by Dan Abnett
Gilbear fired twice, blowing open holes in the lower belly of the thing. These issued spurts of stagnant pus onto the carpet. Then the Blueblood colonel was flying through the air, tossed aside by a twist of the huge horns.
Backing frantically, the other Volpone fired wildly. Blubbery, wet punctures appeared in the creature’s flank, some oozing filmy fluid, others erupting with sprays of tissue and watery blood. A cloned human arm was blown right off and lay twitching on the ground.
A screaming Volpone was hoisted into the air and shaken violently to death, impaled through the chest on one of the horns. Another was crushed under the meat-beast’s bulk, leaving a trampled mess of blood, bone and broken armour pressed into the carpet. Grasping limbs and curling pseudopods caught hold of a third and began to pull him apart, slowly and inexorably. His agonised wailing drowned out the meat-beast’s keening roar.
Gaunt scrambled up, dazed, and shot the clasped Volpone through the head to end his drawn-out death. He fired again and again, until the sickle clip of his bolt gun was empty, the powerful close-range shots blowing chunks of raw meat and translucent fat out of the creature. Blood and ichor spurted from the wounds.
The monster wheeled round at Gaunt, wailing. Head down, it charged him and the horns, one still decorated with the limp corpse of the Volpone soldier, smashed into the chamber wall, gouging the ceramite facing. Gaunt dived aside, swinging his chainsword round with both hands. The purring blade sliced through the top of the skull and chopped one of the horns off. Then Gaunt was rolling away again, trying to stay out of reach of the biting maw that chased after him, drooling spittle. With its attention on Gaunt, the meat-beast had turned away from the remaining Volpone and they resumed firing, ripping into the thing’s hindquarters but apparently doing nothing to slow it down.
Gaunt knew that daemonic force pulsed inside the beast, a life-energy that animated it beyond any considerations of physical function. If there was a brain or any vital organs at all, they would be useless as targets. The thing wasn’t alive in any real sense. It couldn’t be killed the way a human could be killed.
Daur was firing too now, as were the remaining House Croe guards, and Kowle had scooped up the weapon of a dead Volpone, adding his own shots to the fight. Chass was slumped limply in a corner, unconscious. There was no sign of Sturm.
Gaunt hacked into the thing again, ripping through ribs. His chainsword was matted and clogged with the beast’s fluid and tissue, and steam was rising from the blade where it was being eaten away by the toxic deposits.
Gaunt cursed. Delane Oktar, his old mentor, now long dead, had given him that sword on Darendara, right at the start of his career, when he had still been green and eager. He had carried it ever since, all through his time with the Hyrkans until his service under Slaydo at Balhaut, and beyond to Tanith and every victory of his beloved Ghosts. Its destruction hurt him more than he could say. It took the past from him, took his memories and victories away.
He jammed the dying blade into the beast’s shoulder, kicking out a wash of toxic blood and bone chips. Wedged fast, the sword disintegrated and the power unit in the grip exploded. Gaunt was thrown backwards.
The thing lunged down after him, biting at his kicking boots as he scrambled backwards on his backside. Isak and two of the Volpone surged forward, firing to cover him and draw the thing away. As it wheeled on them, Gaunt found himself dragged clear. It was Gilbear. Blood flecked the front of his armaplas chestplate and there was rage in his eyes. He hauled Gaunt back towards the green bulk of the iron tank.
Another Volpone was caught by the beast’s clamping jaws and shredded by savage bites of its teeth. The walls and drapes of the audience hall were sprayed heavily with blood now.
The creature turned on Isak, snapping off his head and shoulders with one crushing bite. His body fell beneath its clawing, stamping legs.
“A gun!” Gaunt yelled to Gilbear.
“Lost mine!” replied the Blueblood colonel, referring to the hellgun that had been tossed aside with him. He had out his powerful sidearm, a long-barrelled autogun plated with chrome. He put shell after shell into the creature’s neck.
Gaunt scrambled forward, retrieving his boltgun, and slammed a fresh clip into the receiver. He would kill this thing before he died. By the ghosts of Tanith, he would.
