DEFIXIO
Ben Counter

'ORKS !' SCREAMED SOMEONE over the radio, and the concussions of the first crude shells rang through the ground into the reeking, cramped interior of the Defixio. Samiel shouldered the massive weight of die sponson's heavy bolter and squinted through the vision slit. He could see nofhing of the ambush, just wisps of smoke drifting in from the front of the convoy, but he could already hear the confusion of noise building up - broken voices over the comms, dull thuds from up ahead, and the Exterminator crew around him getting to battle posts.
He was bad luck, they said. Samiel was beginning to think mey were right.
'Crew, load up!' came Commander Karra-Vrass's voice over the rumble of the tracks and the ringing of explosions. Samiel glanced round to see Graek heaving the autocannon rounds into their chambers, gang tattoos rippling across his back. Above him, the skinny form of Damrid crammed itself into the turret gunner's chair.
'Defixio requesting target locations,' barked Karra-Vrass into the comms, but all he got was static shot through wifh screams. He turned back and shouted over the noise of the Defixio's engines. 'Crew, I want targets, now! Light armour and infantry priority!'
There was a vast, terrible, crunching explosion and Samiel's vision was filled wifh an orange-white sheet of flame billowing towards him.
He darted back from the sponson as a tongue of fire licked through the vision slit, his gas mask's intake suddenly choked wifh smoke and fumes. There was a hideous wrenching sound as Dniep gunned the engine and the Defixio ploughed through the wreckage of the shattered tank ahead of fhem.

'What the bloody hell was that?' bawled Karra-Vrass.
'Hellhound!' shouted back Samiel. They got Lucullo's Hellhound!'
Burning bodies tumbled across the dark earth outside, and Samiel was thankful he couldn't hear them scream.
'Targets!' The voice was Damrid's, up in the turret, bringing the Defixio's autocannons to bear.
Kallin, on the opposite sponson, opened up and suddenly the Defixio's interior was full of the staccato battering of the heavy bolter's reports, hot shell casings everywhere. 'Come get some, ya groxlickin' sons a' bitches!'
Karra-Vrass swung open the front hatch and put his head out to see what was happening.
When he came back down the side of his face was dark with soot. 'Get the halftrack!'
Samiel didn't hear over the din, but he knew that Damrid would be muttering a word to the Emperor, like he always did, just before the twin thunderclap of the autocannon blanked out the world for a split second.
All of Defixio's firepower was brought to bear on the orks apart from Samiel's sponson. He couldn't see the orks, and now thick smoke was sweeping across the valley from what must be half the convoy burning up ahead. It was choking the interior, too, but the crew barely noticed. Every breath a Chem-Dog took was drawn through a respirator or jerry-built gasmask, and most of them were used to breathing stuff that would kill most people.
Graek yanked the glowing-hot shells out of the breech and slammed another two home, and Kallin continued to fill the air with bursts of heavy bolter fire.
'Samiel, get me targets!' shouted Karra-Vrass. Unlike the rest of the crew his voice was unimpaired by ugly implants or a gas mask - Savlar aristos didn't have such things because back home they breathed clean, imported air.
'Nothing, sir!' replied Samiel, and even as he said it a monstrously crude jet intake sucked the smoke away and he was looking at the underside of the ugliest, squattest aircraft he had ever seen. It flew so low it must have clipped the vox aerial, sounding like a nuclear wind and followed by a score of rickety buggies, half-tracks and bikes crewed by insane greenskins, teeth bared and guns roaring. They barrelled down the side of the valley at astonishing speed and one of them slammed into the Defixio's side, so the tank slewed wildly and Samiel was thrown onto his back. Gunfire rattled along the Defixio's armour and Damrid swung the turret towards the horde.
Then, the roar of the dog-nosed fighter again as it spiralled down for another pass. This time cannon shells lanced down from above, ripped chunks out of the ground, and burst through Samiel's side of the Defixio like a hammer through glass. Samiel heard no noise, because the din had

built up into a wall of white noise that filled his ears. Through the yawning hole in the tank's side he saw a swarming mass of greenskin maniacs sweeping down into the valley.
Samiel realised he had been blown clear across the tank's interior, and that Kallin's gun was still firing wildly even as the wall of white noise toppled over and everything went blank.
WHEN HE WOKE, all he saw was the grim grey sky of Jaegersweld. There was only one planet Samiel had seen uglier than this one, and that was Savlar itself. The Guard was supposed to be a way of getting off Savlar and the Dead Moons, with their chem-pits and convict-cities. All the Guard had done for him was drag him from planet to misbegotten planet, kill his friends, make him a jinx. Because he had been a sole survivor, he had used up more than his fair share of luck already and whoever had to serve with him next would have that little bit less luck to go round. Sole survivors were as unlucky as it got.
Still, he wasn't dead yet.
He sat up and felt the ache running down his limbs, and the sharp shots of pain where his skin had been hit by shrapnel. He took a breath of Jaegersweld's damp, unhealthy air, and heard the metallic sigh as it was forced through the implants inside his ribcage. Samiel's implants were more sophisticated than most, because those willing and able to work as administrators were worth keeping alive for longer than the average Chem-Dog. But the Guardsmen of the Savlar regiment, of course, had little respect for such skills.
They were towards the top of the valley slope. The Defixio stood nearby. The profile of the Exterminator-class battle tank was broken by all manner of salvaged and stolen bits Dniep had bolted on - armour plates, trophies, stowage. Kallin had tied a string of ork hands around his sponson mount, the freshest still glinting with moistness, the oldest shrivelled and rotted. The Savlar regimental markings were stencilled onto one side of the turret - on the other, splattered on in Dniep's loose hand, were the bold white letters that read DEFIXIO.
The tank had been sprayed in the drab brown-grey camouflage scheme common to everything on Jaegersweld, but the various shades of the bits and pieces bolted and tied on made it something very different from what must have rolled out of the factory on some far-flung forge world. Samiel was coming to realise that it was their tank now, their home and their protection as well as the weapon they were ordered to use. And because it was theirs, the crew made sure that in the process of repairing and maintaining it, they left it looking like it had been through its fair share of battles and firefights - they said almost everything had been replaced on the hulking vehicle, until it was almost entirely composed of what they had installed or repaired. The tank belonged to the crew far

