by Dan Abnett
Power sword met refractor shield. The shield was a model manufactured by Chaos-polluted Mechanicus factories on the occupied forgeworld Ermune. It was powerful and effective. The power sword was so old, no one knew its original place of manufacture. It popped the shield like a needle lancing a blister.
The fizzling cloak of energy vanished and Gaunt’s sword blade plunged on, impaling the screaming Infardi revealed inside.
Gaunt wrenched the sword out and got up. The Infardi nearby, those who hadn’t yet been dropped by his Ghosts, backed off and ran in fear. By killing the officer in front of their eyes, he’d put a chink in their insane confidence.
But it was a tiny detail of triumph in a much greater battle-storm. Major Rawne, commanding units nearer to the main gate, could see no respite in the onslaught. The Infardi were throwing themselves at his position as fast as his troops in the snow-trenches and on the wall parapet could fire on them. A row of self-propelled guns was working up behind the enemy infantry, and their munitions now came whistling down, throwing up great bursts of ice and fire. Two shells dropped inside the wall and one hit the wall itself, blowing out a ten-metre chunk.
Rawne saw the Grey Venger advancing over the snow, streaking titanic stripes of laser fire at the Usurper guns. One was hit and sent up a fiery mushroom cloud. Rocket grenades slapped and banged off the Venger’s hull. The Lion of Pardua smashed directly through a faltering pack of Infardi troopers, dozer blade lowered, fighting to get a shot at the heavy gun units too. A tank round, coming from Emperor alone knew where, destroyed its starboard tracks and it lurched to a stop. The shrieking Infardi were all over it, mobbing the hull, their green figures swarming across the crippled tank. Rawne tried to direct some of his troop fire to assist the Conqueror, but the range was bad and they were too boxed in. Tank hatches were shot or blasted open, and the mob of Infardi dragged the Lion’s crew out screaming.
“Feth, no!” Rawne gasped, his warm exhalation becoming vapour.
Without warning, another tank round hit the Lion, and blew it apart, exploding several dozen Infardi with it. Killing the Imperial armour seemed to be all the enemy cared about.
In a snow-trench ten metres left of the major, Larkin cursed and yelled out “Cover me!” as he rolled back from his firing position. Troopers Cuu and Tokar moved up beside the prone Banda and resumed firing.
The barrel of Larkin’s long-las had failed. He unscrewed the flash suppressor and then twisted and pulled out the long, mined barrel. Larkin was so practiced at this task he could swap the XC 52/3 strengthened barrels in less than a minute. But his bag of spares was empty.
“Feth!” He crawled over to Banda, shots passing close over his head. “Verghast! Where’re your spare rods?”
Banda snapped off another shot, and then reached round and pulled the clasp of her pack open. “In there! Down the side!”
Larkin reached in and pulled out a roll of vizzy-cloth. There were three XC 52/3s wrapped in it. “This all you got?”
“It’s all Twenish was carrying!”
Larkin locked one into place, checked the line, and rescrewed his suppressor. “They’re not going to last any fething time at this pace!” he grunted.
“Should be more in the munition supplies, Tanith,” said Cuu, clipping a new power cell into his weapon.
“Yeah, but who’s going back into the Shrinehold to get them?”
“Point,” murmured Cuu.
Larkin blew on his mittened hands and began firing again. “What’s the tally?” he hissed at Banda.
“Twenty-three,” she said without looking round. Only two less than him. Feth, she was good. Then again, who wouldn’t score when they had this many damned targets to fire at?
Rawne got a fireteam forward as far as the cover provided by one of their own burning Chimeras. Lillo, Gutes, Cocoer and Baen dropped into the filthy snow beside him, firing through the raging smoke that boiled out of the machine. A moment later, Luhan, Filain, Caill and Mazzedo moved up close and provided decent crossfire under Feygor’s command.
Rawne waved a third team — Orul, Sangul, Dorro, Raess and Muril — round to the far side of the Chimera. They were reaching position when an Infardi counter-push hit. Two rounds from an AT70 erupted like small volcanoes in their midst. Filain and Mazzedo were obliterated instantly. Cocoer was gashed by flying metal and fell screaming. Steam rose from his hot blood in the chill air. Gutes and Baen ran forward to drag the bawling, bloody Tanith into cover, but Gutes was immediately hit in the leg by a las-round. Baen turned in surprise and took two hits in the lower back. His arms lurched up and he fell on his face.
