Planetkill, page 22
‘But, sir,’ Garver moaned, ‘the cogboys have already run two full sys–’
‘Don’t make me repeat myself, soldier. Move!’
With a mixture of muttered complaints and angry scowls, the crew jogged off towards the tank. Siegler raced over to it with his typical abundance of child-like energy. Dessembra followed him with her eyes.
‘That one seems a little Throne-touched, sergeant,’ she said, nodding in Siegler’s direction.
‘Injured in the line of duty,’ replied Wulfe, tapping the side of his head with a finger. ‘And yet, without doubt, the best man on my crew. He’s the fastest loader in the regiment, and that’s merely one measure of his worth. Sister Mellahd here, on the other hand, possesses the kind of beauty that makes trouble among men. Best she stay out of sight during the operation.’
At the word operation, Dessembra flinched. She turned back around to face Wulfe. ‘My sister-acolyte is quite without sin, sergeant. It is undisciplined minds that are to blame for such troubles. I’m speaking in general terms, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Wulfe, brushing off the mild insult.
Sergeants Strieber and Kohl were already sitting in the cupolas of their respective tanks. ‘You can confess your depravities later, Wulfe,’ Strieber called out. ‘Let’s get our arses into forward gear.’
Dessembra frowned. ‘Crude though he is,’ she said, ‘Sergeant Strieber is quite right. Time is not on our side, sergeant. Get us to Ghotenz. Someone there requires our immediate attention.’ She made the sign of the aquila on her chest then turned and led her subordinates back to the Chimera.
Wulfe strode over to his tank. In the sky above, vessel after overcrowded vessel was pulling away from the planet’s orbit, and here he was, about to roll out on a last-minute mercy run, probably for some damned incompetent blue-blood who’d gotten himself into hot water.
He clambered up the hull of his tank, swung his legs over the lip of the cupola, slid through the hatch and dropped down into the turret basket. As soon as he was seated, he pulled on his headset, activated the tank’s intercom, and issued instructions to his new driver.
With their headlamps throwing stark light out ahead of them, the four Imperial war-machines rolled off into the night.
82 kilometres west-north-west of Ghotenz, East Vestiche,
13.09 local (10 hours 38 minutes to Planetkill)
They rejoined the highway about sixty kilometres south of the abandoned outpost at Gormann’s Point. There were no refugees in sight. Perhaps the locals knew they’d never make it to Banphry in time and had opted to die at home. Or perhaps they’d already passed through. Wulfe hoped their absence wasn’t a sign of something more sinister.
The surface of the highway dropped gradually, easing its way down into a deep sandstone canyon known as Lugo’s Ditch. Wulfe rode high in the cupola, warm winds whipping his lapels as he scanned the area for threats. Craggy, sandstone walls rose high on either side. Wulfe marvelled at the natural beauty of the place, fascinated, in particular, by the rich and varied hues of the rocky strata.
It hadn’t escaped his notice, of course, that the canyon was an ideal place for an ambush. There was no word that the orks had spread this far north, but he put his men on high alert anyway. Sergeants Kohl and Strieber, he saw, were equally uneasy. Both sat in their cupolas, peering through magnoculars at the rocky outcrops on either side.
Taking his cue from them, Wulfe dropped down into the turret basket to retrieve his own pair. While he was there, a light began to wink on the vox-board. It was Sergeant Kohl.
‘Wulfe,’ he said, ‘we’re well out from the naval patrol routes now.’
‘I know that, Kohl. What’s your point?’
‘My point, sergeant, is that Last Rites is the only vehicle here with a decent vox-array. Hasn’t there been any kind of intelligence update from regimental HQ?’
It was a fair question, but the answer wasn’t likely to satisfy. ‘No updates,’ replied Wulfe. ‘If they’ve anything to tell us, they’ll get in touch. But you said it yourself; we’re outside of the patrol zone. The fighter wings have their hands full running defensive sweeps for the lifters. I think we can forget about aerial reconnaissance updates.’
Kohl was quiet. A moment later, he signed off.
Though Wulfe’s tank boasted a crew of six, only two other men shared the discomfort of the turret basket with him. Viess and Siegler sat within arm’s reach of their commander, backs ramrod-straight, eyes pressed to their scopes, scouring the terrain for the first sign of trouble. Wulfe hoped Garver and Holtz were being equally vigilant, tucked away in their cramped, stifling sponsons. Metzger, up front in the driver’s compartment, had more space than anyone else, but not by much.
