Leman Russ: The Great Wolf (The Horus Heresy Primarchs Book 2) by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight [Wraight, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-11-03T15:10:14+00:00

IV

Orbital bombardment continued for three more hours, hammering away at the dropsite coordinates. Sensors from both fleets zeroed in on the impact zones, scanning for signs of weakening. Stress-signals were detected over the Crimson Fortress’ causeways first, followed swiftly by the outlier regions. The battleships’ drop pod racks were given warning, and every pack and squad took their places, locked down in restraint cages as the combat-lumens lit and the warning klaxons sounded.

The Invincible Reason’s bridge crew were first to pick up the telltale discharge of ionised particles, followed by the Aesrumnír’s gunnery teams. Precise loci were fed down to the targeting teams, and the pod-claws swung out into the open bays under the warships’ hulls. Void shields rippled back, exposing the long drop into the atmosphere below, and for a moment the ranks of shackled pods hung like iron fruit under the holding rails.

Then the order was given, and the shackles flew back, the explosive bolts blew and the caskets of death plummeted in unison, thrusters blazing as they shot clear of the battleships and burned towards the red world below.

Gunships came after them, dipping their noses and blasting hard to keep in contact with the rain of pods. Ship-mounted las-fire opened up in their wake, scything down between the descent columns and cracking into sites on the ground, eliciting flurries of dust-blooms as the targets were hit. The drop was dizzying, precipitous – a whistling, shaking ride that spanned the vast gap between orbital fleet and planetside in seconds. Each pod glowed red, then orange, then a fiery white as it hit re-entry, edges blurred from the immense pressures and speeds.

Inside the First Legion units the kill-squads remained silent, lost in their pre-combat meditation. Inside the VI Legion pods the warriors roared with exhilaration, thumping their armoured fists against the restraint cages and setting up the chorus of howls that would accompany their emergence onto the killing fields.

As the drop pods burned through the thickest atmospheric layer and the ground raced up to meet them, interference fire burst upwards from the defenders’ terrestrial emplacements. Stricken pods exploded in mid-air, scattering outwards in huge blast-circles. Stormbirds homed in on the artillery units and let loose with battle­cannons, driving huge wedges through the lines of waiting guns.

Then the first drop pods hit, smashing deep into the planet’s crust and throwing out roiling waves of dust, earth and pulverised rockcrete. The doors peeled open, exposing rack-mounted bolters that swung around, juddering as they let loose. Beneath that punishing curtain, the pods’ restraint cages cracked, releasing their deadliest cargo. The Wolves and the Angels raced out under covering fire, adding their own mass-reactives to the torrents already homing in on the enemy positions.

Bridgeheads were established – points of territory won in the first bloody minutes of fighting. Legionaries pushed out rapidly from those enclaves, driving Scarabine counter-attacking troops back, joining up with their comrades, forming battlefronts and assessing the next objectives. The intensity of the sky-borne assault was ferocious – fast, coordinated, physically brutal, the epitome of the Legion doctrines of war.

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