men, including no small percentage of those who had died, deserved medals for what they had
achieved — but he still railed against the stupidity of the whole operation. Taking Karavassa
wouldn’t matter a damn once General deViers got to the final way-point and found nothing left of
the legendary tank he so desperately sought.
Bergen intended to be there when it happened, to see the look on the general’s face.
“Any word on getting a hospital set up?” he asked, returning his mind to more immediate
concerns.
Marrenburg said he didn’t know, but Bergen’s adjutant, Katz, stepped forward and answered,
“The Officio Medicae staff have taken over a two-storey barracks building close to the west gate.
It’s been swept for threats. No problems. Their triage teams have already brought in the high priority
cases.”
“Good,” said Bergen. “Make sure they have everything they need. I’m also worried about
Colonel Vinnemann. I want him seen by an augmetics specialist as soon as possible. The gravity
here, the dust and all the rest of it… From the sounds of it, it’s all playing absolute hell with that
damned metal spine of his.”
Marrenburg seemed about to comment when Colonel Graves marched in, boot heels loud and
sharp on the stone floor. After a momentary glance in the direction of the dead warboss on the floor,
he stopped, saluted, and said, “Just had word from one of my sweeper teams, sir. There’s something
I think you ought to see.”
The something in question did nothing to improve Bergen’s dark mood. In fact, it had quite the
opposite effect.
“Slaves,” he gasped. “Human slaves.”
He stood in an open square a few hundred metres inside the north wall, looking at a mound of
dead men and women. All were stripped. All were chained together, each iron collar linked to the
next, every wrist and ankle tightly manacled. The flesh of their skinny chests and buttocks had been
cruelly branded with the same glyph that Bergen had seen on the greenskin leader’s breastplate.
Worst of all, each torso bore broad axe and cleaver wounds. They had been slaughtered like grox.
But why? He could only guess. Perhaps, with the battle-lust on them, the orks within the walls had
lost control, desperate to share in the bloodletting, and turned on those humans closest to hand. The
results were stomach-churning. If Bergen’s heart had not already been filled with hatred for the
greenskin race, the sight before him would certainly have done the trick. Blood-drinking ticks
crawled in swarms over the cooling bodies, searching for the sustenance they craved, but finding
little in veins that no longer pulsed.
“We should have expected this,” muttered Lieutenant Katz from behind Bergen’s right shoulder.
“Should we, Jarryl?”
“I would have thought so, sir,” answered the adjutant. “Orks have been raiding the nearby
systems unchecked for years. Salvage ships, mostly. The Navy can’t do much to protect those that
break the spacing restrictions. High risk, high reward and all that.”
“I’m glad my adjutant is so well informed,” said Bergen.
“Sorry, sir,” stuttered Katz. “I didn’t mean to sound—”
67
“Actually, Jarryl, I was being sincere. You know I value your observations. I just hadn’t thought
to see something like this.”
“I imagine the poor souls were brought here from Hadron, sir. It was the only ork spaceport in
the immediate area before the Navy cleansed it. We know ork clans sometimes trade with each
other. These poor souls might have been traded for fuel or ammunition.”
“May the saints guide them on,” said Bergen. He pressed his hands to his chest in the sign of the
aquila, and Katz immediately followed suit. Together, heads bowed, they offered a prayer for the
dead. When they were done, Bergen said, “We’ll find more of them out there, won’t we?”
Katz looked grim. “I expect so, sir, but not alive. I imagine the other divisions will find some
when they take Tyrellis and Balkar, but the orks will kill them before they can be saved.” He
gestured miserably at the pile of bodies in front of him. “There’s nothing we could have done, of
course.”
Bergen saw the truth of that, but it didn’t make him feel any better. These people’s lives had
been stolen from them by dirty xenos scum. Their spirits, on the other hand, still belonged to the
Emperor.
“Make sure the confessors are told of this, Jarryl. I’d like the souls of these men and women to
be commended to the Emperor’s side as soon as possible. I know the priests are busy with our own
dead right now, but these bodies will have to be burned. I don’t want the outpost crawling with
disease now that we’ve taken it back. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” said Katz. “With your permission, I’ll be about it, now.”
“Good man,” said Bergen. He listened to his adjutant’s footsteps fade behind him.
