First and Only

by Dan Abnett

  Gaunt turned to face the tunnel they were hurtling into. He opened his belt pouch and pulled out a fresh drum-pattern magazine for his bolt pistol. The sixty round capacity clip was marked with a blue cross to indicate the inferno rounds it held. He clicked it into place and then thumbed his wire headset.

  'Ready, weapons ready. Word is given. We're riding into the mouth of hell and we could be among them any minute. Prepare for sudden engagement. Emperor be with you all.'

  Along the train, lasguns whined as they powered up, launchers clicked to armed, plasma packs hummed into seething readiness and the ignitors on flamer units were lit.

  NINE

  'Come on,' Caffran said, wriggling up the side of the stinking shell hole that had been home for the best part of a day. Zogat followed. They blinked up into the dawn light. The barrage was still thundering away, and smoke-wash fog licked down across no-man's land.

  'Which way?' Zogat said, disorientated by the smoke and the light.

  'Home.' Caffran said. 'Away from the face of hell while we have the chance.'

  They trudged into the mud, struggling over wire and twisted shards of concrete.

  'Do you think we may be the only two left?' the Vitrian asked, glancing back at the vast barrage.

  'We may be, we may be indeed. And that makes me the last oftheTanith.'

  The Jantine armoured unit stabbed into the Shriven positions behind the barrage, but in two kilometres or more of advancing they had met nothing. The old factory areas were lifeless and deserted.

  Flense called a halt and rose out of the top hatch to scan the way ahead through his scope. The ruined and empty buildings stood around in the fog like phantoms. There was a relentless drumming sound that bit into his nerves.

  'Head for the hill line,' he told his driver as he dropped back inside. 'If we do no more than silence their batteries, we will have entered the chapters of glory.'

  Four kilometres, five, passing empty stations and unlit cargo bays. A spur to the left, then to the left again, and then an anxious pause of three minutes, waiting while another bomb train passed ahead of them from another siding. Then they were moving again.

  The tension wrapped Gaunt like a straitjacket. All of the passing tunnel looked constant and familiar, there were no markers to forewarn or alert. Any moment.

  The bomb train slid into a vast cargo bay on a spur siding,

  coming to rest alongside two other trains that were being offloaded by cranes and servitor lifters. An empty train was just ^ving on a loop that would take it back to the munitions Mumps.

  The chamber was lofty and dark, lit by thousands of lanterns and the ruddy glare of work-lamps. It was hot and smelled bit-let like a furnace room. The walls, as they could see them, were inscribed with vast sigils of Chaos, and draped with filthy banners. The symbols made the guardsmen's eyes weep if they glanced at them and made their heads pound if they looked for longer. Unclean symbols, symbols of pestilence and decay.

  There were upwards of two hundred Shriven in the dim, gantried chamber, working the lifters or sliding bomb trolleys. None of them seemed to notice the new train's extra cargo for a moment.

  Gaunt's company dismounted the train, opening fire as they went, laying down a hail of lasfire that cracked like electricity in the air. There was the whine of the Tanith guns on the lower setting and the stinging punch of the full-force Vitrian shots. Gaunt had forbade the use of meltas, rockets and flamers until they were clear of the munitions bay. None of the shells were fused or set, but there was no sense cooking or exploding them.

  Dozens of the Shriven fell where they stood. Two half-laden shell trolleys spilled over as nerveless hands released levers. Warheads rolled and chinked on the platform. A trolley of shells veered into a wall as its driver was shot, and overturned. A crane assembly exploded and collapsed.

  The guardsmen surged onwards. The Vitrian Dragoons fanned out in a perfect formation, taking point of cover after point of cover and scything down the fleeing Shriven. A few had found weapons and were returning fire, but their efforts were dealt with mercilessly.

  Gaunt advanced up the main loading causeway with the Tanith, blasting Shriven with his bolt pistol. Nearby, Mad Larkin and a trio of other Tanith snipers with the needle-pattern lasguns were ducked in cover and picking off Shriven on the overhead catwalks.

  Trooper Bragg had an assault cannon which he had liberated from a pintle mount some weeks before. Gaunt had never seen a man fire one without the aid of power armour's recoil compensators or lift capacity before. Bragg grimaced and strained with the effort of steadying the howling weapon with its six cycling bands, and his aim was its usual miserable standard. He killed dozens of the enemy anyway. Not to mention a maglev train.

