[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads Read online

  “Those of you with me long enough know that I dislike long speeches,” said Vinnemann. “Something best left to your commissars and confessors, I think, to men who have a particular talent for it.”

  Commissar Slayte, the regiment’s widely despised political officer, dressed as ever in the black and gold of his office, bowed slightly at the compliment. Confessor Friedrich, on the other hand, a flush-faced priest in his late thirties, merely swayed a little as if standing in a strong breeze that only he could feel.

  “However,” continued Colonel Vinnemann, “as Captain Immrich has rightly reminded me, our regiment faces something unprecedented in its history. If a situation ever warranted a departure from my typical reticence, it is this one, for we are about to set foot on a world firmly and completely in the hands of the hated ork.”

  It was Vinnemann’s particular habit to refer to the old foe in the singular. Some of the men did a pretty good impersonation of him, though never with any malice. There was tremendous love and respect for the old colonel among those who had served under him for any length of time. It was well earned. Those men whose jibes contained an edge of genuine insult, especially those that mocked his physical disability, quickly found themselves isolated, cast out by their fellows. Among Imperial Guardsmen, such exclusion was as good as a death sentence.

  Vinnemann’s distinctive posture was caused by his augmetic spine. Twenty-four years earlier, while just a captain, he had undergone a life-saving augmentation procedure following the destruction of his Vanquisher battle tank. His body had never fully accepted the implant. Regular injections of immunosuppressants and painkillers eased things a little, but not much. The injury should have killed him, and so, too, the subsequent operation, but his indomitable spirit had kept him alive, that and the care of the Medicae nurse he later married. During his slow, painful recovery, his superiors had offered him the option of an honourable discharge. It seemed to them the only logical choice.

  Vinnemann had rejected it without hesitation. “A rear echelon position, then,” they had suggested, but the old tanker had rejected that, too. “My duty,” he had insisted, “is to lead my men from the front, no matter what, and, so long as I am able, that is exactly what I intend to do.”

  Twelve years later, he had risen to the rank of colonel, taking command of the entire 81st Armoured Regiment.

  He studied them now, his brave troopers, during a short pause in his speech. A slim lieutenant at the rear coughed quietly behind his hand. The sound was magnified in the relative silence. Vinnemann drew a deep breath.

  “Some of us have fought the ork before,” he continued, “and with notable success. Our victories on Phaegos II, Galamos and Indara stand us in good stead, though many of you, I suppose, had yet to be born at the time of the latter. Still, the point is this: we know the ork. We know that together, man and machine, tanker and tank, we are stronger than the ork. We know that we can beat the ork. We’ve proved it time after time.”

  He found himself stunned by how young some of the most recent reinforcements looked when standing next to their more experienced peers. By the blasted Eye, he thought, some of them are practically children! Was I ever so fresh-faced?

  Thoughts of his two sons bubbled up in his mind. Both were serving in the 92nd Infantry Division on Armageddon. They had grown into fine soldiers. Was it too much to hope for their safety? Was it foolish to pray for them? Millions would die to stop the foe on Armageddon, tens of millions, perhaps. Yarrick’s war demanded it. The very heart of the Imperium was at stake. Why should his sons be spared the fate of their comrades? He knew that glory, victory and a good death were the best he could ask for them. It was all that most good Cadians asked for themselves. Besides, were the men before him not also his sons? That was how he saw them sometimes. They certainly made him feel just as proud.

  “Could General deViers be any more fortunate than to have our proud regiment roll out under his command? I hardly think so. Yes, I’ve heard the mutterings among you. I’ve sensed your dark mood. Why send us to Golgotha, you still wonder, when our kin are so pressed on Armageddon? What difference, you ask, can we make out here on a planet untouched by the Emperor’s light? Well, let me tell you something. Listen closely, now, because I want you to understand it. I believe in this operation! Do you hear me? I believe in it. Our success will make a difference to our beleaguered brothers that you can scarcely imagine. Our triumphant return will re-energise them as nothing else can. Those of you who doubt it will understand once you lay eyes on the prize. Until that moment, I know you’ll do whatever it takes, give your every bead of sweat, your last drop of blood if necessary, for the honour and tradition of our proud regiment, for the glory of Cadia, and for the everlasting dominion of the God-Emperor of mankind.”

