[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads Read online

  The records showed that Lenck had been a sergeant earlier in his career, but something had gone wrong. There had been a trial, a court-martial. He had been locked up for thirty days and demoted to the rank of corporal. Only the commissioned officers knew why and, so far, they weren’t telling, but Wulfe planned to find out sooner or later.

  The day he and Lenck had first met aboard the Hand of Radiance, Wulfe had recognised an icy cruelty behind the man’s purple-irised eyes. Lenck hadn’t done anything overt to induce Wulfe’s dislike, not so far anyway, but Wulfe knew it would come sooner or later. It didn’t help that he was the spitting image of someone else, a convicted Cadian criminal by the name of Victor Dunst. Dunst and his gang of tattooed cronies had once tried to rob Wulfe in the under-streets of Kasr Gehr. Wulfe had been a Whiteshield at the time, just a teenage cadet on leave before graduating from basic. He had been heavily outnumbered but, like so many Whiteshields, his belief in his invincibility was so complete that he hadn’t even thought to run. Instead, he had told the gang to piss off, and Dunst had decided to kill him. Only the chance intervention of a patrolling Civitas enforcer squad had saved Wulfe’s life that day. Dunst’s knife didn’t get more than two centimetres into Wulfe’s chest. Wulfe had been very lucky.

  As Wulfe looked along the row, Lenck seemed to realise that he was being watched. He didn’t turn his head or shift his eyes, he just seemed to sense it. Wulfe saw a grin creep over the younger man’s face and felt a tremendous desire to punch him. The feeling of Lenck’s bones cracking under his fist would be supremely satisfying, he imagined. Wulfe was no brawler, not like some of the men he knew, but he was no slouch, either. He was pretty sure he could take Lenck if it ever came down to a fair fight, though Lenck didn’t seem the type to fight fair. Such an event was unlikely to occur, of course. For Lenck, striking Wulfe would constitute a capital offence due to the difference in rank. Still, thought Wulfe, if we were to put rank aside…

  The ceiling speakers crackled again. “Particle shields holding at eighty per cent. Entering stratosphere in ten, nine, eight…”

  Any jokes or remarks that this announcement might have drawn died in the throats of the troopers as the drop-ship began shaking and juddering. Most of the drop-virgins grimaced. A few started to look peaky, as if they might begin to puke.

  “Time to put them in, gentlemen,” said Wulfe to his crew. He reached into the right pocket of his field trousers and withdrew a small, transparent curve of hard rubber. It was a gumshield, the kind worn by troopers during hand-to-hand combat training. With a nod, Metzger, Siegler and Holtz drew identical items from their pockets and fitted them securely between their teeth. All along the facing rows, veteran tankers did the same thing. The new meat looked on with expressions of abject horror.

  “By the bloody Eye! Why didn’t anyone tell the rest of us to bring gumshields?” demanded a round-faced trooper ten seats to Wulfe’s right. He was the newest man on Sergeant Rhaimes’ crew, and it was Rhaimes — seasoned commander of the Leman Russ Old Smashbones — who answered, removing his gumshield for a moment to do so.

  “Company tradition, bugfood,” he said. He grinned, creasing the skin around the deep scar that ran from his left eye to his left ear. Bugfood was his personal term of affection for the new guys and, whenever he said it, he managed to make it sound like idiot or arsehole. Recently, a lot of the veterans had started using it, and not just in 10th Company. “You’re still a drop-virgin till you break a tooth on the way down.”

  The trooper gaped in disbelief for a moment and then fished in his pocket for something. He pulled out a wadded piece of rag, the type of cloth used to shine boots or buttons before inspection, and stuffed it into his mouth. With a miserable expression, he bit down on it. Wulfe guessed it must taste strongly of polish.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Rhaimes nodding at the young trooper. “Good thinking, son. Good thinking. We’ll make something of you yet.”

  “…three, two, one,” buzzed the voice from the ceiling. “Tropospheric entry achieved. Height, nine thousand metres. All personnel brace for increased atmospheric buffeting. Touchdown in approximately nineteen minutes. Disengaging onboard gravitational systems. Switching to local gravity in three, two, one…”

  For the second time since he had come aboard, there was an instant of gravitational overlap that made Wulfe feel twice as heavy as he normally did. Some of the men grunted as their bodies protested against the sudden strain but, once the grav-plates below their feet went dead, they hardly noticed the difference.