more than it belonged to the Imperial Guard, and that was just how the crew wanted it. Dniep himself was kneeling at the Defixio's other side and welding a huge sheet of salvaged metal over the hole in the side armour, which would become one more battle wound carried proudly like a badge of honour.
'Looks like all yer luck's used up after all.' Samiel looked up to see Kallin standing over him. Kallin was a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered, with skin so appallingly pitted and eroded by the constant rain of chemicals he had lived through that Samiel had seen healthier-looking corpses. The unsophisticated respirator implants under his jaw confirmed he had grown up in the chem-mines of the Dead Moons, which was a feat in itself. 'Miracle we made it this far, with a jinx.'
'Save it for the greenskins, Kallin.'
Kallin stooped down and pushed his ravaged face close. The ork bones hanging round his neck jangled like wind chimes. 'You're a jinx, boy. One of them things sent down to plague us, like the greenskins ain't bad enough. Don't you start thinkin' we'll look out for you or miss you when you're dead. Graek's dead and we're on our way out, and it'll all be because we went and took in a jinx.'
'Graek's dead?'
Kallin indicated the loader's body, laid out in the shade of a rock, one side of his torso dark red and swollen under the tattoos. 'Dead as they come. Busted all his ribs, turned his guts to groxfood. Like I said, miracle if any of us make it now. Jinx and a Guild boy, Emperor's teeth.' He saw Samiel's confused frown, and smiled with a mouthful of teeth stunted from inhaling acidic air. 'You didn't know about Karra-Vrass? You know that damn stick he carries?'
Samiel nodded. Karra-Vrass always carried a silver swagger stick, but Samiel had assumed it was just a gimmick, like other officers insisted on wearing full dress medals or parade swords.
'It's a badge of office. Made of titanium. He's not just any aristo, he's from the Guild. When he's not playing soldier with a tank full of us plebs, the bastard sits in orbit and sells the filth we churn out of the Dead Moons. People like him worked everyone I know near to death. Most of us aren't even cons, we're second generation or more, but they don't care. Long as they keep the trade going, we're just machines to make them creds. Used up Graek like he used up half the men on the Dead Moons.'
When Karra-Vrass approached with Damrid, Samiel couldn't help noticing the shining swagger-stick the officer still held in his hand. In the other was a salvaged visor-scope, just one of the pieces of 'non-standard' equipment that tended to turn up in any Chem-Dogs vehicle.
'We're not rejoining the convoy.' said Karra-Vrass.
'Why not?' asked Dniep, looking up from his hurried weld job.

'Because it's not there. We lost about three-quarters strength in that ambush, and the tail-end must have retreated. We can't hook up with them because our comms are out and the orks have us cut off.'
Then what do we do?' said Kallin, quick to anger. 'Wait for a greenskin patrol to skin us alive?'
The nearest regimental HQ is the Cadian 24th, fifteen hundred kilometres west.'
Three days across ork-held land?'
'Exactly, Kallin. I wouldn't like to think you were questioning this course of action.'
Kallin muttered something under his breath that Samiel was glad he didn't quite catch.
'Now, crew.' continued Karra-Vrass, 'since Samiel is back with us I think this is an appropriate time for a reading. Damrid?'
'Sir.' Damrid stepped forward, fishing a small prayer book from his ill-fitting fatigues. He began to speak of hope and duty, of how they were all sinners who wanted only to survive that they might redeem themselves in the Emperor's service. The words were familiar to Samiel, who had heard such things so often before in the chapels of the administrative colony where he had once lived. But he knew they were not meaningless, even if he had trouble believing them - devotion was the only thing keeping many Guardsmen sane. And even he, sometimes, found himself calling to the Emperor for help - especially when he fought his way out of a flaming wreck and felt the flames on his back as he leapt from the white-hot explosion behind him...
He was a sole survivor. Perhaps the Emperor had already heard him once, and wasn't ready to grant a miracle a second time. Maybe that was why he was supposed to be so unlucky.
Samiel and Damrid buried Graek's body quickly - orks were little more than animals, and they could home in on a spoiled corpse like any other beast. Samiel didn't object when Damrid rifled through his dead comrade's fatigues and pocketed the few trinkets and ammo rounds he found - he'd done the same himself, to friend and foe.
'Is it wrong...?' asked Damrid falteringly. 'Is it wrong to lose a fellow man and think we're better off without him?'
'I don't know.' replied Samiel. 'I didn't know him long.'
The last handful of damp earth was thrown over the dead man's face. 'You didn't want to. He was bad. The worst.'
"What did he do?' It wasn't a question that was generally asked of a Chem-Dog, for a man's crime was his own damn business. But Graek was dead, and he wasn't about to complain.
'A slaver. He ran with the... the uncleans. Some Arbites tracked him down, but he found them first, and when he finished with them they say you couldn't tell they had ever been human.

