Sabbat Crusade

by Dan Abnett

  ‘As you like.’

  ‘Private Harjeon was brought into the medicae with stab wounds,’ said Ana Curth. She did not need to refer to her notes. ‘The autopsy shows that they were mostly superficial. The three serious stab wounds would have required surgery. He would have survived the attack.’

  ‘And yet, he’s dead,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘The toxicology report shows that Private Harjeon had ingested a recreational drug that reacted with a pharmaceutical that I administered during surgery prep,’ said Ana. ‘The patient suffered a seizure resulting in heart failure and brain death.’

  ‘Record death by misadventure,’ said Gaunt, holding out his hand for the paperwork to sign off on the latest casualty in his regiment.

  ‘I should have seen it,’ said Ana, still clutching the reports.

  ‘He shouldn’t have broken the rules,’ said Gaunt. ‘Drug abuse is not tolerated. He would have been executed for it. Hand me that, and let’s be done with it.’

  XVII

  ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you with another meeting,’ said Elodie, ‘but I wanted to let you know that it’s over.’ She was sitting at a tiny table in the hab decks with her hands wrapped around another mug of terrible caffeine.

  ‘Thank you, mamzel,’ said Honne.

  ‘Private Harjeon died in medicae after reacting to a pharmaceutical. He got into a fight, but his injuries weren’t fatal. They’re not looking for anyone in connection with the stabbing.’

  ‘Thank you, mamzel,’ said Honne, again.

  ‘He won’t be hurting any more women, Honne,’ said Elodie.

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ said Honne.

  ‘No,’ said Elodie. ‘Nonetheless.’

  XVIII

  ‘Thank you, Tona,’ said Elodie, after her visit to Honne. They were sitting drinking sacra in Tona’s quarters.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Tona. ‘These things sort themselves out in the end.’

  ‘Do you worry about the men?’ asked Elodie.

  ‘They’re good men,’ said Tona. ‘For every hundred good men, for every thousand, there’s one evil fether.’

  ‘Like Harjeon?’ asked Elodie.

  ‘Like him,’ said Tona. ‘We look after each other, though, don’t we? Don’t think about Harjeon. For every one of him there are a hundred Bans. For every one of him there are even a few Caffs.’

  Feth, I love this story.

  David Annandale is a relative newcomer to the echoing halls of Black Library, but his work has already proved beyond doubt that he should be there. I very much urge you to seek out and read his Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. Now he gets his Sabbat Worlds Writers’ Club tie and fancy embossed card (there’s probably some membership ritual involving rolling up one trouser leg and putting your shirt on backwards. Or did that just happen to me? You guys…).

  I love David’s story for a number of reasons. First, it’s one of the others in this anthology that absolutely fits ‘current’ Ghosts continuity. The whole purpose of the Salvation’s Reach mission (spoiler alert) was to sow the seeds of rivalry between the Blood Pact and the Sons of Sek.

  Archon Gaur is the Archenemy leader, direct rival to Warmaster Macaroth. He’s top dog, and he has the Blood Pact (notorious for being an actually organised, disciplined and thus effective Imperial Guard-style Chaos force – many are converts corrupted from the Guard itself by the dark whispers of Khorne… I refer you to John French’s story, and my own ‘You Never Know’).

  Anarch Sek is the Gaur’s foremost lieutenant. Sek, whose voice drowns out all others, is probably a better strategic battlefield commander than the Archon, and he envies Urlock’s mastery. Sek, inspired by the Blood Pact, has created his own ‘disciplined’ force, the Sons of Sek. Now two Archenemy monsters are fielding armies that go far beyond the feral hodge-podge of the Sanguinary Tribes. They are proper armies, equivalently skilled (and thus as effective) as the Astra Militarum. Gaunt’s mission in Salvation’s Reach was to exploit that rivalry, and make the Blood Pact think that the Anarch was trying to press for power, and make the Sons of Sek believe that the Blood Pact was turning on them. A propaganda war. Split the enemy and make them fight themselves.