  According to the thick wad of briefing papers that everyone had been issued — though few but the guys in recon, as usual, had bothered to read — Golgotha’s surface gravity was a fairly manageable 1.12Gs. Wulfe, who typically weighed around eighty-five kilograms, now weighed twelve per cent more, a little over ninety-five, but the increase didn’t bother him. The tech-crews onboard the Hand of Radiance had taken care of that. Since leaving Palmeros, they had incrementally increased the shipboard gravity each day, subtly preparing the troops for their eventual ground deployment. Men like Siegler and Sergeant Rhaimes, usually a little soft around the middle, had hardened up a lot over the last few months. Wulfe had felt his appetite increasing little by little, and had noticed his clothes tightening around his arms, legs and chest. His body had adapted. Now, with the planet’s local gravity acting on him directly, he didn’t feel any heavier than normal. It would make a big difference to the tanks, though; fuel efficiency, firing distance, trajectory, speed, wear and tear. All of these were matters of serious concern. The enginseers in charge of the regimental tech-crews wouldn’t be getting much sleep.

  Thinking of the strange cybernetic tech-priests, Wulfe decided they probably didn’t need much sleep anyway. Maybe they just popped in some fresh batteries. The image that formed in his mind was, in equal parts, both amusing and disturbing.

  The drop-ship was really bouncing around. Golgotha’s atmosphere was thicker than most populated worlds, and the pressure differentials between the planet’s hot and cold zones reportedly made for some truly ferocious storms. Some of the rookies looked set to soil themselves as the craft was tossed this way and that.

  Wulfe fought an instinct to tense his muscles. It was far smarter to relax if one didn’t want to suffer torn tendons and the like. Such injuries were all too common during a drop.

  “Altitude, seven thousand five—”

  The static-ridden voice was suddenly drowned out by the most awful, ringing screech. Wulfe pressed his hands to his ears. He knew that sound, knew it never heralded good news. It was the sound of tearing metal!

  The drop-ship suddenly rolled hard to the right. Wulfe’s head flew backwards and struck the padded surface of the seat. His stomach felt like it was doing backflips. His vision dimmed. He saw stars. Some of the men on the opposite row were thrown so hard against their restraints that their gumshields flew out. Yelled curses filled the air.

  “We’re frakkin’ hit!” shouted a young trooper in a panic. Wulfe’s heart felt like it was stuck somewhere up by his throat.

  “We’re not hit, Webber,” barked another. “Don’t say that!”

  “What the hell was it, then?” demanded someone else. “By the bloody Eye!”

  “Quiet!” Sergeant Rhaimes yelled at them around his gumshield. “That’s enough of that! It’s turbulence, you kak-eating dung-worms. You heard the cogboy. Buffeting, he said. Now, pipe down!”

  Rhaimes’ lie was all too obvious. He was trying to keep them calm, but no one was buying a word of it.

  The ship rolled hard in the other direction and righted itself, though the juddering was so severe, now, that it was painful. The men gripped their impact frames with white-knuckled hands.

  Wulfe chanced a look up the row at Lenck and was irritated to see him sitting quietly, lips bulging over the tell-tale bump of a gumshield, apparently unfazed. The cocky upstart only jumped when a noise exploded from the vox-speakers. It was a deafening, high-pitched whine
that cut off suddenly to be replaced by the cold flat tones of the cogboy addressing them once again. This time, the voice was amplified to ear-damaging levels and, whether Wulfe simply imagined it or not, he heard hints of his own panic reflected in the broken sentences.

  “…concentrated anti-aircraft… storm… below… off course and… down. All personnel… for immediate…”

  Suddenly, a great wave of nerve-searing pain blossomed in Wulfe’s head. The whole galaxy seemed to roll over on its axis. Up was down, left was right. Then everything shifted again with frightening speed. He shut his eyes tight, saw fireworks bursting behind his eyelids, felt his muscles cry out in protest as his body’s limits were brutally tested, and then, with his heart battering the inside of his chest like it wanted out…

  Darkness. Thoughtlessness. Silence.

  He sank into an unfeeling void in which even bad dreams ceased to exist.

