Necropolis

by Dan Abnett

  Why were his dreams so confused? It was the chatter. That was it. The chatter. He wished it would cease. It was a hindrance to reason. He was High Master of Vervunhive and he wanted his dream-mind dean and unpolluted so he could command his vast community to victory once more.

  The Shield? What? What about the Shield?

  The chatter was lisping something.

  No! N-n

  Salvador Sondar's dreams were suddenly as suspended as the dreamer for a moment. Fugue state snarled his dream-mind. He floated in the tank as if dead.

  Then the dreams resumed in a rush. To poison the servitor taster, that had been a stroke of genius! No one had ever suspected! And to use a neural toxin that left no trace. A stroke, they had said! A stroke had finally levelled old Heironymo! Salvador had been forced to inject his own tear glands with saline to make himself cry at the state funeral.

  The weeping! The mass mourning! Fifty years ago, but still it gnawed at him! Why had the hivers loved the old bastard so dearly?

  The chatter was there again, at the very boundary of his mind-impulse limit, like crows in a distant treeline at dawn, like insects in the grasslands at dusk.

  Chattering

  The Shield? What are you saying about the Shield?

  I am Salvador Sondar. Get out of my mind and

  The wasted body twitched and spasmed in the Iron Tank.

  Outside, the servitors jiggled and jerked in sympathy.

  The vast railhead terminal at Veyveyr Gate was a dank, blackened mess. Clouds of steam rolled like fog off the cooling rubble and tangled metal where millions of litres of fluid retardant had been sprayed on the incendiary fires to get them under control.

  Major Jun Racine of the Vervun Primary moved between the struggling work teams and tried to supervise the clearance work. Tried it was a joke. He had two hundred bodies, mostly enlisted men, but some Administratum labourers, as well as trackwrights and rolling-stock stewards from the Rail Guild. It was barely enough even to make a dent in destruction of this scale.

  Racine was no structural engineer. Even with fourteen heavy tractors fitted with dozer blades at his disposal, there was no way he was going to meet House Command's orders and get the railhead secure in three days. Great roof sections had slumped like collapsed egg-shell, and rockcrete pillars had crumpled and folded like soft candy-sticks. He was reluctant to instruct his men to dig out anything for fear of bringing more down. Already he had sent five men to the medical halls after a section of wall had toppled on them.

  The air was wet and acrid, and water dripped down from every surface, pooling five centimetres deep on any open flooring.

  Racine checked his data-slate again. The cold, basic schematics on its screen simply didn't match anything here in real life. He couldn't even locate the positions of the main power and gas-feed mains. Nearby, a rail tractor unit sat up-ended in a vast crater, its piston wheels dangling off its great black iron shape. What if fuel had leaked from it? Racine thought about leaked fuel, shorting electrics, spilling gas even unexploded bombs an awful lot. He did the maths and hated the answer he kept getting.

  Tough job, major, said a voice from behind him.

  Racine turned. The speaker was a short, bulky man in his fifties, black with grime and leaning on an axe-rack as a crutch. He had a serious eye-wound bandaged with a filthy strip of linen. But his clothes, as far as Racine could make out under the char and the dirt, were those of a smeltery gang boss.

  You shouldn't be here, friend, Racine said with a patient smile.

  None of us should, Agun Soric replied, stomping forward. He stood beside Racine and they both gazed dismally out over the tangled ruins of the railhead towards the vast, looming shape of the gate and the Curtain Wall. It was a sea of rubble and debris, and Racine's workforce moved like ants around the merest breakwaters of it.

  I didn't ask for this. I'm sure you didn't either, Soric said.

  Gak, but that's right! You from the refuges?

  Name's Soric, plant supervisor, Vervun Smeltery One. Soric made a brief gesture over at the vast, ruined shell of the once-proud ore plant adjacent to the railhead. I was in there when the shells took it. Quite a show.

  I'll bet. Get many out?

  Soric sucked air through his teeth and looked down, shaking his bullet-head. Not nearly enough. Three hundred, maybe. Got ourselves places in a refuge eventually. It was all a bit confused.

