The assault on the left breach was relatively light, considering the amalgamation of regiments attacking the right breach. But those regiments were rumoured to be green or understrength, so anyone who cared would probably assume that the forces were roughly equal, thanks to that. Felix wasn't entirely sure if it was either, or both. He also didn't care. He'd mastered not caring a while ago, and for the most part it was useful. He was still covered in some of that apathy, though, one of the negative effects of not caring. Someone he didn't recognize, someone not from the 3003rd, had gotten their head blown off by an ork potshot right in front of him. Blood and brain matter had splattered onto his flak armour, and the olive drab fabrics were browner for it. Beyond that, however, the man had seemed entirely unphased, and he didn't waste long in returning to his nap. Indeed, he'd only paused long enough to make sure there was none on his face before returning to sleep. Napping in the trenches wasn't a pleasant ordeal for most, but there were a select few who had no trouble with it. Most of them were probably in these trenches here. The Grenadiers of Lord Strathcona's Raiders numbered in the thousands, and even that was a stretch at this point, and they were all here in the trenches that stood between the leftmost breach in the wall, and the rest of the world. And they were waiting.
Most of them were fairly good at waiting. All of them were hardened veterans who'd seen at least six months of fighting in their previous campaign. And a month there was almost a year's worth of fighting experience anywhere else, so there was no doubt these men had their heads together. It was just a matter of what they did to pass the time. Most of them, the smarter ones at least, slept. The rest smoked, joked, played cards, or got up to the usual guardsmen shenanigans. A few of the luckier ones passed around a bottle. Unfortunately for all of them. The waiting was just about over.
A shout came over the vox. The Grenadiers' Sergeant Major, the most senior non-commissioned officer left in the regiment, bellowed wordlessly into his comm-bead and roused everyone to action. A deafening cry of "Three-Oh-Three!?" with extra stress on the single "oh" had everyone on their feet and replying in unison. A deafening roar of "Raiders clear the way!" preceded the remnants of the 3003rd rushing to their positions as everyone prepared to charge. Once at their assigned position, the guardsmen acted as one. Their left hands came up and pressed the respirators hanging around their necks to their faces. Then their right hands moved to the back of their heads, where they tightened the straps that would hold their respirators in place. Then they reached up and pulled the goggles sitting on top of their helmets down over their eyes, settling them in place. Only after they had completed this, did they carry on with anything else that concerned them.
"Prepare to charge!" the bellow over the vox was heard even over the thunderous activity as the soldiers prepared to rush the breach. Metallic clattering filled the air as heavy stubbers and autoguns were loaded up. Angry whines steadily increasing in pitch indicated all of the plasma and lasguns powering up. Corporal Hazard set his own weapon to its lowest power setting to maximize the number of shots he got before needing to recharge the hallowed firearm. The occasional "whoosh" made it through the background noise as flamethrowers got tested. Then the first mortars fired. A volley of recoilless rifle rounds roared to life as the bombs whistled through the air. The explosives struck various positions around the breach, taking out pre-selected points believed to house heavy weapons and trying to scatter pockets of increased resistance. And then the Sergeant Major bellowed over the radio once more. "Raiders clear the way!" He shouted with so much force that he blew out one of his temples. That didn't stop him from trying to lead the charge despite his position in the command tent. The Grenadiers' last commissar did that.
The 3003rd didn't need motivating from their leadership, however. They'd fought in worse conditions and survived. The breach didn't even look that heavily defended. Looks, as most were aware, could be deceiving, however, and once the Grenadiers were over the top, the Orks seemed to pile out of the woodwork. The Iceman, his Sergeant, and the rest of their section, were tasked with clearing out the rightmost flank of the breach. The hole had been divided up so that each section would have a strip of no-man's-land to clear for the Chimera's slated to advance behind them. Why they weren't riding in the perfectly good vehicles wasn't entirely clear, but the grunts weren't given an opportunity to argue.
Felix found himself in the lead for his section when the first stubber-coated contraption appeared up on top of the wall. The Orks looked to have strapped as many heavy stubbers as they could to some sort of aim-able frame, and despite its ramshackle appearance, it seemed to work just fine, probably thanks to the amount of "Dakka". A torrent of gunfire ripped from the monstrosity, immediately shredding most of Two Section and pinning down the rest. The Sergeant wasted no time in screaming over the deafening roar.
"Hazard! Hazard! Hazard! Down!" he bellowed, knife-handing each soldier in turn. The first two Hazards were unrelated, and the third was simply nicknamed "Hazard" because he liked to tinker with his flamethrower more than was considered safe. Felix dropped down into the indicated foxhole, dug by a mortar, with his impromptu companions, and while the second Corporal Hazard laid down some "suppressing" fire with his lasgun, the third Hazard whipped out his e-tool and started digging in the mud like he'd found treasure.
Refusing to concern himself with such shenanigans, Iceman set his plasma gun to "Maximal" and waited for it to charge. When the whine got so high in pitch that he couldn't hear it any more, he knew it was ready. The first blast shredded the Ork piloting the stubber-covered gun emplacement, and most of the guns on it to boot. That didn't stop another Ork from stepping up to keep the tracer-show going, however, and the half-dozen guns still capable of working kept on chugging. At least until a second gout of overcharged plasma put a stop to them and their new pilot. By then the Hazard digging in the mud had unearthed an actual treasure. An incredibly muddy, but still functioning heavy stubber, and at least one full box of ammunition.
