There was no wound. No heat. No smoke. Even the searing pain of the blast faded away as Enoch realized it had all been a dream.
He sat on the side of the cot, staring at his boots. They were laid out neatly beside his modestly sized trunk. They were still coated with the acrid red dust of this world. The dreams had tormented him for days. Ever since his tank had been hit by the lascannon blast.
He looked down at his right arm. It was missing below the elbow. In its place was a tangle of wires, pistons, and gleaming dark metal. A bionic replacement. He opened the crude metal fingers of that hand. The gears whined softly, and the hand did as he bade it. It was uncanny - the same thoughts he had used to guide his true arm worked for this bionic. The graft was new - he could see the raw flesh and raggedly stapled skin at the seam where the bionic met the rest of his arm. Sometimes, in the evenings, as the cool breezes wafted across the barren, featureless, chilly deserts, he fancied he could feel the hairs on this arm prickling. A ghost sensation left over from a limb long gone. On those evenings, he knew the nightmares were going to be bad.
Later, he stepped out of the small tent and into the cold desert night. The tents of his crew lay around him. Their lights were off. He heard peaceful snoring. Enoch now wore his dusty boots, his trousers and leather tanker jacket. He raised the collar against the cold, and let his feet guide him where they willed. He knew where he'd end up anyway.
As he trod across the open ground between his billet and the motor pool, he looked up. This world had no moons at all. His homeworld had three, and the vast, empty void above his head was deeply discomforting. The stars twinkled faintly in the blackness.
He walked down the row of main battle tanks, arrayed in neat order. Tarps were pulled over their weapons, their barrels stoppered to keep out the red dust. The tarps billowed silently as a light breeze played with them. He passed familiar names emblazoned on the sides of these vehicles, members of his own squadron. "Tempest". "Blade of Sunrise". "Guardian". "Guenevere". All had scars - scorch marks, plasma burns, bullet holes and patched armor. They were marks of pride. Proof of millenia of service.
He reached the end of the line. There was a little gap, and then one final tank. It was not parked in the same alignment as the others. It was askew, as it had been dragged into position instead of driven. A huge hole yawned in the front hull of the vehicle, the edges melted and seared by punishing heat. The lettering along the turret was almost unreadable after so many years, so many battles. Enoch knew by heart that it read "Anibesa". No one knew what it meant, nor even what language it was. More knowledge was lost now than was known.
By its side, as ever, knelt a figure draped in red robes. He had placed a small circle of candles upon Anibesa's hull, near the left front tread. They flickered in the chilly breeze, releasing the scent of myrrh into the air. As Enoch approached the tech-priest, he heard a soft clicking and whirring. It was the sound of a cogitator, the many gears and auto-abaci moving and processing. It was coming from the tech-priest himself. He was whispering to Anibesa.
Enoch stood by Anibesa's armored flank. The tech-priest interrupted his prayers and looked up at him. "Haustrum." Enoch said in acknowledgement of the man. He spoke in a whisper, as if unwilling to awake Anibesa from its healing slumber.
For a moment they just looked at each other. Haustrum's lower face was encased in a breather mask, the tubes and wires leading to an atmosphere processor he bore on his sternum. Underneath the red hood, though, his true, organic eyes regarded Enoch. Enoch found that a bit unsettling - ocular implants were ubiquitous among the tech-priests. Typically their eyes were the first thing to go.
There was an audible click, like a latch closing, as Haustrum switched his voice emulator from the clicking, binaric machine cant, to a more intelligible one. "Armor Sergeant Enoch Thastra." He said. Enoch wasn't sure if it was a greeting, or a statement. It sounded like Haustrum was reading his profile from a dataslate record - which in fact, he probably was. Even though they had spent the last three nights like this, standing beside Anibesa's inert bulk.
Enoch didn't even have to ask any questions. Haustrum said "No change." As he turned his organic eyes back to the tank.
Enoch found he could barely look at the blast hole in the front of the vehicle. His mind, unbidden, was already replaying the events of that day. It had done this over and over again ever since. The way the hull in front of his face glowed orange, then white. The way it seemed to take an eternity for the lascannon to eat through the metal, though in truth it had taken less time than it took Enoch's heart to make a single beat. The way it had exploded outwards toward him, with a sound like the roar of an enraged beast. Then, there was searing hot pain, so excruciating to be exquisite, so beyond human experience his overwhelmed nerves interpreted it as extreme cold. Molten metal showered over his right lower arm. He had released the heavy bolter firing studs and recoiled backwards, watching in silent horror as the metal ate through his arm, burning through the bone.
