by Dan Abnett
Gaunt signalled with a rotating finger, and Meryn turned to present his back. Meryn’s torso was tough and corded with muscle. Down the left-hand side of the spine, Lesp had been noting a list of names in black ink. They were the names of the men in Meryn’s E Company who had fallen at Salvation’s Reach. Meryn had lost a lot, too many perhaps, to the Loxatl during the final evacuation.
Lesp had got halfway through the name ‘Costin’, a name that particularly troubled Gaunt. Before the raid, Trooper Costin, a chronically unreliable soldier, had been found guilty of death-benefit fraud through the Munitorum’s viduity allowance. It had seemed an especially repellant crime to Gaunt. Someone had made large amounts of money by exploiting the regiment’s dead and fallen. Costin had been killed before his associates in the fraud ring could be identified.
‘I’m honouring my dead,’ Meryn said quietly.
Gaunt nodded. The ‘Book o’ Death’ was a common and popular tattoo among the Tanith officer class, so popular it had been adopted by several Verghastites too. Out of respect, a field officer had the names of men who had died under his command inked onto his skin.
Gaunt had considered it more than once. He wanted to show respect for Tanith tradition, and he felt that certain names – Corbec, Caffran and Bragg, for example – should never be far from him. He’d felt it even more for Dorden.
But it was not seemly for a commissar to break uniform code, he kept telling himself.
‘It seemed only right, sir,’ Meryn said.
It did. It really did. Except it didn’t for a snake like Meryn, a man who had previously displayed absolutely zero company sentiment or sympathy for his troops. It didn’t sit comfortably with Gaunt. Why now? Had Meryn really woken up to something after the knock his company had taken at the Reach? Or was this compensation? Was he trying to look like the grieving commander?
Was he trying to distance himself from a crime by having the name of the culprit inked on his back out of ‘respect’? Costin had been killed before his associates in the fraud ring could be identified…
A common rule of law was that you didn’t mess with or question the feelings of an officer grieving for his men. Gaunt wanted to say something, but genuine pity and sympathy checked him. If this was Meryn being odiously clever, then it was very, very clever.
And Meryn was very, very clever.
‘Doctor Curth?’ Gaunt asked Lesp. Lesp pointed to the second office.
Gaunt went in and closed the door behind him. Ana Curth was sitting at Dorden’s desk, reviewing med files. She had grown a little thinner. There was a tension in her. Gaunt could smell alcohol that he hoped was medicinal.
‘Can I help you, Ibram?’ she asked.
‘Can I help you?’
She shrugged. She seemed tired. Gaunt had heard from various private sources that she had taken the loss hard, and had been working too much and then drinking in order to sleep. The same sources said that Blenner had been looking after her.
Such selflessness hardly seemed likely from Vaynom Blenner.
Gaunt felt a sting of jealousy, but he could hardly complain. His own nights were filled with another woman, and Ana knew it. If there had ever been any sense of them waiting for each other, Gaunt himself had crushed it.
He’d always held back from Ana Curth, partly for reasons of regulation and decorum, and partly because he believed that he wasn’t really the sort of man any decent woman would need or want.
‘I keep coming in here,’ Curth said, gesturing to the desk and the office. ‘You know what? Each time, he’s still dead.’
‘Ana…’
She waved him off.
‘Ignore me. I just can’t get used to it.’
‘Do you need–’
‘I’m fine, Gaunt.’
‘Ana–’
‘Fine. Fine. All right?’
He knew that tone, that firmness, that ‘don’t push it’ attitude. He’d known it from their first meeting at Vervunhive.
‘What do you think of Meryn’s ink?’ he asked briskly.
‘Meryn’s a grown-up,’ she said.
‘I just wondered,’ Gaunt began.
‘Wondered what?’
‘If he was compensating in some way?’
‘For his dead men?’ She had returned to her files, half listening.
‘All right,’ Gaunt said, ‘compensating was the wrong word. Deflecting.’
She looked at him.
‘Deflecting what? With what?’
‘Guilt, with a notion of honour.’
‘What now?’
