by Marc
Samiel looked across to the minefield – there was indeed a scar running right across it, plenty wide enough for the Defixio.
Dniep scratched at the acned skin around his throat implants – he had escaped the worst ravages of the chem-mines because he had been too useful fixing the machines to risk at the workface, but he was still damned ugly. ‘So you solved us one problem, Samiel, but now we got us another.’ He indicated the hulk of the Defixio, smoke still coiling off it. The tracks on the near side had been unpinned and lay limp on the ground. ‘We found enough links, but a coupla pins got sheared. Scawed one soon enough, but we can’t find another. Not for the life of us. And it’ll be our lives, too, ‘cause we’re stuck out here in the open with a tank that won’t move and a bunch of greenskins wondering why their mates haven’t come back.’
‘You should have woken me, I could have helped—’
‘Karra-Vrass said to let you sleep. And didn’t none of us argue with him, neither. Besides, we’re not going to find it. We need something thin enough to fit but strong enough to take the strain. Miracle we found one.’
But Samiel went out and looked anyway. It wasn’t that he dared have any real hope – he just couldn’t lie there and wait. The orks would come, he knew, because they had a knack for being everywhere on a planet at once, and many Guardsmen swore greenskins could hunt a man down by scent alone. He kept low and always checked the horizon for approaching orks, once or twice spotting something dark and moving and hitting the ground until he was sure it was gone. And, as he expected, there was nothing that might serve as a track pin half-buried in Jaegersweld’s heavy earth, just metal fit only for scrap. There was no hope, but he didn’t allow himself be consumed with the knowledge that he would die. Many a time he had heard better Guardsmen than him discover how slight their chances were, then shrug their shoulders and reply that hell, a man’s gotta die somehow.
Nevertheless his steps were heavy and his head low as he clambered back over the ridge. And the sound he heard was engines.
He hurried down the loose slope to see the Defixio warmed up and ready to roll, smoke pumping from inefficient exhausts, trinkets and grisly trophies shaking with the unhealthy vibrations of the cylinders.
The front hatch went up and Kallin looked out. There were a few more scavenged trinkets around his neck and hanging from his various ammo belts and pouches – a Chem-Dog out foraging always came back with some new toys. ‘Samiel, ya grox-lover! Get in!’
Samiel sprinted the last few metres and climbed in – the rest of the crew had been waiting for him. With a nod from Karra-Vrass, Dniep gingerly backed the Defixo off the slope. Then, it turned and headed across the wide channel across the minefield, towards the other side of the plain and the Cadian HQ beyond.
Samiel didn’t ask what had been used as a track pin. Probably the axle off an abandoned ork vehicle, or even a direct replacement from another wrecked Leman Russ tank, of which there must be some lying around.
And then he realised that Karra-Vrass was no longer carrying his titanium swagger stick.
SAMIEL’S TURN AT the lookout came. The last day had been nervous but hopeful – they had hidden under an overhang when a flight of smoking ork flyers swooped overhead, and often lurked behind ridges and rock formations as ork patrols passed close by. Karra-Vrass had told them they were being hunted by orks eager to remove such an impertinent threat as a tank that dared run their gauntlet, and the hunters were closing in. But they had not been spotted, and time was on their side, because they were nearing their destination.
‘Maybe you’re not as unlucky as you look, Samiel,’ Kallin had said, which were probably the most charitable words he had uttered in his life.
They now had to cross one last hill before the Cadian HQ was in sight. There would be some explaining to do – where had they come from? Why were they alone? Where was the rest of the column? The Cadians would certainly make a point of packing away anything small and valuable whenever the Chem-Dogs approached. But they would be able to eat, maybe sleep, pull a few days light duties before someone figured out how to get them back to the Savlar regiment.
Samiel didn’t fancy the Defixio to make it, with a half-busted track and a hole in the side, especially since a constant supply of Leman Russ spares was always required. The Cadians would probably break the old Exterminator up and use the bits to patch up their own vehicles in the motor pool. But even Dniep thought it was a better end than a smouldering wreck in the middle of a planet no one really cared about.
