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Exterminator – Extract

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Exterminator

Mike Vincent

‘You’re our new driver.’ It was not a question. The Tallarn crewman was smoking a lho-stick and leaning against the pitted, tan-coloured armour of the Leman Russ Exterminator. He was of medium build and olive complexion, and he looked like he had been dragged through hell behind a grox-cart. Exhaustion was painted across his drawn features, and his lips and fingers were frostbitten. The lho-stick in his hand trembled, though the vehicle garage itself was uncomfortably warm.

‘Trooper Larno Semic.’ Larno held out a hand to shake. The smoking Tallarn stared at Larno’s hand, then looked up at him.

‘Get in. We’re leaving as soon as the boss is back from the briefing.’ The Tallarn flicked away the butt of his lho-stick, climbed on top of the tank, and dropped through the cupola. Larno blinked, then jumped as a heavy hand crashed onto his shoulder.

‘Don’t mind Raqesh,’ said a deep voice behind him, the owner of the hand. ‘He’ll behave himself once he’s tucked in his main gunner’s seat. It’s me who’ll be making your life a misery.’ The grip steered Larno implacably towards the driver’s hatch before letting go. Larno turned to see a huge black beard wearing a fur hat, with only the vaguest suggestion of eyes and nose to part the two.

‘Trooper Larno Semic,’ he tried again, hand proffered.

‘Great. Me first.’ The beard lifted himself through the driver’s hatch and shuffled into the tiny seat behind the vehicle’s hull-mounted heavy bolter, where he immediately set about the weapon with an oily rag.

This wasn’t how Larno had imagined his first tour of duty would begin.

Larno took a few minutes to stow his kitbag and adjust the driver’s couch to fit his proportions. The previous driver, named Piyardis if Larno’s notes were up to date, must have been a good deal taller than him. Not for the first time, Larno wondered how his new crewmates had fared during the siege of Refinery City One, so recently fought and won. The siege whose casualties Larno and his fellow reinforcements had come to replace. Larno’s gaze lingered on fresh weld marks around his hatch plate.

Corporal Mebethé, tank commander of the Leman Russ Exterminator Nawa, appeared soon after. Driver’s hatch still open, she saw Larno first and fixed him with a tired smile.

‘Driver Semic. Glad to have you with us.’

‘Thank you, corporal.’

‘Boss’ll do fine.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Mebethé leaned her shaven head into the hatch to look at the bearded man, who nodded his greeting. Mebethé turned a knowing look at Larno.

‘Good, you’ve met your new closest associate.’ She turned back to the bearded man. ‘Dmekinou, have you introduced yourself to our new driver?’

‘Who?’ Dmekinou continued to clean the blocky weapon before him.

‘Glad to hear it.’ Mebethé clapped the armoured front of her tank as she withdrew her head from the compartment. She tapped the vox headset strapped to her head. ‘Nawa, you hear me?’

Hurriedly, Larno scrambled for his own headset and jammed it on. Mebethé waited until he had it in place before continuing.

‘For the benefit of our new driver’ – Mebethé nodded at Larno before climbing up onto the Leman Russ and out of sight – ‘HQ had earmarked us for another ride out. That was all I knew until the briefing I’ve just had. We’re on babysitting duty, folks. We’ll be escorting a cargo-8 north-west over the plateau region, ensuring…’ She raised her voice to drown out the sound of her crew’s groans. ‘Ensuring the safe delivery of priority supplies to the high-inclination extraction zone. Mission time, four days out, four days back. Any questions?’

‘Why us?’ Dmekinou growled.

‘Any questions at all?’

‘Who’s our new operator now Hivio’s gone?’ The voice was that of the smoking Tallarn from earlier, Raqesh, the main gunner. ‘And who’s the new troop commander, too? What other fresh-faced imbeciles we getting lumped with?’

‘Mind your mouth!’ Mebethé barked. Larno felt his face redden. ‘Larno is our new driver, part of the crew now. You treat him that way, whether we’re active in the field, kicking our heels on deep transit, or anywhere in between. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Gleaming. As it happens, we’re off to meet our new commander now.’

‘And the new operator?’ Dmekinou asked.

‘Well, that’s the good news.’ Mebethé took a breath. ‘Commissar Goroth will be riding out with us.’ Only the background hiss of the vox-net disturbed the stunned silence that met this announcement. Larno had never met Goroth, but he had heard stories. Oh yes, he had heard stories.

‘Screw that!’ Raqesh snarled, following that with declarations of his desertion and how he’d rather be transported to a penal regiment. Mebethé let him rage. Larno risked a glance at Dmekinou, who was smiling to himself utterly without mirth. Catching Larno’s gaze, he mimed raising a pistol to his own temple and pulling the trigger.

After several moments the shock subsided enough for Mebethé to issue Larno his first operational order. Her weariness carried unmistakeably across the vox.

‘Driver Semic, if you’d be so kind. Start us up, check off your safeties, and get us under way.’

Enbael IX was a wind-scoured ice ball, its surface smeared with half a dozen sprawling promethium extraction facilities like ink blots on paper. Refinery City One had earned the name ‘city’ by dint of its sheer size. From orbit, Larno had thought that the place looked uninviting. Up close, it was positively hostile. Promethium cracking stacks soared into the frigid sky, criss-crossed with gantries, platforms, and flare towers. Hab-blocks squatted amongst colossal lengths of relay pipework, for there was no distinction between citizen and worker. Crevasses of plasteel and rockcrete delved beneath the frozen earth to vast subterranean storage vessels, from where the vital fuel could be pumped to the bulk lifters waiting on the frost-crusted landing fields, flowing ever out to feed the Imperium’s thirsting war machine. Enbael IX’s destiny was to be sucked dry by the Imperium of Mankind, then abandoned.

A storage yard served as the Tallarn 668th Armoured Regiment’s assembly area. Surrounded by stacked crates and containers of spare parts, Nawa and its command tank, Tarva, a Punisher-variant Leman Russ, gathered. Half a dozen officers were waiting for them, along with a Trojan support vehicle called Svuya, which had been outfitted with a fuel bowser, and the Munitorum cargo-8 that was their charge. Larno wanted to look around as he trundled his new vehicle across the rockcrete, but he concentrated on driving, painfully aware of the two months he had spent in warp transit unable to practise. Nawa was a responsive machine, but unfamiliar nonetheless.

‘Keep the engine running, Driver Semic,’ Mebethé said, then climbed out the hatch and approached the officers. Larno watched her salute to them crisply through the orange-tinted armaglass of his scope. Two were in Tallarn drab, but the rest sported a mix of uniforms that Larno could hardly discern. One of the figures placed a high-peaked cap on his head, and Larno felt a lurch. That was Commissar Goroth, then.

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A Black Library Publication

This eBook edition published in 2024 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

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ISBN: 978-1-83609-108-0

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