V2 Chapter 86: All of It, Nothing More Than Loyalty and Sacrifice
Duvette withdrew from the northwest corridor alongside the main Krieg force.
He had not taken the 112th with him. Instead he had left Deputy Commander Dylan and Evan in the direction of Nev City, with orders to coordinate with Petrov on the inner city's defences, the deployment of the assault companies, and combat operations through the underground maintenance network.
Duvette had been deliberately developing the senior officers around him. He wanted them capable not merely of executing orders, but of independent command judgement when the battlefield fractured around them.
For now he stood on a piece of high ground behind the third trench line, his observation scope raised toward the distant northwest corridor filling again with Blood Pact forces.
The demolition charges and minefields the Krieg engineers had left behind were performing their function. Fires erupted at intervals along the corridor as armoured vehicles had their tracks blown off and stopped in the middle of the road, forcing the columns behind them to find a way around.
Slave-workers, infantry, heavy carriers, and the lumbering prime movers towing siege guns were all compressed together, advancing considerably more slowly than the enemy had planned.
Colonel Jurgen Holst and Commissar Oscar Rein were in the rear, working through the Krieg formations and confirming their defensive preparations. Holst used the augury vox vehicle to verify each regiment's position in sequence: the 771st had withdrawn into its designated ground, the 904th third echelon had taken over the second trench line, the 312th Engineer Battalion Group was sealing off the unnecessary communication trenches.
Rein did not interfere with the tactical orders. He moved through the formations, reminding officers at every level that the delay mission did not permit unsanctioned last-stand actions.
A few moments later, Holst walked to Duvette's side and rendered a salute.
"Colonel-Commissar. When do we counter-attack?"
Duvette lowered the scope.
"Not yet."
He pointed toward the distant corridor being refilled by the Blood Pact.
"Keep the artillery harassing them. Continue degrading their rate of advance. When their main strength is fully committed and they begin their all-out assault on Nev City, that is when we move."
Holst looked at the map.
Duvette continued. "At that moment, the 112th assault companies will go through Nev City's outer city underground network and enter the enemy's rear. Priority targets: artillery and vox relay nodes. The Eisenmark armoured battalion cuts in from the flank. The Krieg drives from here toward Nev City and closes the distance."
He paused.
"Wait. The critical question right now is whether Nev City can hold this assault."
As the words left him, the distant sound of guns and cannon reached them from the direction of Nev City.
Duvette was silent for a moment. Then he looked at Holst.
"Do something for me."
"Your order."
"Start keeping the time from this moment forward."
Duvette looked at the tactical map and the red markers massing on it.
"Sveren counter-offensive. Minus forty-eight hours."
"When the clock reaches zero, the encirclement closes."
Sveren Counter-Offensive: 36:08:12
The first twelve hours of the assault on the inner city were considerably more ferocious than anything that had come before.
The siege guns hammered the plasteel perimeter walls without pause. The heavy bombardment opened large fractures across the thick surface. Several outer gun towers were struck and collapsed entirely, forcing the inner city garrison to drag their heavy weapons back and set them up again in the rubble.
Blood Pact forces poured toward the city gate through the old factory roads and derelict street blocks of the outer city. They drove slave-workers ahead to absorb the defensive fire, commissar-troopers shooting from behind at anyone who stopped, shell-armoured infantry sheltering within the disordered columns as they pushed toward the defensive line.
Several assault surges pushed all the way to the base of the city gate, and Petrov was forced to lead his personal guard up to plug the breach himself.
The supplies that had come through before the corridor closed had helped, but the intensity of the fighting still pressed the garrison beyond what they could easily endure.
Petrov stood on the wall, his voice already gone hoarse. He directed every fire position to hold, ordered his reserves to fill the gaps opening on both sides of the gate, and had the surviving PDF soldiers carry ammunition up to the wall positions crate by crate.
The 112th's weapons and engineers earned their place in that window.
Autocannons held the main street junctions. The assault companies' heavy demolitions teams stopped the Blood Pact heavy infantry from closing. The engineers' pre-laid charges brought sections of outer city road down on top of advancing columns. Without those preparations, Petrov understood with certainty that the defensive line would have been torn open.
Even so, the wall continued to shake.
Petrov looked at the Blood Pact forces massing in the distance and said quietly: "Hold."
No one answered.
Every person on the wall was firing.
Sveren Counter-Offensive: -24:32:53
A full day had nearly passed since the Blood Pact army refilled the ground Duvette had taken.
The enemy was assaulting the Krieg positions as well. Every twelve hours, Duvette activated [Flesh Engine], driving the Krieg combat group's capabilities up into the range where they could absorb the most dangerous assault pushes without breaking.
This pattern did not go unnoticed for long.
The Iron Warriors siege master began to track it. The Blood Pact learned to pull back from direct assaults on the Krieg and Nev City lines during the windows when the anomalous force was running. They stopped throwing their strength against a wall they could not breach in that time, withdrew to their artillery positions, and exchanged fire with the Krieg heavy guns at range, waiting for the force to ebb.
Standing on the command high ground, Duvette heard the latest report and produced a cold sound.
"That one actually has something to him."
It was not enough.
The Chaos fleet was still engaged with the Imperial fleet above, and the void could not provide sustained orbital strike support. Duvette had not asked for air superiority; he had asked for short-duration, precise incursions at specific moments.
Through the Grand Strategic Display Module he provided exact coordinates: enemy artillery positions, anti-aircraft emplacements, and ammunition stockpiles. Attack craft cut in low, dropped their ordnance in the shortest possible window, and pulled away. Several concealed gun positions were destroyed. An anti-aircraft emplacement was torn open. The Iron Warriors siege master was forced to relocate his heavy fire assets more than once, and the pressure on both Nev City and the Krieg line dropped marginally.