The tank’s intercom, usually alive with dirty jokes and crude banter during long journeys, was silent save the background hiss of white noise. The silence told Wulfe just how tense his crew were.
Having fetched his magnoculars, he was about to climb back up when he heard someone say, ‘Stop the tank.’
He wasn’t sure he’d heard it correctly at first. The voice came through his headset as little more than a whisper, almost lost against the background rumble of the engine. ‘What was that?’ he voxed back.
‘What was what, sir?’ asked Viess.
‘Stop the tank,’ someone whispered again, clearer this time.
‘Do not stop the damned tank,’ Wulfe barked. ‘Who the bloody hell said that? Holtz? Was that you?’
‘Don’t blame me, sarge,’ replied Holtz. ‘I never said anything.’
‘Garver?’ Wulfe demanded.
‘It wasn’t me, sir.’
Wulfe placed a hand on Siegler’s shoulder and half-turned him in his seat. ‘Siegler, did you just call for the tank to be stopped?’
‘Negative, sir,’ the loader replied, shaking his head emphatically.
Wulfe had never known Siegler to lie. He didn’t think the man was about to start now. ‘Who said to stop the tank? One of you said it, Eye-blast you. Confess!’
‘Do you want me to stop the tank, sir?’ asked Metzger in obvious confusion.
‘No, by the Throne! Keep her steady in fifth.’
‘I never heard anyone say to stop, sir,’ voxed Garver.
‘Me, neither,’ said Viess.
They sounded worried now. Wulfe was spooking them. It wasn’t like him to get flustered this way and it certainly wasn’t like him to hear voices.
‘When we get back to base,’ he told them, ‘I’ll be checking the vox-logs. Then we’ll see which of you smart-arses is having a laugh.’ With a scowl, he climbed back up into his cupola. What he saw when his eyes cleared the rim of the hatch turned his blood to ice and jolted him with such a spasm of fear that he dropped the magnoculars.
They struck the turret floor with a loud clang.
A shocking, impossible figure stood on the road up ahead, arms raised, palms out, eerily insubstantial despite the glaring sunlight.
Borscht!
The dark hollows of his eyes locked with Wulfe’s. His voice thundered in Wulfe’s mind, drowning out everything else. Stop the tank!
Wulfe’s finger flew to the transmit stud on his headset. ‘Stop the bloody tank! All stop! All stop!’
Metzger braked hard on command and Wulfe was slammed forward, ribs hammering against the rim of the hatch. He winced in sudden flaring pain. When he opened his eyes a split second later, the figure of his old friend had completely disappeared.
‘By the bloody Golden Throne!’ gasped Wulfe.
Panicked voices tumbled over each other through his headset.
‘What’s wrong, sir?’
‘Where are they, sir? I have no targets. I repeat, no targets.’
‘Give us a bearing, sarge!’
Wulfe dropped back into his seat, shaking, chilled to the bone. No, he thought. No way. It’s nerves. It wasn’t Borscht. It can’t have been. It’s me. I must be cracking. It’s the pressure. It’s the damned mission clock. It’s…
The vox-board was blinking furiously with calls from the other vehicles. On reflex, Wulfe reached out and keyed the mission channel.
‘What in the warp are you playing at, Wulfe?’ bellowed Sergeant Kohl. ‘You bloody fool. If my man wasn’t so alert we’d be halfway up your exhaust by now!’
‘Why have you stopped, sergeant?’ demanded Sister Superior Dessembra.
Wulfe didn’t know what to say. He felt numb. He sat rigid, eyes wide with fear and confusion. Siegler and Viess stared back at him, deeply discomfited. He forced himself to answer the uproar over the vox. ‘I… I thought I saw something,’ he said. ‘But it’s gone now.’
‘What did you see?’ Sergeant Strieber asked.
‘I don’t know, damn it!’
Typically, Sergeant Kohl’s meagre patience ran out first. ‘You don’t know? Throne curse you, Wulfe! Planetkill is just hours away and you’re braking for shadows? We don’t have time for this.’
‘I know that,’ Wulfe snapped.
