Space Wolf 06 - Wolf's Honour by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

83

TWELVE

No Matter the Cost

The last salvo of the rebel barrage landed right on target, 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 bodies into clouds of blood and vaporised flesh. Ten metres to Mikal Sternmark’s

right, a bunker made of salvaged masonry and quick-setting ceramite compound 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 carcasses 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. Sternmark placed

a boot on the firing step and raised his head above the lip of the stone embrasure. A thick wall

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