by Dan Abnett
“You are the future of Vervunhive now, Gaunt. Why do you think my father made such efforts to evaluate you? He needed to be certain such insurance would not be handed to one who might abuse it. He knew you were no tyrant in the making, and I see that too. You are a soldier, true and brave, with nothing but the survival of our hive in your dreams.”
“Your father died well, Merity Chass.”
“I am glad to hear it. Honour him and the duty borne by his house, Ibram Gaunt. Do not prove him wrong.”
Gaunt studied the amulet. It was a system-slayer and, from what the girl said, quite the most powerful and formidable example of its kind he had ever heard of. In the time of Heironymo, House Sondar had specialised in codifier systems and sentient cogitators, and they had enjoyed long-term trade partnerships and research pacts with the tech-mages of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This was the masterpiece: in the event of anyone achieving total technological mastery of Vervunhive, the activation of this amulet would annihilate the command and control systems, erase all data and function programs, corrupt all codifiers and lobotomise all cogitators. It would cripple Vervunhive and allow the device’s wielders to free the hive from would-be conquerors now rendered helpless.
In its peculiar way, it was more potent than atomics or a chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. It was an ultimate weapon, forged for arenas of battle far beyond the remit of a dog-soldier like Gaunt. It was war on a refined, decisive level, light years away from the mud and las-fire theatres that Gaunt regularly experienced.
Still, he understood it. But he didn’t like it. Such ancient high technology was a fearful thing, like psyker witchcraft.
He set it down on the pew next to him. It gurgled and hummed, system patterns reconfiguring like sunlight on moving water across its smooth casing.
“We don’t need it.”
Merity Chass stiffened and stared up at the stained-glass rosette of the sacristy.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
She turned to face him. Her face was pale, and her eyes were angry and dark. Multi-coloured light from the window behind her created a halo around her slim form. “My father agonised about using it. When I reached the shelters and found he had hidden it in my belongings, I agonised too. Even as I came here to find you, I realised we had left it too late. You have already unseated cursed Salvador. Our dire situation is no longer a matter of control.”
“We have control,” Gaunt agreed. “The problem is now simply one of physical warfare. Though Vervunhive stands at the brink of doom, it is not the doom Heironymo feared or planned for with this.”
She sat down next to him, smouldering with rage. “If only I had brought it sooner — or urged my father to do the same. We could have used it to overthrow Salvador—”
“Praise the Throne we did not!”
She glanced around at him sharply.
Gaunt shrugged. “We’d have crippled ourselves, crippled the hive systems, left ourselves with nothing to use to regain control. A system-slayer is an absolute weapon, lady.”
“So, my soul-searching, my father’s painstaking deliberations… were all pointless anyway?” She laughed a thin, scratchy laugh. “How fitting! House Chass, so gakking intellectual and refined, agonising over nothings while the hive bleeds and burns!”
He pulled off his gloves and tossed them aside. “Heironymo’s legacy was never to be taken lightly. That we can’t use it now does not reflect badly on the care and devotion with which House Chass held that trust.”
She reached out her hand and clasped his callused fingers. “What happens now, Gaunt?”
Slowly, he looked round at her. “We fight a simple war, men and machines, lasguns and shells. We fight and try to drive them out. If we win, we live. If we lose, we die.”
“It sounds so bleak.”
“It’s all I know, the crude equation of battle. It’s not so bad. It’s simple at least. There’s no deliberation involved.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
Her eyes, more alive than anything Gaunt had ever seen, gazed into his. “How long before we know?”
Ibram Gaunt exhaled deeply, shaking his head. “Just hours now. Perhaps a day, perhaps two. Then it will be over, one way or another.”
She pulled him to her, her arms stretched tightly around his broad back. He could smell her hair and her perfume, faint and almost worn away but still tangible despite the odours of cold and damp and dirt she had been exposed to in the shelters.
Gaunt had long forgotten the simple consolation of another’s body warmth. He held her gently, swimming with fatigue, as the low voices of the Ecclesiarch choir ebbed through the sacristy. Her mouth found his.