The meat-beast slew one of the remaining Croe guards and flew at Daur and Kowle, trailing meat and blood from its mouth. Both men stood their ground, exhibiting levels of bravery as high as any Gaunt had ever witnessed. They pumped relentless shots into the approaching nightmare. Nothing slowed it.
Hastily they both dived aside. Daur rolled into Chass’ crumpled body and frantically tried to reload.
Kowle landed on a Volpone corpse. The creature headed for him.
“Get clear!” Gaunt bellowed. Kowle was apparently fumbling with the dead Blueblood’s equipment belts. Gaunt and Gilbear fired again in a futile attempt to drop the thing.
At the final moment, Kowle turned and rose. He faced the rushing beast with his arms held out. He was clutching a canvas web of grenades. The meat-beast bit his arms off at the elbows and Kowle tumbled backwards, blood jetting from the stumps. He didn’t make a sound.
The creature convulsed, retched and exploded from within. Its massive torso blew out in a rush of flame and body matter. A spinning section of rib, thrown out by the blast, stuck quivering into the wall near Gaunt like a spear. Flames gouted out of the huge mouth.
The beast collapsed onto the floor, pulling feed lines and wires out of the ceiling. The pool of stinking fluid spreading beneath it began to burn the carpet away.
With Gilbear behind him, Gaunt crossed to the carcass. “We need a flamer. We need to burn this abomination as soon as possible.”
“Yes, colonel-commissar,” Gilbear answered, turning to the surviving Volpone.
Kowle, on his back in a widening circle of blood, was still alive. Gaunt knelt beside him, soaking his knees.
“Said… you… didn’t have the balls,” Kowle said, his voice so weak it was barely audible.
Gaunt had no words for him.
“Envy you…”
“What?” Gaunt asked, bending closer.
“Balhaut… you were there at the victory, with the warmaster. I envy you. I would have given… everything to share in that…”
“Pius, you—”
“Shut up, Gaunt… not interested in… anything you have to say to me. You took my honour away, you… ruined me. I hope the Emperor… will forgive you for robbing Terra of a… great leader like me…”
Gaunt shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Kowle’s rank studs and cap badge. Carefully and deferentially, he pinned them back in place. Kowle seemed to notice what Gaunt was doing, though his eyes were wide and dilated, and the blood was now merely trickling from his ghastly stumps.
“Goodbye, commissar. You gave your best.”
Gaunt saluted, a sharp, smart gesture he hadn’t made in a long time.
Kowle smiled, barely, then died.
Gaunt got up from the corpse of the People’s Hero and crossed to the awareness tank. “Get Lord Chass up. Get the Shield back on,” he said to Daur sourly. Daur nodded and began to raise the feeble Verghast noble.
Gilbear joined Gaunt at the tank. They looked down at the thickly glazed porthole.
“Come up with a way for me to pay you back as soon as you can,” Gaunt said, not looking round at the Volpone.
“What?”
“You pulled me clear of the beast. I don’t want to be in the debt of a high-caste bastard like you any longer than I have to be.”
Gilbear grinned. “I think I may have underestimated you, Gaunt. I had no idea you were such an arrogant swine.”
Gaunt glanced round. It would take another Ibram Gaunt and a whole different universe for there to be any trust or comradeship between him and Gilbear. But for now, in the thick of this nightmare, Gaunt couldn’t help respecting the soldier, for that was what h
e was: a devoted soldier of the God-Emperor, just like Gaunt. They didn’t have to like each other to make it work. A measure of understanding and honour between them was enough.
Gaunt bent down to look through the port glass, and Gilbear did likewise at his side.
Through the fog of murky, phlogistic fluid, they could just make out a frail, naked body, withered and corrupted, drifting inside the tank, its skull linked to wires and cables that curled upwards to the roof.
“We can call it quits if you let me finish this,” said Gilbear.
“He’s all yours,” said Gaunt.
Gilbear smirked, arming the hellgun he had just retrieved. “What about your due process? What about taking the law into your own hands?” he asked sarcastically.
“I can dispense it. I’m a commissar. That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
Gilbear nodded and fired two shots through the portal window. Filthy green water rushed out in torrents, flooding the floor. Steam rose from it.
