his voice that really caught Wulfe by surprise.
“She could have picked a far worse time to give out on us, and you bloody know it, sarge. In
fact, this old girl has lasted out longer than we had any right to ask. She’s the last crate in the whole
damned company to give out, and she waited right up until now, the safest moment since we crashed
on this rock. So, I don’t give a five-copper back-alley frak whether we’re a laughing stock or not,
I’m bloody glad to be her driver. And I reckon you ought to shake yourself.” Wulfe was stunned.
“Yeah, I think so, too!” said Siegler with a firm nod of his head. Wulfe looked at Holtz. “Well?”
Holtz scratched his chin. “Three against one. I wouldn’t change her for any other crate in the
company, and that includes the lieutenant’s Vanquisher. I can’t think of any other way to put it,
sarge: they just don’t make them like this anymore. She ain’t no beauty, but she’ll do for me.”
Wulfe leaned back against the turret wall, looking at both of the crewmen who shared the tiny
space with him. Everyone on this crew had served in Wulfe’s previous tank, though Metzger had
only rolled out with her once before they’d had to abandon her. The first Last Rites had been
something special, at least in Wulfe’s eyes. It was easy to get attached to a machine that had saved
your life so many times. Only her speed had let her down on that final day, when the clock was
against her, and they had been forced to leave her behind. Wulfe realised now that his close affinity
with the original Last Rites had blinded him to the worth of her replacement. Last Rites II might
look like hell, but she was tougher than old boots. She had got them this far.
“Seems like this old girl has found a few fans,” he said, “and I’ve been a bit unfair.”
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“Just a bit, sarge,” said Siegler. Of the four-man crew, he had served with Wulfe the longest and
the trust between them was strongest, not least because of Siegler’s childlike loyalty. “Last Rites
was a hard act to follow.”
“She was,” said Wulfe, “but you’re right; I reckon this crate is overdue a bit of respect from me.
One of you idiots should have told me I was out of order.”
The looks both men gave him said they wouldn’t have dared. Had his mood been so bad
recently? he wondered. He had always believed himself an approachable man. Was he blind to the
truth in that respect as well?
A light began blinking on the vox-board. Wulfe dreaded opening the link. No doubt another of
the Gunheads was calling in to gloat. Maybe it was Rhaimes. The company’s longest-serving
sergeant was never short of a quip.
What would it be this time?
As Wulfe reached over to the board to open the vox-link, he told his crew, “I’ll say a litany of
thanks to the old girl’s machine-spirit when I get a bit of downtime.”
The men in the turret smiled, and he turned from them, hit the toggle on the vox-board, and said,
“Who the frak is it and what do you want?”
The voice on the other end was not amused.
“Well you could show some damned decorum for a start, sergeant,” snapped van Droi over the
link. “The next man who speaks to me like that gets thrown to Commissar Slayte.”
Wulfe blanched.
“Sorry, sir,” he told Lieutenant van Droi. “Thought it was someone else. What can I do for
you?”
“For a start, you can sit tight until we get an Atlas out to you. It will tow you into Balkar. I’ve
voxed ahead for it already. Damned unfortunate time to break down, Oskar, what with all those
people on the walls to greet us. Colonel Vinnemann is up there, and Major General Bergen, too, no
doubt.”
Looking across the turret, Wulfe met Siegler’s gaze and winked. To van Droi, he said, “With
respect, sir, I can’t think of a better time to suffer a breakdown, can you? Last Rites II is the only
machine in the company to have lasted this long without serious engine trouble. I’d rather it
happened here and now than back there in the desert with the orks at our backs.”
Van Droi was silent for a moment. When he replied, a touch of his usual good humour had
returned to his voice. “Fair comment, sergeant. Glad to hear she’s finally grown on you. Took
bloody long enough, mind you. Anyway, what’s this about refusing Lenck’s assistance?”
Wulfe knew van Droi was probing with that last addition. Wulfe’s contempt for Lenck was still
a matter of concern to the lieutenant, then. “Didn’t want to hold him up, sir,” he said. “We’ve been
on quarter rations and bog-water for so long, I figured that rookie crew of his would fall over if they
didn’t get some proper provisions.”