Infardi troops rushed in from the left, weapons blazing. In the savage short-range firelight that followed, first Oral and then Sangul were killed by massive torso injuries. Dorro managed to get Baen and Cocoer into cover and then he was hit in the jaw with such destructive force his head was virtually twisted off.
Rawne found himself pinned with Luhan, Lillo, Feygor and Caill, firing in support of Raess and Muril who were closer to the trio of wounded Ghosts.
“Three! This is three! We’re pinned!”
The blackened wreckage of a Munitorium troop track fifty metres ahead splintered and rolled as something big pushed it aside. For a moment Rawne felt relief, sure it was one of the Pardus Conquerors.
But it wasn’t. It was a SteG 4, squirming through the heavy snowcover on tyres that were encrusted with slush, oil and blood.
“Feth! Back! Back!”
“Where the gak to, sir?” Lillo wailed.
The SteG fired and the whooping shell slammed through the dead Chimera.
There was a chilling wail from behind Rawne’s position. Part animal shriek, part pneumatic hiss, a sound that swooped from high pitch to low. The output of a powerful beam weapon ripped into the front of the SteG and a rash of pressurised flame blew out the side panels. It bounced to a halt, streaming smoke.
“Fall back! Get clear!” Commissar Hark yelled to Rawne and his soldiers as he fired again into the midst of a charging Infardi platoon. They half carried and half dragged Gutes, Cocoer and Baen back the twenty metres to the nearest snow-work cover.
“I’m surprised to see you,” Rawne told Hark flatly.
“I’m sure you are, major. But I wasn’t just going to sit in the Shrinehold and wait for the end.”
“You won’t have to wait long, commissar,” said Rawne, changing clips. “I’m sure you’ll be pleased to note that this is it. The last stand of Gaunt and his Ghosts.”
“I…” Hark began and then fell silent. As a commissar, even an unpopular, unwelcome one, it was his foremost duty to rally, to inspire the men and to quell just that kind of talk. But he couldn’t. Looking out at the forces that swept in to overran and slaughter them, there was no denying it.
The cold-blooded major was right.
In the very heaviest part of the battle, Gaunt knew it too. Troopers fell all around him. He saw Caffran, wounded in the leg, being dragged to cover by Criid. He saw Adare hit twice, convulse and drop. He saw two Verghastite Ghosts thrown into the air by a shell burst He almost fell over the stiffening corpse of Trooper Brehl, the blood spats from his wounds frozen like gemstones.
A las-round hit Gaunt in the left arm and spun him a little. Another passed through the skirt of his storm coat.
“First-and-Only!” he yelled, his breath smoking in the cold. “First-and-Only!”
Something happened to the sky. It changed abruptly from frozen chalk-white to fulminous yellow, swirling with cloud patterns. A sudden, almost hot wind surged up the gorge.
“What the gak is that?” Banda murmured.
“Oh no,” mumbled Larkin. “Chaos madness. Fething Chaos madness.”
Silent auroras of purple and scarlet rippled across the sky. Crimson blooms swirled out and stained the sky like ink spots in water. Lightning strikes, searing violet-white, sizzled and cracked down, accompanied by thunderclaps so loud they shook the mountain.
The savage fighting fo
undered and ceased. Beneath the alien deluge, the Infardi fled back down to the pass, leaving their wounded and their crippled machines behind them. The mass exodus was so sudden, they had cleared the approach fields of the Shrinehold in less than ten minutes.
The Imperials cowered in terror beneath the twisting lightshow. Vehicle engines stalled. Vox signals went berserk in whoops of interference and swarms of static. Many troopers wrenched their microbead ear-plugs out, wincing. Vox-officer Raglon’s ears were bleeding by the time he’d managed to pull off his headset. Wild static charge filled the air, crackling off weapons, making hair stand on end. Greenish corposant and ball lightning wriggled and flared around the eaves and roofs of the Shrinehold.
In the face of final defeat, something had saved Gaunt’s honour guard, or at least allowed it a temporary reprieve.