  Racine looked round at him, taking in the set power and simmering anger inside the hive worker. What's it like? I hear the refuges are choked to capacity.

  It's bad. Imagine this, Soric pointed to the railhead destruction, but the ruins are human, not rockcrete and ceramite. Supplies are short: food, clean water, medical aid. They're doing their best, but you know millions of homeless, most of them hurt, all of them scared.

  Racine shivered.

  I tried to get some aid for my workers, but they told me that all refugees were set on fourth-scale rations unless they were employed in the hive war effort. That might get them bumped up to third-scale, maybe even second.

  Tough times Racine said and they fell silent.

  What if I could bring you close on three hundred eager workers? Willing types, I mean, workers who can haul and labour and who know a bit about shifting and managing loose debris?

  To help out?

  Gak, yes! My mob are sick of sitting on their arses in the refuge, doing nothing. We could help you make a job of this.

  Racine looked at him cautiously, trying to see if there was a trick. For the good of the hive? he smiled, questioningly.

  Yeah, for the good of the hive. And for the good of my workers, before they go crazy and lose morale. And I figure if we help you, you could put in a word. Maybe get us a better ration scale.

  Racine hesitated. His vox link was beeping. It would be a call from House Command, he was sure, asking for a progress report.

  I need to get this cleared, or at least a path cleared through it. My regiment have the gate blocked temporarily, but if the enemy hits us there, we need to have a secure wall of defence dug in, with supply lines and troop access. You and your mob help me do that, I'll get your bloody ration scale for you.

  Soric smiled. He tucked the axe-rack crutch under his armpit so he could extend a dirty hand. Racine shook it.

  Vervun Smeltery One won't let you down, major.

  The chronometer's chime told him it was dawn, but even up here in the Mid Spine, there was little change in the light outside. The glow of the Shield and the smoke haze saw to that.

  Amchanduste Worlin took breakfast in the observation bubble of his clan's palace. He had risen earlier than any of his kin, though junior Guild Worlin clerics and servitors were already about, preparing the day's work protocols.

  In orange-silk night robes, he sat in a suspensor chair at the round mahogany table and consumed the breakfast his servants had brought him on a lacquered tray. The taster servitor had pronounced it safe and been dismissed. Worlin's attention oscillated between the panoramic view of the city outside and the data-plate built into the table top where the morning news and situation bulletins threaded and interwove in clusters of glowing runes.

  An egg soufflР№, smoked fish, fresh fruit, toasted wheatcakes and a jug of caffeine. Not recommended emergency rations, Worlin knew, but what was the point of being a member of the privileged merchant elite if you couldn't draw on the stockpiles of your clan's resources once in a while?

  He improved the caffeine with a shot of joiliq. Worlin felt a measure of contentment for the first time in days and it wasn't just the alcohol. There was one holding owned by House Worlin, one under his direct control, that gave them commercial leverage in this war: liquid fuel. He had quite forgotten it in his initial dismay and panic.

  Last season, he had won the fuel concession from Guild Farnora, much to his clan's delight. Thirty percent of the fuel imports from Vannick Hive, three whole pipelines, were under the direct control of Guild Worlin. He looked at the megalitre input
figures on his data-slate, then made a few calculations as to how the market price per barrel would soar exponentially with each day of conflict. He'd done the sums several times already, but they pleased him.

  Guild sire? His private clerk, Magnal, entered the bubble.

  What is it?

  I was just preparing your itinerary for the day. You have a bond-meeting with the Guild Council at eleven.

  I know.

  Magnal paused.

  Something else?

  I I brought you the directive from the Legislature last night. The one that ordered all fuel pipelines from Vannick closed off now our kin-hive has fallen. You you do not seem to have authorised the closure, guild sire.

  The closure

  All guilds controlling fuel are ordered to blow the pipes on the north shore and block any remaining stretches with rockcrete. Magnal tried to show a data slate to Worlin, but the guilder shrugged it away diffidently. Our work crews are standing by

  How much fuel have we stockpiled in our East Hass Storage facility? Worlin asked.

  Magnal muttered a considerable figure.