  The Ghosts led the fight up out of the cargo bay and onto loading ramps which extended up through great caverns cut into the hillside. A layer of blue smoke rose up under the flickering pendulum lighting rigs.

  Clear of the munitions deck, Gaunt ordered up his meltas, flamers and rocket launchers, and began to scour a path, blackening the concrete strips of the ramps and fusing Shriven bone into syrupy pools.

  At the head of the ramps, at the great elevator assemblies which raised the bomb loads into the battery magazines high above them in the hillside, they met the first determined resistance. A massed force of Shriven troops rushed down at them, blasting with lasguns and autorifles. Rawne commanded i fire team up the left flank and cut into them from the edge, matched by Corbec's platoons from the right, creating a crossfire that punished them terribly.

  In the centre of the Shriven retaliation, Gaunt saw the first of the Chaos Space Marines, a huge horned beast, centuries old and bearing the twisted markings of the Iron Warriors chapter. The monstrosity exhorted his mutated troops to victory with great howls from his augmented larynx. His ancient, ornate boltgun spat death into the Tanith ranks. Sergeant Grell was vaporised by one of the first hits, two of his fire team a moment later.

  'Target him!' Gaunt yelled at Bragg, and the giant turned his huge firepower in the general direction with no particular success. The Chaos Marine proceeded to punch butchering fire into the Vitrian front line. Then he exploded. Headless, armless, his legs and torso rocked for a moment and then fell.

  Gaunt nodded his grim thanks to Trooper Melyr and his missile launcher. Lasfire and screaming autogun rounds wailed down from the Shriven units at the elevator assembly. Gaunt ducked into cover behind some freighting pallets and found himself sharing the cover with two Vitrians who were busy changing the power cells of their las guns.

  'How much ammo have you left?' Gaunt asked briskly as he swapped the empty drum of his bolt pistol with a fresh sickle-pattern clip of Kraken penetrators.

  'Half gone already,' responded one, a Vitrian corporal.

  Gaunt thumbed his microbead headset. 'Gaunt to Zoren!'

  'I hear you, commissar-colonel.'

  'Instruct your men to alter their settings to half-power.'

  'Why, commissar?'

  'Because they're exhausting their ammo! I admire your ethic, colonel, but it doesn't take a full power shot to kill one of the Shriven and your men are going to be out of clips twice as fast as mine!'

  There was a crackling pause over the comm-line before Gaunt heard Zoren give the order.

  Gaunt looked across at the two troopers who were adjusting their charge settings.

  'It'll last longer, and you'll send more to glory. No point in werkill,'he said with a smile. 'What are you called?'

  'Zapol,' said one.

  'Zeezo,' said the other, the corporal.

  'Are you with me, boys?' Gaunt asked with a wolfish grin as he hefted up his pistol and thumbed his chainsword to maximum revs. They nodded back, lasrifles held in strong, ready hands.

  Gaunt and the two dragoons burst from cover firing. They were more than halfway up the loading ramp to the elevators. Rawne's crossfire manoeuvre had fenced the Shriven in around the hazard striped blast doors, which were now fretted and punctur
ed with las-impacts and fusing burns.

  As he charged, Gaunt felt the wash of fire behind him as his own units covered and supported. He could hear the whine of the long-pattern sniper guns, the crack of the regular las-weapons, the rattle of Bragg's cannons.

  'Keep your aim up, Try Again…' Gaunt hissed as he and the two dragoons reached the makeshift defences around the enemy.

  Zeezo went down, clipped by a las-round. Gaunt and Zapol bounded up to the debris cover and cut into the now-panicked Shriven. Gaunt emptied his bolt gun and ditched it, scything with his chainsword. Zapol laid in with his bayonet, stabbing into bodies and firing point blank to emphasise each kill.

  It took two minutes. They seemed like a lifetime to Gaunt, each bloody, frenzied second playing out like a year. Then he and Zapol were through to the elevator itself and the Shriven were piled around them. Five or six more Vitrians were close behind.

  Zapol turned to smile at the commissar.

  The smile was premature.

