[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-22T04:03:54.870494+00:00

TEN

THE BATTLE OF BHAVNAGER

“Do not shirk! Do not falter! Give them death in the name of Sabbat!”

—Saint Sabbat, at the

gates of Harkalon

Heedless of the 105mm shells tearing into the highway and trees around him, Sims confronted the Infardi armour head-on. The Wrath of Pardua sped forward with a clank of treads and fired its main gun. The hypervelocity round hit the nearest of the two enemy vehicles, exploding into the rear mantlet of its turret with such force the entire turret mount spun round through two hundred and ten degrees. The tank clearly retained motive power, because it continued to churn along the road, but its traverse system was crippled and the turret and weapon swung around slackly with the motion.

The Wrath fired again, mere seconds before a shell from the second tank glanced lengthways along its starboard flank. The hit buckled and tore its track guards and then fragmented off into the trees.

The Wrath’s second shot had missed. The disarmed Infardi machine was closing to less than forty metres now, and its hull-mounted lascannon began to spit bolts of blue light at Sirus’

Conqueror. The other enemy tank was trying to pull around its wounded colleague for a clearer shot knocking down a row of saplings and small acestus trees as it hauled half its bulk off the highway and through the verge underbrush. Heavy shelling from as yet unseen Infardi units continued to lacerate the position.

With furious las-fire from the injured tank now splashing off the Wrath of Pardua’s front casing, Sims ordered his layer to address the other tank coming around the first. Re-laying the gun took a vital second. In that time, the second tank fired again and hit the Wrath squarely. The impact was enough to lurch all sixty-two tonnes of armoured machine several metres sideways. But it didn’t penetrate the twenty-centimetre-thick armour skin. Inside, the crew was dazed, and they’d lost most of the forward scopes. Sims bellowed to retask, but the tank was now right on them and looming for the kill.

A devastating lance of laser fire raked past the Wrath and cut through the assaulting vehicle below the turret. Internally stored munitions went off and the tank exploded with such force that the main body and track assemblies cartwheeled over in a blistering fireball. The blast wake and shrapnel cleared a semicircle of woodland twenty metres in radius.

The Destroyer Grey Venger had struck.

From the open cab of his rapidly reversing Salamander, Mkoll saw the long, low Destroyer prowl past, palls of heat discharge spuming from the vent louvres around its massive fixed laser cannon. It nudged aside the burning wreck of Farant’s dead Conqueror and came up alongside the Wrath.

But the crew of the Wrath of Pardua had recovered their wits and swiftly nailed the remaining aggressor hard at short range, blowing out its port track sections and shunting it away lame with the shell impact. It began to burn.

By then, the trio of scout Salamanders had reversed far enough to be able to turn.

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