She would be best suited for the job.
“As soon as you can, van Droi,” Stromm added. “The Emperor protects. Stromm, out.”
Van Droi immediately switched back over to the company command channel and said,
“Command to Sword Leader. Respond, Wulfe.”
“Sword Leader to Command,” Sergeant Wulfe voxed back. “Go ahead, sir.”
Van Droi could hear the drumming of a heavy stubber between the sergeant’s words.
“Listen up, Wulfe,” he said. “I have friendlies in urgent need of an escape corridor. I want the
New Champion on it. Understood? Move your squad up and cut a path flush with the ship’s hull. Let
the wreck cover the footsloggers’ backs. Carve them a path to safety. Colonel Stromm has the vox,
F-channel, band six.”
There was only the briefest pause before Wulfe responded — “Wulfe to Company Command.
Sword Squadron is on the move.” — but van Droi could read into it easily enough.
Wulfe was probably cursing. New Champion of Cerbera was Corporal Lenck’s machine.
47
“Let’s take it to them,” Wulfe told his crew over the intercom. “Metzger, get her in close, three
hundred metres, a hull-down position if you can find one. Expect plenty of fire.” Last Rites II
gunned forward, churning up the desert under her treads, throwing waves of sand up behind her.
Wulfe dropped down into the turret to switch vox channels. Once he had opened the link to his
squadron, he said, “Sword Leader to One and Two. Orders from van Droi. We’re going in. New
Champion, move up on my right and open a corridor for the infantry. Cut a path in line with the
wreckage so their backs are covered. And try not to hit the friendlies, Lenck. Last Rites II and
Frontline Crusader will give supporting fire centre and left. Frontline Crusader, stop parallel with
me, fifty metre spacing. Hammer Squadron will be supporting us from the rear. Confirm.”
Corporal Siemens came back first. “Frontline Crusader confirms, sergeant. Moving up to cover
your left. The Emperor protects.”
“The Emperor protects,” Wulfe replied automatically.
“New Champion confirms,” reported Lenck a moment later. “Watch and learn, sergeant.”
“Stow the backchat, corporal,” Wulfe spat back. “Just do your job.” He had seen enough of
Lenck during training exercises in the massive holds of the Hand of Radiance to know that he was
good — far better, in fact, than could be expected given his level of combat experience — but Wulfe
wasn’t about to let Lenck know that. The man was already infuriatingly cocky.
With Last Rites II just edging in front, the three tanks of Sword Squadron closed with the
charging orks. Wulfe scrambled back up into his cupola and grasped the twin grips of his heavy
stubber. Looking out at the wall of roaring brown bodies that surged towards him, he realised that he
barely needed to aim. Anywhere he fired, he was sure hit something. Hardly pausing to line up
along the weapon’s iron sights, he pressed his thumbs down hard on the gun’s butterfly trigger.
There was a deafening rattle as the stubber unloaded on the alien horde, cutting dozens of them to
pieces. It was a strange, darkly comical sight, one that Wulfe had witnessed before. The bulky alien
savages appeared to dance a deathly jig as they were literally chewed apart by the hail of lead.
Corporal Metzger stopped Last Rites II just behind a shallow dune, not much protection, but
better than none. It would keep the tank’s vulnerable underside covered while the hull armour took
the brunt of the enemy fire. Then Metzger manned the hull-mounted heavy bolter, adding his fire to
Wulfe’s, devastating the press of enemies that were desperately trying to close the gap so they could
swarm the tank’s hatches.
At this range, Wulfe could see their grotesque faces all too clearly, reminding him of so many
other greenskins he had faced over the years. Some men said they all looked the same, but Wulfe
knew better. One face in particular was burned into his brain: the wart-covered, lopsided face of the
ork that had given him the scar on his throat. The old scar was itching like crazy, as it always did
when he was under pressure. Though the Golgothan orks were similar enough to their distant kin to
dredge up unwelcome memories, they were different, too. They were brown for a start, discoloured,
he imagined, by the red dust to which they had been exposed for so many years. They were also
leaner and harder than any he had seen before, their muscles rippling like steel cables. Golgotha had
made its mark on them. It had shaped them. Toughened them.