Gilbear leaned down once the force of the outrush slackened, and he watched the twitching, spasming form of the High Master trembling in his draining tank. He fired a grenade in through the broken port and turned away.
A dull crump and the sheet of steam that billowed out of the window hole marked the end of Salvadore Sondar, High Master of Vervunhive.
Daur had carried Chass over to the brass console in the wall and he helped the enfeebled lord punch in the override settings. Chass mumbled the codes to Daur just in time. The noble was dead by the time Gaunt reached them.
The runic sigils on the console plate asked for a noble geno-print. Gaunt simply lifted one of Chass’ limp hands and pressed it to the reader-slate.
“Sic semper tyrannis, Lord Chass,” Gaunt whispered.
“Did he see victory, sir?” asked Daur.
“He saw enough. We’ll find out if this is a victory or not.”
Automated systems cycled and whirred. Deep in the bowels of Vervun-hive, field batteries throbbed. The pylon crackled and the anchor stations that remained intact raised their masts.
With a resounding, fulminating crack and a reek of ozone, the Shield was reignited.
Ibram Gaunt left the audience hall of House Sondar and walked up onto an enclosed roof terrace that overlooked the entire hive. Fires burned below, thousands of them, and streaks of constant shelling lit the air. The Shield overhead glowed and crackled.
Now the Last Ditch had begun.
FIFTEEN
DAY THIRTY-FIVE
“Target and deny! By our deaths shall they know us!”
—General Coron Grizmund, at the start
of the Narmenian counterattack
Overnight, between the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth days of the war, Vervunhive had come to the brink of destruction. Now, like a clenching muscle, the Imperial forces tightened and backed through the inner habs and elite sectors, resisting the encircling foe. For all their massive numbers, the Zoicans could only attack by land with the Shield reactivated. The dense streets, city blocks, habitats and thoroughfares favoured the defenders, who could dig in and hold the Zoican push.
Corday and Rawne dragged their forces back from Veyveyr into the worker habs a bare half hour before they could be encircled by enemy forces reaching upwards from Sondar Gate. NorthCol and Vervun Primary battalions pushed west to support the retreating Roane, still resisting street by street as they fell back from the Croe and Ontabi Gates. Colonel Bulwar had nominal command of that front.
Five thousand Vervun Primary troopers under Captain Cargin still held the Hass West Fort fast, though looping columns of Zoican infantry were beginning to bracket them through the chemical plant district.
Throughout the inner habs south of the Main Spine, Imperial units tried to stem the advance. Sergeant Bray directed the Tanith in the wastes north of the chem district. Volpone, NorthCol and Vervun Primary sections strung out to his east, where Corbec’s remaining Tanith and a force of Roane Deepers under Major Relf had consolidated a wide area of manufactories.
The fighting there was thick, as thick as any in the hive. Guild Githran Agricultural had been held since the small hours of the morning. Corbec’s platoons had precious little ammo left and no food. They had been fighting all-out for six hours straight. Enemy flamer-tanks holding the north-south arterial highway rightly were preventing the Tanith from obtaining munitions from the better-provided Roane, just half a kilometre away to the east. The Tanith were forced to scavenge for ammo, running out of cover in twos and threes to loot the fallen Zoicans. At least with the Shield reactivated, they were spared the worst of the shelling, though the enemy armour and field pieces now set up inside the Shield dome were unrelenting.
Baffels whistled a command, and Milo, Neskon and Cocoer dashed from the cover of a derelict abattoir and scurried towards a burning textile mill. Dremmond covered their run with spurts from his flamer. The three Tanith had bayonets fixed. They were all out of ammo, except Cocoer, who had only a handful of shots left.
Six Zoicans lay dead behind the rear wall of the mill. The trio descended on them and stripped them of las-cells. Each corpse had six or seven as well as musette bags filled with stick grenades.
Milo looked up. The air throbbed with las-fire and though the Shield had shut out the rain, the ground was slick and muddy. Me pulled Neskon down into cover. Enemy fire chased down the mill wall, cracking holes in the plaster facing and puffing out brick dust.
