Relieved at the turret guns by Trooper Cavo, Bragg dropped down into the cab to find Milloom and Tuvant sheltering under window level, the grid-shields and hatches pulled up.
'This is madness, you stupid kec!' Tuvant bellowed. 'They'll pin us down and murder us all!'
'I don't think these bandits are really so tough,' Bragg began.
Tuvant turned on him. You kec-head! They're all over us! God-Emperor, but there are thousands of bandits out here, more than enough to kill us all! We should have kept moving! Stopping like this, we'll give them all a chance to congregate for the kill!'
Bragg shambled across to the Caligulan drivers. There was a dull look in his eye Tuvant didn't like. With one meaty, hairy-knuckled paw, Bragg lifted Tuvant off the cabin deck by his throat.
'I'm in charge here,' he growled, his voice as deep and solid as his build, reverberative. 'The colonel- commissar said so. If we have to fight our way through to Calphernia a micron at a time, we will. And we will all fight. Clear?'
'C-clear!' gasped Tuvant, going blue.
'Now, can you make yourself useful?'
'How?' snarled Milloom acidly from behind. Bragg dropped Tuvant, who sprawled, retching, and turned to face the other driver. Milloom had his greasy axle-bar in his hands. 'You don't scare me, Ghost.'
'Then you must be very stupid,' Bragg muttered, turning aside without interest. Milloom launched forward to crush the big man's skull with five kilos of cold-stamped metal. Bragg broke stride lightly, impossibly lightly it seemed for such a great bulk. He caught the descending bar in one palm. There was an audible slap. Milloom gasped as the bar was pulled out of his hands. Bragg tossed it aside.
'You can start by not attacking me. You fething non-combatants really wind me up. Where the feth would you be if we hadn't come to pull your arses out of the Chaos pit?'
'Safe and sound in Aurelian Hive, probably!' Milloom jeered. 'Not out in the deadlands, surrounded by terrorist infantry!'
Bragg shrugged. 'Probably. With the other cowards. Are you a coward, Driver Milloom?
'Kec you!'
'Just asking. The colonel-commissar told me to watch out for cowards. Told me to shoot them on sight, as they were treasonous dogs who didn't deserve the salvation of the Golden Throne. I wouldn't shoot them, not me.'
'There was a pause.
Bragg smiled. 'I'd just hit them. Has a similar result. Do you want me to hit you, Milloom?'
'N… no.'
Then don't assault me again. You can help even if you don't know the business end of a weapon from your own arse. Get on the voxcaster. Recite the Ecclesiarchy's Oath of Obedience. You know that?'
'Of course I know that! Then what?'
Then recite it again. Make it clear and proud. Recite it again, then again and then again. If you get bored, insert the Emperor's Daily Prayer for variation. Maybe the Imperial Litany of Deliverance for good measure. Fill the vox-channels with soothing, inspiring words. Can you do that?'
Milloom nodded and crossed to the vox-caster built into the tractor's dash.
'Good man,' Bragg said. Milloom started to speak into the caster horn, remembering the verses he had learned as a child.
Outside, laser and stub fire whined into the circled convoy. The outriders were laying in hard. Meryn drew his bike in so that Caffran could do real damage to the slowly encircling bandits.
Fulke, Mktea and Tanhak ran the line. From the back of Fulke's machine, Logris excelled and scored four kills. Mktea's gunner Laymon made one of his own before the upper part of his head was scythed off by a las shot at the mouth. Tanhak and Grummed made six, maybe seven, good kills before a short-range missile ended their lives and their glory. Debris and body parts flew out from a searing typhoon of ignited bike fuel.
'Bragg! Bragg! We have to retreat!' Wheln yelled from the half-track, Abat dead behind him and Brostin blazing with his flamer.
In the cab of his freighter, Bragg was calmly unwrapping his autocannons from a felt shroud. Behind him, Milloom was steadily reciting into the vox-horn. Bragg paused, fingering his micro-bead to open the vox-line.
'No, Wheln. No retreat. No retreat,' he said simply.
Rubbing his sore throat, Tuvant scrambled up from the floor, about to argue with the huge Ghost, but he stopped dead as he saw the weapon that the Tanith hulk was preparing. Not one but two autocannons, the like of which were usually fixed to tripod or pintle mounts. Bragg had them lashed together, with a makeshift trigger array made out of a bent ration-pack fork so he could fire them as a pair. Long belt loops of ammunition played out from the gun-slots, leading back to a parcel of round-boxes.
Bragg punched out the perspex window section from the rear of the cab and laid his twin muzzles across the sill. He looked back at Tuvant.
'You wanted something?'
'No,' Tuvant replied, ducking suddenly as stub-fire perforated the cab and showered them with metal shards and soot.
'I can fire this on my own if I have to, but it would be easier if I had someone to feed.'
Tuvant blinked. Then he scrambled forward and grabbed the ammo-belts, easing them around so they would pull unobstructed from the boxes.