And now they were at the crest of the hill, the flats beyond rolling out before Samiel’s eyes, the Cadian HQ finally coming into view…
A grinning, lopsided horned skull totem, cut from sheets of metal and bolted together, stood on the roof of the command bunker. Burned-out Leman Russ and Chimeras littered the compound. A Hydra flak cannon stood idle at one corner, pointing down and inwards, barrels still blackened from the fire it had poured into the attackers streaming through the breaches.
Bodies of men and orks lay in piles around the centres of the heaviest fighting – the breach, the gateway, the mess and barracks complex where the men had made their stand. Where the fuel dump had been was a charred crater ringed with corpses. Buildings and bunkers had been turned inside-out by demo charges, their contents – furniture, equipment, occupants – strewn across the ground. Those structures still standing bore scars around windows and doors that had been used as fire points. Bodies in Cadian fatigues were displayed entwined in the razor wire that topped the rings of barricades and fences. Everywhere were bullet scars, discarded weapons, and the dead. Especially the dead.
But the worst was outside. All around the HQ was a teeming city of tents and huts, brimming with greenskins. They fought, argued, divided the spoils and feasted on the supplies they had hauled out of the HQ’s stores.
The mad bikers that had so taken to Jaegersweld’s landscape were buzzing like flies around the camp, eagerly burning captured fuel in pursuit of the blind speed they lived for. Camp fires smouldered, and the breeze brought the reek of burning and filth.
‘Can you see it?’ called out Damrid from below.
‘Stop.’ said Samiel.
The Defixio ground to a halt. Damrid was the first out, scrambling over the turret seat and pushing his head out of the hatch.
‘Imperator…’ he whispered, one hand held to the pocket in which he carried his prayer book. ‘Xenos malefka… what about forgiveness? Hasn’t it been enough?’
Damrid slithered back into the Defixio’s hull. Dniep replaced him, eager to see what had caused such shock in his crewmate.
‘Those bastards.’ he said when he saw. ‘Alien bastards. We shoulda known.’
Samiel didn’t know what to say. What can you say, when even what little hope a Guardsman allows himself is torn away?
‘So that’s what broke the lad.’ continued Dniep, more to himself than to Samiel. ‘He thought he was forgiven, he really did. That’s why he never called you bad luck, like the rest of us. The Emperor was watching, he thought, because he had been forgiven.’
‘For what?’
Dniep looked at him incredulously. ‘No one told you? Damrid’s the worst! I mean, I did fixin’ for some pretty rough types, and a few people got hurt, and but I never—’ Dniep shook his head. ‘The lad was on a frontier world, raising hell since he was born. When they sent a mission to tame the place, Damrid and his boys took exception. You know his prayer book? Used to belong to a Sister there. They say that as Damrid was hacking the poor bitch to pieces all she could say was: “He will forgive you. He will forgive you…” over and over. Threw her to the cudbears when they’d finished with her. He started reading the damn book on the prison ship, and by the time he got to the Dead Moons he got it into his head he was forgiven.’
Damrid? It didn’t make any sense… but then, sometimes there was a desperation about the way he believed, as if his faith was his only chance and he had to hold onto it no matter what… ‘He doesn’
t look like he went through the Dead Moons.’
‘They kept him safe. A chaplain who believes, that’s the rarest thing in the system. Worth keeping alive. And when the Guard said they were raising up another Chem-Dog regiment, he was first in line, ready to fight the Emperor’s fight and smite the foes of Humanity.’ Dniep shook his head and whistled at the sight of the orks running wild across the Cadian HQ, making belts of skin and necklaces of hands. ‘And now this. He should’ve made it. Really should’ve. Kid like him, just getting through it all without breaking up, that’s like winning the war on your own.’
When they had all looked upon the remains of the Cadian HQ and its slaughtered garrison, they slumped down inside the Defixio and were silent.
Suddenly Kallin slammed a fist into the side of the hull. ‘For this we fight? We drag this lump of metal across a whole damned bitch of a planet and this is what we get?’