Above Karavassa, the sky was dimming with the onset of afternoon. The brown-bellied clouds
looked almost low enough to touch. They flickered with sheet lightning. Booming claps of dry
thunder shook the air.
A crackle of sound in Bergen’s right ear announced a short-range vox-transmission just a
fraction of a second before Colonel Graves’ voice said, “Graves to Division Command. Are you
there, sir?”
Bergen tapped a finger on the transmit stud of his vox-bead and replied, “Bergen, here. Go
ahead, Darrik.”
“One of my squads just reported the discovery of primary and secondary ork munitions dumps,
sir, plus a significant fuel reserve by the south-east corner. Looks like they didn’t get around to
scuttling it. Also, I’ve set up sentry patrols on the walls, as ordered. No room up there for the
Tarantulas, I’m afraid, unless we extend the parapets ourselves. One more thing, sir. Captain
Immrich is requesting permission to refuel his tanks from the greenskin cache.”
“Immrich?” asked Bergen.
“Yes, sir. He’s standing in for Colonel Vinnemann. The colonel is seeing the medicae
augmeticist on your orders, remember?”
“Right, yes,” voxed Bergen. “Tell Captain Immrich to go ahead, but I want the fuel store
searched for nasty surprises first, and have him ask one of the tech-priests for a substance analysis
before he fills up. Emperor alone knows what the orks put in their fuel tanks apart from
promethium.”
“One more thing, sir,” said Graves. “Tech-Adept Armadron tells me his preparations are
complete. A vox-node antenna has been set up and connected to the landlines. We’ve just opened a
link with Army Group HQ. The sound quality isn’t too bad at all. General deViers expects you to
report personally within the next thirty minutes.”
“Understood, colonel. I’ll be back at the comms station in ten. Meet me there. Division, out.”
Bergen turned and began marching back towards the centre of the outpost, retracing his steps
along streets filled with rusting junk and reeking of ork blood and excrement. He was glad of a
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reason to leave the piled bodies of the murdered slaves behind him, but the image of what he had
seen stayed with him, a powerful memory that he would draw on later.
It would fuel his hate in the days to come.
Three days after Karavassa was secured, Major General Rennkamp’s 8th Mechanised Division
moved up to take the old Imperial supply base, Tyrellis, located in the Garrando region of the desert
to the east-south-east of Bergen’s position. Resistance was fractionally lighter than at Karavassa,
and the troopers might have been in high spirits had it not been for the increase in sickness and
parasitic infestation that they suffered. The flesh-boring dannih were a constant nuisance. Orders
had gone out for the men to shave their heads and remove any thick body hair in order to help
combat the problem. Some troopers, preferring to drink their valuable alcohol rations rather than use
them to get rid of the vicious ticks, developed nasty infections. Others reported to the medicae
station with skin so saturated by the fines that they looked as if they had been bathing in spinefruit
juice. The jokes and taunts didn’t last long. The worst afflicted men suffered so badly from the
resulting sickness that they died. It was a miserable way to go, organs clogged by accumulating
dust, failing one after the other until the whole body shut down. That cast a dark shadow over those
who survived, for they knew it was only a matter of time before their own cells became choked with
the stuff. The quicker the general gained his prize, they grumbled, the better.
In that respect, at least, things were proceeding well. It was apparent that the greenskin presence
between Hadron Base and the last known coordinates of The Fortress of Arrogance had been greatly
overestimated. It seemed Ghazghkull Thraka’s pogrom against mankind had called far more of the
orks away from Golgotha than the Officio Strategos had anticipated. This alone remained in
Exolon’s favour, for if the orks were proving less of a threat, Golgotha was doing her level best to
make up for it.
Bergen and the men of his division remained garrisoned in Karavassa, anxiously patrolling the
surrounding lands, waiting impatiently for the general’s order to move east. That order was expected
to come through on the landline once the fortified settlement at Balkar — last of the major outposts
needed to secure the route between Hadron Base and the site of the objective — had been retaken
by the 12th Heavy Infantry Division under Major General Killian. Until then, there was little to do
but wait, and, with time on his hands, Bergen began to notice little things that worried him, such as
the subtle change in the tone of his skin. Each time he shaved, he looked into the mirror and noted
the deepening pink tinge that coloured the whites of his eyes. He was far from alone in this. Medicae
staff had issued everyone in the division with detox packages to help them combat the fines, but
they didn’t seem to be doing much good. Bergen had pressed Sergeant Behr, the medic on his
personal staff, for worst case scenarios.
