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Steel Tread – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

THE LINE

The Salamander was a light armoured vehicle, often employed for scouting purposes, or to ferry officers around hostile warzones. As with so many enduring Imperial technologies, its design leaned upon rugged simplicity. Salamanders were built for speed and resilience.

They were not, reflected Etsul, made for comfort.

She was crammed onto the Salamander’s open-topped fighting platform along with the tattooed Geskan, Lieutenant Aswold, three Cadian infantry officers and all their kitbags. Adding to the press were the Salamander’s commander, its gunner and a robed Munitorum adept. He had introduced himself as Umboldt while herding them aboard their transport back at Mandriga command. He had not spoken since, and clung to a grab rail with an intensity that bespoke either annoyance or fear.

Aswold had made some attempts at conversation, but Etsul fended them away. She hung on near the rear of the vehicle’s troop bay, and fell back upon a calming technique Commander Masenwe had taught his crew.

‘Widen your focus,’ he had always said. ‘Observe the world around you. Anchor yourself in its details. Tally patterns or coloured objects, it sometimes helps. It’s no bad thing to glue your eyes to your targeter, but be sure to look up at the wider battle once in a while.’

Etsul started with the sky. It looked bruised today, blue and amber swirling like milk stirred into recaff. She counted five distinct rafts of cloud coiling across the heavens. They diffused the light of Croatoas’ star and made it possible to look skyward without risking a poisonous glimpse of the Rift.

Unwilling to look long upon that void-borne wound, she hastily turned her attention to the landscape. The Salamander rumbled along a raised transitway, which must once have carried macro haulers between industrial complexes. It was held high on ferrocrete pillars. Beneath, all was mud, stream and thicket.

The transitway had not escaped unharmed. Lianas thicker than Etsul’s forearm had grown over the road’s saviour rails. Plants had sunk their roots into ferrocrete, prising it apart. She counted several blackened patches where flamer teams had burned the rapacious growth, and even the freshest bore signs of the flora of Croatoas returning with obscene vigour.

Other vehicles used the roadway. Several Taurox transports rumbled past, and Etsul saw the caduceus of the medicae blazoned on them. A squadron of quad-wheeled Geskan scout bikes overtook them and roared into the distance.

‘Those warquads are fine vehicles for traversing troublesome terrain,’ commented Aswold. ‘One assumes this stretch of the front will be just as troublesome as where we’ve come from.’

Etsul grunted in response. A roadblock appeared ahead, all sandbag redoubts and emplaced heavy stubbers. Cadian soldiers manned it, alert despite the lack of obvious threats.

Raised barriers allowed traffic through the blockade. Their Salamander joined a queue of vehicles being checked by a pair of Guardsmen with data-slates. Servo-skulls buzzed overhead, playing auspex lenses across waiting vehicles and their passengers. Speakers on fold-out legs blared prayers over the chug of their portable generatoria.

The Salamander reached the front of the queue. Umboldt exchanged words with a Cadian gate guard. He tapped his data-slate, she hers, then she waved them on.

‘Impressive organisation,’ Aswold said. ‘Keeping track of every vehicle moving along this roadway, even in an active warzone. Maintaining a data-schedule for them all. Cadians do things properly.’

‘It isn’t just data-keeping they have a reputation for, Aswold,’ Etsul replied.

She turned away and craned out over the Salamander’s left track. The wind whipped around her, bringing the smells of swampland, salt water and smoke, and underneath them a sinister sweetness she knew well. It was the smell of death borne on the winds of war.

Resuming her exercise, Etsul looked down upon the swamplands. Below the nodding fronds of guasa trees were Cadian and Geskan soldiers, knee-deep in mud, slogging their way through a half-built line of flakboard trenches with arms full of supplies. Etsul grimaced. Her home planet, Tsegoh, was a damp agri-world with high-yield protein farms clinging to ridges of land jutting into its oceans. She knew how the wet got into everything, how the mud clung, and how disease would burn through the workforce like wildfire.

Etsul was perversely pleased to find that, even after Yarroe Canyon, she still longed for the confines of a tank over the dubious freedoms of the footslogger.