At the same time, word reached General Bleddin that the Blood Pact's main strength was converging on the Nev City direction.
Bleddin had no use for Duvette personally.
But he was not going to let a tactical opening pass him by.
Across the rest of the continent, the Imperial main force began hammering Blood Pact positions. Bleddin's artillery reopened fire, his armoured elements pushed forward, and the Blood Pact lines that had been applying steady pressure began to show signs of fracture.
The Iron Warriors siege master arrived at a conclusion he had already suspected.
Time was not on their side.
If Nev City did not fall quickly, the entire Sveren counter-offensive would collapse.
He ordered the assaults to continue.
Even during the windows when Duvette's force was active on the other side of the line.
Sveren Counter-Offensive: -8:32:53
Another evening faded in the last light of the Sveren primary star.
The counter-attack was nearly upon them.
All of the 112th's assault companies quietly withdrew from the forward positions and moved to assembly points in the underground network. The Black Shields left the face of the city gate and entered the concealed passages leading into the outer city's underground transit system. A small number of 112th fire teams and engineers remained at the forward line to maintain the appearance of presence, but the actual defence responsibility had been transferred entirely to Petrov.
Petrov understood exactly what that meant.
He had to hold Nev City for eight more hours.
The enemy's main force was almost entirely committed. A failure at the last moment was not acceptable. He stood on the crumbling wall, supporting himself against a battered Imperial battle standard, his uniform covered in blood and filth, his eyes red from too many hours without sleep.
He watched the Blood Pact forces still pushing toward the gate and gave his orders to the Imperial Guardsmen and Nev City PDF behind him.
He knew he was not Duvette.
He did not have that force, or those miracles.
But he was also a Major General of the Imperium, a man who had come up from noble recruit through company captain and regimental commander to where he stood today. He had fought engagements that were supposed to kill him more times than he could count.
So Petrov had never envied Duvette's power. In other people's eyes, he was perhaps no less a hero. The Imperium's foundations across ten thousand years had never been built on miracles that burned bright and vanished. They had been built on men like him. The bastion-stones.
The ones willing to die on the line were the ones who held it.
All of it, nothing more than loyalty and sacrifice.
Petrov raised the chainsword. The battle standard in his left hand cracked in the shockwave of the guns.
His voice tore out of his ruined throat.
"For the Emperor!"
"For the glory of humanity!"
"Fight to the last!"
"Any soldier who falls back in cowardice will be shot!"
The surviving garrison on the wall answered with a shout that had nothing left in it but edge.
The Blood Pact's next assault wave arrived at the same moment.
Sveren Counter-Offensive: -00:05:00
Duvette was still standing on the high ground behind the third-to-last trench line.
He had his head down over the mechanical pocket watch in his hand. His actual attention was on the System panel, where the last five minutes of the skill cooldown were running.
The enemy continued driving forward through the shellfire. Heavy carriers were picked apart by the Krieg guns and burned where they stopped. Blood Pact infantry used the wrecks as cover and pushed in behind the flames. Even the commissar-trooper units had begun committing themselves directly to the advance.
Almost no one noticed that the Krieg heavy artillery's fire direction was quietly shifting.
Gun by gun, the heavy pieces were recalibrated. Artillery observers began transmitting new coordinates. In the communication trenches, Krieg soldiers who had been exchanging fire with the enemy stopped their meaningless long-range shots. Those who had been resting in the blast shelters came out.
They smelled the enemy's death on the air.
Colonel Holst stood inside the trench command node, holding the vox handset, waiting for Duvette's final confirmation.
Commissar Rein stood at his side. He said nothing.
He knew what was coming. He knew how these Krieg soldiers would carry the order out. They would not ask for an explanation. They would not shout before the charge. They would wait for the signal, and then they would go directly toward the designated objective.
On the battlefield's flank, hidden in the dark, the Eisenmark armoured battalion also received the final attack order.
Engines fired simultaneously under their heavy canvas covers. The tarpaulins were dragged off by the crews. Leman Russ tanks, Chimeras, and Hellhound flame tanks emerged from beneath the mud-grey shrouding, their armour carrying the grime of three days of waiting. Major Kleist sat in the command tank and looked out at the distant fire.
They had watched their comrades fight for three days.
Now it was their turn.
Kleist did not deliver a long address before battle. He opened the armoured frequency and said one thing.
"Don't stop. Drive through them. Crush them."
"Let this ground drink their blood."
At the same time, in the underground assembly point beneath Nev City, Stroud, Elias, and Anderson had each brought their 112th assault company elements into position.
The woman Stroud had pulled out of the water station was there as well. Mara Sinn had been assigned to assist with casualty movement, but she had stopped at the entrance to the passage. She looked at the black-armoured warriors standing silently in front of her, and finally spoke the question that had been inside her.
"Angels. Will you come back?"
Stroud looked at her through the visor of the force-feedback power armour.
This time, he did not correct the word "angels" as he had once before.
He was silent for a few seconds.
"We will."
Then he turned to face the assault teams behind him.
"Prepare to advance."
Sveren Counter-Offensive: 00:00:01
The assault signal split the air.
Duvette did not wait.
He went over the trench with the first wave, moving directly into the heaviest fire. The power sword ignited in his hand. Behind him, the Krieg soldiers came out of their positions simultaneously.
Every skill activated in the same instant.
[Flesh Engine.] [Eye of Judgement.] [Blessing of the Omnissiah.] [Iron Crusade.]
His strength reached every soldier. His will ran through every one of them.
Duvette looked at the dense mass of red markers ahead.
"Begin the encirclement."