First and Only

by Dan Abnett

  He felt a wetness heavy his moustache and wiped it. Fresh blood smeared his grey-cloth sleeve. There was more in his mouth and he spat, his ears throbbing. Looking around in the green-lit interior of the tank, he saw all the crew were suffering spontaneous nose-bleeds, or were retching and hacking blood.

  There was a vibration singing in the air; low, lazy, ugly.

  Sendak swung the tank's periscope around to scan the scene outside. Something was happening to the lines of towers which flanked them on either side. They were glowing, fulminating with rich curls of vivid damask energy. Mist was columnating around the old stones.

  'Blood of the Emperor!' Sendak growled, his teeth and lips stained red with his own dark blood.

  Outside, in the space of a human heartbeat, two things happened. The lines of towers, just ragged rows of stone spines a moment before, exploded into life and became a fence, a raging energy field forty metres tall. Lashing and fizzling lines of force whipped and crackled from tower to tower like giant, supernatural barbed wire. Each tower connected blue and white brambles of curling energy with its neighbour. Any man or machine caught in the line between towers was, in two heartbeats, burned or exploded or ripped into pieces. The rest were penned between the sudden barriers, hemmed in and unable to turn or flank.

  As the energy wires ignited between the previously dormant stone stacks, something else happened on the flat tops of each tower. In puffs of pinkish, coloured gas, figures appeared on each tower platform. Teleported into place by sciences too dark and heretical for a sane mind to understand, these squads of soldiers instantly deployed heavy weapons on tripods and laid down fire on the penned aggressors beneath them. The Chaos forces were dun, wasted beings in translucent shrouds and scowling masks made of bone. They manned tripod-mounted lascannons, melta-guns and other more arcane field weapons with hands bandaged in soiled strips of plastic. Amongst them were their corrupt commanders, quasi-mechanical Chaos Marines, Obliterators.

  Sendak screamed orders, trying to turn his advance in the chaos. Two tanks to his right swung blindly round into the nearest energy fence and were obliterated, exploding in huge clouds of flame as their munitions went off. Another tank was riddled with fire from the tops of the two nearest towers. Sendak suddenly found the enemy had heavy weapon emplacements stretching back along the tower-lines around, between and behind his entire column.

  He almost admired the tactic, but the technology was beyond him, and his eyes were so clouded and swimming with the blood-pain in his sinuses he could barely think.

  He grabbed the vox-caster horn and fumbled for the command channel. 'It's worse than we feared! They are luring us in and using unholy science to bracket us and cut us to pieces! Inform all assault forces! The towers are death! The towers are death!'

  A cannon round punched through the turret and exploded Sendak and his gunner. The severed vox-horn clattered across the deck, still clutched by the marshal's severed hand.

  A second later, the tank flipped over as a frag-rocket blew out its starboard track, skirt and wheelbase. As it landed,, turret-down, in the mud, it detonated from within, blowing apart the Leman Russ next to it.

  Behind the decimated tanks, the Oudinot were fleeing.

  But there was nowhere to flee to.

  FIVE

  Every opening in the stepped structure which rose above the Tanith Ghosts along the far side of the cliff around that gross, inscribed dome seemed to be spitting fire. Las-fire, bolter rounds, the heavier sparks of cannon fire, and other exotic bursts, odd bullets that buzzed like insects and flew slowly and lazily.

  Corbec ran the line of the platoons which had reached the crest, his great rich voice bawling them into cover and return-fire stances. There was little natural cover up here except the natural curl of the hill brow, and odd arrangements of ancient stones which poked like rotten, discoloured teeth from the bracken.

  'Dash! Down! Crawl! Look!' Corbec bellowed, repeating the training chant they had first heard on the Founding Fields of lost Tanith. 'Take your sight and aim! Spraying and praying is not good enough!'

  Down the crest, near Lerod's command position, Bragg opened up with the rocket launcher, swiftly followed by Melyr and several other heavy weapons troopers. Tank-busting missiles whooped across the gully into the crumbling stone facade of the tumbled structure, blowing gouts of stone and masonry out in belches of flame.

