Necropolis

by Dan Abnett

  Gaunt raised his hand. I am confident the Administratum will provide whatever they can, whatever is in their means. I trust the astropaths have been maintaining contact with the warmaster?

  Of course.

  I will not ask Macaroth for aid, but I want him to understand the situation here. If he deems it worthy of his notice, he will assist us.

  Horns sounded, a pathetic gesture of pomp, and Legislator Anophy shuffled into the baptistry with his retinue: a long train of child-slaves, servitors and guards, some carrying banner poles. The banners and the robes were singed and grubby in places, and the slaves looked wet-eyed and terrified. Representatives of the guilds and high houses flocked in behind the Legislator's procession, shouting and disputing.

  Gaunt turned to Banefail. You can help me immediately by keeping these worthies out of my face. Listen to their petitions and notarise them. I will review later if there is an opportunity.

  It will be done, Banefail said. May the Emperor of Mankind provide for you in this hour.

  As the Administratum staff swept away behind Banefail to head off the angry mob of dignitaries, Gaunt resumed his review of the battle data. The first of the vox-links had just been set up and Daur brought him a speaker set.

  Gaunt selected a channel. Vervunhive Command to Grizmund. Signal ˜Uncle Dercius'.

  ˜Uncle Dercius' given and heard, crackled the receiver.

  I need you to deny the approaches to Croe Gate and Ontabi Gate. From what I can see here, the main vehicular invasion is pouring in that way.

  Agreed. But there are tank squadrons coming up through Sondar Gate too.

  Noted. I'll deal with that. May the God-Emperor guide you, general.

  And watch over you, colonel-commissar.

  Adjusting his channel setting, Gaunt raised the commander of North-Col armour groups milling in confusion south of the Commercia. He directed them down towards Sondar Gate. Then he began to systematically contact all the tattered sections of infantry and Guard.

  He got through to Corbec at Guild Githran Agricultural.

  Feth, commissar! I thought you were dead!

  I thought the same of you, Colm. How is it?

  Bad as anything I've seen. We're holding, just barely, but they're pouring it on. I could really do with a pinch of armour.

  It's coming your way as we speak. Colm, we need to do more than hold, we have to push them back. The Shield will only work for us if we can hunt them out from under it.

  You don't ask for much, do you?

  Never.

  You'll owe me a planet of my own for this, you realise?

  I owe you that already, Corbec. Think bigger.

  A servitor brought Gaunt more data feeds from the newly engaged codifiers set up in the baptistry. Gaunt looked through them, his gaze stopped by a report relayed in from Varl.

  Daur?

  Sir!

  I want a list of guilds controlling fuel supply and accredited proof from every damn one of them that they closed their pipelines down.

  Yes, commander.

  Gaunt spent the next ten minutes voxing tactical instructions to dozens of individual troop units throughout the hive. He was unable to reach Varl or any unit north of the Main Spine. As he worked, servitors and staff officers tracked the substance and matter of his battle-plan on a hololithic chart of the city, overlaying it with any data they received from the ground.

  For a short while, Gaunt toyed with the settings of the vox-unit, hunting through the bands to locate the low frequencies the Zoicans were using. He still hoped they might intercept and unscramble the Zoican transmissions and eavesdrop on their tactical command net. But it was futile. The Zoican channels were seething with transmissions, but all in that incomprehensible chatter, the chatter that defied translation even by linguistic cogitators, a constant, meaningless stream of corrupt machine noise that gave up no secrets. Either that, or the chanting repeats of the Heritor's name on the propaganda wavelengths. Gaunt had fought Chaos long enough to know not to call in human scholars or astropaths to try to decode the chatter. He couldn't allow that filth to taint any mind in Vervunhive.

  A commotion at the door roused Gaunt from his work. A detail of Vervun Primary soldiers was escorting General Sturm into the baptistry.

  We found him trying to join a party of refugees boarding a ferry at the viaduct jetty, sir, the squad's leader told Gaunt.

  Gaunt looked Sturm up and down. Desertion? he said softly.

  Sturm straightened his cap, bristling. I am senior commander here, Gaunt! Not you! Vervunhive is lost! I have given the signal to retreat and evacuate! I could have you all shot for disobedience!