He pulled back. “I don’t think—” he began.
“A common soldier messing with a high-born lady?” She smiled. “Even if that mattered once, it doesn’t now. This war has made us all equals.”
They kissed again, neither resisting. For a while, their passion was all that mattered to either of them. Two human souls, intimate and wordless, shutting the apocalypse out.
Midnight was long past. Bray’s Tanith units, after a day and night of tank-busting in the slag-reaches of the chem plant district, fell back through the battered central hab zone towards the Shield Pylon. All the Zoican southern efforts seemed to be directed at the pylon and Bray knew that its strategic importance was unmatched by anything in the hive. Bray had about two hundred and eighty Tanith left, augmented by four hundred more Vervun Primary, Volpone, Roane and NorthCol stragglers, plus around six hundred hivers. The hivers were mostly non-coms, who looked to the troops for protection, and Bray and his colleague officers found themselves managing more of a refugee exodus than a troop retreat.
But some of the hivers had consolidated into scratch units, adding about one hundred and seventy fighting bodies to Bray’s forces.
More than half of the scratch companies were made up of women, and Bray was amazed. He’d never seen women fight. Back on Tanith war was a masculine profession. But he couldn’t deny their determination. And he understood it. This was their fething home, after all.
Bray’s immediate command chain was formed by Vervun Primary and NorthCol, but though some of them outranked him, they looked to him for leadership. Bray suspected this was because Gaunt was now field commander. Everyone deferred to the Tanith now the endgame had begun.
Shells from Zoican armour whooped over his head and Bray sprinted into a trench-stretch between a blown-out meat-curing plant and a guild estate mansion. In the trench, Sergeant Zweck of the NorthCol and Major Bunce of the Vervun Primary were directing the men around the curing plant to engage the enemy’s forward push.
Las-fire zagged down at them. Most of the Imperial shooters fired from shallow foxholes at the ranks of Zoican assault troops advancing, bayonets fixed, across the rubble. Mortar shells rebounded off the rockcrete slag and exploded as airbursts, causing significantly more damage.
Behind the toppling lines of Zoican infantry, tanks rumbled in, many carrying troops clinging to the hull netting like apes.
Bray fired his weapon over the trench lip. Beside him, Zweck was decapitated by air-burst splinters. Blood saturated the side of Bray’s dark fatigues.
He reached for another clip.
“What are their names?” Caffran yelled over the pounding thunder of the tanks. He had Yoncy under one arm and was leading Dalin by the hand. Tona hurried after him.
Scratch companies to their west were holding the Zoican front back, and they were struggling to keep up with a straggle of civilian refugees fleeing into the northern sectors. Caffran yelled again.
Tona Criid was busy and didn’t answer Caffran.
She was firing her laspistol at the Zoican assault troops crossing into the street behind her. But she was in trouble. There was no one to cover her.
“Hold tight to your sister and get down!” Caffran cried at Dalin, pressing the swaddled baby into the boy’s arms. “I’m going back for your mother!”
“She’s not my mother. She’s Auntie Tona,” said Dalin.
Caffran glanced back confused and then ran on as lasbursts flickered around him.
He fired his lasgun wildly and dropped into the shell-hole where Tona cowered.
“Fresh clip!” she called.
He tossed her one. Reloaded, both rose and sent a stinging waft of kill-fire down the street at the Zoicans. Ochre bodies crumpled.
“Good shots. You’re scary, Tona.”
“I do what I do. Fresh clip!”
He tossed her another.
“So they aren’t yours? I thought you looked too young.”
Tona swung round to him, her face hard. “They’re all I have! Gak you! You won’t take them from me, and neither will these bastards!”
She swung up and fired her gun, killing one, two, three…
Savage fighting continued unabated on all fronts right through into the early hours of the thirty-sixth day. By then, two thirds of the hive’s immense civilian population were packed into the north-eastern sectors and docks, making desperate efforts to flee to the north bank. The flow was far beyond the abilities of the river ferries to manage. Working through the night, with only brief pauses to refuel, boats like the Magnificat shuttled back and forth across the Hass. Over two million refugees were now in the outhabs of the north shore or clogging the Northern Collective Highway. The night was cold and wet, and many — wounded, shocked, or unfed — suffered with exposure and fever.