'And he never changed, that was the worst. He never saw the light. He never stopped hurting people. When we evacuated the civilians out of the south, he went missing for days, and after he came back we'd hear stories about families burned in bunkers and children hunted down for sport. They blamed it on the orks, but Graek had some... some things he kept. I think he was the worst sort of person.'
Samiel was grateful for an unhealthy shudder from the Defixio's engines as they kicked protesting into life. 'Dunno if they'll hold together,' Dniep was saying. 'Fuel's not a problem, you can run a Leman Russ on boot leather and bad language. But she took a big hit back there and the track drives are looking shaky.'
'Will it last?' Karra-Vrass's voice was dispassionate - he must have known that his life depended on the Defixio not breaking down, but he didn't sound like it.
Dniep stood up, wiping the oil off his hands onto his stained fatigues. Three days? Be surprised, sir. But then again, sometimes even I get surprised by how much punishment these things can take.'
'Good.' The officer raised his voice. 'Burial detail, are you finished?'
Damrid raised a hand. He had rolled up the sleeves of his fatigues and for the first time Samiel noticed something - a tattoo, a skull surrounded by barbed wire, with a barcode underneath, at the top of the boy's arm. It was one of the many symbols branded on the fresh convicts brought in to keep up the population of the Dead Moons, which meant that Dam-rid wasn't second generation like Samiel had assumed. He was a con. What had he done, this boy? You heard tales of kids slung into the chem-mines for stealing loaves of bread or failing to cheer when the planetary governor waved to the crowds. Poor lad. Life could be bad enough without being sentenced to a slow death when you were hardly old enough to know what right and wrong really were.
'And weaponry?'
'Loaded and ready,' came Kallin's voice from within the hull.
Very well. The orks will have patrols out looking for survivors and we must not give them the chance to find us. We roll immediately'
They clambered into the Defixio, Damrid into the turret to take the first lookout, with Karra-Vrass alongside Dniep at the front. Kallin and Samiel, meanwhile, slumped against the sponson mounts to catch some of the noisy, cramped downtime that passed for sleep on the move.
You CAN'T DREAM when you're not asleep, but it still felt like a nightmare. It wasn't that long ago it had happened, but he knew it would be burned across his mind's eye until he breathed his last. It was the reason he was on the Defixio at all, and the reason they all thought what only Kallin spoke - that Samiel was a jinx who had used up too much of his luck. His previous tank, an Executioner, had found itself

surrounded and outnumbered by the light vehicles and bikes the greenskins rode like madmen.
He saw the billowing black-red of the fire and felt the heat across his face. He felt the cold earth against his back heating up as fuel spilled over the ground and rippled towards him, on fire.
He could see, as if they were in front of him right then, the silhouettes of his old crewmates, fire at their backs and orks at their front, blasting away with sidearms at their assailants. When the magazines had gone up from a lucky warbike shot the rear of the tank's hull had been torn off and Samiel had tumbled out while the burning wreck slid to a halt, and there his crewmates had made their stand.
Living on a planet like Savlar meant you valued every scrap of pride you scrounged, and the men who crewed the shattered tank weren't going to let themselves be taken prisoner by anyone or anything. Samiel watched as one was cut down by explosive shellfire, another ground beneath the wheels of a warbike that slewed insanely close.
And then the plasma coils went critical. An expanding globe of white-hot energised plasma, like a new star, incinerated the crewmen and burned a hole in the ork attack.
When the smoke cleared and the bodies were recovered, Samiel was the only one alive. His injuries were minor, and the orks hadn't even noticed him in the confusion. He heard them all say he was the luckiest Guardsman on the planet.
But they weren't smiling when they said it.
'No USE, SIR. Goes as far as I can see.' Samiel snapped out of his half-sleep, and once more he was back inside the stale hull of the Defixio. He knew something was wrong because the tank was only moving slowly now, and Karra-Vrass was replacing Damrid at the turret hatch.
Damrid dropped down onto the floor.
'What's happening?' asked Kallin, also jolted out of his own half-dreams.
'Minefield,' came the reply, and Samiel realised it was probably the worst possible answer. Orks made no attempt to conceal their minefields, but they laid a hell of a lot and didn't care if they lost a couple of their own to them, meaning the fields were always big with no way through. They also had a habit of packing them with so much explosive they left craters the size of command bunkers - current Guard wisdom was that the orks laid mines more because they liked the noise than for any strategic advantage.
Karra-Vrass came back down and pulled a folded-up map from inside his greatcoat. He laid it out on the floor - it showed the northern part of the continent across which the Defixio was trying to travel. Samiel saw just how far they had to go, and how much of the ground they had to