  The elevator doors ahead of them parted and a second Iron Warrior Chaos Marine lunged out at them. It was loftier than the tallest guardsman, and dad entirely in an almost insect-like carapace of ancient power armour dotted with insane runes in dedication to its deathless masters. It was preceded by a bow-wave of the most foetid stench, exhaled from its grilled mask, and accompanied by a howl that grazed Gaunt's hearing and sounded like consumptive lungs exploding under deep pressure.

  The beast's chain fist, squealing like an enraged beast, pulped Zapol with a careless downwards flick. The Vitrian was crushed and liquefied. The creature began to blast wildly, killing at least four more of the supporting Vitrians.

  Gaunt was right in the thing's face. He could do nothing but lunge with his chainsword, driving the shrieking blade deep into the Chaos Marine's armoured torso. The toothed blade screamed and protested, and then whined and smoked as the serrated, whirling cutting edge meshed and glued as it ate into the monster's viscous and toughened innards.

  The Iron Warrior stumbled back, bellowing in pain and rage. The chainsword, smoking and shorting as it finally jammed, impaled its chest. Reeking ichor and tissue sprayed across the commissar and the elevator doorway.

  Gaunt knew he could do no more. He dropped to the floor as the stricken creature rose again, hoping against hope.

  His prayers were answered. The rearing thing was struck once, twice… four or five times by carefully placed las-shots which tore into it and spun it around. Gaunt somehow knew it the sniper Larkin who had provided these marksman blasts.

  On one knee, the creature rose and raged again, most of its upper armour punctured or shredded, smoke rising and black liquid spilling from the grisly wounds to its face, neck and chest.

  A final, powerful las-blast, close range and full-power, took its I head off.

  Gaunt looked round to see the wounded Corporal Zeezo standing on the barricade.

  The Vitrian grinned, despite the pain from his wound. 'I went against orders, I'm afraid,' he began. 'I reset my gun for full charge.'

  'Noted… and excused. Good work!'

  Gaunt got to his feet, wet and wretched with blood and Chaos pus. His Ghosts, and Zoren's Vitrians, were moving up the ramp to secure the position. Above them, at the top of the [ elevator shaft, were maybe a million Shriven, secure in their battery bunkers. Gaunt's expeditionary force was inside, right in the heart of the enemy stronghold.

  Commissar Ibram Gaunt smiled.

  TEN

  It took another precious half hour to regroup and secure the Ifcomb deck. Gaunt's scouts located all the entranceways and blocked them, checking even ventilation access and drainage gullies.

  Gaunt paced, tense. The clock was ticking and it wouldn't take long for the massive forces above them to start wondering why the shell supply from below had dried up. And come looking for a reason.

  There was the place itself too: the gloom, the taste of the air, the blasphemous iconography scrawled on the walls. It was as if they were inside some sacred place, sacred but unholy. Everyone was bathed in cold sweat and there was fear in everyone's eyes.

  The comm-link chimed and Gaunt responded, hurrying through to the control room of the bomb bays. Zoren, Rawne and others were waiting for him. Someone had managed to raise the shutters on the vast window ports.

  'What in the name of the Emperor is that?' Colonel Zoren asked.

  'I think that's what we've come to stop,' Gaunt said, turning away from the stained glass viewing ports.

  Far below them, in the depths of the newly-revealed hollowed cavern, stood a vast megalith, a menhir stone maybe fifty metres tall that smoked with building Chaos energy. Its essence filled the bay and made all the humans present edgy and distracted. None could look at it comfortably. It seemed to be bedded in a pile of… blackened bodies. Or body parts.

  Major Rawne scowled and flicked a thumb upwards.

  'It won't take them long to notice the bomb levels aren't supplying them with shells anymore. Then we can expect serious deployment against us.'

  Gaunt nodded but said nothing. He crossed to the control suite where Feygor and a Vitrian sergeant named Zolex were attempting to access data. Gaunt didn't like Feygor. The tall, thin Tanith was Rawne's adjutant and shared the major's bitter outlook. But Gaunt knew how to use him and his skills, particularly in the area of cogitators and other thinking machines.

  'Plot it for me,' he told the adjutant. 'I have a feeling there may be more of these stone things.'

  Feygor touched several rune keys of the glass and brass machined device.

