Double Eagle by Dan Abnett Read Free Book Online Page A

too?
    The Line of Death sat waiting for its commander. As he climbed up, he patted its flank, even though the sun-roasted metal scorched his hand. The Line was an Exterminator-type assault tank, its chassis the same basic pattern as the heavier Conqueror. Its turret-mounted twin autocannons could produce an astonishingly savage field of rapid firepower. The tank was painted dust-red, though that wash was scuffed down to the chrome base metal in many places. Its name was painted on the turret’s mantlet, and its regiment—8th Pardus Armoured—was embossed above the sponsons beside an Imperial double eagle crest.
    LeGuin clambered over the drums of spare munitions webbed to the rear cowling and hopped up into the turret. Matredes, his gunner, was waiting for him in the top hatchway.
    “We going?”
    “Yeah.”
    Matredes shouted down to Emdeen, the driver, and the VI2 engine revved. They lurched onwards, treads clattering, and rejoined the file.
    The Line had not been LeGuin’s for long and, though he tried to bond with the steed, they were not tight. For most of his career, LeGuin had been a Destroyer man, commander of the tank killer Grey Venger. Thirty-four kills they’d shared, until Venger had fallen to enemy fire on the shrine world Hagia three years before. LeGuin might have happily burned with his steed, but his life had been saved by the selfless action of an infantry scout called Mkoll, a man LeGuin respected enough not to be angry with.
    On his return to regimental headquarters, they’d assigned LeGuin this can. He’d wanted another Destroyer, naturally, for that’s where his skills and training lay, but there were just none available. On the rare occasions one of that ancient marque came up for transfer or reassignment, it was usually a reconditioned hulk with lousy bearings, a rebored engine and some useless firework in place of the precious, specialist L/D cannon.
    So, disguising his disappointment, LeGuin had become an assault tanker, riding his new steed in with Humel’s doomed Enothian campaign.
    The Line spurred forward. Under the present circumstances, the memory of his disappointment seemed ridiculously insignificant and made LeGuin smile. So, he hadn’t been assigned the steed he wanted. Shame. If only that was the worst thing he had to deal with now.
    All that mattered at this moment was what was going to get them first: the desert or the enemy.
    Even with the internal compartments filter-sealed, it was like an oven in the Exterminator. LeGuin dared not use the air exchanger for fear of depleting fuel even further. Matredes was studying the charts by the light of a red bulb overhead, and he said something. LeGuin had put on his ear-baffles already, and now he switched on the internal intercom.
    “Say again?”
    “Another forty kilometres, and we should be reaching rougher terrain… open karst. That’ll mark the beginnings of the rift.”
    LeGuin nodded. The rift, and the mountains beyond it, represented the second and third of the great barriers the columns would have to overcome in order to reach safe territory. The desert was just the beginning. But it gave him some sense of hope. These were palpable markers that he could tick off.
    LeGuin popped the hatch and sat up, taking the electroscope Matredes passed to him. The Line of Death was travelling in the forward quarter of the retreating column. According to unconfirmed rumours, some of the Imperial elements had already reached the Makanite passes, on the doorstep of safety. According to other rumours, enemy rapid assault units had reached there too, gunning to deny them.
    He scanned ahead through the scope, trying to brace against the lurch of the machine. Every view was filtered by heat haze and whirling dust. But there did now seem to be something far ahead. A slender blue-white line. Mountains, or a daylight dream?
    The vox chattered something he didn’t quite catch. A moment later, he didn’t need it repeated. Flickering shadows shot