He was the lucky one. Tiberius had been loading shells when the blast hit the ammunition reliquary. The shell he held cooked off immediately, and suddenly the man simply did not exist. There was no scream, no blood, he vanished into fire and was gone forever. Enoch remembered each moment of their escape from the crippled vehicle, how the fire closed in around them. The choking smoke, the panicked screams, and the feeling of helplessness and terror. At the final moment, as the fire consumed the shells and they began to cook in a cacophany of explosions, the blast doors had snapped shut. Someone had the presence of mind to close them. It was the only reason the commander had been able to drag Enoch out of the dying tank, and the rest of his crew survived with superficial wounds.
The blast, contained in the rear of the vehicle, had all but destroyed Anibesa's archaic engine. Haustrum was skilled with maintenance rites, but restoring this level of damage was beyond an initiate like himself. Anibesa had to wait for more learned hands.
Enoch was pulled from his reverie by the soft clicking of Haustrum's binaric cant. He listened for a while. It was the only sound, aside from the soft whispers of the breeze caressing the sides of the tank.
Enoch heard a pause in Haustrum's prayers. "Does it speak back to you?" He asked.
"She." Haustrum said.
"She?"
"Anibesa's machine spirit is feminine."
Enoch's eyebrows raised slightly. He had never thought of this vehicle that way. He and his crew always referred to it as an object. Impersonal and genderless. It was an object - valued and cherished, carefully maintained and respected - but an object nonetheless. The idea that it could identify itself with one sex or another was difficult to absorb.
"What does. . . she say?" Enoch asked haltingly.
"She mourns the loss of her motive force. Her machine-heart has sustained trauma as well."
Enoch narrowed his eyes. "The onboard cogitator? Was that hit too?" He asked, with growing dismay.
Haustrum tilted his head. Gears clicked. He was trying to find a way to explain. "Her heart is damaged. She feels. . . grief."
"Grief? For her injuries?"
"Yes. And for her lost crew."
Enoch had no words for several moments. "She mourns for Tiberius?"
"And for the damage inflicted upon you."
Enoch looked down at his bionic arm. The fingers opened at a thought. "Haustrum?"
The tech-priest looked up at Enoch again.
"Please tell Anibesa that I am sorry. For her wounds, and for her current state. For closing the blast doors like that. We were afraid."
"You did not close them. She did."
"What?"
"She could not abide more losses among her crew."
Haustrum took the long, stunned silence that followed as a sign that he could return to work. He knelt, and clicked into cant once more, speaking to the recently revivified cogitator onboard. Soothing the ancient machine spirit with prayer and company.
Enoch was lost in thought. His eyes traveled across her pitted, scarred hull as if seeing it for the first time. Each bullet hole told a story. Some of the shapes were strange and jagged, others were smooth, like scoops of metal had been removed from Anibesa's hide. What had made those marks? Or these slashes? Or those burns? How many battles had this beast witnessed? How many crew have served aboard her in the thousands of years since her creation? How many of them have died under her watch?
Enoch felt a lump forming in his throat. He sensed something from this machine. A presence, something he couldn't truly define, and was barely sure was there, but it persisted. He no longer saw the tank as an object. She was a brave and mighty warrior. Loyal, maternal, and fiercely protective of the fragile, frightened cubs she bore in her adamantium shell. So much so, she'd willingly sacrifice herself to save them. She'd end her millenia-long existence to prolong their brief, fitful lives.
His vision blurred with tears. As one rolled down his cheek, he felt the desert breeze chill the trail it left upon his dusty skin. For a moment, he could almost see past her mechanical shell, and see the dying machine spirit within. He could see something more than just a machine. Perhaps this was why Haustrum still had his eyes.
Enoch placed a hand upon Anibesa's flank. She was warm to the touch. Not the searing heat of the las blast, but the warmth of her internal systems, still operating, still beating. She was still here. Gratitude overwhelmed him, and the tears flowed freely.