[Gaunt's Ghosts 03] - Necropolis

by Dan Abnett

  Baffels led Venar and the others and proceeded to clear the rest of the yard. A few brief exchanges with retreating Zoicans left more ochre bodies lying on or between the rails.

  Milo could hear something else now, over the shooting and Wheln’s shrieking and the constant thunder of the main battle.

  Voices. Chanting voices, low and slick and evil.

  The ammo-can clacked dry and the autocannon was useless. Corbec threw it aside and pulled his lasrifle off his shoulder, opening up again. His unit was right at the gate now, embroiled in an entirely structureless fight with the main force of the Zoican shock-troops. The fight blasted through the ruined outbuildings of the gatehouse complex and across the rubble-thick ground in the gate-mouth itself.

  There were Zoicans everywhere.

  Corbec had ceased to be a commander. There was nothing to command. He was simply a man fighting with every iota of strength and stamina left in him. He fought to stay alive and to kill the ochre shapes that drove at him from all sides.

  It was the same for all the Ghosts in that engagement. The only thing that slowed the tide of Zoican invasion was the width of the blasted gate. In an open field, the forty or so Ghosts with Corbec would have been overrun long since.

  Corbec was bleeding from a dozen light wounds. Those enemies he didn’t kill outright with las-fire he demolished with blows from his rifle-stock and stabs of his bayonet.

  Dremmond was suddenly alongside him, swathing the enemy in a wide cone of flames. The flamer pack on his back stuttered. Corbec knew that sound. The tanks were almost dry.

  He yelled at Dremmond to wash the gates. What little flame they had left could best be used burning the entrance out.

  Dremmond swung around, his spurting fire twisting like a whip. A dozen Zoicans crumpled, armour burning and melting off them. Some became torches that stumbled a few paces before they fell.

  Dremmond bought Corbec a moment to think.

  Corbec crossed, firing still, towards the wound-peppered wall of an outbuilding, glad he had jammed all the energy clips he could find into his jacket pockets that dawn.

  Genx was in cover by the wall. By now the pain was beginning to trickle through and Genx was pale with trauma. Without his hand, he couldn’t handle a lasrifle, although there were several fallen nearby, dropped by dead Zoicans and Tanith alike.

  Corbec handed Genx his laspistol and the lad — Genx was no more than twenty, though built like a ox — began to crack away at any target in sight.

  Supported by a trio of men, Sergeant Fols covered the entrance to a stairwell in the gatehouse, its roof blown off by the advance of the first flat-crab earlier. The blackened corpses of Vervun Primary gunners from the upper ramparts lay all around, amid the twisted wreckage of their fallen guns and piles of ceramite chunks.

  Fols looked up at the mighty gate that they fought to protect. It was almost painful to see it with the top blown away, just two great gate towers adjoining the splintered Curtain Wall. The fort on top had fallen in and its debris made up the ground they fought over.

  Fols also noticed how the Shield above them was rough-edged and intermittent. The death of the flat-crab which had blown out the arch of the massive gate had also taken down a relay station, and the Shield canopy was fraying and sparking out over them.

  Fols felt wet and realised it was rain. The torrential downpour outside was still hammering and now, with the Shield ripped back for a hundred metres or so, it was falling on them too.

  The ground was turning to mush as the rain made gluey soup out of the ankle-deep ash.

  The Ghost next to Fols dropped wordlessly, his jaw vaporised. Streams of rain ran down them all, colouring with blood and dirt.

  Fols rounded his two remaining men into the staircase, firing across the gate. The rain and smoke was killing visibility.

  Fols saw the bright blurt of Dremmond’s flamer a little way off, saw how the rain made steam off the white-hot blasts and heated stones.

  The man next to him yelled something and Fols realised there were Zoican shock troops spilling over the side walls behind them by the dozen.

  He turned, killed three. A welter of las-shots cut his men apart and splashed the wall they had just been using for cover with their blood. Fols lost a knee, an eye, an elbow and a fourth shot tore through his belly.

  He was still firing when a Zoican bayonet impaled him to the wall.

  The chanting continued. The Zoican shock forces were pushing through Veyveyr Gate holding banner-poles aloft, the whipping flags marked with the symbol of Ferrozoica and with other emblems that stung the eyes and nauseated the gut: the runes and badges of the Chaos pestilence that had overwhelmed them.

