"Its beautiful," Knox said, his eyes flicking over every centimeter of the fresh armor like he was about to propose to it. No one could tell if he was being sarcastic or serious, but it didn't matter because the Ladybird looked, if not beautiful, then at least functional again—ready to kill or die in a way most of the base's other vehicles could only dream of. The blackened scorch marks had been buffed out, the hull patched with an entire new frontal glacis plate, and the smell of scorched synthoil that had haunted the crew compartment for days was mostly replaced by the citrusy tang of budget-grade solvent.
The techs had left a few parting gifts—stenciled smiley faces on the mudguards, a cartoon of a Khadak bug getting stomped on the loader's hatch, and a fresh coat of anti-corrosive in wide, uneven stripes. Nyla ran her fingers along the edge of one of the new welded seams, feeling the ridge where the plates didn't quite line up. The Ladybird would never win a beauty contest, but it looked like something that could survive a direct hit from orbit and keep rolling long enough to run over someone's dog tags on the way to the next disaster.
Nyla let herself smile, just for a second. She could see traces of the old hull, the places where shrapnel had bit deep and the paneling was pockmarked like the surface of some ancient, battered moon. It was so familiar it almost felt like home; she'd spent more hours inside this tank than she had in her own quarters. She wondered, briefly, if she'd ever feel that about a place that didn't come with a near-certainty of getting shot at.
"It still looks like shit," Henley said, not even pretending to be sentimental. He was wiping off his hands with a ration wrapper, which was doing a terrible job of cleaning the grease and grime from under his fingernails.
Knox rewarded the comment with a fist into Henley's not-insignificant belly, nearly knocking him off the Ladybird's fender. "That's because you don't appreciate craftsmanship," Knox said, but his tone was the kind of warm that meant everything was, for the moment, okay.
"Are we sticking around here or moving on?" Nyla asked, both to break the silence and because she actually needed to know if she had time to run to the latrine before they got ambushed again.
Knox, always the showman, checked his wrist display like he was expecting breaking news. "We're moving on. Command wants us to support a push on one of the hives. Apparently, we're joining up with Bravo Company, which means more bodies for the grinder and maybe, if we're lucky, a hot meal at the other end." He grinned. "Or just more corpses. Either way, it's a change of scenery."
Henley grunted, which in Henley-speak meant he was okay with it. Nyla just nodded, clambering up onto the side armor and pulling herself toward the gunner's hatch. She paused at the top to look out over the rest of the yard, which was starting to fill with the early-morning haze of dust and exhaust. The other tanks—MBTs, IFVs, the occasional scout crawler—were coming online one by one, their crews shuffling like zombies in the pale light, prepping for another day of existential dread.
For a moment, Nyla let herself imagine what it would be like to sleep past dawn. Maybe even eat breakfast at a table, instead of off a dashboard. But as soon as the thought bubbled up, it got stomped by a surge of anxiety, like the universe itself was reminding her that comfort was for people who didn't have a two percent life expectancy.
She dropped into the gunner's seat, took in the familiar, faintly sour scent of compressed air and unwashed crew, and settled her hands on the controls. Knox was still outside, arguing with one of the techs about the merits of heat-resistant paint. Henley was somewhere in the engine compartment, probably trying to squeeze an extra half-kilometer per hour out of the battered turbines. It was quiet for a second, and Nyla let the silence fill her, breathing deep and slow.
It was Henley who broke the spell, thumping back into the compartment with a fresh can of stim and a grin that showed every chipped tooth. "Ready to roll," he said. "Let's go ruin someone's day."
Knox slid in last, sealing the hatch and giving the interior a quick once-over. He didn't say anything, just nodded to each of them, like a coach before a playoff. Then he flicked the comms array to local, and the cabin filled with the static of a dozen other vehicles doing the same. For a second, Nyla felt the old comfort of being part of something bigger than herself, even if that something was just a slow procession into hell.
The order came down within minutes: all units, form up and advance east, in line with grid coordinates. The Ladybird was third in the column, which meant they'd be the first to get hit if the Khadak had set up an ambush, but also the first to fire back. It was a mixed blessing, but Nyla had learned to take what she could get.
The convoy rumbled out of the colony like an angry, overburdened animal. The tracks of the tanks ground into the packed dirt, kicking up plumes of dust that hung in the air like dirty smoke. The sun wasn't even properly up, but already the glare bounced off the sand and made the horizon shimmer with heat. Nyla squinted through the viewport, adjusting the glare filter until the world came back into focus.
