[18]

North of Velgrad

Around 20:30

Surs tried to get the Guard flight to strike the Z-2 substation, but of course they refused. They had their own mission and they weren't going to strafe important infrastructure on the word of a low-ranking cleric ranting about unknown heretical technology. We still couldn't raise anyone else. But we did get a useful, horrifying piece of information from the Guard pilots. Velgrad wasn't the only city affected. The same sort of thing was happening in cities all over the planet. Not all of them, I prayed. But the pilots didn't know.

I ordered a stop near a civilian service station and let Surs off on the side of the causeway. We were about two kilometers from our target. Inside portable vox range. The service station would have a few land-vox units, and Surs would find an uncompromised chain of command to fight his way up in order to relay what we had learned. That was the important mission now. I even considered detailing one of us to protect him, but it was a bad idea. He would be safer without word of a Battle Sister escort flying out at the speed of rumor to the nearest enemy patrol.

The sun was down, but there was still a glow of violet in the west. We took a long route to the target. Off-road most of the way, and only getting close when there were woods between us and the substation. We disembarked 800 meters from the target, leaving the Rhino in the shelter of a low hill and a cluster of trees. It would only be a minute away if we needed it for distraction, cover, or evacuation. And I wanted surprise that could only be had on foot.

I didn't think that there were any Orks in the power station, but Sergeant Gustav would have been proud of me. I didn't intend to fight the enemy. I intended to murder him.

There were two disposable launchers in the Rhino, meant to give us light anti-armor capability in a pinch. Extra bolter ammunition, including a few precious magazines of Whisper bolts. Extra grenades. Melta-charges, meant to blow man-sized holes in half a meter of reinforced rockcrete in case we had to make a new door in a major manufactory.

We took as much as we could reconcile with stealth, and moved into the trees. Spaced out, weapons ready, alert for sentries, tripwires, mines. It was slow. I tried not to think about people dying in the city ahead of us, waiting for us to cross a few hundred meters and kill their murderers.

No sentries. No tripwires. No mines.

We crawled the last two hundred meters to the firing position I liked best. About 200 meters from the target, a slight rise for cover, dense foliage for concealment. Sparse trees ahead, and then, a hundred meters from us, a tall fence topped with coils of razor wire. Then a hundred meters in from the fence, the power substation, a vast thing, humming and buzzing with potentia. No enemies were visible, nor trucks. It wasn't the sort of place that had buildings where people could hide. I wondered if I had been mistaken.

"Right side," murmured Gwen, a few meters away. "Cameleoline?"

I looked. After a moment I could see it, a sort of ripple in the air. Big enough for several large trucks or train cars, and twice as tall. A thick power cable was visible, snaking across the ground and disappearing where the shimmer began.

That much true cameleoline would be staggeringly expensive. We can't even get it for our power-armor, and we have the financial support of the Church.

"Something like cameleoline," I said. "Heretic tech. Or xenos. Spread out. Stay low. Look for more."

Another fifteen agonizing minutes, crawling, straining our eyes through our helmet low-light. We didn't find any more ripples. We established new firing positions. The old one, and another, a hundred meters to the right, with good enfilade of the camouflaged target.

We wouldn't use the Whisper bolts. Those had been for sentries. They are as close as a bolter can come to being quiet, but they give up most of the bolter's destructive power to do it.

The first target would be the fence. We would demolish two of the posts with bolter fire. At a hundred meters, firing prone with support, it would take just a few seconds of aimed shots, working down from top to bottom. Hopefully opening a six meter breach in the barrier, when the chain-link collapsed.

At the same time, we would spend the rockets on our mysterious enemy. Over the fence, from our higher firing position.

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Then we all had targets in the power station itself. None of us knew what any of the parts did, but some were obvious enough. For example: the giant box with all the cables leading to and from it was an important thing that would make power stop flowing through those cables if you put enough explosive .75 caliber rounds through it. Under other circumstances it would be desecration and blasphemy against a sacred machine. Tonight it was the machine's time to die for the good of the Imperium.

Then, presumably, someone would try to do something about us, and we would shoot them.

If that failed, then we would fall back and rendezvous with the Rhino. Then either retreat or insert through the breach. Treads hate chain-link and razor wire, but with the section already downed, the Rhino could shove the remnants out of the way with its dozer blade. We could disembark and use the melta charges to blow up the target, using the vehicle for cover and trying not to die.

We prepped the launchers. We prayed in silence. Far off to my right, Tara and Verity would be indexing their target points on the fence, speaking or thinking their own prayers.

I broke vox silence. "Confirm set?"

Tara: "Set."

"Fire fire fire."

There was the shattering noise of bolter fire. I shouldered my launcher, sighted, and fired. A split second later, Gwen's shot flashed out. We moved away from where we had been in case we had been seen, flattened ourselves to the ground, and witnessed the result.

The fence had mostly fallen in, but not as well as I wanted. It would probably be fine with the Rhino, but infantry couldn't cross it.

The shimmer in the air burned away like thin paper around the two smoking craters left by our launchers. What was under it was almost comically mundane. Three large transport trucks, facing us. The close one was a destroyed, burning wreck, but it had had an enclosed back before our rockets hit it. The middle one had a crane instead of an enclosed back. The far one had an enclosed back.

The crane was holding something, and a thick power cable roped its way up to it.

I skipped my chosen target in the power station and turned my bolter on the thing at the top of the crane.

We fired. Sparks flew. Something in the power station caught fire, burning silver-white instead of orange with a brilliance that washed out my low-light vision and made me switch to natural light.

The fire consuming the thing on the crane was a terribly familiar shade of green. I recognized it from the year before, fighting the Eldar.

The shapes that came from the trucks, though, were human.

They had two seconds that they shouldn't have had. We had all over-committed to rapidly destroying the hardware targets. I should have had one of us wait and scan. A couple of them used their two seconds to spray hastily aimed fire in the direction of our muzzle-flashes. We were all pressed into the dirt, using the shape of the ground for cover. A few more of them tried to find cover, but we were already positioned in enfilade.

We kept shooting until movement stopped. Fifteen or twenty people got out of the trucks. Trucks are heavily built on Gaervalt, built to run for centuries without replacement panels. But the bolters still penetrated when they hit square. More than that: the trucks weren't true armored vehicles, for all that they had thick metal. They were not designed to prevent spalling. Even non-penetrating hits would crater the hull outside and spall horribly inside, sending shrapnel bouncing around inside.

We shot into the cabs and beds until people stopped coming out. All three vehicles were on fire. Billowing orange promethium flames made the grass and deadfall ignite for fifty meters in every direction. Explosives and bullets cooked off. Bodies burned. There had been women as well as men, I think. No child-sized shapes, thank the Emperor.

I caught myself staring at the flames instead of leading my team. I used the squad vox. "Reposition again." We shouldn't be where we had shot from. Shouldn't be fixated on a killed target. There could be more of them maneuvering on us through the trees. Tara confirmed the order.

I got a status report. No injuries. Enough ammunition.

I murmured a prayer and tried the command vox.

"Marisa to command."

Several seconds passed. Then Isela's voice.

"Command copies. Send."