above.
Around each turret, a cluster of soldiers stood ready – loaders, sighters, vox-officers, adjutants, all ready for the order.
‘Wall-guns,’ Nero voxed to Grimaldus. ‘Wall-guns, now.’
Grimaldus sliced the air with his blazing maul, screaming a single word.
‘Fire!’
Craters appeared in the enemy horde. Huge explosions of dirt, scrap metal, bodies and gore erupted from the army. With the numbers facing them, the gunners on Helsreach’s walls couldn’t miss.
Thousands died in the first barrage. Thousands more came on.
‘Reload!’ a lone figure, armoured in black, shouted into the vox.
The walls themselves shook again, tremors pulsing through the rockcrete as the second volley fired. And the third. And the fourth. In a sane army, the annihilation inflicted upon them would be catastrophic. Entire legions would be breaking and running in fear.
The aliens, blood-maddened and howling their throaty war cries, didn’t even slow down. They ignored their dead, trampled their wounded, and crashed against the towering walls like a peal of thunder.
With nothing capable of breaching the metres-thick sealed gates in the northern wall, the berserk aliens began to climb.
I have always believed there is something beautiful in the very first moments of a battle. Here are the moments of highest emotion; the fear of mortal men, the frustrated bloodlust and screaming overconfidence of mankind’s enemies. In the moments when a battle is joined, the purity of the human species is first revealed to the foe.
In organised union, the hundreds of Steel Legion soldiers step forward. They move like different limbs of the same being. Like a reflection stretching into infinity, every man and woman down the line aims their lasguns over the wall, down at the greenskins howling and clambering. The aliens drag themselves up by their own claws; they climb on ladders and poles; they boost up on the whining thrusters of jump-packs.
And all of it so delightfully futile.
The crack! of thousands of lasguns discharging in a chorus is a strangely evocative song. It sings of discipline, defiance, strength and courage. More than that, it’s a furious response – the first time the defenders can vent their rage at the invaders. Every soldier in the line squeezes their triggers, letting their lasrifles shout for them, spitting death down at the foe. Las-bolts tear into green flesh, ripping orks open, throwing them to the ground far below to be pulped under the boots of their kin.
Barasath’s fighters streak overhead, their weapons still stuttering into the massed horde. Their targets have changed – more often than not, they rain their viciousness upon the artillery tanks that were unloaded last from the landers, and are only now catching up to the back to the besieging army.
I watch as the first of our fighters is brought down. Anti-air fire rattles up from a junked Hydra, its two remaining turrets tracking a group of Lightnings. The explosion is almost ignorable – a crumpled pop of fuel tanks detonating, and the protests of engines as the fighter spirals down.
It impacts in a burning wreck, wings shorn off, spinning and crashing through the ranks of the enemy. Some might consider it tragic that the pilot likely killed more of the enemy with his death than he did in life. I care only that more of the invaders are dead.
The first of the enemy to gain the ramparts does so alone. A hundred metres and more down the wall, a lone ork crashes down with his back-mounted propulsion pack streaming smoky fire. The others that were with him are either dead or dying, falling from their ascent as their bodies and thruster fuel tanks are riddled with las-fire. The one alien that touches down on the wall lasts less than a heartbeat. The creature is bayoneted in the throat, the eye, the chest and both legs by half a dozen soldiers, and their rifles blast the beast back over the edge.
First blood to Helsreach.
The minutes became hours.
The orks
Around each turret, a cluster of soldiers stood ready – loaders, sighters, vox-officers, adjutants, all ready for the order.
‘Wall-guns,’ Nero voxed to Grimaldus. ‘Wall-guns, now.’
Grimaldus sliced the air with his blazing maul, screaming a single word.
‘Fire!’
Craters appeared in the enemy horde. Huge explosions of dirt, scrap metal, bodies and gore erupted from the army. With the numbers facing them, the gunners on Helsreach’s walls couldn’t miss.
Thousands died in the first barrage. Thousands more came on.
‘Reload!’ a lone figure, armoured in black, shouted into the vox.
The walls themselves shook again, tremors pulsing through the rockcrete as the second volley fired. And the third. And the fourth. In a sane army, the annihilation inflicted upon them would be catastrophic. Entire legions would be breaking and running in fear.
The aliens, blood-maddened and howling their throaty war cries, didn’t even slow down. They ignored their dead, trampled their wounded, and crashed against the towering walls like a peal of thunder.
With nothing capable of breaching the metres-thick sealed gates in the northern wall, the berserk aliens began to climb.
I have always believed there is something beautiful in the very first moments of a battle. Here are the moments of highest emotion; the fear of mortal men, the frustrated bloodlust and screaming overconfidence of mankind’s enemies. In the moments when a battle is joined, the purity of the human species is first revealed to the foe.
In organised union, the hundreds of Steel Legion soldiers step forward. They move like different limbs of the same being. Like a reflection stretching into infinity, every man and woman down the line aims their lasguns over the wall, down at the greenskins howling and clambering. The aliens drag themselves up by their own claws; they climb on ladders and poles; they boost up on the whining thrusters of jump-packs.
And all of it so delightfully futile.
The crack! of thousands of lasguns discharging in a chorus is a strangely evocative song. It sings of discipline, defiance, strength and courage. More than that, it’s a furious response – the first time the defenders can vent their rage at the invaders. Every soldier in the line squeezes their triggers, letting their lasrifles shout for them, spitting death down at the foe. Las-bolts tear into green flesh, ripping orks open, throwing them to the ground far below to be pulped under the boots of their kin.
Barasath’s fighters streak overhead, their weapons still stuttering into the massed horde. Their targets have changed – more often than not, they rain their viciousness upon the artillery tanks that were unloaded last from the landers, and are only now catching up to the back to the besieging army.
I watch as the first of our fighters is brought down. Anti-air fire rattles up from a junked Hydra, its two remaining turrets tracking a group of Lightnings. The explosion is almost ignorable – a crumpled pop of fuel tanks detonating, and the protests of engines as the fighter spirals down.
It impacts in a burning wreck, wings shorn off, spinning and crashing through the ranks of the enemy. Some might consider it tragic that the pilot likely killed more of the enemy with his death than he did in life. I care only that more of the invaders are dead.
The first of the enemy to gain the ramparts does so alone. A hundred metres and more down the wall, a lone ork crashes down with his back-mounted propulsion pack streaming smoky fire. The others that were with him are either dead or dying, falling from their ascent as their bodies and thruster fuel tanks are riddled with las-fire. The one alien that touches down on the wall lasts less than a heartbeat. The creature is bayoneted in the throat, the eye, the chest and both legs by half a dozen soldiers, and their rifles blast the beast back over the edge.
First blood to Helsreach.
The minutes became hours.
The orks
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