Only Blood - Third War For Armageddon Story

‘There’s definitely something there!’Brother Sunno leaned over to look through the open door of the driver’s cab,
shouting to make himself heard over the throb of Rhino’s engines. He had his
helmet off. The atmosphere in the tank was thick and bitter, but better, he said,
than breathing endlessly recycled suit air. The four Black Templars in the
battered passenger compartment, two novitiates and two initiates, shifted their
gazes from whatever internal space they’d been examining and glanced at the
forward comms panel. The novitiates blinked slowly, as if perplexed. It had been
a hard few days for them all.‘Bring Cataphraxes to a halt,’ ordered Brusc, sword brother of the Ash Waste
Crusade, commanding officer of this sorry remnant. He drummed metal-clad
fingers on his armoured thigh, rattling out a brief, tinny tattoo in the Rhino’s
passenger cab. Near silence fell suddenly as Sunno cut the engine. Small sounds
grew large: the wind whistling over the tank’s fittings, muted by thick armour;
the almost inaudible whine of power armour at rest; the thunderous breathing of
the five giants within the tank.The communications array on the forward wall hissed unhelpfully, its screen
set to seeking auspex and fizzing with green static snow.Brusc exhaled contemplatively, his eyes shifting to each of the warriors with
him. Osric, Sunno in the cab, the novitiates Marcomar and Doneal, not yet
initiates, already mightier than fully grown unenhanced men. The tight scar
tissue on his face itched as it always did when he was tired. He did his best to
ignore it.‘Brother Osric? What say you?’ asked Brusc eventually.