“Watch out for ghosts, sergeant!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two days east of Balkar, Wulfe and the rest of the expeditionary force entered a rocky region of the Hadar desert known as Vargas. Led by General deViers, riding comfortably in a specially outfitted command Chimera, the Cadians moved in a long column that slowly snaked along the floor of a deep canyon marked on Officio Cartographica charts as Red Gorge.
The gorge ran for almost three hundred kilometres along a meandering path that would eventually lead the men of the 18th Army Group to the site of the largest and bloodiest battle of the last Golgothan War. It was there, at long last, that General deViers expected to find The Fortress of Arrogance. It was there, also, that he expected to face the greatest ork resistance to his progress so far. By all accounts, the foothills and low valleys of the Ishawar Mountains were littered with wrecks from the war. What better place for the scavenging greenskins to build a major settlement?
Despite the likelihood of violent confrontation, the mood among the men was mixed. Some were upbeat, seeing the final phase for what it truly represented, an end to their tormented time on a world unfit for human habitation. Others were less optimistic. Some, like Major General Bergen, anticipated great disappointment on arrival at the coordinates the Mechanicus had provided. Even so, the realists in the army group were as keen to get the whole thing over as the optimists were.
On the other hand, few were happy about having the entire expeditionary force negotiate Red Gorge. There was simply no other choice. The rocky clifftops and surrounding highlands were riddled with chasms and crevasses, many of them impossible to spot from the ground until too late. Under other circumstances, Commodore Galbraithe’s Vulcan gunships could perhaps have guided the column from the air, but flying conditions were far from ideal over the Hadar. Frequent dust storms threatened to clog air intakes, something that would have sent the Vulcans crashing to the ground. Electromagnetic surges from the thick clouds made mid-and high-altitude flights just as deadly. So the Vulcan pilots were forced to fly low, making slow passes along the canyon floor, just a few hundred metres above the heads of the Cadian troops, visored eyes scanning for signs of ambush.
Wulfe watched the Vulcans from his cupola, black birds roaring as they crossed the strip of red sky overhead. They left trails of grey smoke that moved like ribbons on the wind.
For Wulfe, this phase of the journey was particularly harrowing. The sharp crags and deep, shadowed gullies along which the column moved were a powerful reminder of Lugo’s Ditch. As the rock walls rose to fantastic heights on either side, a cold sweat began to soak Wulfe’s tunic.
Watch out for ghosts, sergeant!
Even now, with the glow of the second day fading, Lenck’s words were still eating away at Wulfe’s insides. What had the bastard corporal meant? The most obvious answer was that he knew about Lugo’s Ditch. But how? Wulfe was sure that Confessor Friedrich wouldn’t have betrayed him. He doubted any of his crew would have, either. Beans didn’t know anything about it so that ruled him out.
Had Lenck simply meant Victor Dunst? A ghost of the past rather than of the dead? That was almost as much of a stretch. All Lenck had regarding Dunst was a name, wasn’t it?
Wulfe wracked his brain, desperate to remember who he had told about Dunst. He hadn’t recounted the story often — it wasn’t exactly one of his favourites — but it was an old custom among Cadian troopers to compare scars and tell the tales of how they had been won. Wulfe had shared the Dunst story with a handful of men in his early years with the regiment. Had someone told Lenck? Did the rotten corporal know just how much his appearance troubled Wulfe?
As the day wore on, Wulfe tried to put the matter to the back of his mind. He sat in his cupola, occupying himself with a study of his surroundings as Last Rites II rambled through the dust kicked up by the tanks in front. There was vegetation in the canyon, the first that he had seen since crashing on this world. Not much of it, of course — mostly dry grasses and scrawny, thorn-covered tangles of brash — but it meant moisture. There was animal life, too, and far larger than the biting ticks the Cadians had endured so far. Wulfe saw great, slothful, flat-bodied lizards basking on the rocks. Their skins were armoured with hundreds of small, bony plates, and they were coloured like the land around them. As the Imperial column rolled past, they hissed and slid quickly into the mouths of inky black caves.