  This terrific story shows the results of that disinformation war. It also portrays the aspect and viewpoint of the Archenemy with great skill. Set firmly in current Ghosts continuity, it is one of the other stories in this volume that provides, if rather more indirectly, vital links between the events of Salvation’s Reach and those of The Warmaster.

  If you never thought you’d find yourself rooting for the Pact, prepare to be confounded…

  Dan Abnett

  The Deeper Wounds

  David Annandale

  Lycotham Gamma, 782.M41

  (the 27th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

  Human skulls were a disappointment. They were too close to the surface.

  Seddok Etogaur considered this as his Death Brigade moved through the disused mining tunnels. He felt an emotion like regret – regret woven in barbed wire – whenever his knife scraped bone. This wrathful frustration came whether he was carving an enemy’s flesh or his own. The blade could not sink as far as was right. There were limits to the profundity of the pain and the conjuring of blood. He marked his worship of the Blood God in the whorls of sliced muscle and flaps of cheek. But how could he give full expression to his faith and rage with such hard limits in the material?

  There was very little more he could do with the canvas of his own flesh. The scars overlapped. They built on each other, layering the violence of meaning. His skull showed in patches on his crown. He had even worked on the bone itself, scraping runes with the point of the blade. The extent of his mutilation demanded the respect of his subordinates. The depth of commitment to the Blood Pact was measured by the acts of war against the enemy, and in the acts given physical memory on the warrior’s body. Seddok’s loyalty was visible in every contortion of the slices. He hadn’t even spared his tongue. He could still speak without difficulty, although he could taste nothing but thickened tissue and blood.

  It wasn’t enough. The blade should go deeper. There should always be more pain, more blood, more flesh to tear away.

  He was thinking about the limits to injury because the same ones applied to the present action. He and his troops were going to inflict pain. But not enough.

  It would never be enough.

  They reached a junction. Kstah took the left tunnel without hesitation. The mining operations had honeycombed this range of the Katchgar Mountains on Lycotham Gamma. The work went on, but many of the veins had been exhausted. By tasting the air and sensing vibrations beneath its clawed feet, the loxatl could gauge how close they were to any of the workers. The reptilian xenos had led the brigade through tunnels that hadn’t been used in years. As they neared their target, Seddok could hear, faintly, the sounds of labour and industry. There wouldn’t be any need for secrecy soon. A bit longer, and everything would be about injury and the teaching of a lesson. The lesson that would not be enough.

  The Death Brigade had placed themselves on Lycotham Gamma four days earlier, landing in a desert, far from any population centre. Seddok and his warriors had made good time, and seen no one. They had not been detected by the Sons of Sek. The blow would come from the night. The message would be clear.

  The quality of the air changed. It went from stale and close to choking, oily, gritty. Seddok felt a breeze. The tunnel came to an end at an opening about twenty metres up the cliff face. Seddok looked right, to the north, at the manufactorum. It squatted in a narrow valley, its walls abutting the mountainsides. It was a cathedral of black iron. Its clusters of chimneys were spires a hundred metres high, spewing clouds so thick they blocked all sight of the sky. Though it was midday, the valley was in deep twilight. A web of rails ran from tunnel entrances, feeding trainloads of
ore to the receiving bays in the complex’s east and west flanks. The south face was dominated by massive gates. From there, a road led from the valley.

  ‘This won’t hurt as much as it should,’ said Mevvax Sirdar, echoing Seddok’s displeasure. She was looking at the transports hauling the manufactorum’s output through the gates. They were hull components for void ships. Taking out the manufactorum would be a blow to the Sons of Sek’s strength, but hardly a crippling one. They controlled Lycotham Gamma. This was not the only centre of production.

  ‘Agreed,’ Seddok said. ‘But what does?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘We have orders,’ he reminded her. ‘And we obey.’

  She nodded once, the gesture tense with anger at the prospect of unjustified effort.

  ‘We are delivering a message,’ he said, reminding himself as much as his subordinate. They were teaching, not decapitating. The Blood Pact was not at war with the Sons of Sek. But Anakwanar Sek did not recognise the authority of Urlock Gaur as he should. The magister needed to be reminded that the forces of the Blood God in this region of the galaxy spoke with one voice, and obeyed one master. The Sons of Sek believed themselves to be supreme on Lycotham Gamma. Perhaps they were. That did not mean they were untouchable.