“You’re a damned poor liar, sergeant,” said van Droi. “And there are no rookies in my company,
not anymore. They bled and sweated like the rest of us, and they killed their share of greenskins, so
let’s drop the whole them and us bit, shall we? I’m moving through the gates now. Find me in the
officers’ mess when you’ve been fed and watered.”
“Understood, sir.”
Van Droi signed off, but another light was blinking on the vox-board now. Wulfe hit the switch
and said, “This is Last Rites II. Go ahead.”
“Last Rites II, this is Atlas recovery tank Orion VI. We’re pulling up to you now. Give us a
minute to get tow-lines hooked up and we’ll be under way, over.”
The Atlas commander sounded young, and his voice made Wulfe reflect on van Droi’s words:
no more us and them. He had been obstinate in his refusal to accept the new tank. He had been
obstinate in not telling his crew about the apparition in the canyon on Palmeros. Was he being just
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as obstinate about the new meat? Was Lenck really as bad as he seemed, or had Wulfe cultivated
bad feeling between them from the start on account of the man’s likeness to Victor Dunst? He was
starting to suspect it was the latter.
“Understood, Orion VI,” he voxed. “Let me know when you’re ready to take us in.”
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Evening fell quickly over the base at Balkar. The sky turned black just as Last Rites II finally
reached the motor pool where she would undergo her much-needed repairs. Wulfe thanked the
young commander of the Atlas tank, asked him where the mess hall and barracks buildings were,
and led his crew off to find them. Their search would have been impossible but for the electric
lamps that had been strung up throughout the base, their thick cables running along streets and
dangling from rooftops. Even so, it wasn’t easy. The lights were kept relatively dim at night in order
to avoid drawing attention from itinerant ork bands. Earlier that day, units from the 259th
Mechanised Infantry Regiment under Colonel von Holden — part of Rennkamp’s 8th Mechanised
Division — had been sent out to eliminate a band of travelling greenskin scavengers. The greenskins
had been spotted forty-some kilometres out from the base by scouts on Hornet bikes as they
patrolled the low hills to the north. The scouts had then guided Armoured Fist units in for the attack.
The action was short, bloody and decisive, and, importantly, none of the orks had escaped. Even a
single fleeing greenskin might have brought a larger force back down on the Imperial camp. The last
thing Exolon needed was a full-scale assault on their forward position. The top brass were desperate
to avoid anything that might delay success, and a siege more than qualified.
The mechanised units that engaged the orks actually managed something quite unusual; they
brought two of the orks back alive. Naturally, both of them were horribly maimed and crippled,
hanging onto their worthless alien lives by virtue of their raw inhuman resilience alone. Even so, the
struggle to capture them had been immense. Wounded orks were often even more dangerous than
healthy ones.
Wulfe heard of it first from a group of soldiers in the mess tent as he finished off a few slices of
cooked meal-brick and a glass of rather tepid, but thankfully clear and salt-free water. He shook his
head as he listened. Captive orks? It sounded like the officer in charge of the Armoured Fist unit in
question was some kind of show-off. Wulfe wouldn’t have brought them back. He’d have executed
them on the spot. The top brass, on the other hand, must have seen some gain in the situation — a
morale boost, probably — because someone had approved the construction of two cages in an area
by the east wall. According to the troopers that told Wulfe all this, the captured xenos were proving
quite a draw.
Wulfe was just finishing his meal when word reached him that the men of 10th Company were
to pay the caged aliens a visit. Wulfe guessed van Droi wanted the less experienced men to see the
foe up close and personal, based perhaps on some notion that familiarity eliminated fear.
Groxshit, thought Wulfe. The closer you got to orks, the more you saw how damned dangerous
they were.
Despite his earlier promise to give thanks to the machine-spirit of his tank, he found himself
with little time to do so. Stopping briefly at his barracks, he made arrangements to meet his crew by
the cages a little later, but his first order of business was to find Lieutenant van Droi in the officer’s
mess. Thus, after a few moments spent trying to smarten himself up a bit — not easy given all he
had been through — he crossed the base and arrived outside a single-storey sandstone building with
the appropriate marker-glyph on the door.
There was a surly, bored-looking soldier on guard duty outside.
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“Sergeant Wulfe to see Lieutenant van Droi,” said Wulfe. The trooper nodded, asked him to
wait, and then popped inside to verify things with the lieutenant. A moment later, he reappeared and
ushered Wulfe inside.