Wulfe stole a glance to left and right, and saw that Frontline Crusader and New Champion of
Cerbera had halted in formation, adding their lethal firepower to the slaughter. The toll on the orks
was mind-boggling, and a number of the smallest turned and tried to break from the fight. These few
began struggling against the tide pressing at their backs, eager to escape the sweeping arcs of fire
that were killing so many of their foul kin. It was hopeless, of course. Wulfe swept his barrel from
left to right, cutting them down without mercy.
Suffer not the alien to live.
Down in the turret, Corporal Holtz didn’t need Wulfe to tell him what to do. He had plenty of
experience to guide him. Last Rites II, like so many other Leman Russ tanks, boasted a co-axial
autocannon that could chew infantry and light armour apart with ease, allowing the gunner to spare
the precious, limited ammunition of the main gun. Holtz employed the co-ax now, traversing the
48
turret slowly in a ninety-degree arc, firing relentlessly, covering the sand in lifeless alien debris. On
the other side of the turret basket, Siegler was pulling a fresh ammunition belt from a stowage box.
With its incredible rate of fire, Wulfe’s heavy stubber would need reloading in a matter of seconds.
“Don’t waste any time, Lenck,” Wulfe voxed to the New Champion. “Cut that corridor. Those
men can’t last much longer.”
“I’m on it, sergeant,” Lenck snapped back.
Sure enough, Wulfe saw the Exterminator’s turret-mounted heavy bolters blaze into life,
stitching a bloody path straight through the foe. They made one hell of a mess, a kill for almost
every hit scored.
Wulfe felt someone tap his shin twice. He tore his eyes from the bloodbath, dropped his hand
down into the turret, and accepted the ammunition belt that Siegler was feeding up to him. Ork slugs
rattled and spanged from the turret armour all around him, sending showers of sparks into the air.
Wulfe ducked down, staying as low as possible without abandoning his cupola altogether.
“Sort those bastards out, Holtz!” he yelled over the intercom. “I’m taking an awful lot of fire up
here!”
“If I could just use the main gun, sarge,” Holtz argued.
“Well you can’t!” barked Wulfe. “No high explosives. We’re too near the bloody footsloggers.”
Wordlessly, Holtz traversed the turret again, using the autocannon to pour out another lethal hail
that bought Wulfe the time he needed to reload. With quick, practised hands, Wulfe re-threaded the
belt into the heavy stubber, yanked hard on the cocking lever, and was about to resume firing when
something huge and dark leapt high into the air on a trail of blue fire, curved straight towards him,
and landed with a heavy clang on top of his turret. Just a metre closer and Wulfe would have been
fatally crushed under the heavy body of a monstrous, mad-eyed brute with a smoking red rocket
strapped to its back. It was some kind of insane greenskin assault trooper!
Wulfe and the ork looked at each other for the briefest instant, blue eye locked to red, and Wulfe
knew that it was over. The ork’s rusty cleaver was already in the air, poised at the start of a
sweeping downward stroke that would hack him apart. His heavy stubber couldn’t help him. The
ork had one massive foot on either side of the barrel.
Oh, frak, thought Wulfe.
A tidal surge of adrenaline slowed time to a crawl and blocked out everything but the enormous
figure of the monster that was about to end his life. Wulfe didn’t hear the burst of fire from his right.
He didn’t hear his name being called over the vox. But he saw the ork’s weapon hand disintegrate in
a bloody mist, followed almost immediately by its massive, razor-toothed head. It burst like a rotten
fruit, and he felt the monster’s foul blood spray over his face and fatigues like hot rain.
The creature’s heavy blade clattered against the turret armour as it fell. Then the headless body
followed it, falling backwards, slipping over the tank’s track guards to the red sand below.
Wulfe didn’t move for another second, confused that he was somehow still alive. He didn’t
register the ork shells that were whining past his head.
There was something powerfully salty on his lips, and the foul taste of it snapped him back to
his senses. It was ork blood. He wiped it off with his sleeve and turned. Looking to the right, he saw
Corporal Lenck standing in the cupola of the New Champion, his heavy stubber still pointed in
Wulfe’s direction.
For just the briefest moment, Wulfe felt absolutely sure that Lenck was about to shoot him.
There was a look of utter triumph in the arrogant corporal’s eyes. He could end Wulfe’s life with the
merest pressure of thumb on trigger.
But the lethal impacts never came. After a tense second, Lenck laughed, turned his stubber back
on the orks and continued firing. He looked sickeningly pleased with himself.