They all looked at him, and Samiel wished he would stay quiet, but like the rest of them Kallin had felt hope building up during the journey’s last leg and he couldn’t cope with having it torn away from him. His voice was rising to a screech. ‘Why now? Why couldn’t they take the place a month earlier, or a month later, or any time but now? They can’t… what happened? Can’t these damn Cadians even look after their own HQ?’
Kallin slumped, suddenly exhausted. Dniep spoke weakly, his voice cracking. ‘The Jurn regiment is supposed to be south, past the gulf. If we can get down there, and cross it—’
‘No.’ Karra-Vrass’s voice was strong. That was why he was an officer, thought Samiel grimly. He was as broken as the rest of them, but he could conceal it. ‘We would be passing through the ork drop sites. When we are found here we will be executed quickly, for we are on the frontier and prisoners would use up too many supplies. If we break for the south we will be imprisoned, enslaved, probably used as playthings, and then we will die anyway. The gulf cannot be crossed, there have been enough prisoners that have tried.’
‘So what then?’ Kallin’s voice was like a child’s. Samiel was almost sure he was weeping. ‘We die?’
Karra-Vrass looked at him. ‘We die.’
‘Everybody dies.’ Samiel realised that he was the one speaking.
‘The truest of things.’ replied Karra-Vrass. ‘All lives end.’
‘So it is willed.’ said Damrid. His face was pale as a dead man’s and he had a faraway expression. It was said a man could gain a place at the Emperor’s side by his conduct when all seemed lost, for even in the moments of the most terrible desperation, He was watching, He was judging.
This was Damrid’s last chance. If he died well, maybe that would mean he’d be forgiven, after all.
‘But how many know when their time comes?’ continued Karra-Vrass. ‘How many can see the end coming, and be prepared? Not many. Of all those of our brothers-in-arms who died, only we can ready ourselves. It is in death, more than anything, that a man can be measured. Isn’t that right, Damrid?’
‘So it is willed.’ said the boy again.
‘Their patrols will catch up with us within the hour. Their camp sentries will be onto us long before that. We don’t have much time, but it will be enough. We have been given the greatest gift that any man could ask, for now we have a purpose. We will spend the rest of our lives battling the alien foe, not because we are ordered or because we must, but because we choose to do so, to make our deaths mean something. It could be otherwise – we could die in flight, or cowering, or under the slaver’s whip. But we will not.’
Samiel looked up. It shouldn’t mean anything, for still they were all dead men. But somehow, it did. They could butcher his friends, strip away his hopes, wage a war that forced him to spend his life in exhaustion or fear cooped up in a tank on a planet he hated. They could turn him into no better than a bad seed. But by the Emperor himself, those greenksin bastards couldn’t make him die for nothing.
He was on his feet, shivering with excitement and pride. Karra-Vrass stood, too, and smoothed out the creases in his greatcoat.
‘Crew, load up.’ he said.
EVERY SAVLAR VEHICLE was equipped with hermetic seals around the hatches and doors – these they sealed, so that even breathing the same air as the Chem-Dog crew would be a privilege the orks would have to fight for. Karra-Vrass took off his officer’s greatcoat, rolled up the black sleeves of his uniform, and slammed two autocannon shells home into the breech. Damrid calmly recited those hymns that meant the most to him – the ones about never despairing, because every good man has his place in His plan, even if that man in his humility knows it not.
Karra-Vrass checked his sidearm, a duelling pistol that somehow he had managed to keep hold of even though its ivory handle and fine workmanship would have caught the eye of the most honest Chem-Dog. The others did the same with weapons they had as trophies or charms – Kallin’s ugly snub-nosed gun looted from a dead ork, a shotgun Dniep hid under the driver’s seat, a rusted sergeant’s sword Damrid had kept. A rummage through the Defixio’s gear produced an old but working laspistol, which Samiel took.
This is the last gift I will ever receive, he thought. It felt like the first.
They did not have long to wait. As darkness approached once again, a greenskin foot patrol approached from the camp. Perhaps fifty strong, they stalked low in the gathering gloom, led by one a head or two taller than the rest, one arm hacked off and replaced with a brutal three-fingered claw that spat sparks from a power field. They had axes, guns, clubs.
