“Lieutenant van Droi calling for you on the vox, sir. He and his 10th Company are heading towards our position with the remnants of Colonel Stromm’s 98th Mechanised Infantry Regiment. The major general thought you would want to know, sir.”
Vinnemann clapped his hands together.
“Did you hear that, Alex?” he asked his adjutant. The young man nodded, smiling. Vinnemann barked out a laugh. “Fine officer, that van Droi. Fine officer! I knew he’d get his boys through. Come on, you lot. We must welcome them!” He turned to the runner. “Which direction are they approaching from, son?”
“From the south-east, sir,” replied the young man. He, too, was smiling, infected by the colonel’s open joy.
“They’re about two hours out. They’ll enter through the south gates. The Sentinel pilots who picked up their transmissions are guiding them in.”
“Outstanding,” said Vinnemann. He grasped the head of his cane and struggled to his feet, wincing for a moment with the pain that shot through his back. It would soon be time for more blasted injections, but he wouldn’t let the thought of that spoil this wonderful moment. His 10th Company had survived. Gossefried’s Gunheads were returning to the fold. Say what you liked about them — and certain officers had plenty to say — they were a bloody resilient lot.
When General deViers ordered Vinnemann’s regiment east to secure The Fortress of Arrogance at last, every single one of his companies would be accounted for. Rolling Thunder would be deploying in full strength. It would do wonders for the regiment’s morale.
From his cupola, Wulfe saw the walls of the base appear through the dusty pink haze in the distance. They rose from atop a rocky mound with a gentle, easy gradient on one side, and they were topped with watchtowers and weapons batteries. He could see long barrels protruding from the old-fashioned crenellations, even at this distance. Home at last, he thought, for home, to him, was with the rest of the regiment. Sure, there was competition, even the odd bitter rivalry, between the companies of the 81st. What regiment didn’t endure such things? But they were all tankers together in the end, and all of them were Cadians, and therefore brothers when it came to the fight for mankind’s survival. It would be good to see old Vinnemann again, to know that the man was still up front, leading as few other officers of his rank dared to do. Wulfe was surprised at how much that thought suddenly meant to him. Lieutenant van Droi was a great man and company commander in own right — he was direct, honest and approachable, though he could be bastard hard at times — but Vinnemann was practically a legend among his men. His refusal to lie down and die when other men would certainly have done so epitomised the unrelenting spirit that Rolling Thunder was famous for.
“Can’t believe we made it back to the rest of the pack,” muttered Holtz over the intercom. “Never thought we’d live to see this.”
“Can’t wait to sleep in a proper bunk again,” said Siegler.
Metzger was typically silent, concentrating on keeping Last Rites II in formation behind the tank in front as the walls of Balkar loomed ever larger in his vision slit.
“Do you think they’ll have water and food waiting for us, sarge?” Siegler asked.
“They had bloody well better,” griped Holtz. “I’ve been running on fumes for the last three days. I’ll die if I have to drink recycled piss again. Fit to collapse, I am. Someone’ll have to help me out of the hatch.”
“I’m sure the Officio Logistica has taken our supply needs into consideration,” said Wulfe. “Balkar is the launching point for the general’s big gambit, right? He won’t have left anything to chance. First thing I’ll do after we dismount is find the mess hall. I’ll bloody well faint if they try to debrief me first.”
The others laughed at that. Even Metzger. No one would be trying to debrief him. Only the tank commanders would have to deal with that, and, as far as fainting was concerned, they all knew that their sergeant had only collapsed once in his life — that day so many years ago when an ork had cut his throat. Blood loss had knocked him unconscious, but the medic that had leapt onto the tank’s turret to save him had got there just in time. That very medic, Wulfe later found out, had died a few days later, captured in a raid and tortured to death in a greenskin camp. A mop-up detail had found his body hanging from a makeshift gibbet, hands, feet and other parts lopped off. He had been taken while trying to save a wounded trooper on open ground.
Wulfe was still about the business of avenging him, and only death would ever make him stop. In that sense, he felt a great closeness with Colonel Vinnemann, though he had only ever spoken to the man twice in person. Vinnemann’s never-ending quest to avenge his wife was well known.