  Something stung Wulfe’s left cheek. The pain was sharp, and, slowly, though he struggled against it, it dragged him back from the comfort of his dark oblivion. Half awake, he probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue. The flesh was ragged. He tasted blood. His tongue played over nearby teeth and… Damn it! Two of them were much sharper than before. They’d been broken. He wondered idly if he’d swallowed the pieces and decided that he probably had.

  Next, there came a shooting pain in his eyes. He wanted to shut them tighter, but the lids were already squeezed together hard. Then a shadow fell across him, and the pain dissipated. Slowly, carefully, he eased the lids apart and saw…

  “Holtz? Is that—”

  Waves of fire surged through his muscles as he tried to rise. He grunted in pain and sank back down.

  “Easy,” said Holtz, leaning over him. “Siegler’s gone to scare up a medic, but they’ve got their hands full. There were deaths, sarge. Brebner and half his crew. Some of Fuchs’ men. Krauss and Siemens both lost their drivers. A score of lads from the support crews bought it, too.”

  Holtz paused for a second. Then, with sorrow giving way to relief, added, “By the bloody Eye, sarge, we thought you were out of the game for good this time. Just lie still for a bit, will you?”

  They were wasted words. Wulfe was already moving. With another grunt of pain, he rolled to his left and braced himself with his right hand. His fingers pressed down into warm red sand and he froze.

  “Golgotha,” he whispered.

  Holtz heard him. “Aye, sir. Golgotha, for better or worse.”

  Wulfe paused, letting the sensation of the fine red grains filter up into his brain. He raised a handful of sand up in front of his eyes and watched it pour like water from between his fingers. He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together and noticed that the sand left a stain there, a thick smear of dark red dust.

  “Like blood,” he murmured.

  Holtz caught only the last of these words and mistook Wulfe’s meaning. “No bleeding, sarge, except your mouth. You feel like anything’s broken? If you’ll just wait for the medic.”

  Again, Wulfe brushed off this advice. Injured or not, he didn’t have time to lie around on his back. He lifted his head towards the horizon and, through his nose, drew a few deep, deliberate breaths of the Golgothan air. He immediately wished he hadn’t. The air was thick, stung his nostrils a little, and smelled like eggs. Is that sulphur, he wondered, or something worse? Open sands stretched out all around him, flat and featureless, running all the way to the shimmering distance where land and sky seemed to melt and flow together in a mirage line that hovered above the surface of the desert.

  He turned his face and looked directly up. The sky was heavily overcast with rich, swirling reds and browns. Quite beautiful, he supposed, but oppressive, too. The cloud ceiling was very low, and lightning flashed deep inside it, though no precipitation fell. He detected the muted glow of the local star, directly above him, hinting at midday, its light barely managing to struggle through. Then he realised how dark everything was. Even in the middle of the day, the ambient light was only a shade stronger than twilight on Cadia.

  Holtz followed his gaze. “According to the cogboys, we should be glad of them clouds, sarge. They say one clear day is enough to kill a man.”

  “A million ways,” Wulfe murmured.

  “Again, sarge?”

  “That Terraxian poet… I can’t remember his name. He said Golgotha has a million ways to kill a man.” Wulfe pulled himself up into a sitting position, wincing as he did so. Holtz watched without comment, giving up on trying to keep Wulfe still, merely shaking his head in frustrated disapproval.

  “Is Siegler okay?” asked Wulfe. “Metzger? Viess and his men?”

  “Siegler and Metzger are all right,” said Holtz, “not a scratch on either of them. Same goes for Viess, though his driver is a bit messed up.” Absently, he reached up and rubbed the ugly, discoloured mass of scar tissue that covered the left side of his face. Seven years ago on a world called Modessa Prime, a secessionist guerrilla had hit Wulfe’s tank with a shaped-charge explosive. Holtz had been in one of the sponsons. A fine spray of molten metal had turned him from a handsome, confident trooper into one of the most bitter men Wulfe had ever known. Very occasionally, however, Wulfe saw hints of the old Holtz shining through, a bit like the Golgothan sun.

  “Eye blast it!” exclaimed Wulfe suddenly. “Van Droi was up front with the pilot. He isn’t—”

  “No,” said Holtz, cutting him off. “Chipped a tooth, though. Raging about it, he is. He was here earlier with that damned soggy cigar sticking out of his mouth. Seemed to know you’d be all right. Said you were to report to him once you were on your feet. You and the rest of the tank commanders, that is.”

