Volume Two - Chapter Twenty-Three - Breaker

BTS Sylvia Cover - by Sebastian Banan

***

There were some people that believed that rallying the troops was a waste of breath.

There were others that saw it as the glorious duty of a commander, to stand proud before their soldiers and shout words of encouragement.

Sylvia was rather ambivalent about the whole thing. She’d been the wide-eyed young soldier huddled in a trench while some commanding officer droned on over the loudspeakers before. Half the words were drowned by the booms of artillery and the other half were garbled by the blood rush in her ears. 

She understood the idea of a rousing speech, but the only times she had ever actually felt something was when she had seen the massive frame of a knight walk over the trench she was hiding in, a behemoth of steel that stomped forwards with the certainty of the God Emperor’s will.

Sylvia wished she could do that now. She suspected that the Eternal Pride felt that too.

“Let us move, Squire! Let us stomp the foe to paste beneath my mighty feet. Let them taste the bitter pill of my shells.”

“No,” she said. “We aren’t capable of that, yet. Titan Vyper, how many points do we have?”

“You currently have 140 points.”

A drop in the bucket. Enough for two more Castlekiller Missiles. “May I purchase two more of those missiles?” she asked. She was already shifting her attention onto the targeting system. There were some orks rushing ahead of the rest, far ahead, in fact. They rode along on what looked like modified dune buggies and lengthened cars that bumped along the uneven, crater-filled terrain at speeds that were nothing short of insane. 

“Of course. Here you go. Happy hunting!”

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 0

Those orks were tempting targets, especially the one ork vehicle that had what was obviously a Lightning’s jet engine strapped onto its roof. It was leaving a trail of dust behind it as it rushed towards her position.

She instead targeted both Castlekillers further back, into the largest formation of ork infantry she could see. She fired both, then focused her Volcano Lance around and fired a beam  that super-heated the air and cut across the orkish daredevil. The vehicle exploded spectacularly.

The orks behind it cheered, and Sylvia sneered. Even from as far as they were, she could tell that they were elated at the violence. “Beasts.”

“Enemies.”

She could agree with that. Her missiles went off. “Two more,” she said.

Two more locked into place, and she fired them, then she split her focus and pulled up her vox. “MacDonald, I need two empty flatbeds near my position, with tarps over their backs. No... make that three. Now!” 

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 290

She fired those almost as soon as they were in place. The main thrust of the enemy force were running as quickly as they could, and that was impressive speed. Orks were nothing if not fast. But they were still a ways off. 

The artillery pieces on the wall started to open up. Mostly the bigger guns, those designed to cross the distance and hit targets kilometres away. The mortars were still silent, but she hoped they would open up once the orks were closer.

Two more hits registered. She fired her Volcano Lance again, narrowly missing a large, surprisingly fast truck that had rushed ahead.

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 510

Soon, enough orks were close enough that she stepped forwards with a limp and opened with the meltaguns. It was beyond their maximum effective range, but that was fine. Mostly she cooked the skin off of the orks spilling out of the newest opening in their tunnel, somewhere just a few hundred paces from the edge of the trenches. 

The men at the trenchline opened fire as well. It was still early enough, and they had little counter-fire, that they could line up their shots and be precise. 

That wouldn’t last.

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 800

She realized that she was going to have a problem, and soon. The Eternal Pride needed upgrading. She was slowly clawing her way up to the point where she could afford those upgrades. 

She wasn’t sure if the trenches would hold long enough for her to get them.

Buying missiles in the field was one thing, but replacing entire primary weapons? Nevermind replacing her... the Eternal’s plasma engines. She wanted to remove the weaker of the two and replace it with something with a lot more kick to it, enough to let her run her new shields at their maximum capacity while not having to worry about conserving energy for her other weapons. As it was, the two plasma cores she had were running hot. The needle was gently edging from orange to red on one readout, and she worried that the Eternal couldn’t handle too much of that. 

If she had other knights, then stepping back would be easy. 

A glance to either side showed a four kilometre-wide section of walls. Her section. The area her extra-strength platoon and the four others here were ordered to protect along this section of the outer walls.

Hers was the only knight. 

“We’re alone,” she said.

“Then we do it alone.”

She clenched her jaw. “We’re outgunned.”

“Then we do it outgunned.”

Sylvia’s ears twitched. “Even with Vyper, we might die.”

“Then we chose not to.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. In the not-so far distance, her missile found their marks, two more blooming explosions joining the rest. “Two more,” she said. “And... Vyper, how is the rest of the wall?”

“The overall situation is rather dire. The tunnel you sealed was one of over a hundred spread out across the length of the wall. Some sections were spared. The orks are concentrating their forces at certain locations and ignoring others entirely.”

That was unusual. It was also, she supposed, unsurprising. It was the smart thing to do. Focus on areas where they had discovered the least resistance and where they could get into the wall and past it. If they shut the guns down and killed the defenders in one space, then they could advance their vehicles there with no interruption and less resistance.

She glanced up as a flight of the planetary Aeronautica roared past overhead. They fired smaller missiles down, then spat a few thousand shells down into the ork formation before banking up and away.

Already, the ork’s own crude flyers were showing up in the distance and were rushing over.

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 960

She locked one of the two missiles onto a fat bomber. The huge aircraft was droning along, low in the sky and trailing a wake of dark exhaust smoke behind it like an unfurling banner. The missile flew off, climbing towards the enemy. Its twin veered lower, aiming into a small pack of vehicles that were coming a little too close for comfort.

The missile struck the bomber at the front, blasting apart the first third. She was afraid that it hadn’t been worth the investment in points, but then the rest of the craft came crashing down onto the battlefield, its payload going off and scattering orkish bodies all over.

The amount of hits plinking off of her new ion shields doubled for a while. The orks had fully taken notice of the lone knight defending this entire section of the wall.

She scanned further afield. There were... six stompas. Nothing bigger, fortunately, but that was still enough firepower to cause her and her troops a lot of trouble. Fortunately, they were ponderously slow.

New Purchase: 2x Castlekiller Missiles.

Points Reduced to: 1280

She didn’t bother aiming at the stompas. They had few orks within, comparatively. Once they came into Volcano Lance range, then she might try something, but that wouldn’t be for a while.

The ork formation, if it could be called that, started to spread out, and the orks were beginning to take cover behind the berms formed by craters and using the wrecks of their own vehicles as hiding spots. 

They had blunted the front of the assault, but that would only last so long. More were still pouring out of their distant camp, and she could hear a faint chant coming from the green tide. 

Sylvia reached over and flicked the vox on. 

She didn’t believe in fancy speeches. But...

“All men of Death Bane, brace for impact. The xenos come for our homes. So we fight them. We kill them... and if you’re afraid... then kill them afraid.”

The Eternal Pride laughed in her head, and his warhorn blared a loud, discordant, challenging noise that echoes across the battlefield.

Sylvia grinned right back.

She glanced over as a pair of trucks rushed over and came to a stop nearby, men jumping out of them in a hurry. Good, so that set of instructions was followed, at least.

There were two possibilities here. 

The first was that the orks would flood over the trenches so quickly that nothing could really be done.

The second, the one she was gambling on, was that they’d slow down under the withering fire of men desperate to live. If they held, then they had a chance. They’d give her time. The most precious commodity they had. 

“MacDonald,” she said into the Vox. “I need you to contact the magos. We’re doing field repairs and replacements on the Eternal Pride. Tell him to bring everything he needs to replace one of our engines right here and now.”

Hopefully she wouldn’t regret that. 

***