Observing these things offered Wulfe only temporary respite from his thoughts. Again and again, he returned to the matters that troubled him most. As the strip of sky above Red Gorge grew dark, he dropped back down into his turret basket, leaving the hatch open above him so that a cooling wind could circulate.
Siegler was dozing in his seat, thick arms folded on top of the shell magazine, head resting in the crook of his elbow. By the glow of the turret’s internal lamps, Beans was leafing through a tattered magazine featuring monochrome picts of hard-faced Cadian women stripping out of military uniform. Judging by the state of the pages, the magazine had had a great many owners over the years.
Wulfe smiled to himself and tapped Beans on the shoulder. Speaking low on the intercom so as not to wake Siegler, he said, “That stuff will rot your soul.”
“Damage done,” said Beans with a grin. “I’ve been through this one so many times I think I’ve desensitised myself. You want it?”
Wulfe laughed, but his tone was serious when he said, “Listen, Beans. You and I need to have a talk.”
“What about, sarge?”
“I think you know what.”
Was it Wulfe’s imagination, or did the new gunner flush a little?
“The stand-off in the staging area, right?”
Wulfe nodded, frowning. “A tanker stands with his crew, no matter what. You know the rules. You’re lucky Siegler and Metzger overlooked it, but if I ever see you standing on the sidelines like that again, you’ll be back on the support crews before you can say ‘the Emperor protects’. What the hell were you thinking?”
Beans shrugged guiltily. “If it had been any other crew, sarge… But it was Lenck’s lot.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Plenty.”
There was a pause, a moment of uncomfortable mutual silence, before Wulfe said, “Tell me what you know about Lenck.”
Beans looked up. “I know not to mess with him. The officers might have all the official power in the Guard, but it’s guys like Lenck that control the shadows. Every regiment has them, right? The guys who can get you more booze, more smokes, more meds.” He held up his shabby, pornographic pictomag. “More stuff like this. They make a business of it, and the officers let it go on because the men grumble a little less. Fewer fights break out. I can’t imagine Guard life without such guys, can you? Well, that’s Lenck. If the price is right, he can get just about anything. He’s more like a hive-gang boss than a soldier. And he thinks you’re out to shut him down.”
Wulfe knew all this, of course. Beans was still a relative newcomer to the regiment, but he clearly had a good handle on things. Everything he had said was true. Regiments needed their hustlers and fixers. Things became unbearable all too fast without them. It explained a lot about Lenck’s mysterious popularity with the newer guys. Still, the idea that Lenck should be allowed some slack on account of this alleged service to the regiment didn’t sit well. Wulfe huffed. “This is the Imperial Guard, not the blasted underhives. Voeder Lenck is a cocky, jumped-up little arsehole and, sooner or later, he’s going to wish he’d never met me.”
Beans looked uncomfortable as he said, “Um… Didn’t he save your life, sarge?”
Wulfe spat a curse. “He killed an ork that was about to kill me. Duty demanded it. Any trooper would have done the same.” His voice had taken on an angry edge, all the harder because, in truth, he was grateful and it bothered him immensely.
Beans raised a placatory hand. “I’m just saying what I heard.”
Wulfe muttered under his breath. Glancing up through
his open hatch, he saw that the sky was almost pitch black. Would old deViers have them pressing on throughout the night again?
Wulfe addressed his driver, “You need me to take a shift on the sticks, Metzger?”
“I’ll be fine for another few hours, sarge,” replied Metzger. “How about you take a shift then?”
In his long and bloody career, Wulfe had manned every single station aboard a Leman Russ tank. He wasn’t nearly as talented a driver as Lucky Metzger, but he was more than capable of keeping his crate in place while Metzger got some much-needed sleep.
“Fine,” said Wulfe. “Two hours. Let me know if you get tired before that.”
“Will do, sarge,” said Metzger.
Wulfe sat back in his command seat. He wasn’t feeling particularly sleepy right now. He mind was running laps. He kept hearing Lenck’s words in his head. The old scar on his throat was irritating him, too. He scratched it lightly.