  And how much more is still coming through the pipe?

  Another murmur, a figure of magnitude.

  Worlin nodded. I deplore the loss of our Vannick cousins. But the fuel still comes through. It is the duty Guild Worlin owes to Vervunhive that we keep the pipes open for as long as there is a resource to be collected. I'll shut the pipes the moment they run dry.

  But the directive, guild sire

  Let me worry about that, Magnal. The flow may only last another day, another few hours. But if I close now, can you imagine the lost profits? Not good business, my friend. Not good at all.

  Magnal looked uncomfortable.

  They say there is a security issue here, guild sire

  Worlin put down his caffeine cup. It hit the saucer a little too hard, making Magnal jump, though the kindly smile never left Worlin's face. I am not a stupid man, clerk. I take my responsibilities seriously, to the hive, to my clan. If I close the lines now, I would be derelict in my duties to both. Let the soldiery gain glory with their bravado at the war front. History will relate my bravery here, fighting for Vervunhive as only a merchant can.

  Your name will be remembered, guild sire, Magnal said and left the room.

  Worlin sat for a while, tapping his silver sugar tongs on the edge of his saucer. There was no doubt about it.

  He would have to kill Magnal too.

  At the very southernmost edge of the outer habs and industry sectors, the great hive was a sky-filling dome of green light, pale in the morning sun, hazed by shell smoke.

  Captain Olin Fencer of Vervun Primary crawled from his dug-out and blinked into the cold morning air. That air was still thick with the mingled reeks of thermite and fycelene, burning fuel and burned flesh. But there was something different about this morning. He couldn't quite work out what it was.

  Fencer's squad of fifty troopers had been stationed at Outhab Southwest when the whole thing began. Vox links had been lost in the first wave of shelling and they had been able to do nothing but dig in and ride it out, as day after day of systematic bombardment flattened and ruptured the industrial outer city behind them.

  There was no chance to retreat back into the hive, though Fencer knew millions of habbers in the district had fled that way. He had a post to hold. He was stationed at it with the thirty-three men remaining to him when Vegolain's armoured column had rolled past down the Southern Highway, out into the grasslands. His squad had cheered them.

  They'd been hiding in their bunkers, some weeping in rage or pain or dismay, that night when the broken remnants of the column had limped back in, heading for the city.

  By then, he had twenty men left.

  In the days that followed, Fencer had issued his own orders by necessity, as all links to House Command were broken. Indeed, he was sure no one in the hive believed there was anyone still alive out here. He had followed the edicts of the Vervun Primary emergency combat protocols to the letter, organising the digging of a series of trenches, supply lines and fortifications through the ruins of the outhabs, though the shelling still fell on them.

  His first sergeant, Grosslyn, had mined the roadways and other teams had dug tank-traps and dead-snares. Despite the shelling, they had also raised a three hundred-metre bulwark of earth, filled an advance ditch with iron stakes and railing sections, and sandbagged three stubbers and two flamers into positions along the Highway.

  All by the tenth day. By then, he had eighteen soldiers left.

  Three more had died of wounds or disease by the fourteenth day, when the high-orbit flares of troopships told them Guard reinforcements were on their way planetside.

  Now it was sunrise on the nineteenth day. Plastered in dust and blood, Fencer moved down the main trench position as his soldiers woke or took over guard duty from the weary night sentries.

  But now he had sixty troops. Main Spine thought everything was levelled out here, everything dead, but they were wrong. Not everyone on the blasted outer habs had fled to the hive, though it must have seemed that way. Many stayed, too unwilling, too stubborn, or simply too frightened to move. As the days of bombardment continued, Fencer found men and women and some children too flocking to him from the ruins. He got the non-coms into any bunkers he had available and he set careful rationing. All able-bodied workers, of either sex, he recruited into his vanguard battalion.

  They'd raised precious medical supplies from the infirmary unit of a bombed-out mine and they'd set up a field hospital in the ruins of a bakery, under the supervision of a teenage girl called Nessa who was a trainee nurse. They'd pilfered food supplies in the canteens of three ruined manufactories in the region. A VPHC Guard House on West Transit 567/kl had provided them with a stock of lasguns and small arms for the new recruits, as well as explosives and one of the flamers.