The officer’s mess had a low ceiling of cracked plaster, and at least half of the red floor tiles
were missing, leaving large areas of bare concrete visible. Strip-lights hung above long trestle
tables, buzzing and flickering, their bright glare somewhat harsh to eyes accustomed to the dull
Golgothan day. As he looked around, Wulfe decided this place wasn’t much of an improvement on
the grunts’ mess. He wondered idly if the food and drink was any better.
Even here, inside this building, the orks had painted typically crude images of the things that
generally occupied their tiny minds: guns, blades, skulls, strange gods, and much more besides.
Many of the scrawls were so obscure, so badly rendered that Wulfe couldn’t begin to guess what
they might represent. Some effort had been made to cover them up, of course, but there were so
many. They were literally everywhere. As he had walked here, Wulfe had seen miserable troopers
plastering the walls with propaganda material from the Departmento Munitorum. It was a minor
punishment detail. The commissars had ordered it. One of the posters near Wulfe’s assigned
barracks building had caught his eye. Check your kills! it ordered. There was a well painted image
of a big, strong Cadian trooper blowing an ork’s brains out as it lay limp on the ground. The bottom
of the poster read:
Destroying the brain will put most targets down for good!
The ork in the poster was a damned sight smaller than any of the ones Wulfe had met, but there
was no denying the artist’s talent. His or her work graced a number of other posters, too. Most were
concerned with showing proper reverence to the Emperor and the authority of his agents, from the
political to the theological. Others yet bore the seal of the Adeptus Mechanicus and offered concise
reminders on the proper care and operation of standard-issue field equipment.
It wasn’t that the troops needed reminding — their drill sergeants back on Cadia had seen to that
with an abundance of cruel enthusiasm — but leaving the walls of an Imperial base covered in ork
iconography, no matter how short the intended stay, was tantamount to heresy under Imperial Law.
The mess hall was busy. The air was filled with the constant hum of conversation, and no one
paid him much attention. Wulfe soon spotted van Droi at a table on the far left. The lieutenant was
sitting with a number of officers from the other companies of the 81st Armoured Regiment. As
Wulfe walked over to present himself, he noted how damned tired his company commander was
looking. The others didn’t look much better. Golgotha hadn’t been particularly kind to any of them.
“Sergeant Wulfe reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, saluting stiffly. The men seated around the
table looked up.
“At ease, Wulfe,” said van Droi around a mouthful of food. Wulfe glanced at the lieutenant’s
plate automatically and saw a dark, thick slice of meal-brick. It looked hard and cold. So, he
thought, the food isn’t any better. They’re on the same rations as us grunts.
He took no satisfaction in the knowledge. He wouldn’t have grudged the lieutenant a better
standard of fare.
“Take a seat, Oskar,” said van Droi, indicating an empty chair at the corner of the table.
Wulfe hesitated, looking at the other officers. Most were busy chewing or chatting to their
neighbours. A few smiled at him or nodded. Wulfe recognised Captain Immrich among them,
Colonel Vinnemann’s right-hand man, tipped to replace him if the old tiger ever got bored of his
quest for vengeance.
“I wouldn’t want to impose on the captain and his companions, sir.”
“None of that, sergeant,” laughed Captain Immrich. “Sit down at once. Let’s not make it an
order. You’ll find none of that classist crap at my table. Isn’t that right, gentlemen?”
The other officers agreed, though some less readily than others. Wulfe bowed a little to the
captain, and then sat down, stiff as a board. Immrich noted it, grinned and shook his head. “We’ve
met before, sergeant,” he said, “aboard the Hand of Radiance. You remember?”
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“I do, sir.”
“Just after that blasted mercy run we sent you on.” He turned to the other officers and added,
“The Kurdheim affair,” before turning back to Wulfe. “Bad business that. You should never have
been sent back out there with so little time left.”
Damned right we shouldn’t, thought Wulfe angrily, remembering the men who had given their
lives that day. Not that it was Immrich’s fault.
The captain seemed to read Wulfe’s mind. Tremendous pressure from up top on that one. The
damned Officio Strategos were adamant about it. Colonel Vinnemann objected from the start, but it
was never going to count for much. Did those posthumous decorations ever come through for the
other two? Medallion Crimson, second class, wasn’t it?”