The vox channels were mostly quiet. The only regular traffic was coming from the Sentinel and motorbike scouts up front. After a minute, Beans’ voice broke in on his thoughts.
“Want a read?” said the gunner with a grin as he offered his sergeant his magazine.
“Not much reading in it,” Wulfe replied with a half-smile, but he took it anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the sixth day out of Balkar, General deViers had started to develop a dry, itchy cough. It wasn’t nearly as bad as those of some of his officers, but it caused him a certain degree of panic because he was so much older and, therefore, more vulnerable to Golgotha’s subtle assaults on his health. He had seen what the red dust had done to some of his troopers. The damned medicae staff were being about as much use as a paper lasgun, in his opinion.
Last night, the high canyon walls of Red Gorge had come to an abrupt end. The column had made it through without incident and had set up camp briefly on the open sand at the canyon’s mouth. Dawn had broken only an hour ago, revealing just how fortuitous the decision to halt the column had been. His decision, of course. Had the men of Exolon continued pushing eastwards, they would have run straight into the biggest ork fortification that deViers had ever seen.
He was looking at it now.
He stood just outside the doorway of a hastily-erected command tent, magnoculars pressed to his eyes, scanning the massive ugly structure that seemed to run from one end of the horizon to the other. Behind it, visible as little more than a faint silhouette in the morning light, he could see the slopes of the towering Ishawar Mountains. Their peaks were invisible, lost in the bellies of blood-coloured clouds.
“Why in blazes wasn’t I told about this?” he raged. “It’s colossal. How could the probe-servitors possibly have missed something like this? Get those tech-priests in here. Get Magos Sennesdiar. I want some damned answers at once.”
The ork wall was easily a hundred metres tall. Throne knew how long it was. It was breathtaking in its scale. It was plated with great metal slabs of armour painted red from top to bottom, and decorated with oversized ork glyphs daubed crudely in white. There were sharp, uneven crenellations all along the battlements, and the barrels of huge cannon could be seen thrusting outwards from behind them. But was the wall manned? In the short time deViers had been watching, he hadn’t witnessed any signs of life. Could he trust his eyes? The haze of dust and shimmering air made it difficult to discern movement at this range. The gun-towers and battlements could, in fact, be seething with the foe.
If they were there at all, however, it seemed that they hadn’t spotted the 18th Army Group. Not yet.
Their eyesight, thought deViers, isn’t as good as ours, but the longer we watch and wait, the more time we give them to discover us. We can’t lose the element of surprise. A sudden thrust is our best chance to get through, and we must get through. Glory and fame await, Mohamar. It won’t be long now.
There were vast iron gates, as tall as the wall itself, spaced at intervals all along its length, but none were open. They looked very heavy, very solid.
One of the major generals cleared his throat. DeViers couldn’t tell which one.
“And we’ve no idea how far it extends?” deViers asked. “No idea at all?”
Bergen, Killian and Rennkamp all stood a pace behind him, staring out at the ork wall through their own magnoculars.
“There hasn’t been time to properly reconnoitre it yet, sir,” said Bergen. “The Vulcan pilots say they’re awaiting your order to go up, if that’s what you want. There might be a way around it. Best estimates at this time suggest it’s over a hundred kilometres long, though.”
“By the Golden Throne,” hissed deViers. “Over a hundred kilometres.”
He wasn’t optimistic about finding a way around. A feeling in his gut, an instinct developed over decades of battlefield command, told him this was all part of his great test. Here was an obstacle put before him to see if he was worthy of everlasting fame. No, there would be no going around it. There was nothing for free in this universe.
The sheer size of the wall suggested it might have been built to keep out Titans. A foolish notion, of course. Nothing could keep out a Titan for long, but it probably made some kind of rudimentary sense to the greenskins. Was the construction of the wall a reaction to Yarrick’s assault on Golgotha? The mighty commissar had employed Titans throughout his campaign. Perhaps the greenskins had anticipated an Imperial return all along.