  On hands and knees, Gaunt regrouped with Corbec under the lip of the hill. The barrage of shots whistled over their heads and the honeysuckle stench was augmented by the choking scent of ignited bracken.

  'We have to get across!' Gaunt yelled to Corbec over the firing of ten thousand sidearms and the scream of rockets.

  'Love to oblige!' returned Corbec ruefully, gesturing at the scene. Gaunt showed him the data-slate and they compared it to the edifice beyond, gingerly keeping low for fear of the whinnying shot.

  'It isn't going to happen,' Corbec said. 'We'll never get inside against a frontal opposition like this!'

  Gaunt knew he was right. He turned back to the slate. The data they had downloaded from the crystal was complex and in many places completely impenetrable. It had been written, or at least translated, from old code notations, and there was as much obscure about it as there was comprehensible. Some more of it made sense now – now Gaunt had the chance to compare the information with the actual location. One whole part seemed particularly clear.

  'Hold things here,' he ordered Corbec curtly and rolled back from the lip, gaining his feet in the steep bracken and hurrying down the slope they had advanced up.

  He found the tower quickly enough, one of the jagged, mouldering stone formations, a little way down the slope. He pulled bracken away from the base and uncovered the top of an old,

  decaying shaft he hoped – knew – would be there. He crouched at the mouth and gazed down into the inky depths of the drop beneath.

  Gaunt tapped his microbead to open the line, and then ordered up personnel to withdraw to his position: Mkoll, Baru, Larkin, Bragg, Rawne, Dorden, Domor, Caffran.

  They assembled quickly, eyeing the black shaft suspiciously.

  'Our back door,' Gaunt told them. 'According to the old data, this sink leads down some way and then into the catacombs beneath the shrine structure. We'll need ropes, pins, a hammer.'

  'Who'll be going in there?' Rawne asked curtly.

  'All of us… me first,' Gaunt told him.

  Gaunt beaded to Corbec and instructed him to marshal the main Tanith levies and sustain fire against the facade of the structure.

  He stripped off his storm-coat and cloak, and slung his chainsword over his back. Mkoll had tapped plasteel rooter pins into the stonework at the top of the shaft and played a length of cable around them and down into the darkness.

  Gaunt racked the slide of his bolt pistol and holstered it again. 'Let's go,' he said, wrapping the cord around his waist and sliding into the hole.

  Mkoll grabbed his arm to stop him as Trooper Vench hurried down the slope from the combat-ridge, calling out. Gaunt slid back out of the cavity and took the data-slate from Vench as he stumbled up to them.

  'Message from Sergeant Blane,' Vench gasped. 'There's a Chimera coming up the low pass, sending signals that it desires to join with us.'

  Gaunt frowned. It made no sense. He studied the slate's transcript. 'Sergeant Blane wants to know if he should let them through,' Vench added. They're identifying themselves as a detail of tactical observers from the warmaster's counsel. They use the code-name 'Eagleshard'.'

  Gaunt froze as if he had been shot. 'Sacred Feth!' he spat.

  The men murmured and eyed each other. It was a pretty pass when the commissar used a Tanith oath.

  'Stay here,' Gaunt told the insurgence party and unlashed the rope, heading downhill at the double. 'Tell Rafflan to signal Blane!' he yelled back at Vench. 'Let them through!'

  SIX

  The Chimera, its hull armour matt-green and showing no other markings than the I
mperial crest, rumbled up the slope from Blane's picket and slewed sidelong on a shelf of hillside, chewing bracken under its treads. Gaunt scrambled down to meet it, warier than he had ever been in his life.

  The side hatch opened with a metallic clunk and three troopers leapt out, lasguns held ready. They wore combat armour in the red and black liveries of the Imperial Crusade staff, elite bodyguard troops for the officer cadre. Reflective visor masks hid their faces. A taller, heftier figure in identical battle dress joined them and stood, hands on hips, surveying the scene as Gaunt approached.

  The figure slid back his visor and then pulled the helmet off. Gaunt didn't recognise him… until he factored in a few years, some added muscle and the shaven head.

  'Eagleshard,' Gaunt said.

  'Eagleshard,' responded the figure. 'Ibram!'

  Gaunt shook his old friend's hand. 'What do I call you?'