Look at what he endures to pursue it, thought Wulfe, having heard stories of the endless pain the colonel suffered.
As the tanks and halftracks got closer and closer to Balkar, a strange noise began to cut into Wulfe’s uplifted mood. It came from the rear of his tank, and Wulfe knew at once that something had gone wrong. Metzger reported over the intercom a moment later that the engine’s temperature was increasing rapidly. Wulfe checked the rear vision blocks and saw thick black smoke pouring out of the back of his tank from beneath the metal engine covers.
“The blasted radiator has packed in,” he told his crew. “Metzger, warp damn it, can we at least make it inside the gates? Tell me we can!”
Before the driver could answer, Last Rites II gave a great shudder and stopped dead in her tracks. Wulfe cursed so long and loud that he almost went hoarse. He watched the other vehicles move up from behind, come abreast of him, and then overtake. New Champion of Cerbera passed within a metre on the right. The vox board started blinking. Wulfe, thinking it must be van Droi, immediately opened the link.
“Oh dear, oh dear, sergeant,” said a smug voice. “Looks like you’ve pushed the old girl too hard at last. Time she was put out to pasture, don’t you think?”
“What the frak do you want, Lenck?” Wulfe growled back. “Just calling to gloat? Frivolous use of vox-communications during an operation… that’s a punishable offence. Old Crusher would love to hear about that.”
“Get over yourself, sergeant. I was just voxing to see if you and your men would like a lift into base. There’s room on the track-guards. Can’t have you sitting out here like idiots, embarrassing the lieutenant and the rest of the company like that.”
Wulfe gritted his teeth. He would rather dance naked at the general’s next banquet than let that weasel-faced son-of-a-bitch gloat over this for the rest of his hopefully short life. Last Rites II had been running smooth ever since they had left the crashed drop-ship. All the other tanks — all of them — had needed to stop sooner or later for field repairs, but not her.
So why in the warp had she chosen now to break down?
Wulfe smacked a fist against the inside of her turret and said, “Damn it, girl. Couldn’t you have waited a few more kilometres?” Then he hit the transmit stud and said to Lenck, “Move on, corporal, before my gunner blows you into the hereafter.”
“Such hostility, sergeant. Save it for the greenskins, why don’t you? New Champion is moving on. Maybe we’ll see you in the mess hall. We’ll try to leave some food for you, but no promises. Lenck, out.”
Wulfe cut the link and roared with frustration in his turret. “This stupid old bucket! She couldn’t have picked a worse time! We’ll be the laughing stock of the whole damned base.”
“Yes she could,” said Metzger. His voice was almost a growl.
“What?” said Wulfe. It was rare for Metzger to speak up, but it was the confrontational tone of his voice that really caught Wulfe by surprise.
“She could have picked a far worse time to give out on us, and you bloody know it, sarge. In fact, this old girl has lasted out longer than we had any right to ask. She’s the last crate in the whole damned company to give out, and she waited right up until now, the safest moment since we crashed on this rock. So, I don’t give a five-copper back-alley frak whether we’re a laughing s
tock or not, I’m bloody glad to be her driver. And I reckon you ought to shake yourself.” Wulfe was stunned.
“Yeah, I think so, too!” said Siegler with a firm nod of his head. Wulfe looked at Holtz. “Well?”
Holtz scratched his chin. “Three against one. I wouldn’t change her for any other crate in the company, and that includes the lieutenant’s Vanquisher. I can’t think of any other way to put it, sarge: they just don’t make them like this anymore. She ain’t no beauty, but she’ll do for me.”
Wulfe leaned back against the turret wall, looking at both of the crewmen who shared the tiny space with him. Everyone on this crew had served in Wulfe’s previous tank, though Metzger had only rolled out with her once before they’d had to abandon her. The first Last Rites had been something special, at least in Wulfe’s eyes. It was easy to get attached to a machine that had saved your life so many times. Only her speed had let her down on that final day, when the clock was against her, and they had been forced to leave her behind. Wulfe realised now that his close affinity with the original Last Rites had blinded him to the worth of her replacement. Last Rites II might look like hell, but she was tougher than old boots. She had got them this far.
