I'd like to say thank you to those who have been following the story of Prawa V. I appreciate your support. I've been writing about Prawa V and the 280th since the latter half of last year and I am way ahead of the passages I have posted here.  I've found my writing has significantly improved over the past few months and I've also drifted away from writing the little vignettes as I feel I cannot convey everything I want in them. Thus, I am writing longer, fuller texts now and would welcome your thoughts and opinions.

 

I'm posting a scene from later on in the story about the recovery of the final vehicle in the triumvirate of tanks the Resistance is collecting for when the final day comes. I've already revealed the Malcador (Brutus) and will reveal the second in a later blog post. You'll see some familiar names, including our narrator who has been leading his squad after the death of Rakoczy for some times, and some new ones. Laska has rapidly become my favourite character and she has some nice moments in other passages.

 

As always, I welcome all constructive feedback. Let me know what I did well and what I can do better!

 

Now, let me tell you of the recovery of the beast known as 329.

 

The air inside the vault felt thick enough to choke on. Every step stirred the dust, curling it around our boots like smoke in the lamplight. The deeper we pushed, the less the glow of our torches seemed to matter. Darkness swallowed the beams after only a few metres, leaving the edges of the corridor murky and half-seen.

 

I kept my lamp high, sweeping left and right. Riveted panels, rust-streaked bulkheads, and nests of corroded piping loomed from the gloom. The old Imperial eagles — cracked, pitted, and eaten by time — leered down at us with hollow eyes. They didn’t offer comfort, just a reminder of who built this place, and how long ago they had abandoned it.

 

We worked like we always did — quiet, deliberate, no chatter beyond what mattered. This wasn’t a battlefield, not yet, but it carried the weight of one. The dust wasn’t just dirt. It was history. It settled on us like a second uniform.

 

Every doorframe got a chalk mark. Every passage junction got a numbered entry on my slate. I logged every exposed pipe, every strange corrosion bloom, every half-missing panel without argument. We weren’t just looking for the Vulcan. We were building a map, one step at a time. Because down here? Getting lost would be as final as getting shot.

 

Czajka worked in silence on my left. His stylus scratched across the surface of his dataslate as he sketched crude but effective floorplans. He didn’t need orders. He already knew what we were doing. There was comfort in that. I trusted Czajka to notice the things I missed.

 

Laska, behind me, had less patience. She kept glancing at every side passage, fingers tapping idly on the grenade launcher slung tight against her chest.

“I don’t like it,” she muttered, voice low enough not to echo.

 

“You’re not supposed to,” I said without turning.

 

And it was true. The vault didn’t feel hostile — not quite. But it felt still, heavy, like the air itself was watching us. I’d known that feeling in the mines before. It always meant something overhead was about to shift.

 

Krystan trailed behind, one glove tracing the edge of the bulkhead as he walked. He wasn’t slacking — he was thinking. He always did this when the edges got tight. His eyes flicked over faded warning sigils and strips of flaking hazard paint, as if they might tell him something the rest of us couldn’t see.

 

Zofia moved quietly on the left flank, a little behind the others, eyes constantly scanning the ceiling and corners. She never said much. She never needed to. What mattered was the way she checked every overhead pipe, every stress fracture in the walls, noting them in that worn medicae slate of hers. Always assessing. Not for treasure — for risk.

 

The further in we went, the colder it got. The desert heat hadn’t made it this deep. Every breath came with a hint of metal and old oil. The echo of our boots returned sharper, like the walls themselves were awake.

 

I kept marking. Every alcove. Every sealed hatch. Every pile of collapsed ductwork. Laska shot me a look when I noted a broken servitor arm half-buried in the rubble.

“Really?” she whispered.

 

“Record everything,” I replied without humour.

 

It wasn’t superstition. It was survival. Too many had been buried under rock and rust because they skipped the little things.

 

The corridor widened. The vault proper opened before us.

