Gunships circled and swooped through the night sky, pounding Giant’s Shoulder with pulse rounds, missiles and bomblets. The promontory had become a field of fire yet the combat mechs were still holding out, replying with a variety of ranged weapons, while the defence battery gave back as good as it was getting. Some five hundred metres above the action, veiled by the pouring rain, another gunship maintained a holding pattern: from inside the main passenger compartment, Utavess Kuros stared down with exhilarated fascination and a sense of approaching triumph. How the game had shifted! Just hours ago he was nought but a mind trapped in his own head, imprisoned and humiliated by a pair of traitorous machine intelligences. Now he was leading the assault to regain possession of the ancient Forerunner artefact while in near space an immense Hegemony armada was poised to crush a pitiful, Imisil-led alliance of rebel scum who had thought to defy the greatest civilisation in half the galaxy!
Below, the Brolturan troops had established a beachhead on a rocky outcrop on the promontory’s northern edge while a heavy-weapons section had set up an elevated fire point on the ridge just to the west. Together they were creating a murderous crossfire that hammered and ripped up any mechs straying out of cover. The main facility’s primary tracking sensors had already been put out of commission by three aerial jump teams, two of them fighting off combat mechs while the third set charges around the armoured sensor cluster. All of the five-man teams had died, shot or clawed to pieces, but not before the sensors were wrecked. Which forced the battery systems to rely on secondary short-range detectors that were more easily fooled by Brolturan countermeasures.
As well as the naked eye, Kuros was observing the ongoing assault on a wide holoplane hanging down over the strategic overview table. An infrared subframe showed the hotspots of engaged units, with tags distinguishing between body heat and mech cooling manifolds. Another subframe was a more symbolic representation, revealing weapon types, rates of fire, hit accuracy percentages, and casualties. Yet another was an enhanced composite, showing the whole of the top of Giant’s Shoulder in pale blue-grey with the glare of the defence floods filtered out. The rain was like a succession of ghostly sheets trailing and swirling across.
An auxiliary holopanel provided updates and occasional vid-reports from the other ambushes taking place. Becker’s strike against Tusk Mountain had successfully sabotaged the insurgents’ preparations so there would be no interference from that direction. Vashutkin’s operation to prevent bands of Spiralists from reaching the northern ridges had not been as successful–one of his three flyers had been shot down by a shoulder-launched missile, forcing him to land on the northern ridge and set up defensive positions.
The only thing missing was any confirmation of the presence of the mechs’ controlling intelligence, this entity known as the Legion Knight. But detailed scans had turned up no evidence to corroborate it–whoever was directing the combat mechs had to be holed up in the fortified building.
Once we’ve cut off the legs and the hands, then we’ll deal with the poisonous head.
Even before he completed the thought, a hot bright explosion split the night as a missile or an energy bolt finally reached the battery’s innards. That first eruption was followed by two larger ones as the ammunition detonated. Chunks of burning wreckage flew in all directions, some pieces falling over the edge of the promontory in fiery groundward arcs. Kuros allowed himself a wide and satisfied grin before telling the attendant flight officer, ‘Down–have the pilot take us closer, within safety margins.’
Moments later the gunship dropped to 200 metres above the war-torn promontory. At that height the craft began to attract some enemy fire but it seemed half-hearted and uncoordinated. A mixture of explosive, frag and EMP missiles were falling among the mechs with greater accuracy now and the infrared view was showing that their numbers were down to less than a score.
Sensing victory, Kuros ordered his officers to prepare for a final push. Ground units moved up to forward positions on the promontory, now plunged into gloom, while the other gunships and flyers circled lower in the unceasing rain. Jump teams landed on the fortification unimpeded and from the balconies opened fire on the last defending mechs. Kuros smiled and ordered his gunship closer to the fortified facility, to hover above it. He could already envisage the moment when he stepped down onto the paved area before the entrance.
Alerts blinked on the enhanced overview–the combat mechs were on the move. In unison they were leaping out from behind armoured shelters and shielding to charge straight towards the rear of the promontory. The troops dug in there opened fire, pouring a stream of energy bolts and HE rounds into the oncoming machines, aided by airborne units and the heavy-weapon crews on the ridge. Almost half of the mechs were brought down or destroyed outright by the time the survivors reached the Brolturan positions… which they either leaped over or swerved around, their metal carapaces gleaming in galloping precision, their taloned limbs pounding the ground, ignoring the troops as they dashed up the rocky slope, heading north.
Kuros watched the frantic retreat with an amused contempt. Either some consensus or collective self-preservation had been triggered or their master had ordered them to flee, confident that the facility fortifications would foil any assault. Later, once the Hegemony had fully tightened its grip on this world, he would have them all hunted down…
More alerts appeared, sidebar sensor displays tracking a spectrum of other variables. They indicated energy spikes at a number of locations inside Giant’s Shoulder, running in a line from the tapered sea-facing point westwards towards the ridge at the rear.
Suddenly more spikes appeared, this time from either flank of the promontory, and he heard a sequence of thunderous cracks. An awful suspicion formed in his mind and he was about to order the gunship to gain height when the sensors picked up another big energy spike from the rear, close to the ridge… and on the holopanel he saw the ground there explode upwards, followed by another explosion and another, immense eruptions of rock and dirt, as if the rocky massif was being hammered from beneath by something trying to escape. The force of the multiple blasts was sending stone debris flying high. Kuros felt the acceleration as the pilot banked the gunship away with the jets opened to full thrust, but it was too late. Massive chunks and splinters of rock rose out of the growing clouds and smashed into the gunship.
Most of the right-side suspensors were crushed immediately. The thrusters shrieked as they chewed themselves into wreckage. The gunship wheeled away, plunging towards the hilly woods and fields below, and the last thing Kuros saw on the holopanel was Giant’s Shoulder collapsing amid billows of dust.