The Salamander slowed. Etsul gripped her grab rail and adjusted the heavy kitbag on her shoulder with a grimace.

‘I believe this is our exit,’ said Aswold. The Salamander plunged down an off-ramp, descending into more overgrown industrial ruins. As fronds and boughs whipped past, Etsul breathed deeply. She had been lulled by the rhythm of the journey, the temporary release from responsibility that came with being a passenger. Now the spell was broken. Giving up on her calming ritual, she ran through the names of her crew, muttering them to herself like a mantra. It didn’t do to forget such things, and repetition was the ally of memory, as they taught in basic training.

Rhus Vaslav, gunner, sergeant, Cadian.

Isaac Trieve, driver, Brethian.

Erika Moretzin, loader, Cadian.

Nix Chalenboor, sponson gunner, Dakturian.

Garret Verro, sponson gunner, Cadian.

And then there was the tank itself, Steel Tread, an Agamemnor-pattern Leman Russ Demolisher. According to her briefing slate the vehicle had seen centuries of warfare. Oathkeeper, by comparison, had been practically new, rolled off the forge lines barely three years ago. Its machine-spirit had been fierce and eager.

Etsul wondered what sort of spirit inhabited an ancient war engine like Steel Tread. She had worked with older tanks before. One had struck her as wise and protective, but others had tended towards bestial savagery, steeped in centuries of spilt blood.

Etsul would have liked to go over the vehicle’s specifications again. Many systems were unfamiliar. Crammed in as she was, though, and unsure of how soon they might stop, she didn’t dare unsling her bag to rummage for her data-slate. She sighed and rolled her shoulders as best she could. There were entire inloads of Cadian strategic procedures and battlefield jargon she’d barely had time to absorb.

Etsul resigned herself to learning on the job. At least she knew her way around the inside of a tank well enough.

The transitway reached ground level. It carried them on through thickets and between tidal estuaries, then abruptly into an industrial belt. Buildings soared skyward, hollowed by war. Their flanks slumped amidst vomited spills of brickwork. Empty windows stared down upon her. Pipes wider than the Salamander ran alongside the roadway and formed rusting arches under which they passed. Nests of thorned vines and plants with vibrant red flower spikes grew everywhere, boiling up from within ruined buildings like guts from an opened belly.

Etsul saw bullet holes and shell craters.

Clouds of biting insects thrummed through the air, thick as mist.

The smell of putrefaction grew stronger.

‘Was not always like this,’ murmured Aswold. ‘Croatoas used to be a bustling industrial world. Tens of billions of good, Emperor-fearing folk.’

Etsul knew this. Even the densest soldier of the Coronal Crusade had some knowledge of the planet for which they fought.

‘It was the darkness that changed things, after the Rift opened,’ she said. ‘Something dreadful happened to the people, the cities…’

‘Not to mention the plant life, the weather, and whatever else you care to note,’ Aswold agreed.

‘And then we came, the Coronal Crusade, here to reclaim Croatoas as the God-Emperor willed.’

‘So the Commissariat and the priests tell us,’ replied Aswold, careful to keep his voice low.

Etsul glanced a sharp question his way. Aswold shrugged.

‘Better to go to war in His name and thus find purpose, than to sit becalmed in the void wondering where the tides of the immaterium have hurled you and what has become of the Emperor’s realm, no?’

‘I don’t need anyone to tell me why I should kill heretics,’ said Etsul. ‘Hate is reason enough.’

Aswold gave her an appraising look. ‘I might say, hatred and faith, one informing the other.’

Now it was Etsul’s turn to shrug. ‘Either is better than fear.’

Their conversation was broken by thunder. She jumped and reached again for her sidearm. Those around her ducked instinctively, except Umboldt.

‘Mobile Imperial artillery engaging in speculative suppression,’ he shouted, straining to be heard over the booms rolling from all around. As they crossed a junction, Etsul spied a trio of Basilisks, their long barrels elevated, their crews hastening to load fresh shells. The muzzle of the nearest gun spat fire, rocking the vehicle back on its treads. Then the Salamander was past, and forging on towards the gap of daylight at the end of the processional.

‘Is there a battle in progress?’ Aswold asked. ‘Should we be ready for combat?’