 

A chamber, broad and tall, stretched into the gloom. Gantries crossed above like skeletal bridges, their railings sagging with age. Kerosene lamps, long-dead but recently rekindled, cast a dull orange glow along the lower platforms. I knew the shape at the centre before the others even spoke.

 

Half-shrouded beneath a filthy tarpaulin stood a tank.

 

Wide-set tracks. An angular turret. A squat, brutal hull. Bigger than a Leman Russ, heavier than a Chimera. Even under the cover, I knew what it was.

 

The Vulcan.

 

But we didn’t rush it.

 

We spread out, slow and deliberate. Laska circled right, checking sightlines and covering the far doors. Czajka moved up into the gantries, the worn steps groaning under his weight. I paced forward, keeping my slate active, mapping every inch. Tool racks. Cargo crates. Supply lines overhead. Every detail.

 

Krystan didn’t join us.

 

He stood still, staring at the tank. One hand rested against its flank, brushing the dust aside to reveal a faded stencil:

329

 

The way he did it made me uneasy. He wasn’t examining it like a soldier. He was listening.

 

We weren’t alone.

 

I felt it, sure as the ground beneath my boots. Someone, somewhere, behind the maze of passages or the heavy bulkheads, was breathing the same dust.

 

And sure enough, I wasn’t wrong.

 

We were too focused on the Vulcan.

 

That was the truth of it. The sheer weight of the thing had pulled us in, had us pacing it like shipwreck divers circling some ancient wreck on the seabed. We’d logged the doors, the gantries, the old winches bolted to the overhead girders — but we hadn’t logged who else was breathing our dust.

 

The first lasbolt cracked from the left gantry, smacking into the floor by Laska’s boots. She ducked behind a stack of rusted fuel drums, but not fast enough. The second found her.

 

I saw it hit — a sharp impact just below her collar, spinning her off-balance. She went down hard, pulling herself behind cover, gritting her teeth to stop a cry. Blood seeped between her fingers as she clutched at her shoulder.

 

“Contact!” I shouted, bringing my lasgun up.

 

They moved well — too well for a simple patrol. Three squads, minimum. PDF by the look of them, but tighter, sharper. Controlled bursts. Flanking. Pinning. They weren’t improvising — they had orders.

 

Kasnyk’s voice rang out sharp from above. “Hold your fire! Stand down!”

 

Liar.

 

I squeezed off a return shot at the gantry, driving one of his troopers back into cover.

 

Czajka had already dropped prone behind a rusted girder, working with terrifying calm. His rifle coughed once, and a PDF trooper tumbled off the gantry like a broken puppet.

 

Laska, bleeding and pale, dragged herself into a better position with Zofia snapping to her side. Zofia moved fast, no words, just routine — cinching a tourniquet tight even as the air cracked with fresh shots.

 

Kasnyk stepped into the open on the upper walkway, long coat trailing. His monocle pulsed faintly, flickering data none of us could see. He didn’t even flinch when another lasbolt sizzled past his head.

 

“Your best option,” he called calmly, “is to—”

 

I fired again, forcing him to duck behind the railing.

 

“Ambush!” I shouted. “Flanks and gantries! Stay low!”

 

The vault exploded into chaos.

 

PDF squads swept in from three directions, forcing us back toward the centre of the chamber. Lasfire streaked through the dust-heavy air, hammering against rusted crates and collapsing old support beams.

 

I shifted position and squeezed off another shot — but the lasgun jolted violently. I glanced down. The housing had split wide where a lucky shot had scored it. The charge pack indicator still glowed green, but it was dead weight now.

 

A sharp breath escaped me as I stared at it. Useless. But had it struck me? A finger’s width higher and it would’ve cored through my chest.

 

I dropped it without thinking.

 

Laska’s grenade launcher lay half-buried near her, abandoned when she’d gone down.

 

I grabbed it. Clumsy in my hands — too heavy, unfamiliar. Not like the rifles I knew.