cover was covered in the green markers of known ork camps and outposts.
Karra-Vrass stabbed at the map with the end of his swagger stick. 'Dniep, is this our position?'
'Near enough.'
Between the Defixio and the Cadian HQ lay a plain bounded by contours - in the world outside, those contours were ragged, torn ranges of loose earth and landslides. No kind of country for a tank.
'The minefield will have no safe channels, and the high ground is not an option. However, the field is not particularly deep. Defusing is possible.'
Everyone looked at Dniep. He had a knack with anything technical -Samiel had heard tell of the miracles he had worked with the stubborn Leman Russ engines, and no doubt he could have taught the Tech-Guard Engineers a thing or two about clearing mines. 'I could do it.' he said, with an uncharacteristic bravery that made Samiel realise just how desperate a situation they were in.
4Vhat about patrols?' asked Kallin. We'd be waiting here for hours, the bloody greenskins could pick us off for fun.'
'Dniep could stay' It was Damrid who spoke - by now all the crew were crowded around the map. 'If someone marked the mines first, he'd defuse them in half the time. We'd have a driver in case we got jumped. He'd have to go out and clear a path afterwards, but not for as long. We'd still be targets, but we'd have a better chance.'
'And we'd leave a man behind if we had to run for it,' added Kallin grimly.
Karra-Vrass began folding up the map. 'We're not leaving anyone. But we may find ourselves in a firefight a man short. We're already down a loader.'
'So, who do we need the least?' asked Dniep.
And this time, they looked at Samiel.
IT WAS DARK by then. Jaegersweld had two moons, one large and bright, but its light was filtered through many layers of ever-present cloud and a sickly, grey glow fell over the landscape. The minefield was obvious enough - some explosive-packed devices stuck above the ground, more of a challenge than a trap. But while they might have been animals, orks were a very cunning type of beast. They would have some buried so you couldn't see them, and those were the ones Samiel would have to spend a long time marking so Dniep's foray would be as short as possible.
Samiel told himself it could be done - it wasn't far across. And it certainly had to be done, for the loose, muddy hills on either side would be near-impossible for the Defixio to clamber across, even with Dniep at the controls.

Hopping down from the front hatch, Samiel was acutely aware of just how exposed he was. Outside the tank, he felt soft and vulnerable.
Inside the tank he was on home ground, a tiny bubble of the Imperium around him. Now he was behind ork lines, and alone. He checked his gear - flare gun, bayonet (another of Dniep's 'finds'), a bag of spent shell casings to mark the mines.
It wasn't slow work, but there were a lot of mines, densely packed to make the huge chain explosions the orks liked so much. He looked up every now and again to check for glints of approaching machinery against the grey-black horizon, and listened for the juddering drone of an ork engine. Once or twice he heard the chatter of gunfire far off, but that might mean anything in an ork warzone - they could be launching a major assault or just taking pot shots at one another for fun.
That they were so difficult to predict was the worst thing, because you couldn't just herd them into killing zones or cripple their economic base or any of the other things that worked with good old-fashioned humans. The only ming that worked was hatred. There was no sympaury, no honour. You had to exterminate them, all of diem, because they were seemingly designed to spring up again at the slightest chance. Samiel knew that war against the orks would never end - even if they were wiped off the surface of Jaegersweld, the Guard would just be packed off to the next planet mat became infested, and it would begin all over again. For Samiel, it had become a case of getting out alive and hoping that some distant commander would grant him a plot on a conquered planet as reward for a lifetime of fighting, so he could let someone else do all the hating. But if he really had used up all his luck already, as the others suspected, then he didn't fancy his odds.
The sound diat alerted him was the squeal of metal on metal as the Defixio's turret turned to face something he couldn't see. Samiel looked around him - he was more than halfway across the minefield, a long trail of shell casings marking the hidden mines. The Defixio was too far away - if he ran for it now it would probably move before he got there and he'd be left standing in full view of whatever was attacking. He obeyed die first rule of the Imperial Guard, and kept his damn head down.
The autocannon fired and an explosion bloomed some way off. A group of vehicles was illuminated for the briefest moment - bikes, huge clunking things like battering rams on wheels with speeds limited only by the insanity of their riders.
Orks. They had been found, and now the greenskins were moving in for the kill. They were crazy, these bikers, but mey were as dangerous as it got for a tank - mey carried the crudest of explosives which could crack open a Leman Russ with ease. Samiel had seen it done. And now it was going to be done to the Defixio.
The red-hot exhausts and muzzle flashes were visible now as the bikers careered down the valley at tremendous speed, and the Defixio was moving.

It was heading the only way it could - towards the nearest ridge of surely impassable ground. Karra-Vrass was gambling on the tiny chance that the Defixio might make it, because the other chances were the minefield and the approaching orks, and those odds were worse still.
It wouldn't make it. No way. Kallin's sponson chattered away at long range at the bikes, and after a worryingly long wait (Damrid must be having to load it himself, thought Samiel, remembering Graek's shattered ribs) the autocannon fired again. Two bikes tumbled flaming to a standstill, but the others sheared through their wreckage and stayed on course.
The Defixio was at the foot of the ridge and began to climb, the loose earth already slipping under its tracks. The tank wouldn't have outrun the bikes at the best of times and now it was slower still, hauling itself painfully up the crumbling slope as the bikes roared around it, sweeping towards its near side. Samiels's sponson fired and the closest bike's front wheel was shredded, flipping the bike over and sending the ork rider somersaulting into the Defixio's side. Samiel realised that Karra-Vrass himself must be manning the gun.
The officer's aim was good but there were only so many rounds he could squeeze off, and the lead biker threw a grenade, fuse sparkling, at the tracks as he slewed past. The explosion was loud even from where Samiel was lying and he saw links of track flying. Three more followed as the bikers passed, Karra-Vrass's gun still firing but blindly through smoke and shrapnel.
Samiel knew they didn't think much of him - in fact, they would probably have preferred one less gunner than a sole survivor and the misfortune he brought. But they were still his comrades, and they were still soldiers of the Imperium up against aliens. He couldn't just let them die.
He stood up, pulling one of the flares out of his bag, and lit it. When his eyes adjusted to the sudden glare he saw the lead biker had spotted the flash in the darkness and was wheeling in Samiel's direction, the others following.
Samiel considered dropping the flare and running - but ork mines were unstable and the weight of a man would set even the tankbusters off. His heart, already racing, quickened further when he realised that the safest thing he could do was stand his ground and face the bikers' charge.
'Come on, you green bastards! Come and get some!' he yelled over the roar of the bikes' engines.
It was probably the bravest thing he had ever done. Probably the last, too. Would anyone survive to tell the story of how he died? Could the crew in the Defixio even see what was happening? Samiel couldn't think of an answer because his mind was full of the bikes screaming towards him. He could see the lead bikers' bared teeth in the light from the flare, see the pinpricks of white in its tiny piggy eyes and the blur of the front wheel...