  He scanned their faces for signs of open dissent and found none. Instead, their response to his words was both immediate and deafening.

  “For Cadia and the Emperor!” they roared and, like his own amplified words, the sound echoed back at him from the hangar walls.

  He grinned at them, eager not to dwell on the doubts he secretly carried. “Sergeant Keppler,” he said, “get these brave soldiers loaded up!”

  “Aye, sir,” said the old sergeant with the mutilated ear, and he threw up a salute that was so sharp it could have cut glass. He turned, took a deep breath, and roared at the men, “Right you maggots, you heard the colonel. About face! Squad leaders, take ’em in nice and clean!”

  Vinnemann watched them proudly as they marched up the ramps and into the bellies of the waiting drop-ships, each company to a ship of its own. Be strong, sons of Cadia, he thought, now more than ever.

  He turned and dismissed his officers so that each could go to join his men. Finally, with his personal staff in tow, the colonel moved off to board his own shuttle.

  The hangar air began vibrating with the whine of powerful engines as the naval flight-crews began warming up their craft. With a great metallic groan, the massive bay doors slowly opened onto space. Orange light flooded in, reflected from the planet below.

  After seven long and troubled months aboard the Hand of Radiance, it was time, at last, to return to war.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Good solid ground, thought Sergeant Oskar Andreas Wulfe. Greenskins or not, he was looking forward to standing on good solid ground. It would be a fine thing to feel dirt and rock under his boot-heels again, the first time in far too long. He was sick of living day-to-day on this damned ship with its maze of gloomy corridors and its endlessly recycled air. With thoughts of dunes and mountains and broad open plains, he marched his crew up the boarding ramp and into the drop-ship that would ferry them down to the surface.

  The trip from Palmeros to the Golgothan subsector had been the longest unbroken warp journey of his career, and plenty of tempers had frayed under the strain, not least his own. It wasn’t just the journey, however. Warp travel was no picnic, but it didn’t help that his mind was still wrestling with the memories of his last days on Palmeros, memories that often woke him in a cold sweat, gripping his bunched sheets and calling out the name of a dead friend.

  He suspected that his crew was more bothered by this than they let on. They had to bunk with him, after all, and often got as little restful sleep as he did. He thought he detected it in their eyes sometimes, a loss of confidence in him where once it had been unshakeable. How much worse would matters be, he wondered, if he ever told them the truth about what he had seen in the canyon that day? Much worse. It didn’t do for a tank commander to see ghosts. Those who reported such things tended to go missing shortly afterwards, marched off by whatever Imperial body had jurisdiction. So far, the only man Wulfe had confided in was Confessor Friedrich, and that was how he intended to keep it. Even drunk off his arse, as he often was, the confessor was a man to be trusted.

  Wulfe forced his mind back to more positive territory. It would be good to see a sky overhead again, instead of pitted metal bulkheads veined with dripping pipes and ta
ngled cables. It hardly mattered what that sky looked like, just so long as it was wide and open and any colour but the lustreless grey of starship bulkheads.

  Following the squad in front, Wulfe led his men through one of the drop-ship’s cargo holds, turning his head to look at the tanks and halftracks that rested there. Beyond them, further back in the shadows, sat the company’s fuel and supply trucks. All of the vehicles were covered in heavy brown tarpaulins, lashed down with thick steel cables and bolted to solid fixtures in the floor. But, even with her bulk hidden under a tarp, it was all too easy for Wulfe to mark out his own tank. The Leman Russ Last Rites II boasted a Mars Alpha pattern hull, so she was fractionally longer in the body than the other Leman Russ. She was an old girl, and badly scarred — in Wulfe’s opinion, one of the shabbiest tanks he had ever set eyes on. Her armour plating was riveted together, rather than mould-cast, and her turret was all vertical surfaces just begging to be hit with armour-piercing shells or rocket-propelled grenades. He was quite certain that she would get him and his entire crew killed during their first engagement. She was nothing like her predecessor, and he cursed her for that. He remembered seeing her for the first time and wondering if, in assigning him this old junker, the lieutenant had meant to punish him for something. Wulfe had thought his relationship with Lieutenant van Droi perfectly solid up to then, but now he felt he had cause to question it. To make things worse, some of the other sergeants had leapt on the chance to rip him up about it.