 

I fumbled with the mechanism, struggling to remember the sequence. Chamber open? Feed drum? I’d watched her work it a dozen times, but not like this. Not under fire. Not slick with dust and blood.

 

Laska coughed, voice tight with pain. “Just rack the bolt and shoot the :cuss:ing thing! …sir.”

 

I didn’t hesitate after that.

 

Czajka, still working the gantry angles, risked a glance toward me — eyes narrowing as he clocked the grenade launcher in my fumbling grip.

 

Rakoczy wouldn’t have frozen up, Czajka thought. He’d have made this look easy.

 

He adjusted his sight, tracking a second PDF trooper. But Rakoczy’s dead. And you’re what we’ve got.

 

He fired again, and the trooper crumpled.

 

The battle swirled.

 

Krystan was missing. My stomach sank.

 

“Where’s Krystan?” I shouted, trying to mask the rising edge in my voice.

 

Czajka didn’t answer. He was already moving, shifting his firing angle without breaking rhythm.

 

Zofia finished cinching the dressing on Laska’s wound, yanking tight and earning herself a hissed curse from the corporal. “Hold still,” she said flatly.

 

More PDF were flooding through the left passage. We were being driven into the open.

 

The Vulcan loomed behind us — cold, motionless, indifferent.

 

 

While the others fought for every breath behind cover, Krystan was already moving.

 

I caught a glimpse of him slipping away as the PDF pressed harder — crouched low, weaving through the wreckage and rusted gantries. Not running. Moving with purpose. That was Krystan. Steady. Quiet. Always with a hand on the hull.

 

He reached the base of the Vulcan without anyone noticing. His boots scraped against the dust-slick deck plates as he stepped closer. For a moment, he paused, one gloved hand resting against the tank’s flank. It wasn’t reverence. It was something else. Like he was listening.

 

Then he climbed.

 

The cupola’s hatch creaked open, metal grinding in protest. The chaos outside masked the sound — lasfire, shouted orders, and the hiss of ricochets filling the vault. Without a glance back, Krystan slipped inside.

 

The interior swallowed him whole.

 

Dim, dust-choked glow strips traced the edges of the control banks. The Vulcan was no Chimera. The controls were broader, cruder, older. Heavy levers. Coiled cables. Exposed gearing and half-familiar dials. He recognised some — drive levers, instrument gauges, even a throttle quadrant that looked like it had been lifted from a mining hauler — but most were foreign.

 

His breath fogged faintly in the cold.

 

Krystan’s fingers hovered above the mess of controls. Somewhere beneath the adrenaline, a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth despite himself. Terrified? Absolutely. But this was it. This was what he lived for. Machines. Steel. Control.

 

He whispered, barely audible, “Come on… you’re just a Chimera with a bad attitude.”

 

He flicked a master switch.

 

Nothing.

 

He tried again, pulling at a lever, flipping a few toggles — only the dull clunk of inert machinery answered.

 

No. He forced the panic down. Training. Focus. Chimera or not, everything had logic. He traced a row of cables until his eyes settled on a recessed primer coil, partially hidden beneath a mass of bundled wiring.

 

“Old trick,” he muttered.

 

He set his jaw and twisted.

 

The Vulcan exhaled. A hiss of old fuel vaporised into the compartment.

 

The whole machine vibrated faintly, like a slumbering beast shifting in its sleep.

 

Krystan’s hand found the ignition lever. His heart hammered.

 

The thought crept unbidden — What manner of monster do I awake?

 

Before he could lose his nerve, he shoved it forward.

 

The Vulcan roared.

 

The engine coughed to life, clearing decades of dust from its lungs in a single violent growl. Every control around him shook. Gauges flickered. Amber warning lights blinked uncertainly. The floor itself trembled beneath his boots.

 

A thrill surged through him.

 

It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t safe. But it was alive.