  Some of the Zoicans had loudhailers wired and bolted to their helmet fronts and were broadcasting abominable hymns of filth and whining prayers of destruction.

  From his position, Corbec knew the Zoicans believed their victory was assured.

  He wished he could deny it, but with the pitiful numbers left to him, he didn’t stand a chance.

  He changed clips again, throwing the dead one away into the rubble. Next to him, Genx and two other troopers reloaded.

  They would kill as many as they could. In the name of the Emperor, there was no more they could do.

  Data-pulses told him the fighting was intense, bestial. But it was so very far away. It came to him only as unemphatic bursts of information, unemotional cascades of facts.

  Salvador Sondar drifted in his Iron Tank. He was becoming increasingly disinterested in the trials of the hive soldiers. What was happening at Croe Gate and, more vitally, at Veyveyr was an inconsequential dream to him.

  All that really mattered now to the High Master of Vervunhive was the chatter.

  A rocket cremated Trooper Feax and threw Larkin into the air. He came down hard amid the rubble and the bodies, ears dead, vision swimming and his beloved rifle nowhere in sight.

  He clambered up. He had been with Corbec’s unit at the gate. That was the last thing he remembered.

  His hearing began to return. He heard the wretched chanting of the Zoican advance as from underwater. He saw the las-fire and banner poles as dancing bright colours in the smoke.

  A Zoican was right on top of him, glaring down out of that fearsome mask-visor, stabbing with his bayonet.

  Larkin lurched aside and fell off a length of wall, two metres down to a bed of debris below. Ignoring his spasming back, he yanked out his silver Tanith knife and leapt at the Zoican the moment he reappeared over the gully-lip.

  The Zoican bayonet cut through Larkin’s sleeve. He slammed the brute back over into the rubble and pushed his blade in, trying to find a space between the ochre armour plating.

  It went in, just below the neck seal of the battle-suit. Foul-smelling blood began to spurt out over Larkin’s arm and hand, and it stung like acid.

  The Zoican thrashed and spasmed. Larkin fought back, clawing, kicking and wrenching on his blade’s grip.

  He and the Zoican rolled twenty metres down the rubble slope. At the foot, Larkin’s frantic efforts ripped the Zoican’s helmet off.

  He was the first person in Vervunhive to see the face of the enemy, square on, naked, shorn of armour or mask or visor.

  Larkin screamed.

  And then stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

  A torrent of las-fire cut across the gate from the west. Zoicans crumpled, falling on their banner poles, loudspeakers exploding as they died. Corbec and his men, amazed, pushed around to support, hammering into the halted storm force with renewed vigour.

  Nine platoons of Vervun Primary troops funnelled in across the open gate from the west with Commissar Kowle at the head.

  Kowle had headed for Veyveyr Gate from House Command the moment the action began at dawn and it had taken him until now — almost noon — to reach the front. Unable to reach Modile or any Vervun command group, he had grabbed Vervun troops by force of authority and personality alone and led them towards the gate flanked by Bulwar’s men an
d armour.

  Kowle was singing an Imperial hymn at the top of his lungs and firing with a storm bolter.

  Bulwar’s NorthCol units pressed in behind, and Bulwar had the sense to spread them east to reinforce the failing Tanith line.

  Corbec couldn’t believe his eyes. At last, a co-ordinated effort. He rallied his remaining men and scoured the eastern flank of the gate for signs of Zoicans. His support helped Kowle reach the gate itself, a gate that had been held by the Tanith alone for more than an hour.

  The three prongs — Tanith, Vervun and NorthCol — pushed the Zoicans back out into the outer habs and the torrential rain. Kowle moved his units aside to allow Bulwar’s armour to finish the job and block the gate, though not before the commissar had posed for propaganda shots that were quickly relayed across the entire public-address system of the hive: Kowle, victorious in the blasted mouth of Veyveyr; Kowle, blasting at the enemy; Kowle, holding the Vervun banner aloft on a heap of rubble as Vervun Primary troops mobbed to help him plant the flag-spike in the ground.

  By early afternoon, the gate was held fast by fifty tanks of the NorthCol armoured. Kowle was once more the People’s Hero. The battle for Veyveyr Gate was over.

