Ghostmaker

by Dan Abnett

  He ordered the platoon leaders to ready their men – though most had begun to do so already – and summoned the senior officers for a tactical meeting in the command centre. He sent Milo away in search of his cap and jacket, and his weapons.

  In under ten minutes, Corbec brought Rawne, ferod, Mkoll, Varl and the other seniors to the centre, to find Gaunt, now dressed, spreading out the communiques on the camp table. There were no preliminaries.

  'Orbital reconnaissance and forward scouting has shown a massed, singular column of Chaos moving through the territory to the west.'

  'Objective?' Corbec asked.

  Gaunt shrugged. It was a disarming gesture from one usually so confident. 'Unclear, colonel. We've been expecting a major attack for days, but this doesn't seem to focus any strength on our positions at all. Early reports show the enemy have cm through – well, destroyed, in fact – a battalion-strength force of Kaylen Lancers. But I have a hunch that's only because the lancers were in the way. It's as if our enemy has another objective, one they're determined to achieve. One we don't know about.'

  Mkoll was eyeing the charts carefully. He'd scouted and mapped the area in question thoroughly during the previous week. His sharp tactical mind saw no obvious purpose to the assault either. He said as much.

  'Could their intelligence be wrong?' Varl asked. 'Maybe they've made their play at positions they think we hold.'

  'I doubt that,' Mkoll answered. 'They've seemed well informed up to now. Still, it's a possibility. They've committed a huge portion of their strength to a mistake if that's true.'

  'If it's a mistake, we'll use it. If they have some dark and secret purpose, well, we'll do ourselves no favours by waiting to find out what it is.' Gaunt paused and scratched his chin thought fully.

  'Besides,' he said, 'our orders are clear. General Thoth is sending us in, as soon as we're ready, on orders from Lord Militant General Bulledin himself. The Tanith will form one arm of a counter assault. Upwards of sixty thousand men from various regiments are to be deployed against the enemy. Because of the peculiar, not to say perplexing orientation of their advance, we'll catch them side on. The Ghosts will cover a salient about nine kilometres long.' Gaunt indicated their area of the new front on the chart, marking little runic symbols on the glass plate with his wax pencil. 'I don't want to sound over-confident, but if they've presented laterally to us by mistake, or if they're driving towards something else, we should be able to do a lot of damage to their flank. Thoth has demanded a main force assault, what the beloved and devout Chapterhouses like to call a meat-grinder. Rip into them along the flank and try, if nothing else, to break their column and isolate parts of it.'

  'Begging your pardon, commissar,' Rawne's sibilant tones whispered through the centre's close humidity like a cold draught. 'The Tanith aren't heavy troops. Main force, without playing to our strengths? feth, that'll get us all killed.'

  'Correct, major.' Gaunt fixed the man with a tight stare. 'Thoth has given the regimental commanders some discretion. Let's remember the depth of ground cover and jungle out there. The Ghosts can still use their stealth and cunning to get close, get in amongst them if need be. I'll not send you in en masse. The Ghosts will deploy in platoon sections, small scattered units designed to approach the foe unseen through the glades. I think that way we will give as good an account of ourselves as any massed charged of armoured infantry.'

  The briefing was over, save to agree platoon order and position. The officers filed out.

  Gaunt stopped Mkoll. This notion they've made a mistake: you don't hold with it?'

  'I gave my reasons, sir,' Mkoll said. 'It's true, these jungles are dense and confusing, and we can use that. But I don't believe they've made a mistake, no, sir. I think they're after something.'

  'What?'

  'I wouldn't like to guess,' Mkoll said, but he gestured down at the chart. Just off centre in the middle of the area mapped out as the new front, Gaunt saw what he was pointing to. A mark on the map representing the estimated position of the prehuman ruins Mkoll had found while scouting just a few days before.

  'I never did get a look at that, first hand. I… couldn't find it again.'

  'What? Say that again?'

  Mkoll shrugged. 'I saw it from a distance on patrol – that's when I reported it to you. But since then, I've been unable to relocate it. The men think I'm slipping.'

  'But you think…' Gaunt let the silence and Mkoll's expres sion finish the sentence.