She could see the gaping wound of the defensive perimeter behind them, the burnt-out troop carriers and the half-collapsed barricades, all left to rot in the dust. Ahead, the land was empty—just low hills and scrub, no movement except for the thin line of smoke on the horizon that said someone, somewhere, was burning. Probably not a good sign.
Henley took the opportunity to play DJ for the column, piping ancient music through the comms until someone higher up threatened to have him airlocked if he didn't turn it off. That was the cue for Knox to start inventing new lyrics, all of which involved creative ways to die in a tank or what the Khadak probably smelled like. Nyla laughed despite herself, and for a few minutes, things almost felt normal.
The drive was slow, way slower than any of them liked, because the brass insisted on keeping the entire group together in one long, vulnerable line. Nyla watched the MBTs in front of them wallow through the sand, their wide treads gouging deep furrows that the lighter vehicles struggled to follow. Every now and then, a burst of static would come over the comms as someone hit a soft patch and had to be dragged out. It was like watching a pack of animals, each more stubborn than the last, all struggling toward the same fate.
After an hour, the boredom started to settle in, pressing down on Nyla's chest like a weighted blanket. It was the worst kind of waiting—the kind where nothing was happening, but you knew that at any second, everything could happen at once. She tried to distract herself by running diagnostics on the weapon systems, but everything checked out, which only made her feel worse. She wished, not for the first time, that she was the kind of person who could just sleep through the downtime.
Henley, on the other hand, seemed perfectly content to watch the world drift by. He'd rigged a makeshift hammock out of a cargo strap and was half-dozing, one eye open for the next snack opportunity. Knox alternated between scanning the horizon and fiddling with the radio, trying to catch any hint of enemy movement or command chatter.
"Sergeant, it's 2367. Why are we still using treads for a majority of our vehicles?" Henley asked, his voice bored in the way only someone running on two hours of sleep and three cans of stim could be.
Knox didn't even look up. "Because they work. And because some genius in procurement keeps blowing the maglev budget on hover toilets and anti-grav espresso makers. Now hush, I'm watching the road."
The junction was a tornado of dust and exhaust, made worse by the arrival of the other company. Bravo rolled in stacked high with infantry and half the tanks missing their outer skirts, some still scarred by the last round of fighting. Nyla watched the two columns merge, their vehicles shuddering as they fell into lockstep. It was an ugly choreography, the kind you got when everyone was running on adrenaline and half the drivers could barely see straight. Overhead, a pair of battered drones circled like lashed-together vultures, relaying the whole mess to somewhere higher up the food chain.
Eventually, the sergeants sorted themselves out. Knox spent five minutes in a screaming match with the Bravo lead—a woman with a shrapnel scar down the side of her face and a voice like a sandblaster—before they both stomped off in the same direction. Orders were relayed. The new columns reoriented east, the point of the spear aimed square at one of the largest hive warrens in the sector.
Nyla had seen holos of the hives. The Khadak didn't build up, not like humans did. They tunneled. Every inch of dirt out there could be hiding a tunnel, a pit, a living grenade ready to puke out a thousand chittering horrors. The surface was just a crust: a few spires for show, maybe a mound or two, but everything important happened below ground. Imperial doctrine said to flatten the surface, then go in with flamers and sweepers and pray the eggs weren't already hatching.
The column picked up speed, the lead MBTs punching through the softest sand while the lighter IFVs and crawlers trailed behind, riding in their wake. The mood in the Ladybird's cabin grew tense. Even Henley was silent, his usual wisecracks dying in the static. Up front, Knox watched the horizon with predatory focus, jaw set and hands steady on the controls.
They rolled for at least twenty minutes with nothing but the whine of turbines and the occasional warning chirp from the proximity sensors. It was Henley who broke the silence first, craning his neck to look out the hatch before settling back down.
"Sergeant, is the Khadak the worst enemy you've fought so far?" Henley's voice came out flat, but Nyla could hear the genuine curiosity under the fatigue. The question hung in the air for a second, like everyone in the tank was waiting for Knox to lie to them. She was, anyway.
Knox didn't answer right away. He kept his gaze forward, like he might see the answer in the next ridge. "The Khadak are definitely the messiest," he said at last. His voice sounded hollow, sucked dry by too many years in the field. "But worst? No."
Nyla blurted out, "There's worse than this?" and immediately regretted it. She could hear her own voice echo in the half-empty compartment, thin and too young.
Knox grunted. "There are always worse things nipping at the Empire's borders." He left it at that, and by the way his jaw clenched, nobody was supposed to ask for details.
The radio spat out a new burst of static, drowning any follow-up. Henley let it go, but not for long. "Sergeant?" he said, shifting gears. "How'd you get the Ladybird patched up so fast? The techs had her done in, what, two hours flat?"