  Paraak laughed. The sound was liquid. The grotesque that masked his features had short spikes that pierced his cheeks. He was always swallowing his own blood. ‘It would do them good to bleed,’ he said.

  Seddok grinned, feeling the ragged edges of his lips split as they rubbed against his own grotesque. His mask, unlike those of Paraak and the other lower orders, was not iron. It was gold. Even better for us to see them bleed, he thought. There was a second lesson they were about to teach. The braggart Sons of Sek needed to be taught humility. They vaunted their military prowess. The stories of their precision and discipline were spreading through the Sabbat Worlds systems. There was some basis for their pride, yes. They were doing well, yes. But Seddok had come to show them what a Death Brigade of the Blood Pact could do.

  Before the manufactorum gates, on either side of the road from the valley, was an encampment. Large enough, Seddok estimated, for two hundred troops. He counted twenty sentries stationed around its perimeter and near the gates.

  ‘Look at them,’ said Eshk. ‘Proud of their finery.’

  He meant their gear. Even from this distance, the quality of the Sons’ equipment was apparent. They weren’t wearing full-body carapace armour as the Death Brigade were, but the vests and helmets had a uniformity, and thus probably a reliability, beyond what many Blood Pact troopers had at their disposal.

  ‘It won’t do them any good,’ Seddok answered. He eyed possible approaches. The urge to launch into the humiliation of the Sons was strong. He wasn’t concerned by the eight-to-one odds. His brigade had annihilated larger Imperial Guard forces. But he had to be mindful of the goal. If the manufactorum was shuttered against him, its walls would be those of a fortress. He would be kept at bay until reinforcements arrived.

  If he followed the dictates of cold anger instead of hot rage, the path was clear. Kstah had brought them to an entrance that gave onto one of the rails. From the state of its disrepair, it had fallen into disuse years ago, now too far from a viable source of ore, and was being allowed to decay. Its span was still intact. The receiving bay it led to was fed by two other lines. One of them came from an opening ten metres down and a hundred to the right of the brigade’s position. The other started from a tunnel whose mouth was almost forty metres straight up.

  Seddok looked at the upper line. Kstah gave a peremptory hiss and pointed at the lower one instead. Seddok watched, trusting the loxatl’s vibratory perceptions. After a few minutes, an ore train rumbled down the track, its carts full. Its passage was loud, but added little to the metallic thunder echoing throughout the valley. Seddok raised his magnoculars and examined the sentries. They didn’t so much as glance at the train. Their attention remained on the road, the sole ground approach to the manufactorum.

  It was almost too easy.

  ‘I think they want to be hurt,’ he said.

  At Kstah’s signal, the brigade headed down the track. Twenty-five warriors in carapace armour stained dark with the blood of their victims. Twenty-five grotesques: metal faces of leering violence, noses and chins hooked into claws. Seddok knew their appearance would not terrify the Sons of Sek. His determination was that their actions, however, would.

  From the moment they left the concealment of the tunnel, they were visible from the ground. Kstah, a quadruped, would be hard to spot, but the others would draw attention with their movement if an observer’s eye fell on them. Seddok kept track of the sentries below as he crossed. They didn’t move. No alarm was raised. In less than five minutes, the brigade was entering the manufactorum bay halfway up the complex.

  The interior was vast. A few hundred metres ahead, slaves unloaded the contents of the ore train’s wagons and hauled their carts down ramps to the levels below. The ceiling here was low. Further on, beyond the unloading, the space opened up.

  Seddok took the lead now. The punishment was about to begin. They were no longer concerned with evading the enemy. Doing so for more than a few moments more was impossible. Slaves in the thousands were at work. There would be guards. What mattered now was speed and violence. And he wanted to be seen. The full meaning of the lesson he was about to deliver would be in its witnessing. They would leave survivors. Not many, but enough for the message to be spread: Respect the authority of the Gaur. His reach is long.