  Fencer's recruits had come from everywhere. He had under his command clerks who'd never held a weapon, loom workers with poor eyesight and shell-shocked habbers who were deaf and could only take orders visually.

  The core of his recruits, the best of them, were twenty-one miners from Number Seventeen Deep Working, who had literally dug their way out of the ground after the main lift shaft of their facility had fallen.

  Fencer bent low and hurried down the trench line, passing through blown-out house structures, under fallen derricks, along short communication tunnels the miners had dug to link his defences. Their expertise had been a godsend.

  He reached the second stub emplacement at 567/kk and nodded to the crew. Corporal Gannen was making soup in his mess tin over a burner stove, while his crewmate, a loom-girl called Calie, scanned the horizon. They were a perfect example of the way necessity had made heroes of them all. Gannen was a trained stub-gunner, but better at ammo feeding than firing. The girl had proven to be a natural at handling the gun itself. So they swapped, the corporal conceding no pride that he now fed ammo to a loom-girl half his age.

  Fencer moved on, passing two more guard points and found Gol Kolea in the corner nest, overlooking the highway. Kolea, the natural leader of the miners, was a big man, with great power in his upper body. He was sipping hot water from a battered tin cup, his lasgun at his side. Fencer intended to give him a brevet rank soon. The man had earned it. He had led his miners out of the dark, formed them into a cohesive work duty and done everything Fencer could have asked of them. And more besides. Kolea was driven by grim, intense fury against the Zoican foe. He had family in the hive, though he didn't speak of them. Fencer was sure it was the thought of them that had galvanised Kolea to such efforts.

  Captain, Kolea nodded as Fencer ducked in.

  Something's wrong, Gol, Fencer said. Something's different.

  The powerfully built miner grinned at him. You haven't noticed? he asked.

  Noticed?

  The shelling has stopped.

  Fencer was stunned. It had been so much a part of their daily life for the last for
tnight or more, he hadn't realised it had gone. Indeed, his ears were still ringing with remembered Shockwaves.

  Emperor save us! he gasped. I'm so stupid.

  He'd been awake for upwards of twenty minutes and it took a miner to tell him that they were no longer under fire.

  See anything? Fencer asked, crawling up to the vigil slot in the sandbags next to Kolea for a look.

  No. Dust, smoke, haze nothing much.

  Fencer was about to reach for his scope when Zoica began its land offensive.

  A wave of las-fire peppered the entire defence line of the outhabs, like the flashes of a billion firecrackers. The sheer scale of the salvos was bewildering. Nine of Fencer's troops died instantly. Three more, all workers, fled, utterly unprepared for the fury of a land assault.

  Grenades and rockets dropped in around them, blowing out two communication dug-outs. Another hit the mess hall and torched their precious food supplies.

  Fencer's people began their resistance.

  He'd ordered them all to set weapons for single fire to preserve ammunition and power cells. Even the stubbers had been ordered only to fire if they had a target. In response to the Zoican assault, their return seemed meagre and frail.

  Fencer got up to the nest top and raised his lasgun. Five hundred metres ahead, through the smoke and the rubble, he saw the first shapes of the enemy, troopers in heavy, ochre-coloured battledress, advancing in steady ranks.

  Fencer began firing. Below, Kolea opened up too.

  They took thirteen down between them in the first five minutes.

  Zoican tanks, mottled ochre and growling like beasts, bellied up the road and fanned out into the ruins, using the available open roadways and other aisles in the rubble sea. Mines took two of them out in huge vomits of flame and armour pieces, and the burning hulks blocked the advance of six more.

  Rockets flailed into the bulwark and blew a fifteen-metre section out. Corporal Tanik and three other troops were disintegrated.

  Another Zoican tank, covered with mesh netting, rumbled through the ruins and diverted down a dead-snare. Blocked in by rockcrete walls to either side and ahead, it tried to reverse and swing its turret as one of the Vervun flamer positions washed it with incandescent gusts of blowtorch fire and cooked it apart.