‘There are frequent attacks. The heretics dash themselves against the Mandriga Line like wild beasts,’ sneered Umboldt. ‘Fear not. You shan’t have to fight them today.’

‘None of us is afraid of a fight, quill-pusher,’ replied Aswold. Umboldt scowled. One corner of Etsul’s mouth quirked in a half-smile.

The Salamander left the shadow of the ruins. The transitway became a rutted dirt road. The tank banged and lurched as it passed over plasteel plates laid down, Etsul presumed, to prevent the route from being churned to a mire. Islands of foliage rose to either side amidst broad streams and a network of trenches and bunkers. Imperial Guard soldiery were everywhere, packing the trenches, running messages or out on patrol. The Salamander passed communication dugouts and mortar pits veiled by screens of flakboard and cameleoline. Etsul saw towers for artillery spotters jutting proud of the marshes. Here and there squatted platforms mounting anti-aircraft cannons.

‘We’re close,’ she said to Aswold.

‘Have you thought the thoughts that needed thinking?’ he asked her. The words had the cadence of a saying.

She eyed him.

He returned his bright and guileless smile.

‘As it happens, I have, despite your chatter.’

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘If words earned the Emperor’s grace, I would be a saint by now.’

‘Some words do,’ she said.

‘Rarely my chatter, Hadeya,’ he replied, and Etsul snorted a laugh.

‘Are those turrets ahead?’ she asked, pointing. As the shapes resolved, Aswold’s smile broadened.

‘I believe those are our tanks.’

She saw he was right. There were Leman Russ battle tanks of various patterns dotted amongst the trenches, painted Cadian green. On each was displayed a stylised hammer design, haloed in flame. Etsul’s eye had been fooled by the redoubts of packed earth and flakboard around each vehicle. These weren’t gun turrets. Rather, the tanks had been dug in so that they could serve as such.

‘If they’ve emplaced our tanks, then the tides of war must move sluggishly here,’ she said.

Beyond the tanks and trenches sprawled a half-drowned no-man’s-land of rubble, greenery and the remains of drowned roadways littered with wreckage. Smoke rose in the distance, tattering into the wind. Etsul thought of the Basilisks and their ‘speculative suppressing fire’. She hoped those dark plumes marked fresh enemy dead.

The Salamander wheeled off the road and came to a halt. Its power plant cut out, leaving Etsul’s ears ringing. This tinnitus slowly gave way to the sounds of the front line: murmured conversations; shouts, and barked orders, and prayer; the rumble of engines; the crackle of cook-fires and the tinny squawk of voices through vox-sets. Artillery fire thumped in the distance. She smelled meat cooking and the funk of hundreds of unwashed bodies. Stronger than ever was the sweet tang of death. It crept from the swamps, and no amount of fortifications could hold it back.

Umboldt flourished his data-slate.

‘Officers of the Astra Militarum, please confirm your belonging to the following regiments. Cadian Eight-Hundred and Thirty-Second Heavy Infantry. Cadian Forty-Ninth Armoured. Geskan Forty-Third Light Infa–’

‘No one calls us that,’ rasped the Geskan.

‘What?’

‘We’re the Trenchrunners. They’re the Dauntless Eight Thirty-Two, and they’re the Hammers.’

‘Whatever nicknames the common soldiery bandy about is of no interest to the Departmento Munitorum,’ sniffed Umboldt, words as clipped as cogitator keystrokes. ‘You will all confirm at this time that you belong to or are being transferred to one of the regiments aforementioned.’

‘I believe we can all confirm that, yes?’ asked Aswold. There were murmurs of assent. The Geskan bristled and spat off the side of the tank.

Umboldt stared expectantly.

‘Throne’s sake. Yes,’ snarled the Geskan.

Umboldt nodded in satisfaction and tapped at his data-slate.

The device chimed.

‘Oh, data-spirit of knowledge, we offer you this day our thanks for your continued guidance and thrice-blessed autopedantry,’ he intoned solemnly, before returning his gaze to the gathered soldiers.

