Helsreach

the ceiling clattered down onto their helmets.

Ryken's platoon was up to their necks in trouble, and no amount of hard fighting alone was going to get them out of it. Most of his men, the ones that weren't bleeding to death on the ground, were at the windows on the various floors of this hab-block, pouring their fire into the street outside. The rooms were still full of furniture, left by the families who were taking shelter in local underground bunkers. It was, as last stands went, a pretty terrible place to be holed up in, but their barricade had fallen half an hour before, and it was every squad for themselves until they could regroup at the next junction.

The problem was that Ryken's platoon was cut off much too fast when the last bastion fell. As rearguard covering the other squads' escapes, they'd been encircled and forced to find whatever cover they could.

'They're climbing the damn walls!' someone cried out. Ryken scrambled to the nearest window, keeping low and bracing to fire into the street again. As he rose to fire, he found himself face to face with a green-skinned creature hauling its way through the second-storey window. It reeked of mould and gunsmoke, and its piggish eyes were glazed by whatever alien emotions it felt in the heat of battle.

Ryken bayoneted the beast in the throat, firing three shots even as he stabbed. The alien was hurled back from the window to fall on its companions below.

They were indeed climbing the damn walls.

Ryken ordered three of his men to cover the window, and raced for the stairs leading down to the ground floor. The snapping

crack

of lasrifles firing was even louder from downstairs, where the bulk of the platoon was entrenched.

'Reinforcements are en route!' he called down the stairs.

'You said that half an hour ago!' Sergeant Kalas called back up.

Ryken caught a glimpse of the sergeant, his bolt pistol clutched in a two- handed grip, kneeling at a window and firing booming shots out into the road. He retreated back to a nearby window himself, adding his fire to the onslaught.

In the street, a riot of alien flesh was taking place. Only the most foolish or bloodthirsty orks were seeking to race across the road and scale the building's walls. Most of the xenos - and Ryken thanked the Emperor for small mercies - possessed enough intelligence to remain in cover themselves, behind their own junk-transports or shooting from windows of adjacent habitation blocks. They laughed and jeered as the barrage continued, and great howls of porcine laughter would rise up when another pack of baying aliens would charge across the street only to be cut down by the Steel Legion's defences. Raucous enjoyment of their own kin's death was a barbarous madness Ryken had long come to associate with this accursed xenos breed.

There was no understanding such creatures.

'

We

can't hold here,' Vantine crouched under cover again, whispering a rapid litany of devotion as she reloaded her rifle. 'You hear those engines? More are coming, major.'

'We're not breaking out anytime soon,' he spoke the words as a bitter curse, setting his rebreather straight. 'So we

will

hold.'

'Or we die.'

'That's not an option, and I'll shoot you the next time you give voice to it.'

She smiled behind her own gas mask, but Ryken saw none of it. He had risen to his feet and was leaning against the wall, his lasgun braced against his chest. He kept close to the wall, risking a look out of the window. What he saw made him curse more colourfully than Vantine had ever heard before.

'So,' she rose close to him, taking position on the other side of the window, 'not good news, then?'

'Tanks. The bastards are rolling armour up the road.'

Vantine chanced a look herself. Three tanks, Imperial Leman Russ chassis looted and ''improved'' with crooked armour panels bolted on and painted in mismatched hues. The jagged fronts of the three tanks showed alien glyphs of allegiance that meant nothing to human eyes.

'We're dead,' she shook her head. 'And there's no need to shoot me. They'll shell this block to rubble and do it for you.'

Ryken ignored her. 'Nikov,' he keyed his vox-bead live. 'Nikov, how's the launcher coming?'

Nikov was on the hab-block's top floor, where he'd retreated with his missile launcher ten minutes before. The weapon had taken a beating when the barricade had fallen earlier.

'It's still jammed,' Nikov's reply came over the vox in a crackling hiss. After a pause of several moments, he added, 'Did I hear you shouting about reinforcements again?'

'They're coming! Throne, why is everyone whining about that?'

'I think it's because we'd rather not die, sir.'

The west wall chose that moment to explode. Debris burst into the room, filling it with stone dust. Through his goggles, Ryken stared at a hole the size of three grown men in hab-block's wall. Most of the soldiers nearby picked themselves up off the floor. Two stayed where they were, mangled and unmoving.

'Get that launcher working,' Ryken said in the moment of eerie calm. Vantine scrambled to her feet and ran from the gaping hole in the wall.

Outside offered alien laughter, the grinding of tank treads and a distant thrum of racing engines.

'More?' Vantine called out.

'That's not the enemy,' Ryken said. 'Those aren't tank engines.'

And they weren't. His vox-bead screeched a distorted chatter of mixed channels, but one voice broke through. 'Your request for reinforcement,' it said, much too deep to be human, 'is acknowledged.'

The room darkened as the gunship rattled past on whining turbines. It swooped low, strafing the street, opening up with its weapons. From its cruising angle, it clearly didn't intend to stay long, but the pilot was inflicting all the punishment he could while the Thunderhawk remained.

Heavy bolters mounted on its wings and cheeks spat a torrent of lethal shells into the visible groups of enemy warriors. Inhuman blood misted the air as packs of the creatures burst under the explosive ammunition. Snarling, the diminishing groups of survivors returned fire - their stubbers chattering, the solid shells raining off the black gunship's hull like harmless hail.

The tanks were another matter. The first shell crashed into the gunship's side with a storm's force, and Ryken flinched back from the detonation. It spun the gunship on its axis, sending burning wind breathing from its boosters as it turned. In reaction to the attack, the avian shape gained altitude in a sudden thrust, banked over the first of the tanks, and at last dropped its cargo.

Dark figures clanged onto the surface of the tanks, as black as beetles crawling on the metal skin.

The first to fall - a figure on the roof of the lead tank - wore a silver-faced helm and wielded a mace with a sparking power field around its eagle-winged head. The weapon descended in a slice to shatter the vehicle's turret. It broke clean off and fell into the horde of aliens that mobbed the tanks from below.

'Good morning, Reclusiarch,' Ryken's voice was breathless with relief.

The knight didn't answer at first. He and his standard bearer were already engaged by the greenskins swarming up over the useless tank's hull, clambering higher in a desperate need to