‘Costin, and the viduity scam. I think Meryn’s complicit. Costin was not smart. He needed clever co-conspirators. Conveniently, Costin died before he could turn them over. And now Meryn’s in mourning and untouchable.’
‘So, what?’ Curth asked. ‘Meryn killed Costin before he could roll?’
‘No, of course not–’
‘You’re a piece of fething work, you really are!’ she spat out, tossing the file in her hand aside so forcefully it knocked a glass over.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m a commissar. I know what men are capable of.’
She got up and took off her smock. Then she turned away from him and pulled her crew-issue grey tee shirt up above her shoulders. Her back was slender, beautiful, the line of the spine–
There was a dressing just below her left shoulder blade. With the fingers of her right hand, she ripped it off.
Dorden.
One word, still raw and seeping blood from the needles.
‘Silly of me,’ she said. ‘Sentimental. Against uniform code? I’m sure. Fething did it anyway.’
‘Ana–’
She pulled her shirt down again, turned and sat back down.
‘Forget it,’ she said.
‘The Book o’ Death,’ he said. ‘You know how many times I’ve thought about following Tanith tradition and doing the same? Getting Lesp and his needles at my skin?’
She looked at him.
‘What’s stopping you? No, I can guess. Uniform code. Unseemly for a commissar to decorate his skin.’
‘There’s that. As a commissar, I take both uniform code and setting an example very seriously, funnily enough. But that’s not the real reason.’
‘What is?’
‘The available area of my flesh.’
‘What?’
‘Dorden. Corbec. MkVenner. Bragg. Caffran. Colonel Wilder. Kamori. Adare. Soric. Baffels. Blane–’
‘All right…’
‘Muril. Rilke. Raess. Doyl. Baru. Lorgris. Mkendrick. Suth. Preed. Feygor–’
‘Gaunt…’
‘Gutes. Cole. Roskil. Vamberfeld. Loglas. Merrt–’
He stopped.
‘I just don’t have enough skin,’ he said.
‘You just don’t have enough heart,’ she replied.
‘All right,’ he said, but he wasn’t all right at all.
‘I came down to tell you that we might have trouble coming,’ he said. ‘A drive issue. Possible boarding. Be ready.’
‘I’m always ready,’ she said, blowing her nose loudly.
He nodded, and turned to leave.
Gaunt walked out through the first office area. Meryn was getting his back swabbed by Lesp. The smell of clean alcohol again.
‘I’m just on my way now, sir,’ Meryn said.
‘Stay, Flyn,’ Gaunt said as he walked past. ‘Get the names done properly. All of them. All of the Ghosts. I miss them too.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Meryn.
A long walk took Gaunt back to his stateroom. Maddalena Darebeloved was waiting for him.
Since joining the regiment, Maddalena had spent some portion of her time in Gaunt’s cabin suite and the rest of it protecting Felyx Meritous Chass, the son Gaunt hadn’t known he had. Felyx was integrating into the Tanith Regiment under the watch of Dalin Criid. Felyx’s mother, Merity Chass of the Verghast House Chass, had insisted that he follow his father into war and learn the trade and value of combat fro
m someone who excelled at it.
Excelled. Not the right word, Gaunt thought. Someone who was entirely devoured by it.
Maddalena was a lifeward, one of House Chass’ most formidable bodyguards. Beautiful and supple, she carried her sidearm shrouded by a red cloth, as was the Vervunhive custom.
As he came in, she was cleaning her sidearm. Gaunt knew something was wrong. Their relationship had been generally and robustly physical. He understood his attraction to her. Her face had been augmetically modified to resemble that of Merity Chass, so as to reassure Felyx. Gaunt had responded to that on an instinctive level.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
‘You tell me,’ she replied.
‘You’re strip-cleaning your sidearm,’ he said.
She nodded, and rapidly slotted and slapped the weapon back into one piece. It was a .40 cal Tronsvass she’d taken from stores to replace her original weapon.
‘There’s trouble coming,’ she said, checking the pistol for balance, and returning it to her holster.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘Are you mad, Ibram?’ she replied, looking at him. ‘The engines are making the wrong noise.’