“Seems like this old girl has found a few fans,” he said, “and I’ve been a bit unfair.”
“Just a bit, sarge,” said Siegler. Of the four-man crew, he had served with Wulfe the longest and the trust between them was strongest, not least because of Siegler’s childlike loyalty. “Last Rites was a hard act to follow.”
“She was,” said Wulfe, “but you’re right; I reckon this crate is overdue a bit of respect from me. One of you idiots should have told me I was out of order.”
The looks both men gave him said they wouldn’t have dared. Had his mood been so bad recently? he wondered. He had always believed himself an approachable man. Was he blind to the truth in that respect as well?
A light began blinking on the vox-board. Wulfe dreaded opening the link. No doubt another of the Gunheads was calling in to gloat. Maybe it was Rhaimes. The company’s longest-serving sergeant was never short of a quip.
What would it be this time?
As Wulfe reached over to the board to open the vox-link, he told his crew, “I’ll say a litany of thanks to the old girl’s machine-spirit when I get a bit of downtime.”
The men in the turret smiled, and he turned from them, hit the toggle on the vox-board, and said, “Who the frak is it and what do you want?”
The voice on the other end was not amused.
“Well you could show some damned decorum for a start, sergeant,” snapped van Droi over the link. “The next man who speaks to me like that gets thrown to Commissar Slayte.”
Wulfe blanched.
“Sorry, sir,” he told Lieutenant van Droi. “Thought it was someone else. What can I do for you?”
“For a start, you can sit tight until we get an Atlas out to you. It will tow you into Balkar. I’ve voxed ahead for it already. Damned unfortunate time to break down, Oskar, what with all those people on the walls to greet us. Colonel Vinnemann is up there, and Major General Bergen, too, no doubt.”
Looking across the turret, Wulfe met Siegler’s gaze and winked. To van Droi, he said, “With respect, sir, I can’t think of a better time to suffer a breakdown, can you? Last Rites II is the only machine in the company to have lasted this long without serious engine trouble. I’d rather it happened here and now than back there in the desert with the orks at our backs.”
Van Droi was silent for a moment. When he replied, a touch of his usual good humour had returned to his voice. “Fair comment, sergeant. Glad to hear she’s finally grown on you. Took bloody long enough, mind you. Anyway, what’s this about refusing Lenck’s assistance?”
Wulfe knew van Droi was probing with that last addition. Wulfe’s contempt for Lenck was still a matter of concern to the lieutenant, then. “Didn’t want to hold him up, sir,” he said. “We’ve been on quarter rations and bog-water for so long, I figured that rookie crew of his would fall over if they didn’t get some proper provisions.”
“You’re a damned poor liar, sergeant,” said van Droi. “And there are no rookies in my company, not anymore. They bled and sweated like the rest of us, and they killed their share of greenskins, so let’s drop the whole them and us bit, shall we? I’m moving through the gates now. Find me in the officers’ mess when you’ve been fed and watered.”
“Understood, sir.”
Van Droi signed off, but another light was blinking on the vox-board now. Wulfe hit the switch and said, “This is Last Rites II. Go ahead.”
“Last Rites II, this is Atlas recovery tank Orion VI. We’re pulling up to you now. Give us a minute to get tow-lines hooked up and we’ll be under way, over.”
The Atlas commander sounded young, and his voice made Wulfe reflect on van Droi’s words: no more us and them. He had been obstinate in his refusal to accept the new tank. He had been obstinate in not telling his crew about the apparition in the canyon on Palmeros. Was he being just as obstinate about the new meat? Was Lenck really as bad as he seemed, or had Wulfe cultivated bad feeling between them from the start on account of the man’s likeness to Victor Dunst? He was starting to suspect it was the latter.
