When the second god machine appeared, we were given the code
word to break in to small groups and break for the city. All of the gun pits and bunkers were
connected by buried comms cable. Of
course some would have been cut in the fighting I suppose, but for most of the
time it didn’t seem like a big thing, at least to us.
We’d spent a lot of time bored, we were cold, wet and hungry
but when you’re in a battle, all of that goes out of the window. The
battle lasted four days for us, we fired everything we had and then leftovers
from the forward units were sent back out to get us shells from destroyed
positions further forward. When
casualties came through we took their winter coats. Well, they were going to heated underground
hospitals, weren’t they ? Only I suppose
that there was no fuel and therefore no heating, so I don’t suppose it did the
casualties any good at all. Some guys
took the boots off of casualties who had boots in better condition. We were still fighting, so we thought we deserved
to keep the decent kit, that’s alright innit ?
Over the course of the action we fired hundreds of fire
missions, by the end of the second day we’d sent over a thousand shells up the
tubes and they were so worn that we knew we weren’t really shooting
straight. But I suppose it didn’t really
matter. The trunions were close to
collapse and there was some defect which developed in the breach and ate
through our stock of obturation rings.
Stuff that’d be once a year in peacetime came monthly at the beginning
of the war, then it spend up to weekly and by the time we’d fallen back to Last
Base West, it was almost a full refurb daily, we were out of everything, tools,
spares, trained men, it was hard.
And it wasn’t just the guns which were worn out, we were
too. And tired, so tired. Tired of killing and death, of cold and
hunger, of fear and pain, tired of being tired.
Anyway, there’s eight gun numbers in an earthshaker crew. Over the three years me an’ Dreas had seen
fourteen other crew members come and go, mostly to Thunderbolts and shell
shock, six of them during this last battle. We ended up with a couple of old
men, militia with basic rifle training; they were useless on the gun position,
they didn’t have the strength to do their tasks so they just took up space and
ate food. I can’t remember their
names.
We used to learn them, out on the
prairie, the names of the replacements.
I could tell you the names of half a dozen killed last year and how they
died. Where they died.
I couldn’t tell you about the old men.
So when the God Machines attacked we fired one last barrage;
more or less direct fire, all six tubes at once at the big one with the missile
launcher on her shoulders. It lit up so
bright we thought it’d been blown back to the godamn Emperor. But when the flash cleared, it was still
there. We hadn't even scratched the paint. And then the battery was rolled up from the left by one of those dog headed hunting ones. It was firing at some poor bugger somewhere else, It
just crushed all our guns, deliberately, one at time. It didn’t really kick or stomp, it just sort
of pushed them over with a giant toe and then trod on the gun, settling its
weight before taking the next step.
Six steps, six earthshakers trampled into the dirt. It was weirdly swift, yet the God Machine
was obviously taking its time so’s not to fall over.
Well, that was the end of the Battalion, from talk in the tunnels when we escaped, they came up specifically looking for the Heavy Artillery Battalions first. After that me an' Dreas were mixed in with all the others, a giant pot of the entire PDF. Knowing something shite is going to happen never makes it easier, does it ? Anyway the God Machines were followed up by those brown coated skull faced psychos.
We ran back and ended up in a mortar pit. We fired the rest of the bombs in the general
direction of the skull fefthers.
Three. There were three bombs
left. The brown coated fefthers were
close on the heels of the God Machines; hordes of them. It was obviously over. We checked our rifles and prepared our-selves,
starting to trade shots with the fefthers as they came closer.
Anyway, we saw another one of the bigger God Machines arrive
and that’s when the call came out to evacuate.
We went down a just-too-damn-short-to-walk-in tunnel from a pill box
just behind the mortar pits, back to a large revetment with an already
destroyed wyvern battery in it. Some
sort of energy weapon I reckon. It must have been huge, two of the tracks were vapourised, the rest were just bits. But one of the hulks had saved the entrance to the next tunnel.
The next tunnel was bigger, you could have
driven a tank down it. We were crushed
as went down but it opened out into one of the underground vehicle stores and
there were people there who organised all of us into packets who were then sent
down the railway to the city.
The trains weren’t running, the power had ended months
before. We marched in good order down
the tunnels, with the packets at the other end being sent to different places
in the city. I’ve no idea how many made it
out, but it didn’t seem enough to continue the fight and then it also seemed
too many when it came to re-arming and getting enough to eat. Even after Last Base West, here in the city
there are more arms caches waiting for us.
And food, still. It’s only freeze
dried Grox Stew, but it’s hot and there’s plenty of it.
So now with my new comrades, I’ve got a two march through my
once beautiful city. Abell, where I was
brought up is in the east and thankfully that’s where I’m going. I know it well and so I’ve been put in charge
of this group. There’s only twenty of
us, which is not enough to secure the district, but I’ve been given the
locations and access codes for another two caches, so we’ll see how it
goes. We’ve got a few days, so it’s time
to think about IEDs an’ stuff.