  “Don’t get too far ahead of us all, will you?” they said. “Let us know if you need help pushing her up a dune.”

  “What does she run on, Wulfe? Pedal power?”

  “How many aurochs does it take to pull her?”

  The list went on. Wulfe scowled over at the covered tank, glad she was cloaked by the tarp so he didn’t have to look at her ugly hide. He quickly turned away.

  The squad in front of him, Sergeant Richter’s crew, stomped up a narrow metal staircase and disappeared from view. Wulfe put his hand on the guardrail and hoisted himself up after them, steel steps ringing under his polished marching boots. His men clambered up behind him, right at his back, silent except for the gunner, Holtz, who was grumbling unintelligibly. Wulfe didn’t wonder that Holtz was uneasy, though the man was apt to grumble at the best of times. Emerging safely from the warp was one thing, and Wulfe’s relief was genuine enough, but every man in the regiment knew what awaited them on Golgotha. Only the crazies and the liars — meaning most of the commissioned officers — professed to like the army group’s odds of success here. To Wulfe’s mind, Operation Thunderstorm seemed like the most incredible gamble. Colonel Vinnemann had done his level best to instil a sense of purpose and honour in them, of course, but that was all part of the job.

  An entire world overrun with orks. By the blasted Eye! Who knew how many of the filthy buggers there would be?

  Without realising he was doing it, Wulfe reached up to brush a fingertip over the long horizontal scar at his throat. Orks. His hatred of the greenskins was as strong today as it had ever been. Probably stronger, in fact.

  A doorway led into one of the passenger holds at the top of the metal staircase. It was a long dark space barely three metres across, extending to the left and right like a tunnel. Twin rows of tiny orange guide-lights lined the floor, and numbers in faded white paint marked the walls. Wulfe and his men soon found their seats, buckled themselves in, and reached up to pull metal impact frames down over their heads and shoulders. The frames locked into place with a loud click. It was a sound filled with significance, with a distinct finality. Once you were locked in, there was no getting off this ride.

  Only minutes remained until the drop. Wulfe felt a familiar tightness in his stomach. He glanced up and down the compartment, and nodded in friendly acknowledgement to Sergeant Viess.

  Viess, only recently promoted, had been Wulfe’s gunner for some years and remained a friend, though an undeniable distance had grown between them since he had been given his stripes. He had his own men to lead, and Holtz, formerly a sponson gunner, had taken his place on the main gun. Wulfe was glad for Viess. Most men in the regiment aspired to commanding their own tank. He missed having him on his crew, though. Together, they had notched up a good number of armour-kills.

  Once the last squad had filed in to the compartment, the door hissed shut. Almost two hundred men sat in the compartment. They were Gossefried’s Gunheads, the 81st Armoured Regiment’s 10th Company. Only the lieutenant and his adjutant were absent, seated in the cockpit with the drop-ship’s flight crew. The rest sat facing their fellows, trading jokes and nervous banter across the hold’s narrow length. Corporal Metzger, Wulfe’s driver, sat next to him, typically pensive, with Holtz and Siegler — the latter being Wulfe’s long-serving loader — in the opposite seats.

  This drop was different from the last, not just in terms of the nature of the mission, but for the smaller crew with which Wulfe was rolling out. His previous tank had boasted sponsons on either side of her hull, two protruding compartments, each housing a belt-fed heavy bolter that made messy work of anything foolish enough to close with her. She had been an awesome war machine, utterly unstoppable, and memories of abandoning her on a dark highway so many light-years away filled Wulfe with genuine longing and remorse. He had mourned her loss every day since then, but what choice had there been? Her top speed hadn’t been nearly enough. Leaving her behind, he and his crew had boarded a much faster Chimera APC, and the lighter machine’s speed had saved their lives. They had made it onto the last lifter into orbit just before the planet Palmeros was utterly obliterated.

  Despite the pain of losing his beloved tank, Wulfe knew he had a lot to be thankful for. Billions of Imperial civilians had not been so lucky.