It was some way into the minefield when it careened straight into an anti-vehicle mine so scrappily made it stuck out of the ground half the height of a man. The noise was so vast Samiel was totally deafened, and a column of earth burst out of the ground. An instant later a huge chain explosion erupted with such force Samiel felt himself picked off his feet as the concussion hammered over him. He slammed onto the ground, breath knocked out of him, mind reeling, the whole world a swirling madness of white noise and explosions.
When the noise subsided and he opened his eyes, he saw the air thick with smoke coiling from a rip in the ground longer than the skid from a dropship crash. The wan moonlight made strange shifting shapes in the smoke, and the smell of burnt fuel was dizzying. A bike wheel, licked with flame, rolled slowly along the ground.
By the Emperor, thought Samiel, I'm alive.
I can't believe it. I'm alive.
Through his near-deafness he caught the ragged sound of an engine gunning and the smoke parted to reveal the last biker, blackened and battered with blood-flecked teeth bared, clinging to his bike as it tore towards Samiel through the blast zone. Samiel acted on reflex - he lashed out his gun and fired. It was then that he realised he was armed only with the flare gun.
The sparkling white flare spiralled towards the bike and shattered against the handlebars like a firework, leaving an incandescent comet trail as the bike hurtled forward. Samiel could see the ork's manic grin and the wicked squinting eyes behind its goggles, and knew he was going to die.
There was a massive wash of heat as the bike took off at the last second in a ball of flame, somersaulting over him and cartwheeling across the plain. The rider was thrown off, on fire, further into the minefield -Samiel covered his head just in time to protect himself from the inevitable shower of debris from another detonating mine.
Samiel watched as the flames guttered out. For the second time in half a minute he was quite astonished to be alive. He lay back on the ground, suddenly exhausted, and got his first real sleep for months.
'You ARE ONE lucky bitch, Chem-Dog.' The voice was Dniep's. It was morning, and the sun was flooding the dank valleys of Jaegersweld with drab grey light. Samiel felt he was propped up against the slope. He was aching again, but mostly unhurt.
'Them greenskin bastards cleared us a path.' continued Dniep. 'And that last one, you must've caught his fuel tank. Went up like a flare shell, saw it from here. Even Kallin was impressed.'
Samiel looked across to the minefield - there was indeed a scar running right across it, plenty wide enough for the Defixio.

Dniep scratched at the acned skin around his throat implants - he had escaped the worst ravages of the chem-mines because he had been too useful fixing the machines to risk at the workface, but he was still damned ugly. 'So you solved us one problem, Samiel, but now we got us another.' He indicated the hulk of the Defixio, smoke still coiling off it. The tracks on the near side had been unpinned and lay limp on the ground. 'We found enough links, but a coupla pins got sheared. Scawed one soon enough, but we can't find another. Not for the life of us. And it'll be our lives, too, 'cause we're stuck out here in the open with a tank that won't move and a bunch of greenskins wondering why their mates haven't come back.'
'You should have woken me, 1 could have helped-'
'Karra-Vrass said to let you sleep. And didn't none of us argue with him, neither. Besides, we're not going to find it. We need something thin enough to fit but strong enough to take the strain. Miracle we found one.'
But Samiel went out and looked anyway. It wasn't that he dared have any real hope - he just couldn't lie there and wait. The orks would come, he knew, because they had a knack for being everywhere on a planet at once, and many Guardsmen swore greenskins could hunt a man down by scent alone. He kept low and always checked the horizon for approaching orks, once or twice spotting something dark and moving and hitting the ground until he was sure it was gone. And, as he expected, there was nothing that might serve as a track pin half-buried in Jaegersweld's heavy earth, just metal fit only for scrap. There was no hope, but he didn't allow himself be consumed with the knowledge that he would die. Many a time he had heard better Guardsmen than him discover how slight their chances were, then shrug their shoulders and reply that hell, a man's gotta die somehow.
Nevertheless his steps were heavy and his head low as he clambered back over the ridge. And the sound he heard was engines.
He hurried down the loose slope to see the Defixio warmed up and ready to roll, smoke pumping from inefficient exhausts, trinkets and grisly trophies shaking with the unhealthy vibrations of the cylinders.
The front hatch went up and Kallin looked out. There were a few more scavenged trinkets around his neck and hanging from his various ammo belts and pouches - a Chem-Dog out foraging always came back with some new toys. 'Samiel, ya grox-lover! Get in!'
Samiel sprinted the last few metres and climbed in - the rest of the crew had been waiting for him. With a nod from Karra-Vrass, Dniep gingerly backed the Defixo off the slope. Then, it turned and headed across the wide channel across the minefield, towards the other side of the plain and the Cadian HQ beyond.
Samiel didn't ask what had been used as a track pin. Probably the axle off an abandoned ork vehicle,  or even a direct replacement from

