* * * 

Continued from Part 1 . . .

Tomas stood on the ramparts with second squad, deployed about 20 meters from the front gates. To his right, a heavy bolter team of two men were loading an ammo belt into the side of the large gun.

“There’s a lot of bugs out there.”

The comment came from a grizzled, white-haired old man to his left. The man looked too old to fight, but he held his auto-gun steady enough.

“I looked at the gun’s operating manual,” Tomas said. “It’s an older model—that’s what they gave out to the militias. But it fires a .998-caliber round, and it fires at 400 rounds per minute. That should keep the xenos from the walls.”

The old man grunted. “Four hundred rounds a minute. That’s 4,000 rounds in 10 minutes. Do we have 4,000 rounds?”

Tomas didn’t say anything. He didn’t know the answer.

 * * * 

The horde of xenos was larger than Mattius had hoped. He estimated two or three thousand. That was a lot to handle for his small army of 100.

He’d had stakes driven into the ground at the effective range of his various weapons. When the xenos reached the stake at 2,000 meters out, he ordered the heavy bolters to open fire. The Chimera, armed with a multi-laser and heavy bolter, also began firing.

The first shots fell short, the gunners still new to their jobs. But it took only a moment for them to adjust their aim . . . or, Mattius thought, the xenos had simply raced forward into the poorly aimed fire.

“Fire in bursts,” he yelled. “Aim at what you’re shooting at.”

There were some scattered cheers as the men saw aliens fall to the hail of shells pounding into the horde.

Scores of xenos were being slaughtered, yet the xenos kept coming, never slowing, never seeming to acknowledge the losses they were taking.

They were getting closer.

* * *

The school principal gave the order. “Bolt the doors. Take your positions at the windows.”

Alina was shaking as she picked up her autopistol and took a place at a window. Looking out, she could see the town gates at the end of the street. Somewhere out there was her husband. Alone, as she was.

How could this be happening? she thought. Her ancestors of centuries back had fled the Imperium’s autocratic government to find a home among the stars. For generations, her family had known peace. Their lives had been hard, but they weren’t burdened by onerous tithes or by enlistment quotas that sent too many fathers and sons to fight across the galaxy, never to see their families again.

Alina had thought herself safe on Canopus. The threat of xenos, heretics, and monsters were just fairy tales, a cruel lie to convince people that their lives depended on the Imperium’s harsh rule.

Now she wondered. Perhaps the galaxy was as horrible as the Imperium had said.

* * *

Hundreds of xenos were dead, yet thousands still approached. The men on the ramparts waited impatiently for the order to open fire, but Mattius knew his men didn’t have the training to hit anything at longer ranges. They’d just waste ammo.

He waited until the xenos reached the 300-meter stake to give the order.

Every autogun and a handful of lasguns opened up on the xenos, adding their fire to that of the heavy bolters. The xenos began to fall in even greater numbers, their bodies slamming hard to the ground and then being trampled by the xenos behind them that rushed forward to fill the gaps.

Mattius began to feel some hope until the xenos with some form of firearms opened fire. Some shots  hit the wall below him, and as he looked, he was horrified to see the splatter of writhing worms, some crushed, some still moving.

A man screamed to his left. He’d been hit, and Mattius could see a bloody wound in the man’s shoulder, with a mass of worms digging deeper into him. “Get them out!” the man screamed. “Get it out!”

The man fell, his muscles flailing for a moment, then he lay silent.

“They’re firing worms at us?” Domoro asked, looking at the fallen man with horror. “Their ammo eats us?

Many of the men on the wall forgot about the xenos with the claws and turned their fire on the shooting bugs. No order was given. The horror of the xenos’ flesh-boring ammunition was instinctive, clearly the greatest threat in most men’s minds. 

* * *

Tomas had only been firing for a few minutes, and already he was tired. The noise, the smoke, and the men screaming and falling by the wayside was too much.

The bugs in front of him suddenly turned. It seemed as if every bug was heading for the same section of wall. And the lead bugs were now so close that the heavy bolters could not depress their barrels to fire on the threat.

“A grenade,” someone shouted. “Someone throw a grenade.”

Tomas had a grenade. He took it off his belt, judged his target, pulled the pin, and threw.

His grenade landed about two meters behind the big bugs, but when it detonated, it took out at least a dozen of the xenos. 

A moment later, he felt the ramparts shake. The bugs were at the wall. This bunch had massive, scythe-like talons, and when they hit the wall, the talons made deep rents in the plasteel.

If they weren’t stopped, they’d be through the walls in minutes.

Click here to read the conclusion of this narrative battle report.

—

The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our wargaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.