  Gaunt began to strap on his holster belt. When we get in there, prioritise getting a good assessment of that ruin. Find it again, priority. Keep this between us. Report it back to me directly.'

  'Understood, colonel-commissar. To be frank, it's an honour thing now. I know I saw it.'

  'I believe you,' Gaunt said. 'Feth, I trust your senses more than my own. Let's move. Let's go and do what they sent us here to do.'

  The stone walls were lime quartz, smooth, perfectly finished, lambent. They enclosed the Inner Place like walls of water, like a section cut through the deepest ocean. As if some sublime power had cut the waters open and set aside a dry, dark place for him to walk in, unmolested by the contained pressure of the flood.

  He was old, but not so old that such an idea couldn't touch him with the feeling of older myth. It warmed his dying bones somehow. Not a thrill as such, but a powerful reassurance. To be in tune with such an ancestral legend.

  The Inner Place was silent, except for the distant chiming of a prayer bell. And beyond that, a muffled clamour, far away, like an eternally restless god, or the rumble of a deep, primeval star.

  With long, fragile fingers, freed from the mesh-armoured glove which swung from his wrist-guard by its leather loop and the energy coupler, the Old One traced the gold symbols inscribed on the green stone of the lower walls. He closed his real eyes, dry rheumy lids shutting tight like walnut shells, and the auto-sensitive iris shutters of his helmet optics closed in synch.

  Another old tale remembered itself to him. Back, before the stars were crossed, when his kind only knew one world, and knew the star and the kindred worlds that revolved around it only through the astronomical lenses they trained at the sky. Then, as the weight of years swung by, slow and heavy as the slide of continents, and their abilities grew, they slowly learned of other stars, other worlds, a galaxy. And they realised they were not one and alone but one amongst countless others. And those other lights beckoned and, as they were able to, they fled to them.

  So it seemed now, an echo. The Old One had been alone for a long while, conscious only of the few lives that orbited his in the Inner Place, the lives of his devoted kin. Then, in the outer blackness, other lights began to emerge and reveal themselves to his mind. A few at first, then dozens, thousands, legions.

  The Old One's mind was a fearfully powerful apparatus. As hundreds of thousands of life-lights slowly appeared and began to congregate on this place, it seemed to him as if whole constellations were forming and becoming real. And so many of those life-lights were dark and foul.

  lime was against him and his kind. He despised the urgency, because haste was one thing his long, careful life had previously been free of. But now there was precious little time left. A heartbeat by his measuring. And he would have to use every last pulse of it to achieve his purpose.

  Already his mind had set things in motion. Already, he had shaken out his dreams and let his rich imagination drape across the place like a cloak. Simple deceits, such as would normally beguile the lesser brains of other races, had already been set in motion.

  They would not be enough.

  The Old One sighed. It had come to this. A sacrifice, one that he knew would one day punctuate his long life. Perhaps it had been the very reason for his birth.

  He was ready. At least it would, in its turn, make a new legend.

  Under the thick, wet trees and creeper growth, Third platoon skirted the ditches and mud-ban
ks of the glades, moving ever nearer to the thunder-war in the west. Dawn was now on them and light lanced down through the canopy in cold, stale beams.

  Third platoon; Rawne's. They'd had Larkin seconded to them from Corbec's unit because Rawne's sniper was busy heaving his fever-ridden guts into a tin bucket in the infirmary. Blood-flies, and tiny biting insects that swirled like dust, had begun to spread disease and infection through the ranks. Dorden had been braced for wounded, but what he had got, suddenly in the last day and night, were the sick.

  Milo was with Rawne's platoon too. The boy wasn't sure who hated his presence there most, Rawne or Milo himself. Just before deployment, Gaunt had taken Milo to one side and instructed him to accompany the major's advance.

  'If anyone's going to benefit from your rousing pipes, it's going to be the Third,' the commissar had said. 'If any section is going to break, it's going to be them. I want you there to urge them on – or at least vox me if they falter.'

  Milo would have refused but for the look in Gaunt's eyes. This was a trust thing, a subtle command responsibility. Gaunt was entrusting him to watch the Third from the inside. Besides, he had his lasgun now, and his shoulder pip, and Rawne's sniper wasn't the only man in the Third to fall sick.