another wrecked Leman Russ tank, of which there must be some lying around.
And then he realised that Karra-Vrass was no longer carrying his titanium swagger stick.
SAMIEL'S TURN AT the lookout came. The last day had been nervous but hopeful - they had hidden under an overhang when a flight of smoking ork flyers swooped overhead, and often lurked behind ridges and rock formations as ork patrols passed close by. Karra-Vrass had told them they were being hunted by orks eager to remove such an impertinent threat as a tank that dared run their gauntlet, and the hunters were closing in. But they had not been spotted, and time was on their side, because they were nearing their destination.
'Maybe you're not as unlucky as you look, Samiel,' Kallin had said, which were probably the most charitable words he had uttered in his life.
They now had to cross one last hill before the Cadian HQ was in sight. There would be some explaining to do - where had they come from? Why were they alone? Where was the rest of the column? The Cadians would certainly make a point of packing away anything small and valuable whenever the Chem-Dogs approached. But they would be able to eat, maybe sleep, pull a few days light duties before someone figured out how to get them back to the Savlar regiment.
Samiel didn't fancy the Defixio to make it, with a half-busted track and a hole in the side, especially since a constant supply of Leman Russ spares was always required. The Cadians would probably break the old Exterminator up and use the bits to patch up their own vehicles in the motor pool. But even Dniep thought it was a better end than a smouldering wreck in the middle of a planet no one really cared about.
And now they were at the crest of the hill, the flats beyond rolling out before Samiel's eyes, the Cadian HQ finally coming into view...
A grinning, lopsided horned skull totem, cut from sheets of metal and bolted together, stood on the roof of the command bunker. Burned-out Leman Russ and Chimeras littered the compound. A Hydra flak cannon stood idle at one corner, pointing down and inwards, barrels still blackened from the fire it had poured into the attackers streaming through the breaches.
Bodies of men and orks lay in piles around the centres of the heaviest fighting - the breach, the gateway, the mess and barracks complex where the men had made their stand. Where the fuel dump had been was a charred crater ringed with corpses. Buildings and bunkers had been turned inside-out by demo charges, their contents - furniture, equipment, occupants - strewn across the ground. Those structures still standing bore scars around windows and doors that had been used as fire points. Bodies in Cadian fatigues were displayed entwined in the razor

wire that topped the rings of barricades and fences. Everywhere were bullet scars, discarded weapons, and the dead. Especially the dead.
But the worst was outside. All around the HQ was a teeming city of tents and huts, brimming with greenskins. They fought, argued, divided the spoils and feasted on the supplies they had hauled out of the HQ's stores.
The mad bikers that had so taken to Jaegersweld's landscape were buzzing like flies around the camp, eagerly burning captured fuel in pursuit of the blind speed they lived for. Camp fires smouldered, and the breeze brought the reek of burning and filth.
'Can you see it?' called out Damrid from below.
'Stop.' said Samiel.
The Defixio ground to a halt. Damrid was the first out, scrambling over the turret seat and pushing his head out of the hatch.
'Imperator...' he whispered, one hand held to the pocket in which he carried his prayer book. 'Xenos malefka... what about forgiveness? Hasn't it been enough?'
Damrid slithered back into the Defixio's hull. Dniep replaced him, eager to see what had caused such shock in his crewmate.
Those bastards.' he said when he saw. 'Alien bastards. We shoulda known.'
Samiel didn't know what to say. What can you say, when even what little hope a Guardsman allows himself is torn away?
'So that's what broke the lad.' continued Dniep, more to himself than to Samiel. 'He thought he was forgiven, he really did. That's why he never called you bad luck, like the rest of us. The Emperor was watching, he thought, because he had been forgiven.''For what?'
Dniep looked at him incredulously. 'No one told you? Damrid's the worst! I mean, I did fixin' for some pretty rough types, and a few people got hurt, and but I never-' Dniep shook his head. The lad was on a frontier world, raising hell since he was born. When they sent a mission to tame the place, Damrid and his boys took exception. You know his prayer book? Used to belong to a Sister there. They say that as Damrid was hacking the poor bitch to pieces all she could say was: "He will forgive you. He will forgive you..." over and over. Threw her to the cudbears when they'd finished with her. He started reading the damn book on the prison ship, and by the time he got to the Dead Moons he got it into his head he was forgiven.'
Damrid? It didn't make any sense... but then, sometimes there was a desperation about the way he believed, as if his faith was his only chance and he had to hold onto it no matter what... 'He doesn't look like he went through the Dead Moons.'
They kept him safe. A chaplain who believes, that's the rarest thing in the system. Worth keeping alive. And when the Guard said they were raising up

another Chem-Dog regiment, he was first in line, ready to fight the Emperor's fight and smite the foes of Humanity.' Dniep shook his head and whistled at the sight of the orks running wild across the Cadian HQ, making belts of skin and necklaces of hands. 'And now this. He should've made it. Really should've. Kid like him, just getting through it all without breaking up, that's like winning the war on your own.'
When they had all looked upon the remains of the Cadian HQ and its slaughtered garrison, they slumped down inside the Defixio and were silent.
Suddenly Kallin slammed a fist into the side of the hull. 'For this we fight? We drag this lump of metal across a whole damned bitch of a planet and this is what we get?'
They all looked at him, and Samiel wished he would stay quiet, but like the rest of them Kallin had felt hope building up during the journey's last leg and he couldn't cope with having it torn away from him. His voice was rising to a screech. 'Why now? Why couldn't they take the place a month earlier, or a month later, or any time but now? They can't... what happened? Can't these damn Cadians even look after their own HQ?'
Kallin slumped, suddenly exhausted. Dniep spoke weakly, his voice cracking. 'The Jurn regiment is supposed to be south, past the gulf If we can get down there, and cross it-'
'No.' Karra-Vrass's voice was strong. That was why he was an officer, thought Samiel grimly. He was as broken as the rest of them, but he could conceal it. "We would be passing through the ork drop sites. When we are found here we will be executed quickly, for we are on the frontier and prisoners would use up too many supplies. If we break for the south we will be imprisoned, enslaved, probably used as playthings, and then we will die anyway. The gulf cannot be crossed, there have been enough prisoners that have tried.'
'So what then?' Kallin's voice was like a child's. Samiel was almost sure he was weeping. 'We die?'
Karra-Vrass looked at him. 'We die.'
'Everybody dies.' Samiel realised that he was the one speaking.
'The truest of things.' replied Karra-Vrass. All lives end.'
'So it is willed.' said Damrid. His face was pale as a dead man's and he had a faraway expression. It was said a man could gain a place at the Emperor's side by his conduct when all seemed lost, for even in the moments of the most terrible desperation, He was watching, He was judging.
This was Damrid's last chance. If he died well, maybe that would mean he'd be forgiven, after all.
'But how many know when their time comes?' continued Karra-Vrass. 'How many can see the end coming, and be prepared? Not many. Of all those of our brothers-in-arms who died, only we can ready ourselves. It is