“Understood, Orion VI,” he voxed. “Let me know when you’re ready to take us in.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Evening fell quickly over the base at Balkar. The sky turned black just as Last Rites II finally reached the motor pool where she would undergo her much-needed repairs. Wulfe thanked the young commander of the Atlas tank, asked him where the mess hall and barracks buildings were, and led his crew off to find them. Their search would have been impossible but for the electric lamps that had been strung up throughout the base, their thick cables running along streets and dangling from rooftops. Even so, it wasn’t easy. The lights were kept relatively dim at night in order to avoid drawing attention from itinerant ork bands. Earlier that day, units from the 259th Mechanised Infantry Regiment under Colonel von Holden — part of Rennkamp’s 8th Mechanised Division — had been sent out to eliminate a band of travelling greenskin scavengers. The greenskins had been spotted forty-some kilometres out from the base by scouts on Hornet bikes as they patrolled the low hills to the north. The scouts had then guided Armoured Fist units in for the attack. The action was short, bloody and decisive, and, importantly, none of the orks had escaped. Even a single fleeing greenskin might have brought a larger force back down on the Imperial camp. The last thing Exolon needed was a full-scale assault on their forward position. The top brass were desperate to avoid anything that might delay success, and a siege more than qualified.
The mechanised units that engaged the orks actually managed something quite unusual; they brought two of the orks back alive. Naturally, both of them were horribly maimed and crippled, hanging onto their worthless alien lives by virtue of their raw inhuman resilience alone. Even so, the struggle to capture them had been immense. Wounded orks were often even more dangerous than healthy ones.
Wulfe heard of it first from a group of soldiers in the mess tent as he finished off a few slices of cooked meal-brick and a glass of rather tepid, but thankfully clear and salt-free water. He shook his head as he listened. Captive orks? It sounded like the officer in charge of the Armoured Fist unit in question was some kind of show-off. Wulfe wouldn’t have brought them back. He’d have executed them on the spot. The top brass, on the other hand, must have seen some gain in the situation — a morale boost, probably — because someone had approved the construction of two cages in an area by the east wall. According to the troopers that told Wulfe all this, the captured xenos were proving quite a draw.
Wulfe was just finishing his meal when word reached him that the men of 10th Company were to pay the caged aliens a visit. Wulfe guessed van Droi wanted the less experienced men to see the foe up close and personal, based perhaps on some notion that familiarity eliminated fear.
Groxshit, thought Wulfe. The closer
you got to orks, the more you saw how damned dangerous they were.
Despite his earlier promise to give thanks to the machine-spirit of his tank, he found himself with little time to do so. Stopping briefly at his barracks, he made arrangements to meet his crew by the cages a little later, but his first order of business was to find Lieutenant van Droi in the officer’s mess. Thus, after a few moments spent trying to smarten himself up a bit — not easy given all he had been through — he crossed the base and arrived outside a single-storey sandstone building with the appropriate marker-glyph on the door.
There was a surly, bored-looking soldier on guard duty outside.
“Sergeant Wulfe to see Lieutenant van Droi,” said Wulfe. The trooper nodded, asked him to wait, and then popped inside to verify things with the lieutenant. A moment later, he reappeared and ushered Wulfe inside.
The officer’s mess had a low ceiling of cracked plaster, and at least half of the red floor tiles were missing, leaving large areas of bare concrete visible. Strip-lights hung above long trestle tables, buzzing and flickering, their bright glare somewhat harsh to eyes accustomed to the dull Golgothan day. As he looked around, Wulfe decided this place wasn’t much of an improvement on the grunts’ mess. He wondered idly if the food and drink was any better.
Even here, inside this building, the orks had painted typically crude images of the things that generally occupied their tiny minds: guns, blades, skulls, strange gods, and much more besides. Many of the scrawls were so obscure, so badly rendered that Wulfe couldn’t begin to guess what they might represent. Some effort had been made to cover them up, of course, but there were so many. They were literally everywhere. As he had walked here, Wulfe had seen miserable troopers plastering the walls with propaganda material from the Departmento Munitorum. It was a minor punishment detail. The commissars had ordered it. One of the posters near Wulfe’s assigned barracks building had caught his eye. Check your kills! it ordered. There was a well painted image of a big, strong Cadian trooper blowing an ork’s brains out as it lay limp on the ground. The bottom of the poster read:
[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads Page 17