  At Croe Gate, as news of the overturn reached the Zoican elements, the fighting diminished. Nash sighed in relief as the enemy withdrew from the smouldering gate-hatches. He ordered the wall guns to punish them anyway.

  None of the victorious public-address messages mentioned the losses: 440 Vervun Primary and 200 Roane Deepers at Croe Gate, 500 Vervun “Spoilers” along the Spoil, 3,500 Vervun Primary, 900 NorthCol and almost a hundred Tanith at Veyveyr. They had a victory and a hero, and that was all that mattered.

  Gaunt and his small reinforcement group reached Veyveyr just as the battle was ending. Gaunt was hot with anger and determination.

  Daur led him down a trench to the Vervun Primary Command post where Colonel Modile was rallying men and directing vox-links.

  Modile looked around as Gaunt strode into the culvert shelter, stony-faced.

  “The battle is over. We have won. Vervunhive is victorious,” Modile said blankly into Gaunt’s face.

  “I’ve been listening to the vox. I know what occurred here. You balked, Modile. You lost control. You hid. You shut down the vox-channels when you didn’t like what you heard.”

  Modile shrugged vacuously at Gaunt. “But we won…”

  The Tanith troops stepped into the command post around Gaunt. Even Daur, grim-faced, had a weapon drawn.

  “Round up all the officers and detain them. I want a transcript of all vox-traffic,” Gaunt ordered. The Ghosts fanned out to do so and the Vervun Primary staffers blinked in confusion as they were jostled around.

  “What are you doing?” Modile asked haughtily. “This is my gakking command area!”

  “And you’ve commanded what, exactly? A bloodbath. You dismay me, Modile. Men were shrieking for orders and support, and you ignored them. I heard it all.”

  “It was a difficult incident,” Modile said.

  “I have a reputation, Modile,” Gaunt said, “a reputation as a fair, honest man who treats his soldiers well and supports them in the face of darkness. Potentially, that reputation makes me soft. It seems I understand failure and forgive it.

  “Some, like Kowle, believe me to be a weak commissar, not prepared to take the action my rank demands. Not prepared to enforce field discipline where I see it failing.”

  Gaunt removed his cap and handed it to Daur. He stared at Modile, who still wasn’t sure what was going on.

  “I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly and the treasonous.”

  “Gaunt, I—” Modile began.

  “Commissar Gaunt. Do not speak further. You have cost lives this day.”

  Modile backed away, suddenly, horribly realising what was happening.

  Gaunt took his bolt pistol from his holster. “For courtesy, choose: a firing squad of your own men or a summary execution.”

  Modile stammered, lost control of his bowels and turned to run.

  Gaunt shot him through the head.

  “Have it your own way,” he said sadly.

  TEN

  CASUALTIES

  “There came a point, a few years into my career, when I knew I had seen enough. Since then, I have seen a lot more, but I have Mocked it out. The soul stands only so much.”

  —Surgeon Master Goleca, after the

  Exsanguination of Augustus IX

  From the sound of it, there was a hell of a brawl going on at Veyveyr Gate. The sky under the Shield blazed up at intervals with explosive light, and sound drummed across the hive. It had been going on since daybreak.

  The baby, Yoncy, was crying plaintively and making sobbing, sucking noises. It had been doing it all night. Tona wasn’t sure what to do. Dalin was sullen and quiet, and he slept in the back of the trash-cave most of the time.

  Tona crawled forward out of her dugout and looked across the shell-ruined slopes. Below, half a kilometre away, lay the fenced and razor-wired troop billet of Gavunda Chem Plant Storebarns/Southwest.

  That was where the off-world soldiers lived, the pale-skinned, dark-haired ones with their black costumes and blue tattoos. Tona wondered if they came from a hiveworld too, if the blue tats were gang badges or rank marks.

  She dreamed of their food. There was a banquet fit for the Emperor secured down there in the back sheds. She’d sent Dalin in to scrounge and steal a few times, but it was getting dangerous.

  Tona knew it was up to her now. The baby was weak and crying. She needed milk powder and basic nutrient paste.

