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***
"Go! Keep going!"
An artillery shell blasted down on them. A few guardsmen were instantly turned to pulp and Melchoir's refractor field shot sparks into the air as dirt and rocks cascaded over him.
"Come on, keep going!" he shouted, running forward despite another shell exploding all around them.
The men were starting to break their discipline. Some started to break and run for cover in one of the craters rather than continuing to race forward as fast as they could. Much more of this, and his force would begin to disintegrate.
"Move, move!" Melchoir shouted as his men raced directly into the storm of artillery fire.
Everywhere dust was clinging in the air. The earth shook as the shells pounded over and over again all around them. It was almost impossible to tell where they were going, or how long it would take until they got there.
Another artillery barrage chimed in to the heaving thunder. Melchoir counted the seconds as best he could. It would almost be over now. The shells came screaming in, bucking the guardsmen almost to their knees. A sharp crack exploded in the air just above them, blasting shrapnel down, cutting a half dozen guardsmen into ribbons.
This should almost be the last of it, Melchoir thought, heart hammering in his chest and feet pounding on the ground. The air was choked with debris and shrapnel. The uneven ground, so churned up by preparatory fire, made it difficult to advance.
"Keep it up! Come on, men!"
All around, soldiers fell to shrapnel, or lost their footing and fell into craters as they struggled forwards. Another set of screaming booms shook the earth as even more artillery rained down around them.
As if survival wasn't difficult enough, the first wave suddenly broke in on the enemy.
The enemy marines, caught completely off-guard desperately attempted to open fire on the guardsmen. Some of the attackers dropped horribly as they raced into close combat, some of the defenders began to fall as other guardsmen began to open up with lasgun fire.
The desperate melee was punctuated by one last, overwhelming, single barrage of artillery fire. In the dust and smoke and gunfire and flying shrapnel bodies were cast to the ground, some stunned, some dead.
Dust choked the survivors as they struggled to keep shooting at the enemy. As they struggled just to breathe.
Melchoir looked at his doomed men, and saw them engaging the enemy. They were there, at the fortification, and just in time for the end of the artillery strike.
"Attack! Attack!" Melchoir shouted. A wave of guardsmen poured forward supported by heavy tanks crashing into the barricades.
With a mighty roar, the first vanquisher cannon picked up where the artillery left off, heaving its bastion-breaching shell into the nearest tower. The shot exploded into the side, cascading down rubble from the nearly collapsed fortification.
Another tank fired, and then another. The towers began to buckle and break against the murderous onslaught of heavy cannon fire. With a groan of impending doom, one of them gave up the fight, completely disintegrating into itself.
"Attack!" Melchoir shouted again as he watched the tower fall to the guns of the tanks. "Keep it up!"
The enemy had been completely battered into submission, or so was the plan. Melchoir had risked attacking into his own artillery barrage. There would be some friendly fire, but it would cut down casualties over all, he had justified. After all, he had seen more than once what happened when guardsmen charged a prepared position. He didn't want his enemy time to reorganize. It all made sense to him.
What he hadn't counted on was just how disorganized the enemy would become.
Those that hadn't hunkered down in the fortifications had scattered looking for cover. The moment the artillery let up, they scrambled back towards the safety of their defenseworks.
Now the enemy came up from behind and all around them as they stumbled into the attacking guard army.
Desperate for survival, the enemy attempted a counterattack as best they could. Some enemy soldiers broke through the haze to attack Melchoir, while others revealed themselves from their hiding place in a crater and charged in on the left.
The monstrous creature loomed over the guardsmen as the chaos forces began to unload into them with their boltguns.
The junior officer tried to rally his men into formation. Meltaguns ran forwards, and lasguns aimed.
Suddenly, the metallic beast in front of them spontaneously detonated. Burning demonic fuel sprayed over everyone around as a thick cloud of smoke roiled up into the air. Guardsmen began to open fire on the space marines.
The minions of chaos made it into the first rank of guardsmen, hacking and chopping them apart with contemptuous ease. The junior officer gave the order to hold. The guardsmen could only watch as their platoon mates were butchered.
In shouts of pain and panic, the guardsmen fell and fled. Just as the marines were victorious, the junior officer gave the order to fire. Lasguns opened up in a volley and the nearby tanks pivoted and anti-tank and anti-bunker weapons blasted into them, the pure strength of the guns at point blank range ripped them apart as they tried to continue their counterattack.
Melchoir looked over to his right. The tanks continued their thundering barrage, taking down the middle tower in a spray of concrete and twisted steel.
A flickering blue light caught his attention. He turned and looked at the tank nearest him. It seemed to glow for just a moment with unholy power and then it went out. Slowly, the turret began to traverse over. It pointed its vanquisher cannon not at the third tower, but at the other tank!
A thunderous roar broke out from the barrel and an anti-tank shell burst easily into the side armor of its squadmate, crushing the sponson and punching out the other side.
Before them stood an enemy, hands raised up in the air. Arcane power flew out from his power armor.
