The Sum of Its Parts by Rhuairidh James

Author:Rhuairidh James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2022-11-29T16:01:57+00:00

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rhuairidh James is a background writer for Games Workshop. When he’s not writing about Warhammer, he’s building it, or asleep. ‘The Inevitable Siege’ is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Steel Tread.

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.

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