  You gave the signal to evacuate? Then why are all Imperial forces and planetary units still fighting? Even your own Volpone? You must have given the signal very quietly.

  Don't talk that way to me, you jumped-up shit! Sturm croaked. The room fell silent around them and all eyes turned to observe the confrontation. I am the senior general of the Royal Volpone! I am ranking officer here in Vervunhive! You will obey me! You will respect me!

  What's to respect? Gaunt walked around Sturm, looking out at the watching faces with interest. No one showed any sign of leaping to the general's defence. You fled the assault on House Sondar. You fled the Main Spine and headed for the river. You gave up on Vervunhive.

  I am ranking officer!

  With a brutal tear, Gaunt ripped Sturm's rank pins of his jacket.

  Not any more. You're a disgrace. A coward and a murderer. You know damn well it was your orders that killed five hundred of my Tanith on Voltemand. Killed them because they managed to win what your Blue-bloods could not. Gaunt stared into Sturm's blinking eyes.

  How you ever made general, I don't know.

  Sturm seemed to sag.

  A weapon he said weakly.

  What?

  Sturm looked up with blazing eyes. Give me a cursing weapon, colonel-commissar! I'll not be lectured at by a lowborn shit like you! Or punished! Give me a weapon and allow me the good grace of making my own peace!

  Gaunt shrugged. He pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and held it out butt-first to the general.

  Final request granted. Officers of the watch, so note General Sturm has volunteered to exact his own punishment. He looked back at Sturm. I've never even slightly liked you, Noches. Give me a reason to speak of you well. Make it clean and simple.

  Sturm took the proffered gun.

  Officers of the watch, also note, hissed Sturm, that Ibram Gaunt refuses to signal evacuation. He's condemned you all to death by fire. I'm glad to be out of it.

  He cocked the weapon and raised it to his mouth.

  Gaunt turned his back.

  There was a long pause.

  Gaunt! Captain Daur screamed.

  Gaunt swung around, the powersword of Heironymo Sondar already out and lit in his hand. It sliced through Sturm's wrist before the Volpone general could fire the bolt gun the bolt gun that had been aimed at Gaunt's skull.

  Sturm fell sidelong on the baptistry flagstones, shrieking out as blood pumped from his wrist stump. Nerves spasmed in his severed hand and the bolt pistol fired once, blowing a hole through the ornate prayer screen behind Gaunt.

  Gaunt glared down at the general's writhing form for a moment. Then he stooped and retrieved his bolt pistol from the detached hand.

  Get him out of my sight, he told the waiting troopers with a dismissive gesture at Sturm. I don't want to look at that treacherous bastard any longer than I have to.

  By early afternoon on that fateful thirty-fifth day, whatever co-ordinated resistance could be made was being made. Gaunt's command post in the Main Spine had contacted and tactically deployed almost two-thirds of the available fighting strength in the hive, a feat of determined efficiency that left both the Administratum and the surviving officers of the Vervun Primary Strategic Planning Cadre dumbfounded. What made it altogether more extraordinary was that Gaunt had driven the work almost single-handedly. After the incident
with Sturm, he worked with an intense devotion that was almost terrifying. Latterly, as the cohesion of his plan became clear, he was able to delegate work to the eager tactical staffers, but the core of the resistance plan was his alone.

  Ban Daur stepped out of the baptistry a little after midday to clear his head and find water. He stood for a while under a blackened arch at the end of the hallway, watching through glassless windows as flickering areas of warfare boiled through the dense streets below.

  Captain Petro, one of the tacticians, emerged from the baptistry too and came to stand with Daur, an old friend from their academy days.

  He's frightening Petro said.

  Gaunt?

  Petro nodded. His mind, his focus it's like a codifier. All drive, all purpose.

  Daur sipped his glass. Like Slaydo, he said. Petro raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  Remember how we studied the warmaster's career? The keynote was always Slaydo's singularity of purpose that he could look at a theatre and plan it in his head, hold the whole situation in his mind. That was military brilliance. I think we're seeing its like again.

  He served with Slaydo, didn't he?

  Yes. His record speaks for itself.