He was controlling Melchoir's own vehicles and turning them against him!
"Take him down!" the officer shouted to the nearby guardsmen and tanks, "Focus fire on the enemy witch! Kill it, quick!"
The guardsmen nearby began to pour fire into the sorcerer, but to no visible effect. Even the mightist anti-tank weapons simply bounced off of the warlock's shimmering energy field.
Seeing the officer giving orders, the possessed Leman Russ slowly began to traverse its turret again under orders of the sorcerer. The cannon turned to point directly at Melchoir. He stood frozen.
And then it stopped.
The enemy counterattack was shut down by meltaguns and lascannons, and the third tower began to collapse.
With baleful flashes of light, the few defenders who were able slipped back into the warp. As the haze of the artillery fire finally began to lift, those enemy that weren't able to escape were brutally gunned down.
All that was left was an apocalyptic vision of complete devastation. The fortifications had been completely battered into non-existance. Everything was ruins and craters. Twisted barricades crowned the deeply-pocked remnants of the hill. Bodies were strewn everywhere.
***
The officer walked over the remnants of the position he had just taken. Casualties hadn't been all that bad, considering. And their primary mission was complete. There was no longer either an enemy, or a fortification left to speak of.
The ground reeked of death and decay. Around him were the rotting bodies of other guardsmen. Kingsguard by the look of them. These must have been all that remained of those in earlier waves who had tried to take the hill top from the air.
He could only wonder what had happened to them. Had they met unexpected resistance? Had they merely been overpowered? Were they carelessly cast into some doomed venture? Perhaps they had only been thrown into battle to hold the enemy in place for him to come and finish off later.
It all felt so different to him now. Years ago, he was always part of small skirmishes. Fast-moving, strategic exercises over vast terrain. The fighting here didn't feel like war, it just felt like slaughter. He was beginning to wonder if anybody even cared anymore. If anybody even bothered to plan or strategize.
The corpses strewn about everywhere told of nothing more noble than mindless attrition. What was worse was that Melchoir was becoming inured to it. It almost seemed reasonable. It almost seemed so simple.
He would have to have the vehicles bulldoze the bodies into the craters soon.
Melchoir slowly emerged from his reverie, and started to make his way over to the lead tank commander. His name was Lord Taiaphas Vask. According to the stories, he was once a humble tank gunner, but his talents quickly raised him to a commander of a Leman Russ. Years ago, his russ was hit by a vindicator round, ruining the tank in the cataclysmic blast and killing all of the crew but Vask. His legs crushed, he desperately attempted to escape from the burning wreck, inhaling noxious smoke and flying cinders. As his body began to burn, he only barely escaped.
He was declared dead and posthumously elevated to lordship in respect of not only the personal sacrifice, but also the 27 enemy tanks he knocked out, turning the tide in the Battle of Arjax Pass. It later turned out, by some miracle of the Emperor, that he had in fact survived. Left all but unable to walk on his own, and with most of his body badly burned, he had choked back to life. His lungs had been charred black by the burning fumes, requiring him to be on a respirator at all times just to breathe, and his vocal cords could now only scratch out a few painful words at a time before he was forced to stop.
"Lord Vask", the officer called as he approached the command tank. The small, frail commander looked back at him and flipped on the tank's speakers.
"Hello, there, marshal," came a chipper voice in return.
Melchoir looked confused.
"Oh, don't mind me, sir, I'm the lascannon gunner."
"What?"
"Yeah, when the commander's voice is particularly bad, he has me talk as his surrogate. He types in messages, and then I can read them aloud."
Melchoir looked up at Taiaphas. The tank commander nodded in return.
"Umm... oh," Melchoir replied. "So I came over here because -"
"Look at me when you're talking to me," the chipper voice of the lascannoneer ordered him, "Don't look at my surrogate, you're still talking to me."
"Oh, right," Melchoir replied, looking back up at lord Vask.
"Yeah, he gets that way. Just pretend that I'm not here."
Melchoir looked confused again.
"You fool, you're not supposed to say things yourself when I'm speaking. I know sir, I'm very sorry, it won't happen again. It's happening again right now, you imbecile."
The officer looked back and forth between the hull weapons and the tank commander as the Russ towered above him. The loudspeaker flatly broadcast the argument between the two men with one voice.
"Your attack into artillery fire was brave, but perhaps unwarranted," the tank spoke to Melchoir, "We suffered needless damage to our vehicles."
"Okay, is this Vask talking now, or the gunner?"
"Oh, that was lord Vask."
"But that right there was just the gunner."
"Yes, he doesn't know when to shut up."
"And this is Vask."
"Yes."
"Right," Melchoir replied, "I came over here to... Actually, I can't quite remember why."
"Very well, I will prepare my armor for further action," Vask replied through the chippy voice of his surrogate, "I will await your command."
Melchoir gave Taiaphas a quick salute. The tank commander replied by briefly dipping his vanquisher cannon.
The officer turned and walked away. There was work that needed to be done.
***
I beg to dream and differ from these hollow lies