  In any case, the new machine — hah! he thought. What was new about her? — lacked the same potent defences. Her flanks were practically naked. Her side-armour might be one hundred and fifty millimetres of solid plasteel, but there were weapons aplenty in the hands of mankind’s enemies that could cut through it like butter. An attacker only had to close the gap. Without side sponsons, it would fall to Wulfe to cover the tank’s blind spots from his cupola high atop the turret. There was a box-fed heavy stubber there, pintle-mounted with a nice, wide arc of fire, for exactly that purpose. He knew it was a good weapon, but he still lamented the absence of side sponsons.

  A crackling voice sounded from speakers set in the ceiling. “Bay doors open. Locks released. Engines engaged. Activating onboard gravitational systems in three, two, one…”

  Wulfe felt his stomach lurch, a brief moment in which his body weight doubled as the grav-field of the Hand of Radiance and the drop-ship’s field overlapped. Just as quickly, the feeling was gone, and the drop-ship’s onboard gravity became the only force pulling him into his seat.

  “Bay doors cleared,” reported the mechanical voice a minute later. “Firing thrusters. Beginning descent. Breaching thermosphere in ten, nine…”

  Wulfe tuned out the rest of the count.

  “What’s a thermosphere, sarge?” piped a nervous-sounding trooper a dozen seats to the right.

  “Stifle it, drop-virgin,” barked his sergeant. “How would I know? Do I look like a cogboy to you?”

  Wulfe grinned. New meat, he thought. This was the first drop for a good number of the men. The 18th Army Group’s catastrophic losses on Palmeros had left it at less than half strength. Senior cadets from the Whiteshields — the tough, teenaged Cadian training regiments — had been drafted in to replenish the ranks, but most of those had been posted to regiments in the 8th and 12th divisions. After promoting suitable men from the tech-crews and support squads, the Cadian 81st had to make up the rest of their numbers with men drafted in from the 616th Reserve Regiment — men who, in most cases, had never crewed a tank in their lives. Lieutenant van Droi had expressed his grave concerns about this in private. He felt that most of the new men didn’t make the grade, not by a long shot. The reserves were rarely e
mployed at the front lines, tending instead to be used for garrisoning duties and the like. Wulfe knew that their first taste of front line action would sort the men from the boys.

  Thinking about who made the grade and who didn’t, he cast an involuntary glance along the opposite row of seats towards a man on his far left.

  I’ve got my eye on you, squigshit, he thought.

  The speakers crackled to life again. “Mesospheric penetration in ten, nine…”

  “Sounds dirty, don’t it?” quipped a ruddy-faced trooper on the opposite row.

  “You’re so full of crap, Garrel,” said the young man next to him with a mirthless laugh. He tried to punch his comrade playfully on the arm, but the bars of his impact frame restricted his movement.

  The anxious trooper who’d spoken up earlier opened his mouth to speak again, but he didn’t get a word out before the same gruff sergeant cut him off.

  “Go on, Vintners,” he barked, “ask me what a mesosphere is. I dare you.” Despite his manner, there was an unmistakable tone of humour in the sergeant’s voice. “You’ll be on latrines for the whole frakking op!”

  Nervous laughter rippled along the rows. Vintners turned pale and clamped his mouth shut.

  All this was mere background noise to Wulfe. He was too busy watching the man on the far left, studying the lines and angles of his hawkish face, watching the way he moved his lips as he talked in an undertone with the crewmen seated around him.

  His name was Corporal Voeder Lenck, twenty-eight years old and commander of the Leman Russ Exterminator New Champion of Cerbera. He was a tall, slim, darkly handsome man, all poster-boy good looks, easy smiles and warm handshakes. But Wulfe wasn’t fooled, not for a second, not like the gang of doe-eyed sycophants that had surrounded Lenck since the moment he had transferred in. Why the rookies all flocked to him, Wulfe hadn’t figured out yet. The man had been a bloody reserve, for Throne’s sake. What was there to admire? Admittedly, he wasn’t typical of the newcomers. He had some prior tank experience, for a start. Perhaps that was it: a combination of being fresh to the regiment, like the rest of the new meat, but being an experienced tanker at the same time. It was as good a guess as Wulfe could make.