in death, more than anything, that a man can be measured. Isn't that right, Damrid?'
'So it is willed.' said the boy again.
Their patrols will catch up with us within the hour. Their camp sentries will be onto us long before that. We don't have much time, but it will be enough. We have been given the greatest gift that any man could ask, for now we have a purpose. We will spend the rest of our lives battling the alien foe, not because we are ordered or because we must, but because we choose to do so, to make our deaths mean something. It could be otherwise - we could die in flight, or cowering, or under the slaver's whip. But we will not.'
Samiel looked up. It shouldn't mean anything, for still they were all dead men. But somehow, it did. They could butcher his friends, strip away his hopes, wage a war that forced him to spend his life in exhaustion or fear cooped up in a tank on a planet he hated. They could turn him into no better than a bad seed. But by the Emperor himself, those greenksin bastards couldn't make him die for nothing.
He was on his feet, shivering with excitement and pride. Karra-Vrass stood, too, and smoothed out the creases in his greatcoat.
'Crew, load up.' he said.
EVERY SAVLAR VEHICLE was equipped with hermetic seals around the hatches and doors - these they sealed, so that even breathing the same air as the Chem-Dog crew would be a privilege the orks would have to fight for. Karra-Vrass took off his officer's greatcoat, rolled up the black sleeves of his uniform, and slammed two autocannon shells home into the breech. Damrid calmly recited those hymns that meant the most to him - the ones about never despairing, because every good man has his place in His plan, even if that man in his humility knows it not.
Karra-Vrass checked his sidearm, a duelling pistol that somehow he had managed to keep hold of even though its ivory handle and fine workmanship would have caught the eye of the most honest Chem-Dog. The others did the same with weapons they had as trophies or charms -Kallin's ugly snub-nosed gun looted from a dead ork, a shotgun Dniep hid under the driver's seat, a rusted sergeant's sword Damrid had kept. A rummage through the Defixio's gear produced an old but working laspis-tol, which Samiel took.
This is the last gift I will ever receive, he thought. It felt like the first.
They did not have long to wait. As darkness approached once again, a greenskin foot patrol approached from the camp. Perhaps fifty strong, they stalked low in the gathering gloom, led by one a head or two taller than the rest, one arm hacked off and replaced with a brutal three-fingered claw that spat sparks from a power field. They had axes, guns, clubs.

Kallin whispered sharply to Karra-Vrass - from his vision slit, he could see one of the bike patrols that had been hunting them approaching fast from the opposite direction. They were trapped.
Good, thought Samiel. If you've got to go, then this is the way to do it.
Karra-Vrass glanced up at Damrid. The lad nodded back.
'Fire.' said Karra-Vrass.
The twin explosions burst in the midst of the orks, blasting two or three to flailing limbs. Some tried to scatter but the leader grabbed a couple by the scruffs of their necks, flung them forward, pointed with his monstrous claw and bellowed a command that could only be the charge.
They ran forward brandishing their weapons. Samiel heard Karra-Vrass roll the smoking casings out of the breech and haul another two shells in, as strongly and smoothly as Graek had done.
'Range?' called the officer, voice strained with the effort of forcing the breech cover home.
'Close!' shouted back Damrid.
'Fire!'
The two blasts merged into one as a hole was torn out of the advancing patrol. Some were thrown forward to collide with their fellows in the front, and two of them were thrown into the air in bits. Samiel took the opportunity - slowed down and in disarray, the leader cracking two heads together to stop his troops from fleeing, the patrol was a fine target. He opened up with his heavy bolter, seeing orks stitched through with explosive shells, illuminated in the muzzle flare. Two or three more went down, and the charge was halted. Now Dniep crunched the gears and the Defixio turned towards the orks.
Samiel kept firing, keeping ork heads down, and he could hear the wet crunch of greenskins going under the Defixio's tracks.
Kallin was already firing on his side, meaning the bikers were almost upon them. The foot patrol blazed away with every chance they were given, and shells were impacting fiercely on the Defixio's hull. The noise was appalling, for the orks liked their weapons loud - but Samiel didn't care. They could make all the noise they wanted, they weren't taking down these Dead Moon scummers without the hardest fight of their lives. His heavy bolter roared with the defiance he felt boiling inside him, and another ork was ran through on a lance of hot steel.
There was a sound like a thundercrack as a crude ork grenade went off, buckling the metal patching the hull at Samiel's side. Shells ricocheted off the edge of Samiel's vision slit, but he didn't flinch. His ammo belt was tunning out and Karra-Vrass rammed another one into the heavy bolter's breech. Samiel glanced at him in gratitude, saw the officer understood, and went back to firing. He could barely see the targets now, his vision was full of a heaving press of green flesh as the orks tried to swamp the Defixio.