“Gather the officers together,” deViers told his three major generals. “I want us through those gates by the end of the day.”
“Sir!” protested Killian. “We have no idea of the enemy’s strength. We need full and proper reconnaissance. At least let us get some idea of their numbers before we—”
“I didn’t ask for opinions, Klotus,” snapped the general. “You can see those gates as well as I can, can’t you? Reconnoitre all we like, I tell you now, we’ll find no way around. We’ll have to punch our way through one of them. I will not be stopped, not by a damned wall, not by anything.”
Bergen, Killian and Rennkamp dropped their magnoculars and shared a quick look that deViers decided to pretend he hadn’t seen.
“Might we not send the Vulcans on a forward sweep, sir?” asked Bergen. “Order it now and we’ll know what we’re dealing with. At the very least, they could give us some idea of what’s beyond it.”
“We don’t exactly have air support to spare, Gerard,” said deViers. “You know that. They could be cut to pieces by triple-A fire. I don’t suppose you’d like to explain that to Commodore Galbraithe?”
“But surely just one, sir,” said Rennkamp.
“It would be better than charging in blind,” said Bergen.
“You know,” said Killian, “with luck and a prayer, the bloody orks might well have moved on. I didn’t see any movement. No signs of occupation at all. I mean, who knows how old that thing is?”
DeViers shook his head. “No, Klotus. They’re there all right. It took a lot of work to make that wall. Our prize lies behind it. And I’m damned sure that the xenos filth who made it are still behind it, too.”
“Honestly, sir,” said Rennkamp. “A single Vulcan. Just one fast sweep and we’ll know for sure.”
“And put the whole damned greenskin horde on immediate high alert? No, Aaron. No aerial recon. The Vulcans can’t fly high enough in this accursed weather to evade detection. Give me something else.”
“A Hornet then, sir,” said Bergen. “A single Hornet reconnaissance bike might be mistaken for one of the orks’ own at long range. That’s no guarantee they won’t fire on it anyway, of course, but if we’re lucky, it’ll draw a lot less attention and still let us get a man close enough to make a difference.”
DeViers nodded. “That sounds feasible. Make it happen. Get the best scout we have out there. Someone with experience. I’ll want a full report, including a list of as many weak points as possible, within the hour.”
Bergen saluted and moved off to see it done.
It didn
’t take an hour. It was only forty minutes later that the Hornet rider chosen for the reconnaissance run reported back to Colonel Marrenburg. The colonel cut the scout’s verbal report short, ordering him to save it for the general’s command tent where the army group’s senior officers — more than a dozen men ranking colonel and higher — awaited them. Marrenburg then led his man over the red sand and in through the tent flap. The day was already baking hot.
In the cooler shade of the general’s tent, Marrenburg introduced his scout to the assembled officers.
“Gentlemen,” he said proudly, “this is Sergeant Bussmann. He’s the best damned scout in my outfit. You can have absolute confidence in his report, I assure you.”
Since Sergeant Bussmann belonged to Bergen’s division, deViers asked Bergen to conduct the briefing, giving the general and the others a chance to concentrate on the details and any questions they needed to ask. There wasn’t much good news. Judging by the sergeant’s account, the wall was more daunting the closer one got to it. Whatever lay inside must have been of great value to the greenskins, for they had expended tremendous resources in its construction, resources that might otherwise have gone into the construction of hundreds, if not thousands, of their war machines.
This bothered Bergen on two counts. Firstly, it suggested that the orks had enough resources to be able to afford such a grand static defence. This led him to suspect they had established ore refineries somewhere. Were they close by? Golgotha had been selected for occupation by the Adeptus Mechanicus centuries ago for the amount and variety of metals deep within its crust. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe the orks were taking similar advantage of the resources. Secondly, the use of so much valuable metal in construction of the wall could only mean that whatever lay on the other side was something the orks considered very important. Yes, they were beastlike and savage, but they could be cunning, too. They weren’t nearly as mindless as men believed. They had built a wall, and there had to be a good reason.
[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads Page 21
