was as if this hellish firefight was being conducted in a box that concentrated the fury and amplified the noise.
Bulwar signalled him again and Corbec had to strain to hear. The NorthCol Commander was driving forward in a wedge from the west, bringing his armour in as well as his ground troops and several units of Vervun Primary that he had been able to pry away from the useless Modile. He wanted Corbec to support with his Ghosts from the east.
Corbec acknowledged. He sent the word down, from man to man, trying to unify them into a co-ordinated effort. But the Zoicans were everywhere and Corbec knew at least three parts of his force were bottled in behind him and fighting for their lives.
He took a look eastwards at the dank slopes of the Spoil. Enemy shelling still whooshed down into it and he could see the sparks of las-fire exchanged up and down the ore-slag. The Spoilers were engaging hostiles coming up the Spoil. He hoped the Zoicans would continue their push up at the well-defended Spoilers. If they turned west, they would flow in on his meagre force from the rear and—
He shut off the thought.
“How much?” he shouted at Genx.
With his one good hand, Genx indicated they had about three thousand rounds left for the autocannon, in loops around his body or in the panniers of ammo-drums he had collected. About two minutes’ sustained fire, Corbec thought.
He voxed his men to present and move west. They rose, then immediately ducked back as a heavy rake of las-fire swept in from the northwest.
Corbec screamed a curse. The fething Vervun Primary, effectively leaderless and alone in the mid-yard, were firing at anything that moved and had flanked the Ghosts as well as if they’d planned it.
Corbec tried to raise Modile on the vox. All he got was Modile’s adjutant screaming obscenities down the link, demanding that the NorthCol and the Tanith regroup as per battle orders.
He rose and set the autocannon chugging a blurt of fire down the rubble line at Zoican movement.
A bolt-round slammed into the stone beside him and glanced off, hitting him in the thigh.
Corbec tumbled down with the impact and tried to claw the smouldering shell-case fragments out of his tunic pants. The cloth was punctured and there was blood. He found the round had been spent on impact with the stone and just the case had spun off into him, peppering his leg with dozens of metal scraps. He flexed the limb. It hurt and was bleeding freely, but he could use it.
Modile was definitely going to die.
There was no going west, not directly. He pulled his units after him and headed towards the gate under cover of the eastern trenches and barricades. They might be able to break west further down, beyond the range of the hopeless Vervun Primary.
Shells roared overhead and there were a great many more rockets banging in through the gate mouth now.
Corbec’s force had gone a hundred metres when they met a battlegroup of Zoican shock troops head on.
Milo reached the end of a shattered stretch of wall and tossed a grenade around the corner. As soon as the blast thumped out, vibrating his chest and spilling brick dust and plaster from the wall-section, he raced across the gap and took up station at the next las-chewed corner, kneeling, sweeping his lasgun around in the grenade smoke to cover Baffels, who crossed behind him.
A few enemy shots rang over their heads, higher than the wall, cracking the air.
Neskon and Rhys came up after, darting across the gap as Baffels and Milo fired cover.
“Where’s Dremmond?” shouted Neskon over the roar. He was plastered in blood, but it wasn’t his own.
“Ahead, I think!” yelled Milo. He tried his micro-bead link, but it just ground out static.
The platoon had been advancing down the ditchlines between the buildings towards the gate, in support of Colonel Corbec’s brave push and for a while Dremmond’s flamer had been clearing the way. But a trio of rockets had slammed into the ditch and broken the advance, and now the forward section of the platoon format, with Dremmond and Sergeant Fols in it, had advanced out of sight in the smoke.
Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed on down the side of the next bombed-out storeblock as Neskon covered the gap for the next group of Ghosts: Domor, Filain and Tokar, followed by the vox-officer, Wheln, and Troopers Caill and Venar. Neskon and Domor then advanced, leaving Filain and Tokar to cover the overlap for the three following.
At the front of the group, Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed forward again, grenading a break in the wall and sprinting across it to lay cover for the parties behind.
There was ferocious fighting from a hundred metres ahead. Milo’s micro-bead squawked and he heard flashes of Corbec’s commanding voice.
Domor and Neskon moved up to them and Domor probed the smoke cover ahead with the optic implants he had acquired after an injury on Menazoid Epsilon.
The focus rings hummed and whirred around the blank lenses. “I read heat—lots of it. A flamer, pouring it on.”
Milo nodded. He could smell prometheum.
“Dremmond,” Baffels suggested.
Encouraged that they might be closing on their forward element, the platoon rallied and pushed forward. Milo realised that they seemed to be following him, looking to him for leadership, with Sergeant Fols absent. It was mad—they all had more combat experience than him, and all were older.
It was as if the gloss of Gaunt was on him, as if he represented some kind of natural authority simply by association with the commissar.
The cover ahead broke into a series of low-dug ditches punctuated with shell-craters. Enemy fire was sheeting across it, making it impassable. Milo saw at least two dead Ghosts twisted and broken in the ditch-line.
“Round! We go round!” he urged and Baffels nodded. The men liked Baffels too, and he seemed to be readily adopting the role of second to Milo’s lead, like Corbec to Gaunt. Milo marvelled at the way structures simply evolved organically in combat, without question or spoken decision. With focus, fear and adrenaline that high, right on the tightrope of life and death, men made simple, natural decisions.
Or a well-trained, motivated unit like the Ghosts did at any rate. Milo was sure the Vervun Primary troops were collapsing simply because they lacked that resolve and that organic spontaneity.
He took his fellows left, towards the edge of the Spoil, through a series of drumlike scrap stores where greasy rail bogeys and axle blocks were stacked. Venar had an autocannon and several cans of ammo still strapped to his load-bearing harness, so Milo gave him point to clear the way. The rattle of short cannon bursts echoed through the stores as Venar picked the way ahead clean.
The stores opened out into a hectare or so of stockyard that