‘Enough!’ voxed Dessembra. ‘I want someone else on point. Sergeant Strieber, your tank will move up and lead us on. Last Rites will guard the rear.’
‘Sister superior,’ said Strieber cheerily, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Before Wulfe could protest, Steelhearted broke formation, rumbled past the other vehicles and accelerated up the highway.
‘Wait!’ Wulfe shouted over the vox. ‘I said wait, Throne damn you!’
But it was too late. Strieber’s tank hadn’t gone two hundred metres when the road bucked under her with an ear-splitting boom. A pillar of fire erupted from the surface, ripping away her left tread, spinning heavy iron links off in all directions.
‘Landmine!’ shouted Metzger over the vox.
‘Strieber, respond!’ demanded Kohl. ‘By the blasted Eye!’
‘Steelhearted, respond!’ voxed Wulfe.
Groaning and cursing, Strieber answered a moment later. ‘Bloody orks mined the road!’ he hissed.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ snapped Kohl. ‘They haven’t got the brains for that.’ He didn’t sound at all convinced.
Through his vision-blocks, Wulfe saw dark, ugly shapes pour from the shadowed gullies on either side of the canyon. The air filled with the growl and sputter of countless throbbing engines.
‘Button up, Gunheads!’ he yelled over the vox. ‘Lock hatches! Safeties off!’ He reached up and slammed his own hatch shut, locking it tight in one practiced motion.
‘He’s right!’ voxed Strieber, panic charging his voice. ‘It’s a warp-damned ambush!’
61 kilometres north-west of Ghotenz, East Vestiche,
13.51 local (9 hours 56 minutes to Planetkill)
There were hundreds of them.
Wulfe’s heart was pounding in his chest as he watched them spill out onto the canyon floor. ‘Close ranks,’ he ordered on the mission channel. ‘Form up on Steelhearted. Defensive pattern theta!’
Metzger gunned Last Rites into action. Champion of Cerbera and the black Chimera leapt forward a second later, speeding towards Sergeant Strieber’s crippled tank.
Steelhearted lay utterly immobilised, track-links scattered around her in a forty-metre radius. Her left sponson was still burning. The shrivelled, blackened body of its occupant, Private Kolmann, hung from its twisted hatch. The other vehicles reached her side now, slid to a halt, and spun on their treads to face outward in a defensive, four-pointed star.
‘Stinking greenskins,’ spat Wulfe. ‘It’s a wonder we didn’t smell them.’
Among the myriad enemies of mankind, it was the old foe he hated most. An image flashed through his mind; the blazing red eyes of one particular ork he’d encountered on Phaegos II. The scar on his throat was a memento of that day – the day he’d almost bled to death.
‘Holy Throne!’ voxed Kohl. ‘How many of them are there?’
Wulfe wasn’t about to count. Buggies and bikes of every possible description roared into the canyon. They were gaudy things, painted red, with fat black tyres that churned up the dirt. Many were decorated with crude skull motifs or images of tusked deities. Some boasted far grislier forms of decoration – strings of severed human heads and banners of flayed skin. But the ugliness of the machines themselves was nothing compared to that of their riders and passengers. The orks were hideous, malformed brutes that waved oversized blades and pistols. Their bodies were twisted and hunched with overgrown muscle. Their eyes and noses were miniscule, but their mouths were wide and full of massive, jutting yellow teeth.
The throaty roar of each engine merged into a cacophony that filled the air. Thick black fumes spewed from exhaust pipes as the orks raced over the sun-baked land, kicking up clouds of dust behind them. But they weren’t surging forward. Not yet. They surrounded the Imperial tanks and began circling them at range, moving anti-clockwise.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ voxed Strieber.
The answer came all too quickly. From random points in the massive circle, small groups of ork vehicles suddenly broke formation and sped inward towards their prey.
The hull of Last Rites rattled under a heavy barrage of stubber rounds.
‘Damn,’ shouted Viess.
‘They’re trying to confuse us,’ Wulfe voxed to the other tanks. ‘If we can’t predict their angles of attack, there’s a chance they can close the gap. We have to start thinning them out, now! Siegler, high explosives!’
‘Aye, sir!’ With thick, powerful arms, the loader hefted a shell from the magazine on his right, slammed it into the cannon’s breech, and yanked the locking lever.