Kallin whispered sharply to Karra-Vrass – from his vision slit, he could see one of the bike patrols that had been hunting them approaching fast from the opposite direction. They were trapped.
Good, thought Samiel. If you’ve got to go, then this is the way to do it.
Karra-Vrass glanced up at Damrid. The lad nodded back.
‘Fire.’ said Karra-Vrass.
The twin explosions burst in the midst of the orks, blasting two or three to flailing limbs. Some tried to scatter but the leader grabbed a couple by the scruffs of their necks, flung them forward, pointed with his monstrous claw and bellowed a command that could only be the charge.
They ran forward brandishing their weapons. Samiel heard Karra-Vrass roll the smoking casings out of the breech and haul another two shells in, as strongly and smoothly as Graek had done.
‘Range?’ called the officer, voice strained with the effort of forcing the breech cover home.
‘Close!’ shouted back Damrid.
‘Fire!’
The two blasts merged into one as a hole was torn out of the advancing patrol. Some were thrown forward to collide with their fellows in the front, and two of them were thrown into the air in bits. Samiel took the opportunity – slowed down and in disarray, the leader cracking two heads together to stop his troops from fleeing, the patrol was a fine target. He opened up with his heavy bolter, seeing orks stitched through with explosive shells, illuminated in the muzzle flare. Two or three more went down, and the charge was halted. Now Dniep crunched the gears and the Defixio turned towards the orks.
Samiel kept firing, keeping ork heads down, and he could hear the wet crunch of greenskins going under the Defixio’s tracks.
Kallin was already firing on his side, meaning the bikers were almost upon them. The foot patrol blazed away with every chance they were given, and shells were impacting fiercely on the Defixio’s hull. The noise was appalling, for the orks liked their weapons loud – but Samiel didn’t care. They could make all the noise they wanted, they weren’t taking down these Dead Moon scummers without the hardest fight of their lives. His heavy bolter roared with the defiance he felt boiling inside him, and another ork was ran through on a lance of hot steel.
There was a sound like a thundercrack as a crude ork grenade went off, buckling the metal patching the hull at Samiel’s side. Shells ricocheted off the edge of Samiel’s vision slit, but he didn’t flinch. His ammo belt was tunning out and Karra-Vrass rammed another one into the heavy bolter’s breech.
Samiel glanced at him in gratitude, saw the officer understood, and went back to firing. He could barely see the targets now, his vision was full of a heaving press of green flesh as the orks tried to swamp the Defixio.
Another grenade went off and Kallin swore, his heavy bolter torn off its mounting by the explosion. Without pausing he grabbed his ork gun and opened fire at the talons clawing at the breached hull. Samiel could hear the bikes now, even above the rest of the din, as the riders dismounted and added their weight to the assault.
There was a shriek of metal and suddenly the Defixio was open to the sky – the lead ork was standing over them, power claw holding the turret he had just ripped clean off the tank. Damrid tumbled back down into the hull, grabbed the sword and began to hack at the green arms and heads that appeared over the edge of ragged metal. Kallin’s side gave way seconds later and he was fighting back the encroaching greenskins with his bare hands, ammo expended.
One of the greenskins got Dniep, an axe swinging down and burying itself in his back. Karra-Vrass opened fire with his duelling pistol, each shot hitting home, and Samiel followed suit, laspistol bolts burning into green skin. He heard Kallin yelling obscenities as he was dragged through the hole in the hull by a dozen clawed hands, and Samiel felt sure Kallin would have wanted to go out swearing.
The massive ork reached down and grabbed Damrid in its claw, hoisting him clean out of the tank, shearing through the boy’s skinny body, tossing him aside, roaring its rage and showing its huge fangs. Karra-Vrass grabbed an autocannon shell and rammed it into the monster’s mouth with the strength of a man who knows he has ran out of time. The ork swiped at him with the power claw, batting him aside, and shots from the swarming orks tore into the officer’s torso.
Samiel snatched up Dniep’s discarded shotgun. He could feel the greenskins all around him, teeth biting into his legs, claws sinking into his shoulders. But there was no pain, not at the end, not while he still had his mark to make.