  There were over a thousand other refugees hiding in the trash slopes and crater-plains in the shell-flattened manufactories near to her, but she never thought to ask any for help. Everyone in Vervunhive was on their own now.

  A particularly fierce airburst cracked the sky above Veyveyr, and Tona turned to look. She’d been to Veyveyr railhead a few times and had stood in the glass hall of the main station, now long gone, watching the snooty up-Spine travellers move to and fro from platforms. Her twice-uncle Rika had run a snack-stall there, and she’d also been a part of a pocket-prey team for a few months.

  The Grand Terminus had awed her, even as she worked it. It had seemed to her a doorway to anywhere. If she’d had the credit, she’d have jumped a train south to the tropical hives, to the archipelago, maybe even to Verghast Badport where, so they said, it was possible to buy a route to anywhere, including off-world.

  Veyveyr Gate had always seemed to her a way off this rock. A possible future. A promise.

  Now it was dead and burned out, and callous, off-world soldiers dirtied it with brutal war.

  The baby was squalling again. Tona edged out of her bunker and looked back at Dalin. “Stay with her. I’ll be back soon with food.”

  Tona slid down the rubble stacks and moved towards the wire fence of the troop compound.

  Tona crossed the ruinscape of the manufactories, industrial areas that had been levelled on that first day before the Shield lit up. Shattered rockcrete buildings flanked the lips of craters twenty metres across or more. Ruptured metal sheeting and snapped pipes poked from the brick dust. Unrecognisable pieces of burnt machinery scattered the ground.

  Bodies lay where they had fallen and after a month these were nothing more than loose husks of shrivelled bone and ragged clothing. The rescue teams had taken away most of the wounded in the initial recovery and habbers had carried their own dead out. But still bodies remained, crumpled and half-buried in the wide ruin. Carrion-dogs, lean, diseased and mangy, haunted the rubble, scavenging what they could — like her, she supposed, though unlike the hounds, she drew the line at feeding off corpses. There was a stagnant, rotten smell to the place and sickness lingered. Thousands like her, mostly low-caste or the dispossessed from the outer habs, had made
this place a temporary home when the main refuge camps had over-spilled. Tona Criid, like many of Vervunhive’s base-level citizens, avoided the refuges, for though they offered food and medical rations, they also represented authority and prejudice. The VPHC controlled most refuges brutally.

  She saw others prowling the ruins. Adults mostly, a few children, all thin and dark with filth, their clothes wretched and ragged. Some stared at her as she passed; some ignored her. None spoke.

  She passed a store block where parts of the side windows were intact and she saw her own reflection. It shocked her. A straggly, pale thing with dirty clothes and sunken eyes looked back at her. She had expected to see the bright-eyed, cocky hab-girl with the flashy piercings and snarling smile.

  Seeing the leanness of her own face, she realised how hungry she was. She’d been blocking the feeling. Her empty belly knotted and ached with such sudden fury that she dropped to the ground for a moment, sitting on a cinder block until the pain eased enough for her to stand without cramps or wooziness.

  She took the flask from her belt and sipped a few, precious mouthfuls from the drink-spout. Half full, it was the last of a box of electrolyte fluid bottles she’d recovered from a mining store near Vervun Smeltery One. She was sure that the fluid-packs were the main reason she’d kept herself and the children alive for the last month.

  She hooked the flask back onto her belt and then took out her blade. The back fence of the military compound was just a few metres away now. It seemed deserted. Maybe they were all fighting at the gate. It sounded like it.

  Her brother Nake had given her the blade on her tenth year-day, just a few weeks before he was killed in a gangfight in Down-Reach under the Main Spine. Nake Criid had been a member of the Verves, one of the key under-gangs, and the knife’s handle was decorated with a carefully carved Verve crest: a laughing skull resting in the dip of a gothic V Tona sported a few gang badges herself — an ear-stud, a buckle, a small snake-tat on her shoulder — but she’d never been properly blooded into any gang to speak of. She had run with a few gang crowds and known a boy or two who’d been gang-blooded. While she was with them, they’d each tried to induct her, but she’d resisted. The one thing Tona Criid had always known, ever since Nake had died of stab wounds in an unlit, Down-Reach sewer seven years ago, was that ganger life was dumb and pointless and short. She’d make her own way in life, be her own master, or get nowhere at all.