Another grenade went off and Kallin swore, his heavy bolter torn off its mounting by the explosion. Without pausing he grabbed his ork gun and opened fire at the talons clawing at the breached hull. Samiel could hear the bikes now, even above the rest of the din, as the riders dismounted and added their weight to the assault.
There was a shriek of metal and suddenly the Defixio was open to the sky - the lead ork was standing over them, power claw holding the turret he had just ripped clean off the tank. Damrid tumbled back down into the hull, grabbed the sword and began to hack at the green arms and heads that appeared over the edge of ragged metal. Kallin's side gave way seconds later and he was fighting back the encroaching greenskins with his bare hands, ammo expended.
One of the greenskins got Dniep, an axe swinging down and burying itself in his back. Karra-Vrass opened fire with his duelling pistol, each shot hitting home, and Samiel followed suit, laspistol bolts burning into green skin. He heard Kallin yelling obscenities as he was dragged through the hole in the hull by a dozen clawed hands, and Samiel felt sure Kallin would have wanted to go out swearing.
The massive ork reached down and grabbed Damrid in its claw, hoisting him clean out of the tank, shearing through the boy's skinny body, tossing him aside, roaring its rage and showing its huge fangs. Karra-Vrass grabbed an autocannon shell and rammed it into the monster's mouth with the strength of a man who knows he has ran out of time. The ork swiped at him with the power claw, batting him aside, and shots from the swarming orks tore into the officer's torso.
Samiel snatched up Dniep's discarded shotgun. He could feel the greenskins all around him, teeth biting into his legs, claws sinking into his shoulders. But there was no pain, not at the end, not while he still had his mark to make.
He fired a single round from the shotgun, aimed right into the face of the immense ork leader. With a roar like the end of the world the autocannon shell lodged in its jaw detonated, blowing the beast's head clean off, tearing a huge chunk out of its monstrous body. It swayed, as if it hadn't realised it was dead - then it fell.
Knowing that he had died giving as good as he had got, his heart pumping sheer glory through his veins, Samiel fell under the heaving mass of greenskins and felt no more.
'YOU'RE A LUCKY swine.' said the voice. It wasn't Savlar - the accent was different. 'Well enough to talk?'
'Just.' Samiel was surprised to hear his own voice replying. He opened his eyes - Jaegersweld's sunlight was never very bright, but he still squinted after so long...
Asleep? Unconscious? Dead?

The shadow in front of him became the shape of a man. A lined face and grey hair, dressed in Cadian fatigues. A colonel, Samiel saw from the chevrons on his shoulder.
'You mind telling me what happened here, son?'
'Ran into some orks, sir.' Samiel could hardly believe he was speaking. He had thought he must be dead before, twice... but this time he had been certain. He had been there waiting for it, and when it came he faced it and refused to let it take him without a fight.
He straggled into a sitting position. Behind the colonel was the smoking shell of the Defixio. He wouldn't have recognised it as a tank at all had he not spent the last, greatest moments of its life inside it. Skeletons surrounded it, just as charred.
The massive jawbones and beetling craniums of orks were everywhere, with a couple of human skulls that had once belonged to his comrades.
Took a lot of them with you. Must've thought you were dead, eh?'
'I was sort of counting on it, sir.'
'Like I said, one lucky swine. Fuel tanks went up and threw you clear. Week or two with the Sisters in the field hospital and you'll be back in action.' The colonel looked over Samiel's tattered fatigues, and the gas mask that hung round his neck. 'You from Savlar?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Steal anything and we'll hang you.'
Yes, sir.'
Samiel could sit up but he couldn't walk - one leg was busted so bad he couldn't feel it. As he was loaded onto a stretcher he could see the rest of the Cadians clearing up the debris of the ork camp they had overran in recapturing their HQ. The ork totem was being taken down from the roof of the command bunker, and the bodies lined up in mass graves.
Nothing Karra-Vrass had said was true. His friends (they were his friends in those final hours, without a doubt) had died no better deaths than the hundreds of Cadians days earlier, or the poor souls killed when the convoy was hit. They hadn't achieved anything, not really - the war on Jaegersweld would carry on without them. The Imperium was exactly the same as it would have been had none of them ever lived.
But that wasn't the point. They felt they were achieving something in death. Even Karra-Vrass believed his own words, of that Samiel was sure. They believed they were dying for a cause, they had been allowed to confront their deaths head-on and not have it finding them without warning as they cowered alone. How many Guardsmen on Jaergersweld could say that?
It was a terrible place, this galaxy, that ate up the lives of men. But sometimes, there was hope. Sometimes, there was something you could salvage from it, some dignity and pride, even if it was right at the end. It was more than most men got in the Guard, or on the Dead Moons, or

anywhere else. Samiel couldn't properly understand it himself. But the crew of the Defixio had won a fine and noble victory of their own.
Now, of course, Samiel was a sole survivor twice over, and it would be a miracle if anyone would ever so much as look at him without muttering something dark under their breaths about how that man had used up enough luck for a hundred men. But there were worse things. In fact, he had something to be proud of - he had died a total of three times now, and two of those were pretty good send-offs. That wasn't a bad strike rate.
The Cadians began to carry him back to the HQ compound, through the wreckage of the ork camp. One of the stretcher-bearers glanced round at him, and must have wondered why, when he had a shattered leg and every one of his friends was dead, all this crazy Savlar kid could do was smile to himself.