  But as an infantry officer. Petro frowned. Gaunt's reputation's never been for overall battlefield command, not on this scale.

  I don't think he's ever had the chance to show it before a commissar, a troop commander, always following the lead of higher ranks. He's never had an opportunity like this before. Besides I think it may be because he's got everything to prove.

  What the gak do you mean, Ban?

  The high commanders are dead or, like Sturm, disgraced. Fate and his own actions have put Gaunt in command, and I think he's determined to prove he should have been there all along.

  At a crossroads designated fg/567, in the heart of the eastern central habs, Bulwar's infantry divisions were close to breaking. They had no anti-armour ordnance left and the Zoican tank thrust was burning a spearhead through from Croe Gate, laying waste to hectares of habitat structures.

  Bulwar and his NorthCol battlegroup moved south around the crossroads, tackling Zoican troops in the rockcrete tangles that had once been labour-homes. Tank rounds screamed down over them, blowing out sections of wall and roadway, collapsing precarious spires of rubble and masonry.

  In the shell of a funicular carriage station, between the ornate marble pillars and the old brass benches, they fought at close quarters with a phalanx of Zoicans. More were pouring in through the ticket booths at the far end or climbing up into the station through the shattered wreck of a carriage train that had made its last stop at the platform. Civilian dead lay all around.

  Bulwar led the attack, breaking body armour with his power claw and shooting with his autogun. Men fell around him, too many to count. A las-round struck his shoulder and he was thrown backwards off his feet.

  When he got up, things had changed. A fighting force had erupted into the station from the passenger exits and it was tearing into the Zoicans from the side. They weren't NorthCol or Vervun Primary or even Guard. They were workers, hive labourers, armed with captured guns, axe-rakes, or any other weapon they could find. Bulwar realised they were one of the many scratch companies informally raised by willing habbers to support the defence. He'd heard of many emerging from the ruins to assist the Imperial forces, but not one of this size and organisation. Their vengeful fury was astonishing.

  The frenzied fighting lasted about eight minutes. Between them, Bulwar's platoon and the workers killed every Zoican in the station precinct.

  There was cheering and whooping, and NorthCol troopers hugged Vervunhivers like lost brothers.

  A short, thick-set worker with one eye, bedraggled in muck and blood, limped over to Bulwar and saluted.

  Who are you? asked Bulwar.

  Soric, commander of the Smeltery Irregulars, sir!

  Bulwar couldn't help smiling. The worker boss had a general's pins, fashioned out of bottle caps, sewn into his jacket.

  I thank the Emperor for you, General Soric.

  Soric paused and glanced bashfully at his insignia. Sorry, sir; just a joke to rally the men. I'm just a plant supervisor

  Who fights like a warmaster. How many are you?

  About seven hundred, sir workers, habbers, anyone really. We've been trying to do our bit for the hive ever since the start, and when the Shield went down, it was run or fight.

  You'd put us to shame.

  Soric frowned. If we won't fight for our own bloody hive, sir, I don't know who should.

  Standing orders required all unit commanders to inform Spine Command of the size and composition of any scratch companies encountered so that they could be designated a marker code and factored into the defence structure. Bulwar called up his vox-officer and called in the details of Soric's Irregulars. He looked to Soric. We need to co-ordinate, general. I thank the Emperor for the likes of you, but we'll only win this thing if the military forces and the civilian levies work as one. Get your men to spread the word. Scratch companies must try to make contact with Imperial forces and be accounted for. They'll have to take orders too.

  Soric nodded and called his officers up to brief them.

  You can't be a general though, I'm afraid, said Bulwar. Soric was already pulling his makeshift rank pins off.

  Take a brevet rank, Soric. State-of-emergency field promotion. You're a sergeant now and you'll answer to me. Designate one man in every twenty a corporal, and fix a chain of command. You choose them; you know them.

  Soric nodded again, lost for words with pride.

  Explosions thundered across the station, throwing some of the men to the ground. One of Soric's freedom fighters was yelling out. Enemy tanks! Enemy tanks!