  'We're there…' Feygor said, pointing at the glowing map sig-ils. 'And here's a larger scale map. You were right. That menhir down there is part of a system buried in these hills. Seven all told, in a star pattern. Seven fething abominations! I don't know what they mean to do with them, but they're all charging with power right now.'

  'How many?' Gaunt asked too quickly.

  'Seven,' Feygor repeated. 'Why?'

  Ibram Gaunt felt light-headed. 'Seven stones of power…' he murmured. A voice from years ago lilted in his mind. The girl. The girl back on Darendara. He could never remember her name, try as hard as he could. But he could see her face in the interrogation room. And hear her words.

  When her words about the Ghosts had come true, two years earlier, he had been chilled and had spent several sleepless nights remembering her prophecies. He'd taken command of the worldless wretches of Tanith and then one of the troop, Mad Larkin, it was asserted, had dubbed them Gaunt's Ghosts. He'd tried to put that down to coincidence, but ever since, he'd watched for other fragments of the Night of Truths to emerge.

  Cut them and you will be free , she had said. Do not kill them .

  'What do we do?' asked Rawne.

  'We have mines and grenades a plenty,' Zoren said. 'Let's blow it.'

  Do not kill them.

  Gaunt shook his head. 'No! This is what the Shriven have been preparing, some vast ritual using the stones, some industrial magic. That's what has preoccupied them, that's what they've tried to distract us from. Blowing part of their ceremonial ring would be a mistake. There's no telling what foul power we might unleash. No, we have to break the link…'

  Cut them and you will be free.

  Gaunt got to his feet and pulled on his cap again. 'Major Rawne, load as many hand carts as you can find with Shriven warheads, prime them for short fuse and prepare to send them up on the elevator on my cue. We'll choke the emplacements upstairs with their own weapons. Colonel Zoren, I want as many of your men as you can spare – or more specifically, their armour.'

  The major and the colonel looked at him blankly.

  'Now?' he added sharply. They leapt to their feet.

  Gaunt led the way up the ramp towards the menhir. It smoked with energy and his skin prickled uncomfortably. Chaos energy smelt that way, like a tangy stench of cooked blood and electricity. None of them dared look down at the twisted, solidified mound below them.

 
'What are we doing?' Zoren asked by his side, clearly distressed about being this close to the unutterable.

  We're breaking the chain. We want to disrupt the circle without blowing it.'

  'How do you know?'

  'Inside information,' Gaunt said, trying hard to grin. 'Trust me. Let's short this out.'

  The Vitrians by his side moved forward at a nod from their commander. Tentatively, they approached the huge stone and started to lash their jackets around the smooth surface. Zoren had collected the mica armoured jackets of more then fifty of his men. Now he fused them together as neat as a surgeon with a melta on the lowest setting. Gingerly the Vitrians wrapped the makeshift mica cloak around the stone, using meltas borrowed from the Tanith like industrial staplers to lock it into place over the stone.

  'It's not working,' Zoren said.

  It wasn't. After a few moments more, the glass beads of the Vitrian armour began to sweat and run,, melting off the stone, leaving the fabric base layers until they too ignited and burned.

  Gaunt turned away, his disheartened mind churning.

  'What now?' Zoren asked, dispiritedly.

  Cut them and you will be free.

  Gaunt snapped his fingers. We don't blow them! We realign them. That's how we cut the circle.'

  Gaunt called up Tolus, Lukas and Bragg. 'Get charges set in the supporting mound. Don't target the stone itself. Blow it so it falls away or drops.'

  'The mound…' Lukas stammered.

  'Yes, trooper, the mound,' Gaunt repeated. 'The dead can't hurt you. Do it!'

  Reluctantly, the Ghosts went to work.

  Gaunt tapped his microbead intercom. 'Rawne, send those warheads up.'

  'Acknowledged.'

  A ''sir'' wouldn't kill him, Gaunt thought.

  At the elevator head, the troops under Rawne's command thundered trolleys of warheads into the car.

  'Shush!' a Vitrian said suddenly. They stopped. A pause – then they all heard the clanking, the distant tinny thumps. Rawne swung up his lasgun and moved into the elevator assembly. He pulled the lever that opened the upper inspection hatch. Above him, the great lift shaft yawned like a beast's throat. He stared up into the darkness, trying to resolve the detail.