  'Keep up!' Teygor hissed to Milo as they crept through the weeds. Milo nodded, biting back a curse. He knew he was moving more swiftly and silently than many in Rawne's platoon. He knew too that he had fastened his webbing and applied his camo-paint better than any of them. Colm Corbec had taken time to teach him well.

  But he also knew he wasn't an outsider any more, a boy piper, a mascot. He was a Ghost, and as such he would obey the letter of his superiors. Even if they were dangerous, treacherous men.

  With Rawne's scout Logris in the vanguard, the ten men filed through the glades and thickets of the Monthax jungle. Milo found himself behind Caffran, the only trooper in the platoon who he liked. Or trusted.

  Rawne paused them in a basin of weed and silt-muck which stank of ripe vegetation while logris and Teygor edged ahead. Tiny flies swirled like dust over the soup.

  Caffran, his face striped with camo-paint, turned to Milo and gently adjusted the straps of the lad's weapon, like a big brother looking after a younger sibling.

  'You've seen action, though, haven't you?' Caffran whispered. 'This is nothing new.'

  Milo shrugged. 'Yes, but not like this. Not as a trooper.'

  Caffran smiled. 'You'll be fine.'

  Across the silky water, Larkin watched them from his position curled into the root network of a mangrove. He knew that Caffran and the piper boy had never been friends before now. He had heard Caffran talk of it. Though little more than two years separated them, Caffran felt uneasy around the lad, because he reminded him too much of home. Now that seemed to be forgotten and Larkin was glad. It seemed having Milo in his company had given Caffran purpose. A novice, a little brother, someone junior to the youngest Ghost that Caffran could take care of.

  Caffran felt it too. He no longer despised Brin Milo. Trooper Milo was one of them now. It was like… it was like they were back home. Caffran couldn't understand why he had shunned the boy so. They were all in this together. All Tanith, after all. And besides, if Gaunt had seen fit to protect Milo all this time, Caffran was damned if anything would happen to the boy.

  Rawne waited at the ditch edge for Logris and Teygor. His eyes were fierce diamonds of white with hard, dark centres, flashing from the band of camo-paint across his face. There was something terribly familiar about their situation. He could feel it in his marrow. Soon there would be killing.

  Spoonbills flapped by. Mkoll turned to Domor and slung his weapon.

  'Sir?' Domor asked quietly.

  'Take them forward, Domor,' Mkoll said.

  'Me?'

  'You're up to it?'

  Domor shrugged a ''yes'', the focussing rings of his bionic eyes whirring as they tried to manufacture the quizzical expression his real eyes would have wanted.

  'I need to move ahead. Scout. I can only do that alone. You bring the Ninth up after me.'

  'But—'

  'Gaunt won't mind. I've spoken to him.' Mkoll tapped the ear-piece of his micro-bead intercom twice and softly told the rest of his platoon that Domor was now in charge, 'follow him like you would me,' he urged them.

  He looked back at Domor. This is important. It may be the life or death of us. Okay?'

  Domor nodded. Tor Tanith.'

  'Tor Tanith, like it's still alive.'

  Mkoll was gone an instant later, vanishing into the brooding, puffy, waterlogged vegetation like a rumour.

  'Form on me and renew advance,' Domor whispered into his bead, and Ninth platoon formed and renewed.

  Under the shade of great, oil-sweet trees, Corbec's platoon, the Second, moved into the mire and the glades. The colonel missed Larkin, but his squad already had the crack-shot Merrt, so it would have been churlish to complain.

  Feth, Corbec was thinking, all this time driven mad by Larks's babbling and scaremongering, and now I actually wish he was here.

  Ahead, the glades widened into a lagoon. The still water was coated with russet weed, and black, rotten wood limbs and roots poked up out of it. Corbec motioned the Second on behind him, the thigh-deep water leaving a greasy film on his fatigues. He raised his gun higher.

  'Up there!' Merrt breathed through the intercom. Along the far end of the lagoon, Corbec could see shapes: moving figures.

  'Ours?' Merrt asked.

