‘Well, they did not shoot us,’ I said.
‘I mean did they even see us as people? Will they remember us and think, yeah, we saved those Guardsmen on Karsk?’
I thought about the fierce, savage face of the Death Spectre. I remembered the controlled, killing fury in those cold, black eyes. I remembered the way he had grunted when I spoke to him. ‘The Emperor’s Angels’ I have heard the Space Marine Chapters called. There seemed very little angelic about them to me. I thought Death Spectres an entirely appropriate name. They certainly looked like manifest death to me, and they had proved themselves to be to all those they encountered on the field of battle. Among all those bodies down there, among all the thousands of casualties, I had not seen one encased in ceramite armour.
‘I doubt it.’
Ivan nodded and scratched his metal cheek. It made a nerve-jangling grinding sound. ‘Like mortal gods,’ he said. ‘Like something out of Scripture come to life.’
He sounded uneasy and that too was understandable. It is all very well hearing legends and heroic tales. It is another thing to find one of those legends standing in front of you, wielding a bolter and filled with righteous fury. The uncomfortable thought sidled into my mind: what if the Death Spectre had decided I was one of the Emperor’s enemies? He would have killed me on the spot and there was absolutely nothing I could have done to stop him. Space Marines have a way of making you feel your mortal insignificance. I was glad they were on our side but I was not sure I wanted to be that close to one ever again.
Anton, as ever, chose to give voice to his own reveries. ‘You know I don’t think they are like us at all.’
‘They are certainly not like you,’ Ivan said.
‘I mean it. I think they have no more in common with us than orks do.’
‘That’s not true. They were men once, if the tales are true.’
‘Once, Leo. Not any more. I looked into one’s eyes. It was not like looking into a man’s eyes at all. And I don’t think he looked back at me and saw someone who was the same species as him. They say they live forever, you know.’
‘They don’t. Just longer than us, if they are not shot.’
‘Yes, but they have a gene-seed in them that is passed on from one to another. That lives forever. Some of them must be carrying seeds that date back to when the Emperor walked among men.’
‘I don’t think I have ever seen you this thoughtful,’ I said. It was true too. Of all the strange and wonderful things I saw that day, a thoughtful Anton was not the least strange.
‘And… and those Titans, they were old too, old as the Imperium maybe. Some of them must have walked when the Emperor did and that Space Marine’s gene-seed was new. We live in a strange and terrible universe, Leo,’ he said.
‘It’s taken you all this time to work that out?’ I said.
He just stared at me bleakly, as if he was about to cry. There was a lost look about him, like a child separated from his parents in a hive-world crowd who does not know his way home. It was odd seeing those eyes looking out of that tall gangling body.
A strange gloom started to settle on us. I looked down at the armoured hull of the Indomitable. I knew at once we were all thinking the same thing.
I was the first to say it. ‘It’s dead.’
They understood what I meant. There was no sense of presence in the Indomitable. Whatever spirit had been in it was gone. Anton nodded. Ivan shook his head. They reflected the confusion of the moment.
There was the sound of gunfire and all the thunder of battle in the distance but it was as if we sat in our own small pool of quiet. We were all thinking about the Baneblade. Old Number Ten had carried us across half a dozen worlds. We had looked after it and it had looked after us. It had been in a very real sense the only home we had known in the past decade.
‘What are we going to do?’ Anton asked. They were both looking at me, in that hangdog way that they’d always done even back in the guild factorum on Belial.
‘We need to find an officer to report to,’ I said. None of us moved. A dying heretic started to scream for water. He lay in the shadow of a smashed Leman Russ across from us. Anton turned, raised his lasgun and put him out of his misery. We returned to contemplating our own problems.
‘There’s always the Understudy,’ I said. ‘He might still be alive. I suppose we should look.’
It was something we had been putting off and I hated to bring it up but someone had to. We had to go back into the shattered remains of the Baneblade and start looking for bodies. I doubted that anyone had survived but it was always possible and we would need to account for the casualties anyway at some point if we were the only survivors. The Imperial Guard always has a great curiosity about such things. We would need to reclaim the logs as well. As surviving crew it was our sacred duty.
Anton gulped. He acted tough and he was, most of the time, but there are some things nobody likes to do and this was one of them. It was also the first time any of us had been called on to do such a thing. The old tank had seemed indestructible. I don’t think it was quite real to any of us just yet.
And there was something else, a certain inertia. While we were sitting here we were out of things. Nothing was quite real. We were alone in a world of ruins and dust and corpses, committed to nothing except watching the universe pass us by. Once we started doing something we were back in the world of following orders, performing duties, a world in which we could be killed and in which, at very least, we would have to work. For all our depression, there was still an odd holiday mood in the air. It came from still being alive and having no supervision and, for the first time in years, having no real idea of what to do.
Ivan grunted as he started to get up. ‘I suppose we have to,’ he said.
You could always rely on Ivan to bring you down.
‘Come on you two,’ he said. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
We clambered back down into the body of the Indomitable. We moved very cautiously, much more cautiously than when we had made our escape. There was something ominous about going back down there. It was as if we were rummaging about inside a huge corpse.
We were in the burned-out shell of something that had once been living but was now dead. I think all of us felt that way. They let me take the lead, quite wisely, because nobody really wants to stand in front of a man with a shotgun. Not if they have the slightest smidgen of a sense of self-preservation anyway.
I found that I was holding my breath again and walking on the balls of my feet. I was ready for anything – it was always possible that the Space Marines might have missed someone and that there might be enemies still left alive down here.
We entered the command cabin again. None of us could look at the lieutenant. I paused there and looked at my old seat. How many hours had I spent sitting there? How many leagues had I driven that ancient tank over? One thing was for sure, I would not be doing that again in a hurry. It seemed like a different place now and I felt like a different person from the driver who had sat there taking orders from the lieutenant.
‘Nothing,’ said Anton, shaking his head. ‘No one here except the dead.’ No one made any jokes. Even for us some things were not a subject for humour.
‘I suppose we’re going to have to go below,’ said Ivan. Even he did not sound very keen on the idea. None of us were.
‘I suppose we are,’ I said. There were dead bodies in the corridor leading towards the engine room. They were heretics. They had that strange look, as if their chests or their heads had exploded from within, that is so characteristic of the corpses of those who have been shot with a bolter. There is nothing, with the possible exception of grenades, that leaves quite such a mess and I say this as a man who is quite proficient with a shotgun.