by Dan Abnett
Daur barked out a few commands to calm the commotion in the hallway. He was young, only twenty-three, but tall and cleanly handsome, from a good mid-Spine family and the men liked him. They seemed to relax a little, seeing him so calm. Not that he felt calm.
“Alert duty stations,” Daur told them. “You there! Where’s your weapon?”
The trooper shrugged. “Came running when I heard the — Forgot it… sir…”
“Go back and get it, you dumb gak! Three days’ discipline duty — after this is over.”
The soldier ran off.
“Now!” cried Daur. “Let’s pretend we’ve actually been trained, shall we? Every man of you knows where he should be and what he should be doing, so go! In the hallowed name of the Emperor and in the service of the beloved hive!”
Daur headed uptower, pulling out his autopistol and checking its clip.
Corporal Bendace met him on the steps. Bendace had a data-slate in one hand and a pathetic moustache on his upper lip.
“Told you to shave that off,” Daur said, taking the slate and looking at it.
“I think it’s… dashing,” Bendace said soulfully, stroking it.
Daur ignored him, reading the slate. They hurried up the tower as troopers double-timed down. On a landing, they passed a corporal tossing autoguns from a wall rack to a line of waiting men.
“So?” asked Bendace as they started up the final flight to the fort-top.
“You know those rumours you heard? About Zoica going for another Trade War?”
“That confirms it?”
Daur pushed the slate back into Bendace’s hands with a sour look. “No. It doesn’t say anything. It’s just a deployment order from House Command in the Spine. All units are to take position, protocol gamma sigma. Wall and fort weapons to be raised.”
“It says that?”
“No, I’m making it up. Yes, it says that. Weapons raised, but not armed, until further House Command notice.”
“This is bad, isn’t it?”
Daur shrugged. “Define ‘bad’?”
Bendace paused. “I—”
“Bad is your facial growth. I don’t know what this is.”
They stepped out onto the windy battlements. Gun crews were raising the trio of anti-air batteries into position, hydraulic pistons heaving the weapon mounts up from shuttered hardpoints in the tower top. Autoloader carriages were being wheeled out from the lift-heads. Other troops had taken up position in the netted stub-nests. Cries and commands flew back and forth.
Daur crossed to the ramparts and looked around. At his back, the vast, smoke-hazed shape of the Main Spine itself rose into the sombre sky like a granite peak, winking with a million lights. To his right lay the glitter of the River Hass and the grimy shapes of the docks and outer habs on the far bank. Below him, the sweeping curve of the vast adamantine Curtain Wall curved away east to the smoke pall of the ore smelteries and the dark mass of the Spoil hunkered twenty-five kilometres further round the circumference of the city skirts.
To the south, the slum-growths of the outer habs outside the wall, the dark wheel-heads and gantries of the vast mining district, and the marching viaducts of the main southern rail link extended far away. Beyond the extremities of the hive, the grasslands, a sullen, dingy green, reached to the horizon. Visibility was medium. Haze shimmered the distance. Daur cranked a tripod-mounted scope around, staring out. Nothing. A pale, green, unresolvable nothing.
He stood back and looked around the ramparts. One of the anti-air batteries on the wall-top below was only half raised and troopers were cursing and fighting to free the lift hydraulics. Other than that, everything and everyone was in place.
The captain took up the handset of the vox-unit carried by a waiting trooper.
“Daur to all Hass West area positions. Reel it off.”
The junior officers sang over the link with quick discipline. Daur felt genuine pride. Those in his command had executed gamma sigma in a little under twelve minutes. The fort and the western portion of the wall bristled with ready weapons and readier men.
He glanced down. The final, recalcitrant anti-aircraft battery rose into place. The crew gave a brief cheer that the wind stole away, then pushed the autoloader-cart in to mate with it.
Daur selected a new channel.
“Daur, Hass West, to House Command. We are deployed. We await your orders.”
