[h3][center]Second Lieutenant Vayne Konstantinova Brusilov[/center][/h3]

[i]"Our armor's hard, our tanks are fast!" [/i]

The first line of the first stanza was barely audible over the roar of the engines as the platoon's Chimeras crawled along the ruined streets of the hive. Lieutenant Vayne's cybernetic vision scanned the surroundings as she lead her men in the discordant singing. [i]The March of the Armageddon Tankers[/i] it was called, a military march dating back to the second war for Armageddon when the world had teetered upon the brink of fulfilling its namesake. The voices of her soldiers rang out dimly above the rumble of the Chimeras, out of sync and poorly coordinated, but heartwarming nonetheless.

[i]"And our men and women full of courage!"[/i]

Their battered platoon had been ordered out of the staging grounds on the world, awaiting reinforcement to full strength. Effective immediately, those units that could be spared were now under the command of Inquisitor Hera. It had come as a great shock to the members of the platoon, and a smaller one to Vayne herself. There were plenty of units that were free for reassignment, especially by direct Inquisitorial order, and yet hers had been pulled from the rear before they could reinforce. It filled her with curiosity and apprehension, though she had offered no suggestion of her thoughts to the captain. Were she to meet with this Inquisitor in person however, she would have questions for her. 

[i]"Imperial tankers ready for action,
We are proud children of the Emperor!" [/i]

Even through the din of the singing and the engines, Vayne could hear her troops checking their gear, the individual tank drivers scanning their auspex equipment. Alongside the IFVs marched the troopers of each squad, their eyes peeled for signs of movement amongst the rubble or in the burned out husks of buildings above. The rattle and clink of thousands of rounds of heavy bolter ammunition, spare shotgun shells, extra power packs, and even more food rations. It had been a small war in and of itself with the quartermaster to procure so much extra supply, but she had been beaten off with the repeated insistence that the unit was to be deployed at the order of Inquisitor Hera herself. With their numbers already reduced by the heavy fighting elsewhere, supply shortfalls were the last thing the unit could sustain. 

[i]"Thundering with fire, glinting with steel,
The tanks begin a harsh campaign!
Called to battle by the holy Emperor,
The Commissar will lead us onward in this war!"[/i]

"Hey, Lieutenant!" A voice called from behind her, disrupting the already poorly coordinated rhythm. "Shouldn't it be 'the Inquisitor will lead us' instead? I don't see hide nor hair of old Yarrick 'round these parts. Heh, not as if he'd need us if he were here. Heretics would all shoot themselves before get in his way, I reckon!" Trooper Stanislav, bringing up the rear of the column, smiled broadly at his words. 

"That'd break the flow of the song, you idiot." Called out a woman on the other side of the column. "Different number of syllables, song's already bad enough as it is translated from whatever hive it originated on, no need to make it even harder to sing." She paused, then added, "Besides, Yarrick has better things to occupy his time with than to wander around some pissant backwater hive world."

"Ay, fuck you too, Denisova! Who's to say this little errand won't end with up slaying some arch-heretic and being awarded our own cushy little world to relax on?" He shouted back to her, "I druther fight for some Inquisitor than a Commissar!"

Vayne sighed, grabbing the hailer of the Chimera's vox-caster equipment and speaking into it, the sound blaring out well above the noise of the machinery or the bickering soldiers. "You'll fight for the Emperor, you louts, or you'll be fighting for potato scraps with the ratlings on KP. Now everyone calm down and keep singing, we're approaching the rendezvous with the Arbites force. Let's give 'em a nice show, shall we?"

[hr]

The second time around, the platoon had marginally better cohesion in singing the lyrics to the march, and Vayne had taken the liberty of setting the pre-recorded instrumentals for the march to play over the vox-caster. The discordant symphony echoed across the ruined cityscape as the treads of the chimeras churned through the streets. 

[i]Let enemies, who hidden in ambush, remember this:
We watch for him, we are on guard!
We want not a foot of foreign land,
But we will not give up a speck of ours![/i]

Through the Vox, Vayne barked a false order, "B-company, split off and head to the north." Pressing a finger to her lips, she smiled thinly at the questioning looks of her subordinates. "Let's meet these Arbites then, shall we?"