He hesitated.
‘That’s very impressive,’ he started to say.
But the words didn’t come out right because, very suddenly and unpleasantly, the world was pulled inside out.
FOUR: DEAD IN THE WATER
‘Get up,’ said Brother Sar Af of the Adeptus Astartes White Scars.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Nahum Ludd. ‘Of course. Sorry.’
It was, he knew, entirely inappropriate to lie on the deck when in the presence of three battle-brothers. Entirely inappropriate, especially for an officer of the Officio Prefectus. Officers of the Officio Prefectus did not lie down on the deck during audiences with Space Marines. Also, where was his hat?
He stood up.
‘I… uhm,’ Ludd began. He wasn’t sure what he’d been in the middle of saying. He searched their faces for a clue.
The three Adeptus Astartes battle-brothers in the half-lit hold in front of him gave nothing away. Kater Holofurnace, the giant warrior of the Iron Snakes, very slowly buckled on his war-helm. Sar Af the White Scar seemed poised as though listening to something intently. Brother-Sergeant Eadwine of the Silver Guard seemed lost in deep thought.
‘Have you seen my hat?’ Ludd asked.
None of them replied.
‘Uhm, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt sent me to respectfully inform you that we’re experiencing drive issues,’ said Ludd, suddenly remembering. ‘So… so we’re coming to secondary order in case we get bounced back into real space and experience… uhm… you know, an attack.’
Ludd realised he was blinking with his right eye.
‘You told us this,’ said Sar Af.
‘Did I really?’ said Ludd. ‘When did I do that?’
‘When you walked in here and told it to us,’ said Sar Af.
‘Oh,’ said Ludd.
‘About twenty seconds before the ship was… bounced back into real space,’ said Eadwine, locking his helm in place.
The blinking was beginning to annoy Ludd. Something was getting in his eye. He reached up and found that his fingers were wet. He was bleeding from a scalp wound and the blood was running down his face.
‘Ow,’ he said. He began to remember the world lurching in a spasm, a feeling of… of something he didn’t want to dwell on. He remembered flying through the air. He remembered the deck racing up to meet him.
‘Gather your wits,’ said Sar Af, putting on his own war-helm. ‘This is just the beginning.’
‘It is?’ asked Ludd.
Holofurnace pointed at the roof of the hold with his lance.
‘Listen,’ he said.
Shipmaster Clemensaw Spika flopped back into his seat. He was breathing hard. His head hurt like a bastard. He knew that feeling. The lingering, sickening trauma of a bad translation from the warp. Everyone around him was disorientated and dazed, even the most hard-wired souls.
‘Somebody mute those alarms!’ he yelled. The stations and consoles of the bridge were a mass of flashing amber and red runes. The noise was overwhelming. One of Spika’s aides made adjustments. The immediate row abated, though the ship sirens and warning horns continued to bay.
‘Report, please,’ said Spika, trying to catch his breath.
‘No data, no feed, shipmaster,’ the Master of Artifice replied.
‘No data, no feed,’ echoed the Master of Detection.
‘Guidance is inert,’ reported the chief steersman. ‘The Navigator is unconscious.’
‘Our location?’ asked Spika.
‘Not calculable at this time.’
‘But real space?’ asked Spika. ‘We’re in real space?’
He didn’t have to ask. He could feel they were. The Highness Ser Armaduke had violently retranslated from the immaterium after a drive failure. It was a miracle they hadn’t been annihilated, or torn apart, or void-blown by the extremity of it. An Imperial miracle, bless the divine God-Emperor. Maybe Gaunt had been wrong about their luck.
‘I want a critical status report in five minutes,’ Spika said, getting back on his feet. He was badly bruised from the gravity fall, and his cardiac flutter and irregular breathing were due to the physiological sympathies he felt with his ship’s systems and drives.
‘Five minutes,’ he repeated. ‘Casualties, damage, system status, repair schedules, local position, capacity, ready times, everything.’
‘Shipmaster?’
Spika turned.