  'I'm Imperial Tactician Wheyland here, but my boys are trustworthy,' the big man said, gesturing to the troopers, who now relaxed their spread. 'You can call me by the name you know.'

  'Fereyd…'

  'So, Ibram… bring me up to speed.'

  'I can do better. I can take you to the prize.'

  The stone chimney was deep and narrow. Gaunt half-dimbed, half-rappelled down the flue, his toes and hands seeking purchase in the mouldering stonework. He tried to imagine what this place had been at the time of its construction: perhaps a city, a living place built into and around the cliff. This flue was probably the remains of an air-duct or ventilator, dropping down to Emperor-knew-what beneath.

  Gaunt's feet found the rock floor at the base, and he straightened up, loosening the ropes so that the others could join him. It smelled of sweaty damp down here, and the tunnel he was in was low and jagged.

  'Lasgun!' came a call from above. The weapon dropped down the flue and Gaunt caught it neatly, immediately igniting the lamp-pack which Dorden had webbed to the top of the barrel with surgical tape. He played the light over the dirty, low walls,

  his finger on the trigger. Above him came the sounds of others scrambling down the ragged chimney.

  It took thirty minutes for the rest to join him. They all held lasguns with webbed-on lamps, except Dorden, who was unarmed but carried a torch, and Bragg, who hefted a massive autocannon. Bragg had enjoyed the hardest descent; bulky and uncoordinated, he had struggled in the flue and begun to panic.

  Larkin was moaning about death and claustrophobia, young Caffran was dearly alarmed, Dorden was sour and defeatist, Baru was scornful of them all and Rawne was silent and surly. Gaunt smiled to himself. He had selected them well. They were all exhibiting their angst and worries up front. Nothing would linger to come out later. But between them, they encompassed the best stealth, marksmanship, firepower, medical ability and bravery the Tanith First-and-Only had to offer.

  All of them seemed wary of the Imperial tactician and his trooper bodyguard which the commissar had suddenly decided to invite along. The troopers were tough, silent types who had scaled the chimney with professional ease. They stuck close to their leader, limpets-like, guns ready.

  The party moved down the passage, stooping under outcrops and sags of rock and twisted stone. Their lamps cut obscure shadows and light from the uneven surfaces.

  After two hundred careful steps and another twenty minutes, they emerged into a dripping, glistening cavern where the ancient rock walls were calcified and sheened with mineral moisture. Ahead of them, their lamps picked out an archway of perfectly fitted, dressed stone.

  Gaunt raised his weapon and flicked the lamp as an indicator.

  'After me,' he said.

  SEVEN

  'He wants to see you, sir,' the aide said.

  Lord General Dravere didn't want to hear. He was still staring at the repeater plates which hung in front of him, showing the total, desperate carnage that had befallen Marshal Sendak's advance on Target Secundus. Even now, plates were fizzing out to blankness or growing dim and fading. He had never expected this. It was… It was not possible.

  'Sir?' the aide said again.

  'Can you not see this is a crisis moment, you idiot?' Dravere raged, swinging around and buffeting some of the floating plates out of his way. 'We're being murdered on the second front! I need time to counter-plan! I need the tactical staff here now!'

  'I will assemble them at once,' the aide said, speaking slowly, as if he was scared of a thing far greater than the raging commander. 'However, the inquisitor insists.'

  Dravere hesitated, and then released the toggle of his harness and slid out of the hammock. He didn't like fear, but fear was what now burned in his chest. He crossed the command globe to the exit shutter and turned briefly to order his second-in-command to take over and assemble the advice of the tactical staff as it came in.

  'Signal whatever remains of Sendak's force to withdraw to staging ground All-23. Alert the other forces to the danger of the towers. I want assessments and counter-strategies by the time I return.'

  A brass ladder led down into the isolation sphere buried in the belly of the command globe.

  Dravere entered the dimly-lit chamber. It smelled of incense and disinfectant. There was a pulse tone from the medical diag-nosticators, and pale steam rose from the plastic sheeting tented over the cot in the centre of the room. Medical staff in cowled red scrubs left silently as soon as he appeared.

  'You wanted to see me, Inquisitor Heldane?' Dravere began.