 

He adjusted the starter coil, working it gently, feeling the tank respond like a stubborn animal testing its reins. Slowly, he could feel the systems coming online — old hydraulics groaning, mechanical linkages freeing themselves.

 

And Krystan — wide-eyed, knuckles white on the controls — couldn’t help but grin.

 

He hadn’t tamed it.

 

Not yet.

 

But it hadn’t thrown him out either.

 

The engine’s growl swelled.

 

At first, it was just the deep rumble of combustion, rising steadily, but then the floor itself trembled beneath us. Dust sifted from the vaulted ceiling. The heavy beat of the Vulcan’s heart rolled through the chamber, oppressive and inescapable. I felt it through my boots, through the crate I leaned against, even through the air itself.

 

The firefight faltered. Every eye — ours and the PDF alike — turned toward the tank.

 

It shifted.

 

Steel moaned. The Vulcan’s massive hull shuddered as old hydraulics flexed. Running lights blinked into life, pale and half-choked with dust. They didn’t illuminate the whole chamber, but enough to throw eerie arcs across the gantries and walls.

 

A thin red beam lanced out from beneath the turret — the laser targeter. It swept slowly, searching, hunting, until it steadied on one of the PDF squads pressed tight against the far gantry’s guardrail.

Then came the sound.

 

It wasn’t the engine this time.

 

It was the unmistakable whine of the Vulcan cannons spooling up, starting low like the spin of a turbine, accelerating with mechanical determination. The sound climbed, smooth yet unsettling, until the rotation reached full speed. Even without seeing the barrels, you could feel them — impatient, poised.

 

The PDF froze. No shouted orders from Kasnyk. No clever flanking. Just a collective, dawning horror.

 

The first burst came.

 

A sharp, staccato roar, not like the shrill chatter of lasfire, but a deep, violent rhythm — each shell tearing from the barrels with purpose. Short, measured, two seconds at most, but enough. The gantry above us ruptured. Beams twisted. Men, metal, and dust cascaded to the floor in a tangled ruin.

 

And then the casings came.

 

Dozens of them, big as a man’s forearm, tinkling and bouncing down the flanks of the tank, scattering across the stone floor like spent coins. That gentle sound, so delicate against the backdrop of devastation, chilled me more than the thunder of the guns.

 

The turret rotated deliberately. The red beam flicked to another squad.

 

Again, the cannons gave that terrifying, staccato burst. Explosive shells ripped through cover, reducing men and steel to fragments. The shockwaves slammed against the vault walls, making the whole chamber feel smaller, tighter. The engine revved in sync, a beast exulting in its release, shaking dust and rust free from the ancient structure itself.

 

Krystan’s silhouette sat hunched in the cupola, his knuckles white on the controls. From where I crouched, I could just make out the tight line of his jaw — exhilaration and sheer terror warred on his face.

 

Czajka swore under his breath, eyes wide. “It’s... hunting them.”

 

He wasn’t wrong.

 

The Vulcan wasn’t simply firing. The twin cannons moved with unsettling intent, their aim sharp, precise, shifting as if seeking, thinking.

 

Another burst.

 

Another squad obliterated.

 

The staccato rhythm ceased. The laser targeter dimmed. The only sound was the soft, continuous tinkle of shell casings still rolling across the floor, accompanied by the growling idle of the engine echoing ominously around the chamber — until, with a final sputter, even that faded into silence.

 

None of us moved.

 

I wasn’t sure if we had taken control of the Vulcan.

 

Or if we had simply set it loose.

 

The last shell casing had barely stopped its slow roll across the ferrocrete when silence returned to the vault.

 

Not peace — just silence. The heavy kind, the kind that presses against the skull and leaves you waiting.

 

We crept out from cover like miners from a collapsed tunnel, every movement cautious, half-expecting the Vulcan to open up again without warning. It didn’t. Its guns sagged slightly, steam curling from the barrels, the turret idle.