The sergeant’s answers offered little comfort.
There were wildly varying levels of resistance between men. The hardiest would hold out for
months, perhaps even a standard Imperial year, but the symptoms would steadily worsen throughout
that time. Growing headaches and nausea could be dealt with easily enough; the pills to suppress
these were plentiful. For the changes in skin and eye colour, and the damage to organs, nothing
could be done with the equipment and facilities at hand. Despite Sergeant Behr’s insistence that it
would make little difference, Bergen nevertheless issued new orders to his men: they must wear
goggles and rebreather masks as much as possible.
If the able-bodied men of 10th Division were suffering, though, it was as nothing compared to
Colonel Vinnemann’s pain. Day after day, Bergen marvelled at the colonel’s resilience. The man
rarely uttered a word of complaint, at least not in company, but, between the dust and the higherthan-
standard gravity, his augmetic spine was bothering him like never before. The Medicae
augmeticist kept Bergen informed of Vinnemann’s condition, breaking his oath of patient
confidence for the sake of keeping the divisional leader fully apprised. Colonel Vinnemann had
been authorised to increase his self-administered injections of immunosuppressants and pain69
mediators, but the drugs were problematic if taken in high quantities. Bergen, who held great
affection and respect for the resilient little officer, began to offer daily prayers to the Emperor and
His Saints that Operation Thunderstorm would come to a speedy conclusion. To lose Vinnemann
prematurely would be a huge blow to the expedition. To lose him at all would be a huge blow to the
men who knew him.
Finally, on the fifteenth day after planetfall, it seemed as if the Emperor might be listening to
Gerard Bergen’s prayers.
Reports started coming through on the landline. With Karavassa and Tyrellis securely held and
protecting Imperial supply lines, Killian’s 12th Heavy Infantry Division had pushed forward,
storming the ruined fortress at Balkar, capturing it, and converting it into a front-line stronghold.
The fighting had been heavy there, and the casualty figures were high, hinting at a much heavier ork
presence closer to the site of the general’s ultimate objective. But Killian succeeded all the same,
and the forward base so vital to supporting the final leg of the expedition was firmly and fully
established. Those officers with a pessimistic bent predicted massive greenskin retaliation, but, for
now, Hadron, Karavassa, Tyrellis and Balkar were all back in Imperial hands after almost forty
years of enemy occupation. The final stage of the Operation Thunderstorm could commence at last.
Bergen received all this news with a feeling of great relief. He was even more relieved when the
10th Armoured Division’s new instructions came through from Hadron Base shortly after dawn on
the sixteenth day. General deViers ordered Bergen’s forces — minus an adequate garrisoning force
— to press east from Karavassa, heading straight for Balkar with all possible speed. Once there,
they would link up with elements from the other divisions and await the general’s arrival. DeViers
would personally lead them out into the Hadar region, to the foothills of the Ishawar range, for the
final phase of the operation.
Talking directly to Bergen over the landline, the old man sounded practically ecstatic, like an
over-stimulated child on the night before Emperor’s Day. Perhaps he sensed his long-sought
immortality waiting just beyond his fingertips. He would find The Fortress of Arrogance, whatever
was left of it, and the operation would enter its closing stage. The Mechanicus would fire a beacon
into the upper atmosphere to signal their position. A lifter would then descend from The Scion of
Tharsis to haul the holy machine from the desert sands and lift it back into space. Safely aboard the
Reclamator craft, The Fortress of Arrogance would be restored to its former glory during transit to
the Armageddon system. There, it would be presented to Commissar Yarrick, and he would ride it
out onto the battlefields of Armageddon Prime, rousing the spirits of his tired soldiers, inspiring in
them a glorious new strength. Thus uplifted, they would roll out to crush the foe.
It sounded wonderful, and in Bergen’s heart of hearts, he hoped it would be so, but the voice in
his head still held to the certainty that it was nothing but a pretty dream. Things would not come to