  That prompted another question. “What about Lenck?” Wulfe asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  Holtz snorted. He had declared his own dislike for the new tank commander early on. Wulfe guessed that Holtz’s feelings were based on envy more than anything else, though. Holtz had enjoyed great success with the ladies before his face had been scorched and ruined. Lenck had reportedly enjoyed comparable attention from some of the nurses and female naval officers aboard the Hand of Radiance. From what Wulfe had heard, he wasn’t shy about sharing the details, either.

  “First out the lander, that one,” said Holtz with a scowl. “He’s back inside it now, checking on his tank.”

  “Damn it,” muttered Wulfe. He looked up at the sky again, addressing the Emperor. “Was it too much to bloody ask?”

  Holtz gave a dry laugh.

  “Look on the bright side,” he said. “If that Terraxian ponce was right, there’ll be plenty more chances for him to snuff it before we pull out of here.”

  Wulfe shifted his weight and struggled gingerly to his feet. He was a little dizzy, but he managed to stand under his own power. Once he was up, he turned and cast his gaze over the wreckage of the crashed craft.

  It was a sorry sight. The desert was littered for hundreds of metres with fragments of every size and shape. Black smoke poured from the aft section, churning on a hot breeze. Wulfe watched it rise, climbing towards the clouds, and thought, frak! Talk about advertising our position. We won’t be able to stay here long, not running a flag like that.

  He looked back at the crumpled body of the drop-ship. Scores of sweating men moved around it, carrying supply crates out from a tear in the hull. Others worked to manually widen the massive emergency doors at the ship’s rear so that 10th Company’s vehicles could be extracted. They were having a hard time of it, but there was little choice. There was no way to get the tanks out via the loading ramp. The ship’s belly was pressed flat to the ground.

  Another smaller group of men handled the grimmest task of all. They knelt in the sand, leaning over lifeless bodies to pull dog tags from their necks.

  Wulfe’s eyes lingered on the motionless form of a trooper not twenty metres away. The lad looked barely out of his teens. The pale skin of his face was bright against the dark red sand on which he lay.

  Bug
food, thought Wulfe. He touched the silver aquila badge on the left breast pocket of his tanker’s fatigues and whispered a quick prayer for the young trooper’s soul. Such pitiful sights were something he had gotten used to after so long in the field. Life in the Guard: you either dealt with it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, the commissars would sort you out, permanently.

  A million ways to die here, he thought, and we’ve already had the first. Welcome to Golgotha, troopers.

  “Right,” he said, facing Holtz. “I’ll see a medic later. For now, though, I’d better find van Droi. Get Siegler and Metzger together and see about getting our old junk-heap out of the ship. Come find me when it’s done.”

  “Right, sarge,” said Holtz, “but do me one favour, will you? Go easy on the tank-bashing. You’ll turn her against us if you keep that up. Besides, you can’t judge a tank on shipboard exercises, can you?”

  “Maybe not,” said Wulfe grudgingly. “Maybe not, but you and I both know she’s got a heck of a lot to live up to.” He turned and limped off to find Lieutenant van Droi, determined to ignore the fire in his joints and muscles as he went.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Far to the north of Wulfe’s position, things were very different for those elements of the 18th Army Group that had landed safely. Their fourth evening on Golgotha saw General Mohamar deViers descend from orbit in his private aquila lander to personally oversee operations at the Imperial beachhead, located, as the ork slavers’ base had so recently been, on the Hadron Plateau.

  The preparatory stages of Operation Thunderstorm were already drawing to a close. Construction of the new Army Group HQ was almost complete, well ahead of schedule thanks to the contributions of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Their abundant technologies, the impressive prefabricated structures they had provided, the unceasing toil of their legions of brain-wiped biomechanical slaves, these things and more had seen the laser-blasted surface of the plateau converted and fortified in record time. The 10th Armoured Division was preparing to roll out on the morning of the following day, having been charged with securing the first of a series of outposts critical to establishing key supply lines in the east. So, with his private rooms already constructed and awaiting occupation, it was high time, in the opinion of General deViers, that the men on the ground felt the presence of their leader among them. Time, he thought, to remind them just whose show this was.