked the air.
They had not taken the cleared main road for a conventional push. Instead they had used the Land Speeders and attack bikes' extreme mobility to tear directly through a weak point in the flank at the exact moment the Astra Militarum main force was holding the enemy's complete frontal attention.
Their objective was unambiguous. Straight toward the main connecting passage to the upper hive.
Duvette gave a short, sharp laugh. He had known. The sons of Jaghatai Khan, who worship speed and the hunt — how could they possibly have chosen to slowly push forward behind armoured vehicles?
He watched the white giants at their work: the deadly Chogorian scimitars, and the power tulwars with their force-field edges, and the markings on the shoulder plates of their power armour.
The Fourth Brotherhood of the White Scars. The elite known as the Brotherhood of the Scimitar. And at the very front of the charge, the tall figure leading the line — Joghaten Khan, with his retinue behind him.
Under the sons of Jaghatai Khan's ferocious momentum, everything the enemy put in front of them parted like something cutting through soft material with a heated blade.
The wide tyre studs crushed heretic bones directly underfoot. Joghaten Khan's power tulwar raised fountains of blood with each arc, every stroke severing a rebel head with precision.
Not one Blood Pact soldier could slow them for even a second. The flank defensive line, which had been solid moments before, collapsed in an instant.
Don't try to stop the wind.
Duvette watched those Chogorian eagles screaming past and the phrase moved through his mind. He pressed his communications earpiece and shouted into the channel at every soldier of the 112th:
"Brothers — push the throttle to the floor! Every last one of you! This feast — we are not missing it!"