Helsreach

'The risks are too great,' Tyro said, and Barasath was fast coming to hate her. A petulant little princess from the Lord General's staff - she should go back to her clerical duties and leave war to the men and women who were trained to deal with it.

'War,' Barasath mastered his temper, 'is nothing but risk. If I take three- quarters of my squadron, we can destroy the enemy's first waves of bombers and fighter support. They will never even reach the city.'

'That is exactly why this is a fool's errand,' Tyro argued. She was less skilled at controlling her agitation. 'The city's defences will annihilate any aerial attack. We don't even need to risk a single one of our fighters.'

My fighters,

Barasath said silently.

'Adjutant, I would ask you to consider the practicalities.'

'I am,' she scoffed.

Uppity hitch,

he added to the previous thought.

'This is a two-bladed attack that I suggest.' Barasath looked at his fellow commanders gathered here in the briefing room. While the chamber itself was a bustling hive of activity, with staff and servitors manning vox-consoles, scanner decks and tactical displays, the main table that had once seated the entire city's command section was almost deserted. Almost every regimental leader was with his or her soldiers now, standing ready.

'I'm listening,' Colonel Sarren said.

'If we engage the enemy above the city, a great deal of burning wreckage will fall to the streets and spires below. Add to that the fact we will be under fire from our own defensive guns. Anti- air turrets on spires will be firing up at the sky battle, and have a significant chance of hitting my pilots with their flak-bursts. But if we take the fight to them, their precious junk-fighters will rain down upon their own troops in flames. Once my first wave has pierced their formation, send a second and a third. We can cut overhead to perform strafing runs on their airstrips.'

Silence met this statement. Barasath capitalised on it. 'Their aerial capabilities will be butchered

in a single hour.

You cannot tell me, colonel, that such a victory isn't worth the risk. This is how we must strike.'

He could tell the colonel wasn't convinced. Tempted, yes, but not convinced. Tyro shook her head slightly, half in thought, half already preparing her advised refusal.

'I have spoken with the Reclusiarch,' Barasath said suddenly.

'What?' from both Sarren and Tyro.

'This plan. I have discussed it with the Reclusiarch. He commended me on it, and assured me that city command would allow it.'

Of course, Barasath had done no such thing. The last he'd heard of the knight leader was that Grimaldus was evidently involved in some sort of difficult negotiation with the Crone of Invigilata. But it turned Tyro's head, and that was all he needed. A wedge of doubt. A sliver of her interest.

'If Grimaldus advises this…' she said.

'Grimaldus?' Sarren arched an eyebrow. His jowly face was caught between amusement and alarm. 'A trifle familiar of you to use his name like that.'

'The Reclusiarch,' she swallowed. 'If he believes this is a sound plan, perhaps we should take that into consideration.'

Barasath was adept at hiding all emotion, not just the negative ones. He battled down the urge to grin now.

'Colonel,' he said, 'and Adjutant Tyro. I can see why you wish to hold as much of our forces in reserve as is tactically viable. This is a defensive war, and aggressive attacks will play little part in it. But my pilots and I are useless once the walls are breached and the enemy floods the city. Even the hololithic simulations made that clear, did they not?'

Sarren sighed as he linked his fingers over his belly.

'Do it,' he'd said. And Barasath had. His squadron was airborne an hour later, tearing over the city streets below before powering low over the wastelands.

In the tight confines of his Lightning's cockpit, he was more than just comfortable. He was home. Both control sticks in his hands were extensions of his own body. They said infantry felt the same about their rifles, but by the Holy Throne, there was no comparison. A rifle to a Lightning was like a spear to an angel of iron and steel.

The mass of the alien invasion darkened the ground beneath them.

'Need I remind anyone,' he said over the squadron's vox, 'that bailing out over this mess is extremely ill-advised?'

A volley of ''No sirs'' was his answer.

'If you're hit - and by the Throne, some of us will be - then bring your bird down into one of their fat-arsed god-walkers. Take as many of the bastards with you as you can.'

'Gargants, sir.' That was Helika's voice. 'The orks call their Titans ''gargants''.'

'Duly noted, Helika. Fifty-Eighty-Twos, on my mark, you will break formation and open fire. The Emperor is with us, boys and girls. And the Templars are watching. Let's show them how we earned the knights' crosses painted on our hulls.

'For Armageddon,' he narrowed his eyes, breathing in a lungful of the recycled oxygen offered by his facemask, 'and Helsreach.'

CHAPTER X Siege

W

hen the wall

is first breached, it dies in an avalanche of pulverised rockcrete.

Dark powdery dust blasts into the air, thicker than smoke and expanding like a stormcloud, blinding in its density.

I watch this from hundreds of metres away, standing with my brothers and the soldiers of the Desert Vultures. At the end of the street, the wall is no more. Our defences are broken, and behind the dust cloud, the breach gapes wide.

The true siege has begun. On every rooftop, in every alley, on every street and from every window - for kilometres around - Imperial guns stand ready, clutched in loyal hands, ready to slay the invaders.

Road by road, home by home. This was always how the Battle of Helsreach would be fought, and it is what every soul in the city stands ready for.

The great figures of the Titans begin to withdraw. Their first duty is done; they stood at the walls and pounded the enemy forces with their immense artillery. Invigilata's engines fall back now, not in defeat, nor even willingly - but because they must reload for the true battle. The Crone updated ''the commanders'' shared tactical grid with the locations of the Mechanicus landers within the city limits that serve as Invigilata's rearming stations. Her Titans trudge back to the closest ones now, their tread shaking the city around them. They are tall enough to darken the rising sun as they pass, even though they walk through distant streets.

Reports filter in from across the vox-network. The wall is falling to pieces,