Ironically, that something was Chaos.
“I have consulted the monastery’s sensitives and psyker-adepts,” said ayatani-ayt Cortona. “It is a warp storm, a flux of the empyrean. It is affecting all space near Hagia.”
Gaunt sat on a stool in the Shrinehold’s main hallway, stripped to the waist as Medic Lesp sutured and bound up his arm. “The cause?”
“The arch-enemy’s fleet,” replied Cortona.
Gaunt raised an eyebrow. “But that’s not due to reach us for another five days.”
“I don’t believe it has. But a fleet of that size, moving through the aether, would create a massive disturbance, like the bow wave of a great ship, pushing the eddies and swirls of the warp ahead of it.”
“And that bow wave has just broken over Hagia? I see.” Gaunt stood up and flexed his bandaged arm. “Thanks, Lesp. Immaculate needlework as ever.”
“Sir. I don’t suppose there’s any point advising you to rest it?”
“None whatsoever. We get out of this, I’ll rest it all you like.”
“Sir.”
“Now get to the triage station and do some proper work. There are many more needy than me.”
Lesp saluted, collected up his medicae kit and hurried out. Pulling on his shirt, Gaunt walked with Cortona to one of the open shutters and gazed out at the seething, malign fury of the sky above the Sacred Hills.
“No getting off planet now.”
“Colonel-commissar?”
Gaunt looked round at the elderly high priest. “There’s nothing good about that storm, ayatani-ayt, but there’s some satisfaction to be derived from it at least. If I had followed my orders and returned to the Doctrinopolis, I wouldn’t have reached it until tomorrow, even under the best conditions. So even if I’d got in before the evacuation deadline, I’d have been trapped.”
“Like Lugo and the last few hundred ships undoubtedly are,” said Hark, suddenly there and in the conversation. A typical Hark-esque no-warning appearance.
“You sound almost pleased, Hark.”
“Hagia is about to be wiped from space, sir. Pleased is not the right word. But, like you, I wager, there is some cruel delight to be drawn from the idea of Lord General Lugo suffering along with us.”
Gaunt began to button up the braid froggings of his tunic. “Major Rawne, another bête noir of yours, told me you did us proud in the fight today. Saved him and a good many others.”
“It wasn’t service to you. It was service to the Golden Throne of Terra. I am a soldier of the Imperium and will make a good account of myself until death, the Emperor protects.”
“The Emperor protects,” nodded Gaunt. “Look, commissar… for whatever it’s worth, I have no doubts as to your courage, loyally or ability. You’ve fought well all the way along. You’ve tried to do your duty, even if I haven’t liked it. It took, I have to admit, a feth of a lot of guts to stand up in that room and try and take command off me.”
“Guts had nothing to do with it.”
“Guts had everything to do with it. I want you to know that you’ll receive no negative report from me… if and when I ever get to make one No matter what kind of report you choose to make. I bear you no ill will. I’ve always taken my duty to the Emperor fething seriously. Completely fething seriously. How could I possibly resent another man doing the same?”
“I… thank you for your civility and frankness. I wish things could have been… and could yet be… different between us. It would have been a pleasure to serve with you and the First-and-Only without this cloud of resentment hanging over me.”
Gaunt held out his hand and Hark shook it. “I think so too.”
The doors to the hall swung open and cold air billowed in, bringing with it Major Kleopas, Captain LeGuin, Captain Marchese and the Ghost officers Soric, Mkoll, Bray, Meryn, Theiss and Obel. They stomped their boots and brushed flakes from their sleeves.
“Join me,” Gaunt told Hark. They joined the officers.
“Gendemen. Where’s Rawne?”
“There was some perimeter alert, sir. He went to check it out,” said Meryn.
Gaunt nodded. “Any word on Corporal Mkteeg?”
“He was found alive, but badly shot up. They slaughtered his squad but for two other men,” said Soric.
“What is this, sir?” asked Corporal Obel. “What drove the Infardi back? I thought they had us there I really did.”