In the vast Square of Marshals, just inside the Curtain Wall, adjacent to the Heironymo Sondar Gate, the air shook with the thunder of three hundred tank engines. Huge Leman Russ war-machines, painted in the blue livery of Vervun Primary, revved at idle in rows across the square. More vehicles clanked and ground their way in at the back of the square, from the marshalling sheds behind the South-Hive barracks.
General Vegolain of the First Primary Armoured, jumped down from his mount, buckling on his leather head-shield, and approached the commissar. Vegolain saluted, snapping his jack-booted heels together.
“Commissar Kowle!”
“General,” Kowle replied. He had just arrived in the square by staff limousine, a sinister black vehicle that was now pulling away behind its motorbike escorts. There were two other commissars with him: Langana and the cadet Fosker.
Kowle was a tall, lean man who looked as if he had been forced to wear the black cap and longcoat of an Imperial commissar. His skin was sallow and taut, and his eyes were a disturbing beige.
Unlike Langana and Fosker, Kowle was an off-worlder. The senior commissar was Imperial Guard, seconded to watch over the Vervunhive standing army as a concession to its continued maintenance. Kowle quietly despised his post. His promising career with the Fadayhin Fifth had foundered some years before and against his will he had been posted to wet-nurse this toy army. Now, at last, he tasted the possibility of acquiring some glory that might rejuvenate his lustreless career.
Langana and Fosker were hive-bred, both from aspiring houses. Their uniform showed their difference from Kowle. In place of his Imperial double-eagle pins, they wore the axe-rake symbol of the VPHC, the Vervun Primary Hive Commissariat, the disciplinary arm of the standing army. The Sondar nobility was keen on discipline. Some even said that the VPHC was almost a secret police force, acting beyond the reach of the Administratum, in the interests of the ruling house.
“We have orders, commissar?”
Kowle scratched his nose absently and nodded. He handed Vegolain a data-slate.
“We are to form up at company strength and head out into the grasslands. I have not been told why.”
“I presume it is Zoica, commissar. They wish to spar with us again and—”
“Are you privy to the inter-hive policies of Zoica?” Kowle snapped.
“No, comm—”
“Do you then believe that rumour and dissent is a tool of control?”
“No, I—”
“Until we are told it is Zoica, it is no one. Is that clear?”
“Commissar. Will… will you be accompanying us?”
Kowle didn’t reply. He marched across to Vegolain’s Leman Russ and clambered aboard.
Three minutes later, the Sondar Gate opened with a great shriek of hydraulic compressors and the armoured column poured out onto the main south highway in triple file.
“Who has ordered this alarm?” The question came from three mouths at once, dull, electronic, emotionless.
Marshal Gnide, strategic commander of Vervun Primary and chief military officer of Vervunhive, paused before replying. It was difficult to know which face to answer.
“Who?” the voices repeated.
Gnide stood in the softly lit, warm audience hall of the Imperial House Sondar, at the very summit of the Main Spine. He wished he’d taken off his blue, floor-length, braid-trimmed greatcoat before entering. His plumed cap was heavy and itched his brow.
“It is necessary, High One.”
The three servitors, limp and supported only by the wires and leads that descended from the ceiling trackways, circled him.
One was a thin, androgynous boy with dye-stained skin. Another was a voluptuous girl, naked and branded with golden runes. The third was a chubby cherub, a toy harp in its pudgy hands, swan-wings sutured to its back. All of them lolled on their tubes and strings, blank-eyed.
Servos whined and the girl swung closer to Gnide, her limp feet trailing on the tiled floor.
“Are you my loyal marshal?” she asked, in that same flat monotone, that voice that wasn’t hers.
Gnide ignored her, looking past the meat puppet — as he called it — to the ornamental iron tank in the far corner of the room. The metal of the tank was dark and tarnished with startlingly green rust. A single round porthole looked out like a cataract-glazed eye.
“You know I am, High One.”
“Then why this disobedience?” the youth asked, atrophied limbs trembling as the strings and leads swung him round.
