He heard the clang of the fist-sized rounds hitting the armour of the tank. He felt the vibrations through the metal hull.

Knoll was not far behind. Yedrin was up in a moment, dashed forwards. He fell in behind another tank. He kept so close to it the exhausts splattered his cheeks with the hot gritty fumes.

Yedrin couldn’t see where Blanchez’s squad were. Where she had been were now just bodies. For a moment it seemed everyone was dead, except for Commissar Knoll, pacing behind.

He followed the Hellhound a hundred yards up the beach before it hit a tank trap and jammed solid. Its tracks spun as the commander tried to push forward, and then tried to reverse, and then desperately spun each of the tracks in turn.

The whole attack had now broken down into small squads and the dead were littered all the way back to the shore, where bodies lapped back and forth in the surf.

A missile streaked towards the Hellhound he was sheltering behind. It exploded against the front armour, spraying the sand with shrapnel but failing to penetrate. A second missile arced towards them, hit the turret and ricocheted up into the air.

Long bursts of hard rounds raked the sand about him, while above his head a blizzard of las-bolts was raging.

Yedrin paused for a moment. He could not stop. He glanced round, hoping to see Knoll lying dead, but the commissar was coming relentlessly onwards.

‘We’ve got to keep moving!’ Yedrin shouted.

The others with him nodded. They did not want to die.

‘I’m with you,’ Trooper Dargin said. He had been issued with a meltagun. He held it like an heirloom. ‘Just get me close enough,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll fry them!’

Another rocket roared overhead. The tank crew tried to go backwards. Its tracks spun in the loose stones and threatened to run them all down.

‘Let’s go!’ Yedrin shouted, and sprinted round the side of the tank. The beach levelled out about fifty yards before them, then sloped steeply up in sandy banks. The trenches were dug into these. They could see the line of them, just below the ridge, by the flash of lasrifles.

To his amazement he made twenty yards. It seemed impossible that no one had shot him. He flung himself down. Dargin and Noord were still with him.

Yedrin paused for a moment, then he was up again. He reached the first dunes and threw himself to the ground to fit his bayonet. Of the fifty troopers who had boarded his Gorgon, there could be no more than fifteen left. He looked back. The tank they had sheltered behind was burning. From the flames he could see a long trail of dead bodies.

Above him, on the crest of the headland was a network of pillboxes, tank turrets set into the rock, and communication trenches. Every minute, the gunners raked the dune they were sheltering behind.