‘This is section one-three-one of the Mandriga Defence Line,’ Umboldt told them, the reverence of a moment before replaced by disdain. ‘You should already be fully briefed with regard to joining your assigned combat units and immediate commencement of front-line command duties. Any questions should be addressed to your platoon commanders in the first instance, or to regimental section officers in the case that such personnel are indisposed. May the Emperor bless your endeavours.’

Etsul was first to climb down from the Salamander and into the connecting trench behind it. She took a few paces, enjoying the simple feeling of comparative space. She was tempted to throw her kitbag onto the duckboard floor and stretch out the knotted muscles of her back. However, she had spotted a small group of soldiers waiting nearby, watching the officers dismount. At the sight, another of Masenwe’s lessons came back to her.

‘You can’t be merely human in front of your troops. You keep that for when it’s just you and the Emperor. Rest of the time we’re the strongest, the toughest, the ones who don’t get tired or sad or afraid. They need it from us, and it’s the only way to earn their respect.’

Etsul kept her kitbag on her shoulder.

‘This will be our reception committee,’ muttered Aswold.

‘You’re still not dressed for it,’ she noted.

‘You would prefer that I had attempted to change in the back of a moving Salamander?’

Etsul snorted.

‘They will get used to me soon enough,’ Aswold said. ‘Besides, it will do these Cadians good to remember they are not the only worthy soldiers in the Imperial Guard.’

Etsul smiled. Her expression curdled, however, as realisation dawned on her. Soldiers saluted their new officers and, one by one, offered to lead them to their stations.

All except her.

Umboldt had her name on his precious data-slate, so there surely couldn’t be any mistake. Etsul looked around for the adept, willing to endure his impatient scorn in order to make absolutely sure she was in the right place. He had already hopped from the Salamander and vanished. Etsul grimaced. She’d find no aid there.

She had expected Sergeant Vaslav to meet her, had counted on a few minutes alone with him to get oriented before she met the rest of the crew. From the scant notes on her data-slate Etsul knew him to be a veteran Cadian who had fought for his world long before it was destroyed. He didn’t seem the sort to be late.

Etsul scanned around until she spotted Russ turrets jutting above the trenches. She frowned and squared her shoulders, willing away tiredness, hunger and travel-sore aches. If Vaslav was delayed Etsul wasn’t about to wait around for him. She would just have to find her tank the hard way.

‘No sign of your gunner?’ asked Aswold. Etsul started, realising that he must have noted her predicament and lingered. His own second-in-command stood to one side, wearing a guarded expression.

‘Sergeant, do you know where I can find Steel Tread?’

Aswold’s gunner cleared her throat.

‘Absolutely, sir. Follow the trench that way along the back of this section. She’s the last tank before the lookout tower. If you pass that, you’re into one-three-two and you’ve gone too far. Oh, and keep your head down, sir. Snipers, you know…’

‘Thank you, sergeant,’ Etsul said. She spared a glance for Aswold, whose eyebrows were raised, then turned and set off along the trench. She did as the sergeant suggested, staying low between the flakboard walls. She was still several hundred yards back from no-man’s-land here, but complacency was dangerous. The enemy could be out there, sights ghosting across the front lines, seeking targets worth a bullet.

I’m not getting shot before I find out what in the Emperor’s name is going on here, she thought. There was a chance she was about to walk into a crisis and be expected to aid people she had never met. And if there was no crisis, Etsul wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse.

Tank crews spent countless hours crammed into a confined space together. They relied upon one another for survival just as much as their machines. If one of the crew failed in their duties, all suffered. The thought that her new crew might be this unreliable from the off was not encouraging.

Etsul passed artillery positions, then a side trench in which several wounded Cadians lay on stretchers, then another where a slight and wiry man in a tanker’s uniform led a group of soldiers in prayer. The man looked up at her as she passed. Ice-blue eyes pierced her from under his wild, black brows.

It seemed they were not the first non-natives consolidated into this Cadian regiment. She would not be alone.

Etsul was spattered with mud by the time she found Steel Tread. She knew the vehicle even from a distance. The Demolisher’s blocky silhouette and squat cannon were unmistakable. As she got closer, the tank’s name resolved in curling Low Gothic letters stencilled along the turret’s side. Next to it, someone with passable artistic talent had painted a horned helmet being crushed under a steel-shod boot.