“They did, corporal. They honestly did. But for the damndest luck.” Gaunt quickly explained the nature of the storm effects as best as he understood it. “I think this sudden warp storm shocked the Ershul. I think they thought it was some apocalyptic sign from their Dark Gods and simply… lost it. It is an apocalyptic sign from their Dark Gods, of course. That’s the down side. Once they’ve regrouped, they’ll be back, and stronger too, would be my wager. They’ll know almighty hell is coming to help them.”
“So they’ll assault again?” asked Marchese.
“Before nightfall would be my guess, captain. We must restructure our force disposition in time to meet the Ershul’s next attack.”
“Is that what we’re calling them now, sir?” asked Soric. “Call them whatever you like, Soric”
“Bastards?” suggested Kleopas. “Scum-sucking warp-whores?” said Theiss.
“Targets?” said Mkoll quietly. The men laughed.
“Whatever works for you,” said Gaunt. Good, there was some damn morale left yet.
“Bray? Obel? Drag over that table there. Captain LeGuin, I see you’ve brought charts. Let’s get to work.”
They’d just spread out the tank hunter’s maps when Gaunt’s vox beeped.
“One, go.”
It was Vox-officer Beltayn. “Major Rawne says to get out front, sir. Something’s awry.”
“Awry! Always with that nervous, understated awry! What’s actually awry this time, Beltayn?”
“Sir… it’s the colonel, sir!”
Gaunt ran out down the steps, through the snow lying between the inner and outer walls, towards the gate.
Rawne and a section of men were just coming in, bringing with them ten haggard, stumbling figures, caked in dirt and rime, half-starved and weary.
Gaunt’s eyes widened. He came to a halt.
Trooper Derin. Try Again Bragg. The Verghastite Ghosts Vamberfeld and Nessa. Captain Daur, supporting a half-dead Pardus officer Gaunt didn’t know. Dorden… Great God-Emperor! Dorden! And Milo, Emperor protect him, carrying a Hagian girl in his arms.
And there, at the head of them, Colonel Colm Corbec. “Colm? Colm, what the feth are you doing here?” Gaunt asked.
“Did… did we miss all the fun, sir?” Corbec whispered, and pitched over into the snow.
SIXTEEN
INFARDI
“It was always her greatest weapon. Surprise, you would call it, I suppose. The scope of her ability to produce the unexpected. To turn the course of an engagement on its head, even the worst of defeats. I saw it happen many times. Something from nothing. Triumph from disaster. Until the very end, when at the last, she could no longer work her miracles. And she fell.”
—Warmaster Kiodrus,
from The Path to the
>
Nine Wounds: A History
of Service with the Saint
The night of the sixteenth day fell, but it was not proper night. The surging maelstrom of the warp storm lit the sky above the Shrinehold with pulses and cyclones of kaleidoscopic light and electromagnetic spectres. The snows had ceased, and under the silent, flickering glare, the embattled Imperials stood watch at battle-readiness, gazing at the reflections of the rapidly fluctuating colour patterns on the snowfield and the ice of the Sacred Hills.
It was the stillest time, almost tranquil. Vivid colour roiled and swelled, broke and ebbed, all across the heavens. Barely a breeze stirred. Perhaps as a result of the warp-eddies, the temperature had risen to just above zero.
In an anteroom in the monastery, ayatani carefully lit the oil lamps and then left without a word.
Gaunt put his cap and gloves on a side table. “I… I’m very pleased you’re here, but the commissar in me wants to know why. Feth, Colm! You were wounded and you had orders to evacuate!”
Corbec sat back on a daybed under the bolted, gloss-red shutters, his camo-cloak pulled around him like a shawl, and a cup of hot broth in his hands.
“Both facts true, sir. I’m afraid I can’t really explain it.”
“You can’t explain it?”
“No, sir. Not without sounding so mad you’ll have me clapped in irons and locked in a padded cell immediately.”
“Let’s risk that,” said Gaunt. He’d poured himself a glass of sacra, but realised he didn’t really want it. He offered it to Rawne, who shook his head, and then to Dorden, who took it and sipped it. The Tanith chief medic sat near the central fire pit. Gaunt had never seen him look so old or so tired.
“Tell him, Colm,” Dorden said. “Tell him, damn it. I didn’t believe you at first either, remember?”
“No, you didn’t.” Colm sipped his broth, put it down, and pulled a box of cigars from his hip pouch. He offered them around.