In the hive it was worse. Millions choked the approaches to the wharves or lined the river in ranks as thick as the crowds on the terraces of the stadium watching a big game. Brutal battles broke out as citizens fought to win places on the approaching boats. Thousands died, almost two hundred of them aboard a ferry that they overloaded and capsized in a panic rush to get aboard. Hundreds more were trampled or simply crushed in the press or were pushed into the river by the mounting weight of bodies behind them. Those that didn’t drown immediately died slowly, floundering in the cold of the water, unable to find enough room on the docks to clamber back ashore. An entire pier stretch collapsed under the weight of the refugees, spilling hundreds into the Hass. Rioting and panic fighting spread like wildfire back through the crowds. Like a wounded, enraged animal, Vervunhive began to claw and tear at itself.
Every small boat or craft that could be found was stolen and put to the water, usually overfilled and often guided by men or women with no idea of watercraft. Hundreds of others elected to try to swim or paddle across, clinging to packing bales or other items of floating material. The Hass was almost three kilometres wide, icy cold and plagued with strong currents. No one who tried to swim made it more than halfway before perishing, except for a very few who were pulled out of the water by passing ferry crews.
Streams of evacuees made it up from the docks onto the great viaduct and crossed on foot. The density of foot traffic on the railbridge was so great that many were pushed off and fell screaming into the river far below. Just after midnight, Zoican rockets ranged down the dock basin from the invading forces at the Hiraldi Bridge end to the east. Some fell on the docks or hit the water. Four blew out the central spans of the viaduct, toppling three of the great brick pier supports and killing hundreds. The viaduct as an evacuation route was finished, and those pressed on to the southern spans who had survived the rocket strike were trapped, unable to retreat back into the hive and reach the docks because the pressure of bodies behind them was so great. One by one, they were pushed off the shattered end of the viaduct.
A little after the destruction of the railbridge, Folik, steering his ferry on a return run across the Hass, saw lights and movement on the north shore to the east. Zoican motorised brigades were sweeping in along the far shore from the pipelines and the Hiraldi road, pincering round to deny the escape route. The Zoicans clearly intended no one should survive the destruction of the hive. By dawn, the Zoican army groups were assaulting the tides of refugees on the north bank. The hordes who had been lucky enough to get across the river were now systematically massacred on the far side. Perhaps as many as half a million were slaughtered outright. Hundreds of thousands fled, their numbers dissipating into the inhospitable hinterlands or the ruined outhabs.
Now there was no way across. The ferries returned to the south docks, many under fire from Zoican forces on the north side, and tied up. They were as trapped as the hosts on the banks now. A fearful hush of realisation fell across the multitude when they saw flight was no longer an option. The Zoicans began to fire across the river into the tightly packed refugees. Despite the wholesale killing, it was a matter of hours before the civilian masses began to draw back into the hive. It took that long for the message to filter back through the press of humanity to adjust their tidal flow.
Folik sat with Mincer on the foredeck of the rocking Magnificat, sharing a bottle of joiliq. They had decided not to flee. There seemed little point, especially now they were both roaring drunk. Sporadic enemy fire from across the Mass stippled the waters around them and smacked off the hull. Parts of the docks were ablaze now. Folik expected a rocket or mortar to blow them out of the water at any moment. He fetched another bottle from the wheelhouse and a las-round punched straight through the cabin window and out the other side over his shoulder as he stooped to reach into the steerage locker. It made him laugh. He stumbled back to Mincer. They decided to see if they could finish the bottle before they were killed.
