A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 1973-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

TWELVE

No Matter the Cost

The last salvo of the rebel barrage landed right on tar?get, bursting along the entire length of the Imperial barricades blocking the Angelus Causeway. Huge siege mortar rounds and Earthshaker cannon shells blew gouts of pulverised ferrocrete and structural steel dozens of metres into the air and turned human bod?ies into clouds of blood and vaporised flesh. Ten metres to Mikal Sternmark's right, a bunker made of salvaged masonry and quick-setting ceramite com?pound took a direct hit and vanished in a cloud of grey smoke and razor-edged shrapnel. Guardsmen manning firing positions to either side of the bunker were tossed into the air like broken dolls, their armour melted and their clothes alight.

Nearly three weeks of constant shelling had turned the once-prosperous commercial district that lined the causeway into a nightmare landscape of gutted buildings and smoking, debris-lined craters. The causeway itself passed through the centre of the Imperial lines. Fed by four major transit lines, the broad, six-lane road was made to ferry the produce of Charys's sprawling agri-complexes into the arms of the mercantile syndicates at the nearby starport. Columns of local granite had been raised along the entire length of the causeway, topped by severe-looking angels bearing the scales of commerce or the upraised sword of war. Nearly all of the angels had been destroyed during the long weeks of combat: all save one, who seemed to tower defiantly over the right end of the Imperials' defensive line, his sword raised to strike down the Emperor's foes.

The defenders had built their barricade from the car?casses of the bombed-out buildings that lined the causeway. Heavy slabs of ferrocrete had been dragged into place by cargo walkers brought up from the star-port, and engineering teams had gone to work constructing firing steps and gun pits out of masonry and layers of flakboard. The line of fortifications stretched for a full kilometre, from one side of the causeway to the other. An entire regiment, the Hyrkoon Grenadiers, one of Athelstane's veteran units, had been ordered to hold the causeway at all costs. A full platoon of Leman Russ battle tanks had been assigned to support the defenders, their squat, blocky turrets rising threateningly from ferrocrete revetments built just behind the barricade. From their firing steps, the defenders could see for almost two kilometres down the wide, flat causeway. It was an ideal killing ground, one that any sane commander would dread having to cross, but it also stretched from the city like an out-thrust spear, reaching right for the heart of the Imperial forces on Charys. If the enemy forced open the causeway they could reach the star-port in little over an hour.

Sternmark had no doubt that the causeway would be the traitors' main objective. He and his Wolf Guard had joined the surviving members of Einar's pack just as the first enemy shells had begun to fall. Now, amid the deafening thunder of the rebel bombardment, his enhanced senses detected a different timbre to the impacts landing on the far side of the barricade.

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