By the frakking Eye, Wulfe cursed. Now I’m in his debt. Damn it all! Why did it have to be
Lenck?
49
His eyes followed the line of Lenck’s tracers and he saw that the New Champion had cut a deep,
broad path in the ork ranks, deep enough and wide enough to make all the difference to Stromm and
his men. The orks were pushing away from the crashed drop-ship, eager to avoid being slaughtered
under the torrent of explosive munitions and autocannon fire. They left hundreds of their dead
behind them in great heaps of reeking meat. Wulfe looked beyond the piled bodies and saw
Stromm’s infantrymen fighting valiantly with their backs to the crashed ship’s hull. Not smart, he
thought, to get yourself grounded like that without an exit strategy. It was only by sheer luck, or
perhaps the machinations of the Divine Emperor, that the Gunheads had found Stromm’s lot in time.
If Lieutenant van Droi had picked up the colonel’s faint vox-transmissions any later, the Gunheads
would have found only dead men and scavengers.
Wulfe had said it before, and he said it to himself again now; he wouldn’t have been a
footslogger for all the gold on Agripinaa. What kind of madness made men march to battle without
at least a hundred millimetres of solid armour between them and the foe? Little wonder that the life
of an infantryman was so short. One way or another, most died within their first six months of
combat duty. The average for tankers was almost double. He knew some men resented that, but it
was tanks and their crews that drew most fire on the battlefield.
Through the veils of churning smoke and dust, Wulfe spotted a man that could only have been
Colonel Stromm. His poise, his movements, everything about him radiated strength and leadership.
He and the men immediately around him were fighting desperately against those orks that were still
pressing in from the far side, protected from the tank fire by the very men they were so eager to kill.
At a glance, Wulfe judged that there wasn’t much more than a company’s worth of men left
standing: two hundred, maybe three. The number was dropping even as he watched. The orks kept
up a constant pressure, clambering over banks of their dead to fire clumsily-made pistols and
stubbers, or to charge forward with blades raised high. The sand under the carpet of dead men and
orks had turned into a blood-sodden quagmire.
Wulfe dropped down into the turret and nudged the vox-selector switch to F channel, band six.
“Colonel Stromm,” he voxed, “you have your corridor, but it won’t hold for long.”
Stromm didn’t waste time offering thanks. Instead, he answered, “Understood, armour. We’ll
make our push. Give us all the cover you can. Stromm, out.”
Wulfe contacted Lenck and Siemens briefly and passed this on. For an instant, he considered
thanking Lenck, but he couldn’t forget the look in the man’s eyes. He decided that they would talk
about it later, providing they both lived through this. He scrambled back up into his cupola, intent on
doing whatever he could to help Stromm’s men. He saw two squads of Kasrkin storm troopers
moving out from the colonel’s side, swiftly taking up positions that would allow them to hold the
passage open for as long as possible. They moved as one, firing clean, disciplined hellgun bursts for
maximum effect, and Wulfe found he was profoundly impressed. The Kasrkin were a special breed.
He wondered what it took to remain so cool-headed, surrounded by all that death and horror, by
alien savages that outweighed you three or four times. He marvelled at their calm efficiency.
Like tankers, the Kasrkin drew a certain level of resentment from standard infantrymen. They
received special training and superior kit, and commanders tended not to waste them in wars of
attrition when there were other options available. Right now, however, that training and equipment
was being employed to save lives.
Wulfe wondered how any soldier could resent that.
With the corridor momentarily secured, the remnants of the embattled infantry began pouring
out, desperately making for the cover of Sword Squadron’s tanks. As they ran, some stopped and
turned, dropping to one knee to fire back at the pursuing orks. When the men behind had overtaken
them, they rose again and ran while someone else covered the rear. It was as well-executed a
staggered retreat as Wulfe had seen.
While Sword Squadron’s secondary weapons continued to blaze and stutter, helping to hold the
orks at bay, Wulfe saw Colonel Stromm run down the centre of the corridor, a wiry-looking comms50
officer at his side. The comms-officer was carrying a regimental banner of bright crimson and gold
that rippled and waved above his head as he ran. It might have been glorious but for all the bullet
holes in it. Wulfe noticed, too, that Stromm’s right arm had been strapped to his body. It was
probably broken, and yet he moved towards the tanks with as much speed as any of the others,
slowing only to turn and fire blazing hellpistol shots back at his howling pursuers.