Someone sat atop the tank, rendered in silhouette.

Clearly the risk of snipers had been overstated, or this person had a death wish. She saw it was a woman, heavily muscled and with her tank suit undone to the waist to reveal the olive vest below. Her right arm was a bulky mechanical augmetic. Her blonde hair was shaved short and her eyes glinted violet as she glanced Etsul’s way.

Recognition passed over the woman’s face. She rapped her mechanical fist against the hull, then slid off the tank and out of sight. Etsul rounded the corner and marched up the short ramp connecting the trench to the tank’s emplacement. There was enough space between the makeshift ramparts and the tank itself to form a walled-off enclosure with Steel Tread at its heart.

Despite herself, Etsul felt a moment’s pride at the sight of the Demolisher: her Demolisher. The vehicle looked well maintained. Its exterior stowage appeared in good order.

Steel Tread was bulkier than Oathkeeper had been, with thicker armour and more firepower. Sponson-mounted heavy bolters offered anti-infantry point-defence. A tank-busting lascannon jutted from the vehicle’s prow, while a pintle-mounted storm bolter on its turret sat above the Russ’ main weapon. The fearsome Demolisher cannon’s menace was somewhat undercut by the wire of drying laundry strung between a grab handle on the hull and a nearby lumen pole.

Two of the tank’s crew were rising from fold-out stools either side of a table improvised from a munitions crate. Across it was scattered the paraphernalia of a card game.

One was male, Cadian by his eyes and with youthful features, dark skin and a close-cropped beard. The other was a woman, also young to Etsul’s eyes. Her skin was a shade lighter than her companion’s and her eyes were so dark they looked almost black. Her hair was longer than regulation, with metal beads braided into it, and her nose and ears were both pierced multiple times. Tattoos forested her knuckles and forearms. A stylised teardrop marked the skin beneath her right eye. Both tankers stood to attention, and Etsul was immediately struck by the hostility in the woman’s glare.

The crewman with the augmetic arm ambled around the tank to join them at attention. To the vehicle’s other side, Etsul saw an older man with a sergeant’s insignia pulling himself to his feet. Her errant gunner, still in the process of waking up.

Vaslav dragged one hand over his narrow face as though to scrape away a rime of exhaustion. He was pale and scarred, with a shaved head and a pencil moustache. His violet eyes had bags beneath them. He wore an expression of thinly veiled annoyance.

Etsul took her time with the last few steps of her approach, giving herself a moment to consider what she was going to do. She could play the hard disciplinarian and shock them into shape, or the confident commander, ignoring the troubling details. She knew what Masenwe would have done. For that matter, she knew what she would do.

First impressions mattered.

‘I am Hadeya Etsul, your new commander,’ she said. Dropping her kitbag to free both hands, she made the sign of the aquila. Her crew returned the salute, though she noted the glaring woman’s aquila was just sloppy enough to be disrespectful.

Etsul kept her gaze level and let the silence stretch. It had grown uncomfortable by the time Vaslav cleared his throat.

‘Welcome to Steel Tread, sir. I’m Sergeant Vaslav, your gunner.’ He gestured to each of the others as he introduced them.

‘Loader Erika Moretzin,’ he said. The big woman saluted smartly.

‘Sponson Gunner Garret Verro.’ The young man’s salute was also crisp, and accompanied by a respectful, ‘Sir, it’s a pleasure, sir.’

‘And you are Sponson Gunner Nix Chalenboor, yes?’ asked Etsul. The woman with the gang tattoos wore an insouciant grin.

‘Yeah,’ she replied, and Etsul fancied she saw a challenging glint in the gunner’s eye.

‘My briefing did not suggest we were a stationary unit, sergeant,’ said Etsul. Vaslav looked nonplussed.

‘Stationary, sir?’

‘We have a driver?’ prompted Etsul.

‘Ah,’ said Vaslav, glancing about as though only just realising there was a crewman missing. ‘Driver Trieve is leading prayers in a nearby trench, sir. Faith is our first weapon against the Archenemy, after all.’

Etsul said nothing.