 

The squad stood in a rough circle around the thing, weapons half-raised. No one was brave enough to lower them fully.

 

Krystan stood by the tank’s hull, eyes flicking nervously between the squad and the controls still faintly glowing inside the cupola, as if waiting for the thing to reprimand him. He wasn’t grinning. No one was.

 

Czajka broke the quiet first, voice low. “Some say the old ones think for themselves,” he murmured.

 

No one laughed. Not even Laska, though pain had pinned any levity to the floor.

 

Krystan shifted, not looking at us directly. “...It felt like it wanted to fight.” He thumbed toward the still-smoking barrels. “I just... pointed it.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t me doing all of it.”

 

The words sat heavy. We’d all heard the stories. Machine spirits. Ritual rites. The old gear with habits. Soldiers drunk enough would spin those tales for hours. I’d never cared for them. But standing there, staring at the Vulcan with its idling engine and faint heat haze rolling off it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe this wasn’t just wear and tear.

 

Zofia Malmgren knelt by Laska, methodically working through her field kit. She’d stayed quiet through the fight, and now she worked with steady hands, cutting away the flak's melted edge and dousing the wound with something that made Laska flinch and swear under her breath. Zofia didn’t so much as blink.

 

“You’ll keep your arm,” she said softly. “But you’ll curse me for it.”

 

Czajka helped ease Laska upright, steadying her as blood loss made her legs weak. Between them, they got her standing, if not walking straight.

 

That’s when the Vulcan twitched.

 

A soft creak from above. I snapped my head around just in time to see one of the upper hatches unlatch and swing open on its own, groaning as if stirred by a passing breeze. But there was no breeze down here.

 

Krystan flinched. “I didn’t touch anything.”

 

We froze. No one dared speak.

 

Then, slow as a hunting animal, the front heavy bolters shifted. Their twin barrels settled squarely on Czajka. He went rigid. I swear even Laska held her breath.

 

The bolters paused, locked, then sagged down harmlessly. A second later, a flicker of orange danced across the far wall — the lazy flame of a sponson flamethrower’s pilot light, like the Vulcan had merely cleared its throat.

 

Krystan stumbled back from the cupola. “That’s not me.” His voice cracked slightly.

 

I could see it — the unease creeping behind every pair of eyes.

 

This thing had teeth. Too many teeth.

 

“Alright,” I said, trying to mask the tremor in my voice. “We prep it for transport. Now.”

 

Czajka and Zofia got Laska seated on a nearby crate. Krystan climbed back up reluctantly. I could see the tension in his shoulders. He handled it like it was liable to bite him.

 

While the others moved to secure tow cables and mark the vault’s exits, I noticed it — just beneath the grime on the Vulcan’s flank, half-obscured and worn by time, I found it.

 

A faded stencil.

 

329th Armoured — Katedra Pancerna.

 

The designation meant nothing to me. Nothing official at least.

 

And it made me uneasy.

---

Kasnyk trudged through the dust-choked wind, boots dragging. The squad — no, the survivors — followed, heads down, rifles slung limp.

 

He wasn’t thinking about the wounded. Not about the missing. He was thinking about the tank.

 

The Vulcan.

 

A relic, yes, but not dead. Active. Moving. And worse — used. This wasn’t scavenging. This wasn’t the panic of starving deserters. It was planned.

 

The precise coordination, the fallback positions, the crew discipline, the vehicle recovery. It all clicked into place now like a slow-turning cog.

 

He had underestimated them.

 

Not rabble. Not desperate fools.

 

A resistance.

 

His fingers tightened around the strap of his dataslate case. He had to reach Prawa Ten Drugi. He had to report this before the desert or the shadows took him first.

 

And for the first time in years, Kasnyk tasted something bitter in the back of his throat — fear. The kind that settles when you realise you’ve stepped into something vast and moving, long before you noticed it.