"Get that running soldier! If we win this fight, you're getting promoted!" the Sergeant didn't make it sound like that was a good thing, but no one had time to dwell on it. The second Hazard jumped over to load for his fireteam partner, and the Iceman charged up his plasma gun again. There were half a dozen more gun emplacements at least, and they were all raking the Raiders with crippling torrents of gunfire. The rockets and mortars flying both directions weren't helping, either.
The rest of Three Section hadn't made it much further before digging into another pair of improvised foxholes. They weren't lucky enough to find a heavy stubber, but the weight of auto- and las-fire they put down was almost as good. Slogging things out at relatively short range was the sort of thing the Grenadiers were excellent at, and if they weren't being hit from above so viciously, they might have stood a chance to win the breach all by themselves, assuming they were given enough time and ammunition. Of course, that wasn't the plan. The plan was to clear the way and then bolster a Chimera-based assault. And so far, they hadn't done much clearing. Not that Orks were smart enough to plant tank traps or anti-armour mines. Even the ones that were had been picked off from the trenches.
The only thing the Grenadiers had accomplished that actually was part of their mission, was flushing out the rocket and mortar positions being used by the Orks. They'd even managed to destroy some of them by the time the Chimeras finally rolled up. The steel beasts were immune to the surprisingly erratic gunfire of the Orks, and the 3003rd wasted no time in piling behind them. The Cadians provided excellent cover, and only two of their vehicles ate it before they rolled to a halt. It was a terrible idea, but understandably, none of the drivers wanted to get any closer. Their guns were all in range and it was definitely safest to just sit here and blaze away at the greenskin horde. And that was why they had to charge.
"Grenadiers!" the shout over every vox-casting device owned by the Raiders was audible even over the now-much-louder roar of combat, and the Sergeant Major had blown out his other temple. Every single Grenadier paused what they were doing, checked that they were in throwing range, and then produced a frag grenade, "Attaaack!" the scream sent every single member of the 3003rd into action. A perfect volley of mortar bombs and recoilless rifle fire raked the Ork positions and those in throwing range pelted the greenskin positions with a synchronized volley of fragmentation grenades. Those lucky enough to be toting the Regiment's automatic grenade launchers emptied their weapons as fast as possible, and the rain of explosive death seemed perfect. It wasn't, of course, but the shock-and-awe was, at the very least, palpable, and it sent just about everyone into motion. The Grenadiers charged first, despite having taken cover behind the Cadian's vehicles, but the 88th didn't seem far behind, their Chimeras taking up the rear to provide covering fire while the 3003rd's heavy weapons teams redeployed closer to the breach with new arcs of fire.
Felix and his compatriots had crept up the right side with a pair of Chimeras, and he was once more leading the charge temporarily, blazing away with his plasma gun on the lowest setting until it screamed at him. He was pretty sure it was actually shrieking in binary, but he didn't speak the language, and hadn't risked asking any representatives of the Mechanicum. All he knew, was that it needed to be given a rest now. Someone with normal hands would have had to drop it or face vicious burns. He just held it away from his body and dropped behind a pile of rubble while it cooled down. He shuddered as he waited, having caught a glimpse of the tide of greenskins beyond the breach. Their "Shock and Awe" hadn't even phased the now-Christmas-coloured horde. There were so many Orks that even if they won this engagement, they wouldn't be able to capitalize on it, because they would be out of ammunition.
And of course, the Orks picked now to come boiling out of the breach. Just as the commissar, who seemed to have taken over for the Sergeant Major, came shouting over the vox-waves. His voice was notably higher pitched, and had more of a whip-like crack to it, than the bass-y Sergeant Major, but it was no less effective. "Gentlemen! Fix bayonets!" it was not a welcome order, but it was one they'd all survived at least once before. Felix just wished he had something to fix his bayonet to. The tech-priests got awfully rowdy when he suggested welding a bayonet lug to his plasma gun. Instead, he fiddled with the power settings on his plasma gun as if that would help it cool down faster. He was just in time to look up and see an Ork cresting the mound of rubble he was hiding behind. It was more surprised to see him, than he was to see it, and his burst of plasma ripped through its head before the hulking beast could do anything. It slumped to the ground, giving the rubble some more substance. Of course, that was largely moot now, since there were so many more Orks behind the first, but it at least slowed the next one down a little.
Iceman set his primary weapon back to "maximal" now that he knew it was cool, and whipped out his laspistol. It worked fairly well as long as he aimed for the eyes or throat, though it wasn't something to be relied on, as his supervisor was demonstrating. The Sergeant next to him was screaming largely unintelligible orders and revving his chainsword between hacking at increasingly-less-surprised Orks. Thankfully Felix was able to change that with an overcharged bolt of plasma that tore through a whole swathe of greenskins. He just wished he could have made it wider. It did have the desired effect of re-surprising them, though, and at least for a brief moment, they got a little easier to kill. Lucky for all of them, "Hazard" had finally gotten his head out of his ass, and the half-mad guardsman let rip with a delightfully toasty deluge of fiery death. He was too late to save almost half the section, but it was better than nothing. A few more well-timed bursts of flame, and they seemed to be making some kind of progress. If nothing else, they would have their own little mound of crispy critters to fight from. They just had to hope that everyone else was meeting similar success, so they could actually get through the breach, and maybe win the battle before they all died and got replaced by more valuable troops. Of course, no one would be getting anywhere if they couldn't hold on long enough for the heavy weapons teams to redeploy and provide more much-needed fire-support...