Hass West Fort was encircled by the enemy and under siege. By dawn, it was close to destruction. Shells and rockets rattled into it from outside the Curtain Wall, and enemy troops and light armour pounded it from the manufactories and habs within. Captain Cargin, badly wounded, held his men together, barely six hundred of the five thousand with which he had started the night. There were virtually no gunners or artillerymen left alive, but that hardly mattered because all the munitions for the Wall and fort gun emplacements and missile racks were spent. The Vervun Primary troopers and their lasguns were all that remained. The fort itself was rattled with damage and lower levels were blocked or ablaze.
Cargin adjusted his spiked helmet and limped down the gate battlement, urging his men with a voice hoarse from hours of shouting. The rockcrete deckways were littered with dead. One of his men, Corporal Anglon, called to him. Through the smoke and flame, he had sighted something approaching through the outer habs.
Cargin took a look. Through his scope, he saw a colossal shape crawling through the suburb ruins fifteen kilometres south of the fort. Another death machine, he thought instinctively.
But this was different — larger, slower. A huge pyramid structure, five hundred metres high at the apex, its mechanical sides painted Zoican ochre and decorated with vast, obscene symbols of Chaos. It moved, as far as he could see, on dozens of fat, wide-gauge caterpillar units that crushed everything in its path. A gouged trail half a kilometre wide scored through the habs in its wake. Its flanks bristled with weapon turrets and emplacements, and huge, brass speaker-horns on its summit, with Chaos banners fluttering from poles between them, boomed out the Heritor chant and crackled the inhuman chatter.
“What is it?” Anglon hissed.
Cargin shrugged. He was cold and weak from blood-loss and pain. Every word, movement, or thought was an effort of superhuman concentration. He unstrapped the handset of the vox-unit he had been carrying over his shoulder since his comm-officer had been killed some hours before.
“Cargin/Hass West to Baptistry Command. Marker code 454/gau.”
“Received and recognised, Hass West.”
“We’ve got something out here, approaching the walls. Massive mechanised structure, mobile, armed. I’m only guessing, but unless there’s more than one of these things, I’d lay real money it’s the enemy’s command centre. I’ve never seen a mobile unit so big.”
“Understood, Hass West. Can you supply visuals?”
“Pict-links are down, Command. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“What i
s your situation, Hass West? We are trying to direct troop forces to support you.”
Cargin sighed. He was about to tell Baptistry Command he had less than a thousand men left, most of them wounded, at the end of their ammo supplies, with no artillery support, and an ocean of enemy on all sides. He was about to estimate they could hold on another hour at the most.
The estimate would have been inaccurate by fifty-nine and a half minutes. Anglon grabbed Cargin’s arm, shouting out as fierce lights blinked and fizzled in dark recesses down the centre of the pyramid side facing them. The vast Zoican vehicle shuddered and then retched huge, searing beams of plasma energy at Hass West Fort: cutting beams, like the ones that had dissected Ontabi Gate, but larger still and far more powerful, energy weapons of a scale usually seen in the fleet engagements of naval flagships. The roar was deafening, sending out a Shockwave that was felt kilometres away.
Hass West Fort and the gate it protected were obliterated. Cargin, Anglon and all the remaining defenders were disintegrated in one blinding instant. As the cutting beams faded, rocket and gunnery platforms all across the pyramid opened fire and piled destruction on the ruins. The air stank with ozone and static and fycelene. For half a kilometre in each direction, the Curtain Wall collapsed.
The pyramid machine began to trundle forward again, inching towards the dying hive, blaring the Heritor’s name over and again.
Gaunt woke with a start, his mind spinning. Sleep had taken away his immediate fatigue, but every atom of his body ached and throbbed. It took him a moment to remember where he was. How long had he been asleep?
He clambered to his feet. The sacristy was chilly and silent, the Ecclesiarch choir long since finished.
Merity Chass stood nearby, gazing at the friezes of the Imperial cult. She wore his long overcoat and nothing else. She looked round at him and smiled. “You’d better get dressed. They probably need you.”
Gaunt recovered his shirt and boots and pulled them on. He could still taste her on his lips. He stared at her for a moment more. She was… beautiful. If he didn’t have a reason to fight for Vervunhive before, he did now. He would not allow this girl to perish.