‘I told Trieve to return in time for your arrival but…’ Vaslav continued, letting out a breath. ‘But, well–’

‘He’s proper pious, him,’ sneered Chalenboor.

‘Speak when spoken to, Chalenboor,’ snapped Vaslav.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘I was given to understand the discipline of Cadian regiments is second to none,’ Etsul said. ‘Instead, I find nobody waiting to meet me at my drop-off point, and now you tell me my driver is absent without my leave. I find myself under-whelmed.’

There was something sullen in Vaslav’s continued silence.

‘Yeah, so if–’

‘Commander,’ said Verro, cutting Chalenboor off, ‘would you like to inspect Steel Tread? I can see to your belongings.’

‘That would be good,’ said Etsul, replying to Verro but keeping her eyes on Chalenboor. The young woman stared back.

‘Local orientation would also help,’ she said as Verro hefted her kitbag with a wince. ‘Commissary, section command post, latrines, all that.’

‘Of course, sir,’ began Vaslav, then his gaze slid over her shoulder and set hard. Etsul turned. The man from the side trench with the sharp blue eyes was walking up the ramp.

Leading prayers. Isaac Trieve, I presume.

Trieve was, at least, better presented than his crewmates. His tank suit was crisp, his stride purposeful. Somehow, he had contrived to keep the mud off himself almost entirely. He held a prayer book in one hand and wore a machine-stamped aquila on a chain around his neck. His expression was unconcerned, bordering on smug. Etsul was struck by the sudden thought that Trieve’s absence had been deliberate, that the man had engineered some distance between himself and his crewmates.

Trieve stood to attention and offered a sharp aquila salute.

‘Commander Etsul, it is a privilege.’

‘Is it? A pity, then, that you were not present when I arrived as you should have been.’

‘Of course, sir. My apologies.’ Trieve smiled, seemingly perversely pleased with the rebuke. ‘I was detained by the divine spirit of the God-Emperor, for He moved me to a surfeit of piety that ran overlong. I’m sure you understand, sir. When He speaks to us, His will supersedes all others.’

Etsul shook her head.

‘What I understand, Driver Trieve, is that when my crew musters, I expect you to be present and punctual. If you must make your peace with the God-Emperor afterwards, then He will have to be understanding. I stand between you and Him in the chain of command.’

At this borderline blasphemy, Trieve looked as though he’d taken a mouthful of something rotten. A flush crept up his neck. Etsul heard a sound behind her that might have been Chalenboor stifling a snort. She swung around to see an expression that was half guilty, half amused on the sponson gunner’s face.

Verro still clutched her kitbag, expression pained.

Etsul looked to Vaslav. He was her second-in-command. He knew these soldiers far better than she. A good gunnery sergeant dealt with day-to-day discipline so that their commander could rise above such things as a figure of authority and respect. Vaslav just stared into the middle distance, hands clasped tightly behind his back, expression carefully unreadable.

‘Let me be perfectly clear,’ she said, raking them with her gaze. ‘This has not gone well. I am going to inspect Steel Tread then get some food, and once I have–’

A loud clearing of the throat caused Etsul to wheel about. A Cadian soldier stood at the bottom of the ramp, Ninth Army Group command insignia on her shoulder. She held a data-slate and had her helmet tucked under one arm.

‘What?’ barked Etsul.

‘Apologies, lieutenant commander. Captain Brezyk requests your presence for a strategic briefing at Mandriga command.’

Etsul felt her shoulders sag. Tiredness, hunger, frustration and a painful longing for her old crewmates threatened to crack her composure. Instead, she took a deep breath, and then the proffered data-slate. It told her little more than the messenger.

‘I have just come from Mandriga command,’ Etsul bit out. ‘I am engaged in inspecting my new tank and crew.’

‘With respect, lieutenant commander, the captain was unambiguous.’

‘Of course,’ Etsul replied with a hard smile. She had been a soldier long enough to recognise a stress-test.

‘Verro, get my belongings stowed,’ she told the sponson gunner. ‘The rest of you be ready for full inspection upon my return. And no more excursions.’ She directed this last to Trieve, before turning and following the messenger back up the trench.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Manuel Castañón.

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