  The Death Brigade charged across the receiving bay. The sound of their boots on the rockcrete floor was just another note in the general din. The slaves did not look up until the last moment. Seddok saw their eyes widen. Their screams were the first taste of satisfaction, and the goad to more rage. These ragged humans had lived in the hope that obedience would grant them something that passed for mercy. It did not.

  Laspistol in his right hand, chainsword in his left, Seddok cut through the slaves without slowing his charge. Blood washed over his armour. Limbs fell to the ground. The screams of terror became screams of pain, and the screams of pain ended under the growl of his sword. The rest of the brigade followed in wedge formation, bayonets gutting and stabbing. Kstah slashed with claws, and tore out the throat of one slave with his jaws. They left behind mounds of writhing meat. A few of the drones would live long enough to tell others of the terrible force that had come upon them. Seddok smelled the rancid milk and mint stink of the loxatl.

  The slaughter was a trivial one. A minor thread. But it had its role to play in the tapestry of blood. Every drop an offering to the Blood God. Every drop a rebuke to the Sons of Sek.

  The receiving bay ended at the vast space that occupied the entire central block of the manufactorum. Levels upon levels of assembly floors were fed by huge elevator platforms that rose slowly up a vertical track to the ceiling a hundred metres up, moved horizontally a few dozen metres, then descended another track, just as slowly. Slaves moved components and material on and off the platforms. They had to move fast, as the elevators never stopped. To Seddok’s left and right, he saw more of the elevators. The work levels were staggered. The effect was a disordered tangle of metal and rockcrete. To the right, in the centre of the complex, was the colossal blast furnace. It radiated waves of heat and rumbled with the breathing of mountains. This was the heart of the manufactorum. This was the target. And it had to be attacked at its base.

  An elevator platform rose past the level of the receiving bay. The Death Brigade tore across it and leapt to the level opposite. More slaves here, working on deck beams. Another slaughter in passing. A surge of blood across the floor. But no pause, because these kills were far beneath the skill of the brigade. The slaves deserved no mercy, but they were not the point. They were not the subjects of the lesson.

  At the other end of the level, a platform descended. Seddok�
�s troops took it, and formed a circle as it dropped, clanking and juddering, towards the floor. Now they began to fire. They sent a stream of las in all directions, culling the slaves of every work floor within range, on every level as they went by. Workers died. More panicked. Fires broke out. Disorder spread, gathered force, turned into destruction. Seddok shot a cluster of pipes. The las melted through metal. Live steam and electrical cables fell on the slaves.

  More screams. More fire. Chaos spread, and this was the gift of the Blood Pact’s discipline. Rigour in the service of Chaos. Unity for Khorne. All the better to drown the galaxy in blood. Unity that the Sons of Sek would do well to remember.

  Two-thirds of the way down, there was a sudden change. There was no work taking place on the lower levels. There were makeshift barricades on the sides facing the platform. Seddok saw what was coming. The counter-attack began before he could call a warning.

  Enfilading las-fire struck the platform, killing three of the Death Brigade. Seddok and the others dropped into crouches, reducing their size as targets. But there was no shelter. They were surrounded, outnumbered. The enemy numbered in the dozens on each side, and there were more waiting on the levels below. If the brigade remained on the elevator, it would be annihilated before reaching the floor of the manufactorum.

  ‘In their teeth!’ Seddok yelled. ‘Forward!’

  The platform was between levels. The Sons of Sek rained las down from above, but the soldiers below didn’t have an angle on the Blood Pact yet. Seddok led the charge over the edge. He brought a cataract of rage down on the defenders. There were ten of them. They responded quickly, without panic. He was a fast-moving target, yet he felt the sear of las burn through the armour on his left side. The pain was an outrage. He saw red, his vision shimmering with the pulse of his god’s wrath. He rolled as he hit the deck, and came up firing two metres behind the Sons of Sek.

  His first clear look at them. Their armour was ochre, and was an expression of their fidelity to Anakwanar Sek. Hands covered their mouths, either stitched across their lips or rising from the armour’s gorget. A mark of possession, of the silence of secrets, of their lord’s absolute control.