“This is not disobedience, High One. This is duty. And I will not speak to your puppets. I asked for audience with House Ruler Salvador Sondar himself.”
The cherub swung abruptly round into Gnide’s face. Sub-dermal tensors pulled its bloated mouth into a grin that was utterly unmatched by its dead eyes.
“They are me and I am them! You will address me through them!”
Gnide pushed the dangling cherub aside, flinching at the touch of its pallid flesh on his hand. He stalked up the low steps to the iron tank and stared into the lens port.
“Zoica mobilises against us, High One! A new Trade War is upon us! Orbital scans show this to be true!”
“It is not called Zoica,” the girl said from behind him. “Use its name.”
Gnide sighed. “Ferrozoica Hive Manufactory,” he said.
“At last, some respect,” rattled the cherub, bobbing around Gnide. “Our old foes, now our most worthy trading partners. They are our brethren, our fellow trade-hive. We do not raise arms against them.”
“With respect!” snapped Gnide. “Zoica has always been our foe, our rival. There were times last century they bettered us in output.”
“That was before House Sondar took the High Place here. Vervunhive is the greatest of all, now and ever after.” The youth-puppet began to drool slackly as it spoke.
“All Vervunhive rejoices that House Sondar has led us to domination. But the Legislature of the Noble houses has voted this hour that we should prepare for war. That is why the alarms were sounded.”
“Without me?” the girl hissed, flatly.
“As it is written, according to the customs, we signalled you. You did not reply. Mandate 347gf, as ratified by your illustrious predecessor, Heironymo, gives us authority to act.”
“You would use old laws to unseat me?” asked the cherub, clattering round on its strings to stare into Gnide’s face with dead eyes.
“This is not usurpation, High One. Vervunhive is in danger. Look!” Gnide reached forward and pressed a data-slate against the lens of the tank.
“See what the orbitals tell us! Months of silence from Zoica, signs of them preparing for war! Rumours, hearsay — why weren’t we told the truth? Why does this spring down on us so late in the day? Didn’t you know? You, all-seeing, all-knowing High One? Or did you just decide not to tell us?”
The puppets began to thrash and jiggle, knocking into Gnide. He pushed them off.
“I have been in constant dialogue with my counterpart in Ferrozoica Hive Manufactory. We have come to enjoy the link, the companionship. His Highness Clatch of House Clatch is a dear friend. He would not deceive me. The musterings along the Ferrozoica ramparts were made because of the crusade. Warmaster Slaydo leads his legions into our spatial territories; the foul enemy is resisting. It is a precaution.”
“Slaydo is dead, High One. Five years cold on Balhaut. Macaroth is the leader of the crusade now. The beloved Guard legions are sweeping the Sabbat Worlds clean of Chaos scum. We rejoice daily that our world, beloved Verghast, was not touched.”
“Slaydo is dead?” the three voices asked as one.
“Yes, High One. Now, with respect, I ask that we may test-start the Shield. If Zoica is massing to conquer us, we must be ready.”
“No! You undermine me! The Shield cannot be raised without my permission! Zoica does not threaten! Clatch is our friend! Slaydo is not dead!”
The three voices rose in a shrill chorus, the meat puppets quivering with unknowable rage.
“You would not have treated Heironymo with such disrespect!”
“Your brother, great one as he was, did not hide in an Awareness Tank and talk through dead servitors… High One.”
“I forbid it!”
Gnide pulled a glittering ducal seal from his coat. “The Legislature expected this. I am empowered by the houses of Vervunhive, in expediency, to revoke your powers as per the Act of Entitlement, 45jk. The Legislature commends your leadership, but humbly entreats you that it is now taking executive action.” Gnide pushed the puppets aside and crossed to a brass console in the far wall. He pressed the centre of the seal and data-limbs extended like callipers from the rosette with a machined click. Gnide set it in the lock and turned it.
The console flashed into life, chattering runes and sigils scrolling down the glass plate.
“No!” screeched the three voices. “This is insubordination! I am Vervunhive! I am Vervunhive!”