  'Only Varl could be dumb enough to bring his platoon in front of ours, and he's on the eastern limit. No. Let's go.'

  Corbec raised his gun to firing position, heard nine other safeties hum off. 'For Tanith! For the Emperor! For us!' he bellowed.

  Las-fire volleyed across the water of the lagoon and figures at the far end fell and started. Some dropped into the water, face down; others knelt for cover in the tree roots of the bank and returned fire. Laser shots echoed and returned across the water course. The lowest bolts cut furrows as they flew across the water. Others steamed as they hit the liquid or exploded sodden, decomposing bark.

  Others hit flesh, or cut through armour, and figures tumbled down the far bank, sliding into the water or being arrested by root systems. Merrt made three priceless head shots before a stray return took him in the mouth and he dropped, face down and gurgling, into the ooze of the lagoon.

  Corbec bellowed into his vox-bead that contact had been made and that he was engaging. Then he set his lasgun for full auto-fire and ploughed into the water, his finger clenching the trigger.

  One for Merrt. Two. 'Three. Tour. Not enough. Not even half enough.

  'Second platoon has engaged!' Comms-Officer Raglon reported quickly to Gaunt.

  'Ahead now!' Gaunt ordered, urging the men of First forward through the shin-deep water along the glade bed. His chainsword was in his hand and purring. They could hear the close shooting, harsher and more immediate than the distant thunder of the mysterious war they were approaching: Corbec's platoon, fighting and firing. But the source was unspecified, remote. Gaunt damned the thickness and false echoes of the glades. Why was this place so impossibly confused?

  Las-fire spat across the glades at the First platoon. Lowen fell, cut through and smouldering. Raglon went down too, a glancing burn to his cheek. Gaunt hauled the vox-caster man to his feet and threw him into cover behind a thick root branch.

  'All right?'

  'I'll live,' returned the comms-officer, dabbing the bloody, scorched weal along the side of his face with a medicine swab.

  The enemy fire was too heavy to charge against. Gaunt fell his platoon into cover and they began to return fire with drilled, careful precision. They loosed their las-rounds down the funnel of the glade, and the salvos that came back at them were loose and unfocused. Gaunt could see the position of the enemy from their muzzle flashes. They were badly placed and poorly spaced.

  He ordered his men up, searching for a rousi
ng command. None came but for: 'First platoon… like you're the First and Only! Kill them! '

  It would do. It would do.

  'Third platoon froze, half at a hand gesture from Rawne, half at the sudden sounds of fighting from elsewhere in the glades. They settled in low, in the dark green shadows of the canopy, white eyes staring up from dark camo-paint at every ripple of sound. Feygor wiped a trickle of sweat off his cheek. Larkin tracked around with his custom rifle, hunting the trees around them with his night-scope. Wheln chewed at his lower lip, eyes darting. Caffran was poised like a statue, gun ready.

  'To the left,' Rawne hissed, indicating with a finger, 'fighting there. No further than two hundred metres.'

  Just behind him, Milo jerked a thumb off to the right. 'And to the right, sir. A little further off.' His voice was a whisper.

  Feygor was about to silence the impudence with a fist, but Rawne raised a hand and nodded, listening. 'Sharp ears, boy. He's right. The echoes are confusing, but there is a second engagement.'

  'All around us, then… What about our turn?' Feygor breathed.

  Rawne could feel Feygor's itching impatience. The waiting, the fething anticipation, was often harder than the fighting itself.

  'We'll find our fight soon enough.' Rawne slid out his silver dagger – given to him by Gaunt, Emperor damn his soul! – the blade dulled with fire-soot, and clipped it into the lugs under his lasgun's muzzle. His men fixed their own knives as bayonets in response.

  'Let's keep the quiet and the surprise as long as we have it,' Rawne told them, and raised them to move on.

  There was the sound of water, drizzling. The spitting noise almost blocked out the muffled fighting elsewhere. But not the distant heavy bombardment of the duelling armour.

  Mkoll followed a lip of rocks, slick with black lichen, around the edge of a pool in deep shadow. A skein of water fell from a mossy outcrop thirty metres above, frothing the plunge pool. It was as humid and dark as a summer night in this dim place.