The loading light turned red. ‘She’s lit, sir!’
Through the vision-blocks, Wulfe spotted a knot of large, open-topped half-tracks among the smaller, faster ork vehicles. They were filled to overflowing with monstrous green savages. ‘Viess,’ said Wulfe. ‘Traverse left. Ork half-tracks. Four hundred metres.’
Squinting through his scope, Viess spotted them easily. The ork passengers were howling with insane laughter and excitement. Their blades glinted in the sun. He hit the traverse control pedals, and the turret swung around. Electric motors hummed as he adjusted the angle of elevation. ‘Targets marked!’ he called out.
Wulfe braced himself in his seat. ‘Fire main gun!’
Last Rites rocked backwards with the massive pressure of exploding propellant. Her hull shuddered with the thunderous signature boom of her awesome main gun. The turret basket filled with the coppery smell of burnt fyceline.
Through the vision-blocks, Wulfe saw the leading ork half-track vanish in a great mushroom of fire and dirt. The vehicles nearby were blasted into the air, spinning end over end. They smashed hard to the ground, spilling some of their foul passengers, crushing and mangling the rest. Shrapnel scythed out from the blast, eviscerating scores more.
It was a fine shot.
Bikes and buggies began swerving to avoid the burning wreckage, and the ork circle tightened. The enemy swerved inwards with increasing frequency to pepper the tanks with stubber-fire, but Last Rites boasted front armour 150mm thick, slanted to deflect solid rounds. The greenskins’ armament didn’t pack enough penetrating power to pose an immediate threat.
The real danger was in letting them engage at close-quarters.
A regular drumbeat of deep, sonorous booms told Wulfe that the other tanks were firing round after round into the ork horde. Every impact threw shattered vehicles and torn green bodies into the air. Alien blood splashed on the canyon floor, mixing thickly with the sand. In only the first few minutes of the battle, hundreds of greenskins were blasted apart by the legendary firepower of the Leman Russ’s main battle-cannon.
Like her sister tanks, Last Rites boasted a powerful hull-mounted weapon, too. Wulfe ordered Metzger to fire the lascannon at will. Seconds later, blazing beams of light lanced out to strafe the ork horde. The scorching las-blasts cut straight through light armour, igniting fuel tanks and sending bikes and buggies spinning into the air on great fountains of orange flame.
A trio of ork bikes swerved just in time to avoid destruction and came screaming towards Last Rites. Bolter-fire from the sponsons shredded two of them, but the last veered from side to side, racing unharmed through the hail of shells. Wulfe saw the hideous rider grin and lob a grenade towards his tank.
‘Brace!’ he shouted, and prayed that the blast wouldn’t wreck their treads.
There was a dull boom and the tank shook. Lights flickered in the turret basket. Wulfe’s diagnostics board reported trouble with the right sponson. He ordered the crew to sound off.
Garver didn’t answer.
Wulfe ordered Garver to respond.
Nothing.
‘Damn it all,’ Wulfe shouted. ‘We’ve lost the right sponson. Garver’s gone!’
‘No!’ yelled Holtz over the vox. ‘Those bastards!’
In his periscopic sight, Wulfe watched the ork bike accelerating away. As it passed the black Chimera, it was blasted apart by a searing spray of multilaser fire. Someone was manning the transport’s turret-mounted weapon. The multilaser turned quickly to target an ork truck and fired again, charring wide horizontal slashes in flesh and metal alike. Slaughtered orks tumbled from the back of the truck in limp, lifeless pieces.
Wulfe wondered if Dessembra herself was dispensing the Emperor’s judgement. Or was it one of her acolytes? Whoever it was had avenged Garver. He’d have to thank them later.
‘They’re getting closer,’ voxed Metzger. ‘They’re using smoke from the wrecks to bridge the distance.’
‘Stay calm, you dirty fetcher,’ snapped Holtz. ‘Keep firing. The sarge won’t let them get on top of us.’
‘You bet I won’t,’ added Wulfe, but he saw how quickly the gap was closing. There were just too damned many of them. Sooner or later, they’d get close enough to tag the tanks with high-explosives, or some monster with a flamethrower would press the nozzle of his weapon to a ventilation slit and cook them all alive.
