V2 Chapter 104: The Plutocrat Tower
After the Oligarchy Gate lost its lock, the 8th Hyrkan did not reach the gate immediately.
Gaunt stood near the old drainage channel entrance and looked at the massive gate body that had shifted inward and come apart. The breach was there, but between them and that breach lay a wide stretch of factory district that had been churned open by artillery fire, and the killing ground directly before the high wall.
The fire from the high wall had not stopped.
Autocannons, heavy stubbers, and rocket arrays swept continuously from both sides of the gate towers. Blood Pact reserve units were also pouring out of the fortifications behind the gate, attempting to reseal the breach before Imperial forces could exploit it. The Oligarchy Gate was open, but the road through it did not yet belong to the Imperium.
Gaunt gripped his chainsword. Through the vox, he heard Major Galen Chittle produce a short, unfiltered sound.
"We broke the gate open and now we still have to walk over there."
"Hold the soldiers back for now." Gaunt said. "Our armoured divisions will push up."
The orders came through from the rear shortly afterward.
The Corstaek Iron Hammer advance fire group began moving forward. Heavy weapons teams set up autocannons and lascannons in the cover of abandoned factory buildings. Mortar positions recalibrated to new targets.
The Mordian Iron Guard 11th, 16th, and 21st Regiments stabilised both sides of the industrial avenue and suppressed Blood Pact elements attempting a counter-push from the flanks.
Then the armoured division lead groups began to move.
The first wave pressed forward with large numbers of engineering vehicles, obstacle clearing vehicles, and main battle tanks, more than three thousand heavy armoured vehicles in total.
The column advanced along the steel-plate road the engineers had laid, tracks crushing rubble and bodies, turrets traversing continuously toward the fire positions on the high wall.
The gun towers on both sides of the Oligarchy Gate immediately shifted their fire to these armoured targets.
When an engineering vehicle was destroyed in the road and the burning wreck blocked the column, recovery vehicles drove up and pushed the wreckage to the side of the route. Infantry moved behind the armour's shadow, advancing step by step toward the breach.
Gaunt did not rush forward.
He understood that the 8th Hyrkan had completed the most critical part of their assignment. What they needed to do now was hold this advance line and let the heavier force press through.
The fighting beyond the gate expanded quickly.
Leman Russ main guns fired in continuous waves at the high wall's fire positions. The Iron Hammer pushed their heavy guns close enough to reduce the effect of the void shield remnants. Every time a gate tower gun position exposed itself to fire, Imperial fire concentrated on it immediately.
But the thing that actually stood between the Imperial force and the interior was not those gun towers.
It was the Plutocrat Tower.
It stood behind the Oligarchy Gate. Its base covered several city blocks, integrated with old noble fortifications, fire control nodes, and an underground maintenance system below. The tower itself reached so high it nearly disappeared into the low cloud. Its outer surface was studded with gun ports, observation windows, suspended platforms, and the Chaos-corrupted symbols layered over whatever had been there before.
As long as it stood, the main axial road beyond the Oligarchy Gate remained under its fire control.
The fire control array on the tower's midsection began operating again. Several heavy guns acquired the first armoured lead elements that had entered the area behind the gate, and sustained fire destroyed a significant number of heavy vehicles and reduced them to burning wreckage. The advance line through the gate was forced to halt. Engineers went back into the rubble searching for alternative routes.
"That tower is still controlling the fire." Chittle said quietly.
Gaunt gave a nod.
He could see that several ventilation points at the tower's base were still venting steam. After the left support locking tower's destruction, the Plutocrat Tower's lower force field had visibly destabilised. That indicated it still had connections to the gate body's maintenance system.
The Iron Hammer's demolitions officer received that intelligence quickly.
They did not drive directly at the tower structure. The demolitions teams and engineers moved through the lower maintenance network below the gate, searching for the tower's base support relays. The Black Shield detachment and 8th Hyrkan soldiers worked in parallel to clear the passages. The Mordian Iron Guard and the armoured elements continued to suppress the surface fire.
Gaunt stood at the forward position and watched the demolitions teams disappear into the smoke.
This time he did not personally lead the element inside. The 8th Hyrkan needed him here, holding the advance open.
Imperial fire began to concentrate.
The Iron Hammer's heavy guns hammered the tower's eastern base section continuously. The four armoured division lead groups spread out and oriented their Leman Russ main guns, lascannons, and missile banks toward the same target zone. Other Astra Militarum units cut in from the flanks through the fortifications behind the gate, clearing the Chaos command nodes that were still providing targeting coordinates to the tower's fire control.
Explosions came from below the Plutocrat Tower.
The first was muffled.
After the second, the tower's lower force field began to flicker.
When the third explosion came, a major support structure below the tower's base lost its stability. The Iron Hammer immediately seized the moment and concentrated all available heavy gun fire on the exposed section.
The Plutocrat Tower began to lean.
The lower structure of that enormous fortress emitted a long, tearing sound. Large sections of the outer wall peeled away from the tower body. Chaos battle standards and old Oligarchy insignia fell together into the dust. The gun ports at the tower's top continued to fire, but the targeting had lost its coherence; the shells were landing on the roads where their own forces were withdrawing.
The final heavy gun salvo came down.
The base fractured entirely.
The Plutocrat Tower fell inward, like a cliff face collapsing, the enormous mass of the structure driving into the ground between the old noble plaza and the outer roads of the High Palace district. The tremors in the ground continued for a long time afterward. Dust and smoke covered the entire Oligarchy Zone.
Gaunt watched the tower come down and exhaled slowly.
Chittle stood at his side, still carrying a coating of ash on his face.
"Commissar. What we did today will be enough to fill histories for a good many years."
Gaunt did not answer.
He was looking at the High Palace road that had finally been exposed.
The dust had not yet settled when the sound of tracks and boots came from the direction of the left high ground. The Krieg 1173rd Combat Group, the Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th, and the Silver Guard's remaining strength were converging on the main advance line from the flank.
Duvette stood beside a Chimera and looked up at the Plutocrat Tower still in the process of falling, its enormous mass blocking the sky as it went.
"We arrived slightly late."
Evan said: "The Tower is already down."
"That is good." Duvette looked toward the High Palace in the distance. "It means Gaunt and the others did their work well."
Vegum stood nearby and said nothing. He was still looking silently at the road toward the High Palace.
At that moment, new engine sounds reached them from further away.
The battle standards of eight elite regiments appeared from behind the smoke and dust. Regimental colours, standard bearers, heavy infantry, the Marshal's personal guard, and command vehicles advanced slowly along the main axial road that had been opened. Above, the roar of strike craft and transports came through the sky like continuous thunder.
The Astra Militarum soldiers who had been fighting for days began to turn their heads. The word moved through the entire line quickly.
Marshal Slaydo had arrived.
He was not sitting in the command vehicle.
The Marshal walked at the front of the column. Liberatus hung at his hip. Officers and his guard followed closely behind. The soldiers watching his approach straightened in their exhausted lines.
Slaydo stopped before the wreckage of the Oligarchy Gate and looked at the fallen Plutocrat Tower, then at the High Palace masked in dust ahead.
"The road is open."
His voice went through the vox to the forward positions.
"Now. Advance on the High Palace."
Duvette looked at the Marshal's figure from a distance, his hand resting on the hilt of his power sword.
The place where history had to change had finally arrived.