The junior vox-officer was holding out a headset to him. The man was pale and shaking. The trauma had left its mark on everyone.
‘What?’ asked Spika.
‘Urgent vox-link from Eadwine of the Silver Guard,’ he said.
‘Routed through shipboard vox?’
‘No, sir, that’s down. This is direct from his suit system to my desk receivers.’
Spika took the headset.
‘This is the shipmaster.’
‘This is Eadwine. Cancel all shipboard sirens.’
‘Noble sir, we have just suffered a traumatic return to–’
‘Cancel them.’
‘Why?’ asked Spika.
‘So we can hear.’
The shipmaster hesitated.
‘Hear what, Brother-Sergeant Eadwine?’
‘Whatever it is that’s trying to get in,’ the voice of the Adeptus Astartes warrior crackled back.
‘The chances of us being boarded mere seconds after a translation are ridiculously low. It is an unfeasible coincidence. An Archenemy ship would have to be in precisely the right location, and ready for operation, and–’
‘Spika, you are confused. Reassess the situation. Prepare yourself. And cancel the damned sirens.’
The link went dead.
Spika had to steady himself. He felt extremely unwell. What the hell had the battle-brother been talking about? How dare he talk to a shipmaster like that when…
He found himself staring at the main console, and specifically at the display of the ship’s principal chronometer.
He swallowed, and felt a chill. It wasn’t possible.
Sometime during the last few, terrible minutes of drive failure and brutal retranslation, they had lost ten years.
‘Cancel the damned sirens!’ he yelled. ‘All of them! Right now!’
FIVE: V’HEDUAK
‘The shipboard vox is down,’ said Maddalena Darebeloved.
Ibram Gaunt nodded. He’d tried several wall outlets, and heard nothing but a death rattle of static. The quiet was unnerving. No transmitted throb of the engines, no purr of power conduits. There was just a slow, aching creak of metal moving and settling, as though the ancient tonnage of the Armaduke were begging for mercy.
Even the deck alarms had fallen silent.
Gaunt felt sick. His mind was numb and refusing to function clearly. He felt as though he’d been frozen and then d
efrosted. He was covered in bruises where gravity had smashed him back into the deck, but it was the slowness of his thoughts and the clumsiness of his hands that really bothered him.
From the look of her, Maddalena was suffering too. She was blinking fast, as if stunned, and her usual grace was absent. She was stumbling around as badly as he was.
Gaunt checked the load of his bolt pistol, holstered it and made off along the companionway. Maddalena followed him. There was a thin sheen of smoke in the processed air, and curious smells that mingled burning with the reek of spilled chemicals, and an odour that suggested that long stagnant sumps had been disturbed.
‘I’m going to find Felyx,’ Maddalena said.
Gaunt paused. He had expected as much. It was her primary duty, and he could hardly fault her for observing the orders of her House Chass masters to the letter.
He looked at her.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But Felyx is in no more or less danger than any of us. The welfare of the ship as a whole is at stake. For Felyx’s sake, it should be our priority to secure that first.’
She pursed her lips. It was an odd, attractive sign of uncertainty that Gaunt associated with Merity Chass. The duplicated face mirrored the expression perfectly.
‘He is my charge. His life is mine to ward,’ she said.
‘He’s my son,’ Gaunt replied.
‘You suggest?’
Gaunt gestured forwards.
‘We need to assess several key things. How dead this ship actually is. What the level of injury is. How long it will take – if it’s possible at all – to restore engineering function. On top of that, whether we’re at external risk.’
‘From boarding?’
Gaunt nodded.
‘The longer we drift here helplessly…’
Maddalena smiled.
‘Space is, forgive me for sounding simplistic, very large. To be prey for something, we’d have to be found by something.’
‘You were the one prepping your gun,’ Gaunt reminded her.
‘I’ll come with you to the bridge,’ she said.
They moved as far as the next through-deck junction and stopped as they heard footsteps clattering towards them.
‘First and Only!’ Gaunt challenged. He didn’t draw his weapon, but Maddalena had a tight grip on hers.