A fireteam of Zoican stormtroopers was advancing through the ruins to the west of the mill. Cocoer now had a fresh clip in his Guard-issue weapon and he fired twice, missing his targets but causing the Zoicans to duck and cover.
“We’re pinned!” Milo hissed into his microbead.
“Stay down,” the voice of Sergeant Baffels crackled back.
They did. Neskon poked his head up long enough to be shot at.
“Come on, Baffels!” Milo added urgently. They could hear the crunching footfalls of the Zoicans barely ten paces from their cover.
“Just another moment,” Baffels reassured his friend.
Loud las-shots cracked over the ruins, single shots, high-powered.
“You’re clear! Go!” Baffels squawked.
Milo led the way, Neskon and Cocoer on his heels. He got a glimpse of the Zoicans behind him, sprawled dead from clean head-shots.
Milo smiled.
The trio slid into cover in the agricultural manufactory, safe behind a solid ceramite wall. Baffels and other Tanith crowded round them as they shared out the clip-cells and the stick-bombs.
Milo looked across the roofless factory-space and saw Larkin dug in high up near a vent hatch. The Tanith snipers, along with the Spoilers, had drawn back from the Spoil. Milo had known that the precision killing of the Zoicans had been the work of marksmen.
He flashed a grin up at Larkin. The weasely sniper winked back.
Milo handed a cell to Baffels. “Your turn next time,” he joked.
“Of course,” said Baffels. Hours before he had ceased to recognise the humour in anything.
“Colm?”
Corbec looked up out of the loophole he was holding, his shaggy head coated in soot and grime. He shot a beaming grin when he saw Mkoll.
“About time you got here.”
“Came as fast as we could. The bastards have the Spoil now. We left it to them.”
Corbec got up and slapped Mkoll on the arm. “You all make it through?”
“Yeah, Domor, Larkin, MkVenner — all the boys. I’ve spread them out through our lines.”
“Good work. We need good marksman coverage all along. Feth, but this is ugly work.”
They looked round, hearing angry voices down the burned-out hall. Vervun Primary troops with long-barrelled lasguns were moving in to join the defence.
“The Spoilers, so called,” Mkoll explained to his colonel. “Dedicated to protecting the Spoil. Took a while to convince them that falling back was the smart choice. They’d have held the slag-slopes forever. I
t’s a pride thing.”
“We understand pride, don’t we?” grimaced Corbec.
Mkoll nodded. He pointed out the leader of the Spoilers, a bulky man with bloodshot eyes who was doing most of the shouting and cursing. “That’s ‘Gak’ Ormon. Spoiler commander.”
Corbec sauntered over to the big Verghastite.
“Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only.”
“Major Ormon. I want to lodge a complaint, colonel. Your man Mkoll ordered our withdrawal from the Spoil, and—”
Corbec cut him short. “We’re fighting for our fething lives and you want to complain? Shut up. Get used to it. Mkoll made a good call. Another half an hour and you would have been surrounded and dead. You want a ‘spoil’ to defend? Take a look!” He gestured out of a shattered window at the wasteland around. “Start thinking like a soldier, and stop cussing and whining. There’s more than unit pride at stake here.”
Ormon opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish. “I’m glad we understand each other,” Corbec said.
In the north-eastern corner of the hive, Sergeant Varl and Major Rodyin had command of one hundred and seventy or so men holding the burning docks. Half were Tanith; the rest, Vervun Primary and Roane. Zoican stormtroops were blasting in along the Hass East Causeway under the Hiraldi road-bridge, and the Imperial forces were being driven back through the hive’s promethium depots. Several bulk capacity tanks were already ablaze and liquescent fire spurted from derricks and spout-vents.
Firing tight bursts, Varl crossed a depot freightway and dropped into cover beside Major Rodyin, who had paused to fiddle with the cracked lens of his spectacles.
“No sign of support. I’ve been trying the vox. We’re on our own,” the Vervun officer remarked.
Varl nodded. “We can do that. Just a few of us should be able to keep them busy in these industrial sectors.”
“Unless they move armour our way.”
Varl sighed. The hiver was pessimism personified.