  Bulwar and Soric scrambled over to the station's east entrance to see. The huge shapes of Zoican storm-tanks, long-barrelled and heavily armoured, were scything in towards the station and the surrounding habs. Others, including fast-moving light assault tanks and squat, super-heavy flamer platforms, were pushing round onto the transit streets leading to the Commercia and the Shield Pylon.

  We have explosives, sir, said Soric, saluting again for good measure. Mining charges we lifted from the stores behind the smelteries.

  Static charges with no launchers against tanks?

  It's how we've been doing it so far, sir: a man takes a wrap of charges and runs with it, anchors it to the tank hull

  Suicide!

  Soric frowned. Duty, sir. What other way is there?

  How many tanks have you taken out with that method?

  Twenty-four, I think.

  How many men has it cost you?

  Soric shrugged. Twenty-four, of course.

  Bulwar wiped his mouth on the back of his glove. Incredible. The devotion, the determination. The sacrifice. The workers of Vervunhive, who had built this place with their sweat, were now buying it back with their blood. It was an object lesson in loyalty and devotion that even the finest Imperial Guard regiment could admire.

  The tanks were closing now, hammering the station, blowing sections of the overhead trackway down. Sheets of fire leapt through the terminus hall.

  Throne of Earth! Soric gasped, pointing.

  Mustard-drab battle tanks, moving at full power across the rubble scarps, some of them bursting through sections of wall, were thundering forward from the west. They were firing freely, with huge accuracy, maintaining a cycle rate of fire that the Zoican armour, turning to the flank to greet them, couldn't even begin to match.

  Neither Bulwar nor Soric had ever seen a mass armour charge before, certainly not one undertaken by a crack Imperial tank brigade like the Narmenians. They opened their mouths in awe, and nothing but wild cheers came out.

  Grizmund called it Operation Dercius. He'd sent his sentinel recon units and foot-troop spotter units forward towards Croe Gate as he composed his tank brigade in the Commercia. The spotters couldn't fix the position of the moving Zoican armour, but they could a
ssess its force and direction. Grizmund had compiled the data and sent his main columns first south into the habs and then turned them east at full speed, to catch the enemy's flank. Grizmund truly understood the power of armoured vehicles, not just the physical power, but the psychological strength. If a tank was a threatening thing then a tank moving fast, and firing accurately and repeatedly, was a nightmare. The tank strike was his forte and he only admitted into the Narmenian cadre drivers who could handle thirty-plus tonnes of armour at speed, and gunners and layers who could fire fast, repeatedly and make kills each time.

  In the command chair of The Grace of the Throne, Grizmund watched the picts on his auspex slate wink and flash as they marked hits on the glowing target runes. The interior of the turret was a red-lit sweat-box, alive with the chatter of the vox and the efficient call and return of the gun team. Fresh brass-stamped shells clanked down into the greased loading rack from the magazine over the aft wheels, and the layer primed them and shunted them forward to the gunner, who was hunting through the glowing green viewer of his scope. Every few seconds, the layer eased the muzzle recoil brake and the main gun fired with a retort that shook the tank and welled smoke into the turret, smoke quickly sucked out through the louvres of the outlets.

  Grizmund's driver, Wolsh, was one of the finest and he kept them moving even when firing. He had a master's eye for terrain and seemed to know exactly what to ram and what to steer around, what to drive over and what to avoid. The Narmenians joked that Wolsh could smell a mine a kilometre off.

  Operation Dercius threw forty fast-moving Narmenian heavy tanks down through fg/567 and cut through the neck of the Zoican column spread. Grizmund's forces had killed or crippled seventy-two enemy vehicles by the time they doubled back, swinging around without breaking speed to re-engage the shattered Zoican armour from the other side. By then, the Zoican armour was milling and fracturing in confusion.

  Now came the part that required true skill, a manoeuvre Grizmund had dubbed The Scissors'. As his tanks came around to re-engage, another fifty under Brigadier Nachin charged the enemy from the other side, from the direction of Grizmund's original strike. A textbook disaster in the hands of less able commanders, but at the turn, Grizmund's forces had begun to send identifying vox beacons to distinguish them from the enemy, and Nachin's forces did the same. The rule was anything caught between their charges that didn't broadcast the correct beacon was a target. Grizmund had used this tactic nine times before and never lost a tank to his own fire.