  Heldane moved under the loose semi-transparent flaps of the tent. Dravere got a glimpse of tubes and pipes, draining fluid from the ghastly rent in the man's neck, and of the ragged wound in the side of his head, which was encased in a swaddling package of bandage, plastic wrap and metal braces.

  'It is before us, my Lord Hechtor,' Heldane said, his voice a rasping whisper from vox-relays at his bedside. 'The prize is close. I sense it through my pawn.'

  'What do we do?'

  'We move with all stamina. Advance the Jantine. I will guide them in after Gaunt. This is no time for weakness or subtlety. We must strike.'

  EIGHT

  Death flurried down over the Tanith ranks from the stepped arches of the necropolis. A blizzard of las-shot showered down, along with the arcing stings of arcane electrical weapons. The air hummed, too, with the whine of the slower metal projectile-casters the enemy were using. Barb-like bullets, slow moving enough to be seen, buzzed down at them like glittering hornets. Where they hit flesh, they did untold explosive damage. Corbec saw men rupture and come apart as the barbed rounds hit. Others were maimed by shrapnel as the vile shells hit stone or metal beside them and shattered.

  A barbed round dug into the turf near Corbec's foxhole cover and became inert. The colonel flicked it out with his knifepoint and studied it – a bulb of dull metal with forward-pointing, overlaid leaves of razor-sharp alloy. The blackened, fused remains of a glass cartridge at the base showed its method of propulsion. Shot from simple tube-launchers, Corbec decided, the propellant igniting as the firing pin shattered the glass capsule. He turned it over in one hand, protected by the edge of his stealth cape. Evil and ingenious, the barb's leaves were scored to ease impact-shatter – either against a hard surface to produce a cloud of shrapnel, or against bone as it chewed through tissue to effect the worst wounds possible. The leaves were slightly spiralled too, suggesting that the launcher's rifling set them spinning as they fired. Corbec decided he had never seen a more savage, calculated, more grotesque instrument of death and pain.

  He sighed as the firestorm raged above him. Still no word had come from the commissar's infiltration team, and only Corbec's knowledge of Gaunt's secret agenda allayed his fears at the high-risk tactic.

  Corbec contacted his platoon leaders and had them edge the men forward along the facing lip, winning any inch they could. He had close on two thousand lasguns and heavier weapons raking the front of the pile, and the alcove-lined facade was shattering, slumping and collapsing under the fusillade. But the return f
ire was as intense as ever.

  Trooper Mahan, communications officer for Corbec's own platoon command, crouched in the foxhole beside him, talking constantly into the voice-horn of his heavy vox-set, relaying and processing battle-reports from all the units.

  Mahan suddenly leaned back, grabbed the colonel by a cuff and dragged him close, pushing the headset against his ear.

  '…are death! The towers are death!' Corbec heard.

  He shot a stare at Mahan, who was encoding the information on his data-slate.

  'Target Tertius is routed,' Mahan said grimly, scribing as he spoke and relaying the data in stuttered code-bursts through the handset of the vox-caster. 'Sendak is dead… Feth, it sounds like they're all dead. Dravere is signalling a total withdrawal. The towers—'

  Corbec grabbed the slate and studied the scrolling text Mahan was direct-receiving from High Command. There were flickering, indistinct images captured from Sendak's last transmission. He saw the towers erupt into life, laying down their destructive fences, saw the forces of the enemy manifest on the tower tops.

  Instinctively, he looked up at the towers nearest them. If it happened here, they would suffer a similar fate.

  Even as he formed the thought, a ragged flurry of frenzied reports flooded the comm-lines. The towers had ignited at Target Secundus too. Marshal Tarantine had received enough warning from the Tertius advance to protect the advance of his forces, but still he was suffering heavy losses. They were generally intact, but their assault was stymied.

  'Sacred Feth!' Corbec hissed, heating the air with his curse. He keyed his microbead to open traffic and bellowed an order.

  'Any Ghosts within twenty metres of a tower! Use any and all available munitions to destroy those towers! Do it, for the love of us all!'

  Answering links jabbered back at him and he had to shout to be heard. 'Now, you fething idiots!' he bawled.