Knox let out a slow sigh, the kind that sounded like it hurt coming up. "I paid with what I had left," he said. "Bartered the last of my drink." His tone made it clear that whatever he'd given up, it cost more than just a hangover.
"Was it the real stuff, or that off-brand rotgut they give the officers?" Henley pressed, trying to needle out some humor.
Knox shot him a look sharp enough to cut synth-plastic. "Real enough. From home."
Henley grunted and subsided. Nyla wondered what home meant to Knox. She didn't dare ask. The only home she remembered was a prefab outpost buried in slush, her parents arguing over ration packets while she played with hand-me-down circuit boards. For a second, she tried to imagine Knox as a kid, living somewhere with enough green to grow real fruit and enough quiet to hear yourself think.
The tank's movement jolted, bouncing over a shallow trench. Nyla checked her harness and wiped the sweat from her palms, then let herself relax into the muscle memory of gunnery. The controls under her fingers were as familiar as her own heartbeat by now. She dialed up the sensor overlays, watching the numbers tick up and down as the Ladybird's systems synchronized with the convoy's datanet.
TANK MODEL: ID-74D
HULL INTEGRITY: OPERATIONAL
ARMOR PLATING: OPERATIONAL (UPGRADED)
MAIN WEAPON: 4× 40mm Auto-cannons
ENGINE: 80 KMH MAX
COMMANDER: SGT. Samuel Knox
Nyla flipped the sensor overlay off and let her eyes adjust to the normal spectrum—gray dust, white sun, hints of rust and char where war had scorched the ground. She tried to settle back, but there was a static charge to her muscles, a jittery pulse in her blood she couldn't dial out. The anticipation was worse than the fighting. It always had been. Time to think was a poison; it invited every possible death to parade through her head, each one more creative than the last.
The convoy crawled forward, the tanks moving in a cat-step shuffle, hulls shaking with every rut and furrow. Henley had gone silent again, his foot jiggling in time with the engine whine, just below the threshold of hearing. Knox was a statue up front, eyes fixed on the horizon, the comms earpiece jammed in so tight it had left an angry red ring on his jaw.
After what felt like a geological epoch, the lead tanks braked hard and the entire convoy stacked up behind them. Nyla's HUD flashed a grid overlay: coordinates matched, target zone reached. She squinted out the forward viewport, trying to make sense of the terrain. The warren was even uglier than the propaganda holos. Three organic towers rose from the flat plain, spaced like the points of a triangle. Each was at least thirty meters across, maybe twice that in height, bulbous and slick with something that looked like pus-colored tar. The ground around them was pockmarked with sinkholes and uneven mounds, and there was a strange optical shimmer in the air above each pillar.
Tufts of black smoke curled from the towers, not billowing but floating up in greasy, lazy knots. It was more like the residue of an oil fire than anything alive. The closer they got, the more Nyla realized that the towers weren't perfectly vertical. They canted away at subtle, bone-wrong angles, as if they'd been yanked out of the ground then forced back in by a child's hand. There were grooves running up the sides—ridges and valleys where the flesh had been scored by something sharp. No human design. No logic, except maybe malice.
Knox brought the Ladybird to a halt and signaled the rest of the crew by tapping twice on the bulkhead. Nyla's hands hovered over her controls, tension coiling in her knuckles. The MBTs fanned out to form a semicircle around the hive, heavy IFVs setting up a cordon behind them. APCs disgorged their infantry, who hit the dirt and started spreading out, hugging the minimal cover of their own vehicles. Drones zipped low over the target, lasering data back to command, and for a moment the entire convoy just waited, as if the dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers were all holding their breath at once.
"So what are we actually—" Henley started, but the universe must have hated that sentence, because three Imperial strike jets ripped open the sky right above them, engines screaming so loud Nyla felt her teeth chatter. Missiles streaked down in perfect synchrony, each one aimed at the heart of a tower. The impact was primal. Not just the sound—a whump so massive it seemed to squeeze the air from Nyla's lungs—but the sight: a bloom of fire, smoke, and liquefied matter roiling up and out in every direction.
The shockwave hit the Ladybird like a sledgehammer. The tank rocked back on its treads, and a split-second later the concussive force rolled over the convoy, flattening any infantry who hadn't made it behind their shields. Out the viewport, Nyla watched the nearest tower buckle and collapse inward, folding like a punctured lung. The others didn't fall so much as hemorrhage, splitting open along the grooves and spraying a thick, pinkish spray that steamed where it hit the sand.
She blinked, trying to clear the afterimage. Then the entire ground began to move.