“You are dethroned for the good of the city,” Gnide snapped. He pressed the switches in series, activating the power generators deep beneath the hive. He entered the sequences that would engage the main transmission pylon and bring the Shield online.
The cherub flew at him. He batted it away and it upturned, tangling in its cords. Gnide punched in the last sequence and reached for the activation lever.
He gasped and fell back, reaching behind him. The girl puppet jerked away, a long blade wedged in her dead hands. The blade was dark with blood.
Gnide tried to close the gouting wound in his lower back. His knees gave and he fell. The girl swung in again and stuck the blade through his throat.
He fell, face down, soaking the carpet with his pumping blood.
“I am Vervunhive,” the girl said. The cherub and youth repeated it, dull and toneless.
Inside the iron tank, bathed in warm ichor and floating free, every organ and vessel connected by tubes to the life-bank, Salvador Sondar, High Master of Vervunhive… dreamed.
The salt grasses were ablaze. All along the scarp rise, Vervun Primary tanks were buckled and broken amid the rippling, grey grass, fire spilling out of them. The air was toxic with smoke.
Commissar Kowle dropped clear of the command tank as flames within consumed the shrieking Vegolain and his crew. Kowle’s coat was on fire. He shed it.
Enemy fire pummelled down out of the smoke-black air. A Vervun tank a hundred metres away exploded and sent Shockwaves of whickering shrapnel in all directions.
One shard grazed Kowle’s temple and dropped him.
He got up again. Crews were bailing from burning tanks, some on fire, some trying to help their blazing fellows. Others ran.
Kowle walked back through the line of decimated hive armour, smelling the salt grass as it burned, thick and rancid in his nose.
He pulled out his pistol.
“Where is your courage?” he asked a tank gunner as he put a round through his head.
“Where is your strength?” he inquired of two loaders fleeing up the slope, as he shot them both.
He put his muzzle to the head of a screaming, half-burned tank captain and blew out his brains. “Where is your conviction?” Kowle asked.
He swung round and pointed his pistol at a group of tank crewmen who were stumbling up the grassy rise towards him from their exploded tank.
“Well?” he asked. “What are you doing? This is war. Do you run from it?”
They hesitated. Kowle shot one through the head to show he meant business.
“Turn! Face the foe!”
The remaining crewmen turned and fled towards the enemy positions. A tank r
ound took them all apart a second later.
Missiles strafed in from the low, cloudlike meteorites and sundered twenty more tanks along the Vervun formation. The explosions were impossibly loud. Kowle was thrown flat in the grass.
He heard the clanking as he rolled over. On the far rise, battletanks and gun platforms painted in the ochre livery of Zoica rolled down towards him.
A thousand or more.
Out of nowhere, just before nightfall, about a half-hour after the klaxons had stopped yelping, the first shells fell, unexpected, hurled by long-range guns beyond the horizon.
Two fell short on the southern outer habs, kicking up plumes of wreckage from the worker homes.
Another six dented the Curtain Wall.
At Hass West, Daur yelled to his men and cranked the guns around. A target… give me a target… he prayed.
Dug-in Zoica armour and artillery, hidden out in the burning grasslands, found their range. Shells began to drop into the hive itself.
A gigantic salvo hit the railhead at Veyveyr Gate and set it ablaze. Several more bracketed the Vervun Primary barracks and atomised over a thousand troopers waiting for deployment.
Another scatter pounded the northern habs along the river. Derricks and quays exploded and shattered into the water. In mid-stream, Folik’s over-laden ferry was showered with burning debris. Folik tried to turn in the current, yelling for Mincer. Another shell fell in the water nearby, drenching the screaming passengers with stinking river water. The ferry wallowed in the blast-wake.
Two more dropped beyond the Magnificat, exploding and sinking the ferry Inscrutable, which was crossing back over the tideway. The Inscrutable
went up in a shockwave that peppered the water with debris. Diesel slicks burned on the choppy surface.
