[Gaunt's Ghosts 05] - The Guns of Tanith

by Dan Abnett

  “Well, are they right to be worried?”

  “No.” He glanced at her quickly, and saw she was gazing at him intently. “No. I’m not… not taking risks. I don’t think I am. Not deliberately.”

  “But?”

  Kolea chewed his lip for a second. He looked down at the book with a little shake of the head. There was a moment. During the assault. I ran into the gunfire. I… I didn’t care.

  “Varl saw me. Even now, I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”

  “That you want to escape?”

  He turned his head and met her eyes. There was no guile in them. Only care. The care that made her a great healer. “What do you mean?”

  “We all want escape. Escape from poverty, fear, death, pain. Escape from whatever we hate about life. And we all have our ways. The Ghosts who drink to drown the terrors of war. The ones who gamble. The ones who have a superstition for every thing they do.” As she was speaking, she slid a packet of lho-sticks out of her jacket pocket and lit one. “Me, it’s bad old poetry, a park bench in pretend sunlight, and these damn things.” She took a drag. She’d given up years before after her promotion to surgeon. The old habit had crept up on her again those last few months. “And I like a glass of sacra now and then. Feth, I escape in all sorts of ways, don’t I?”

  He laughed, partly at her frank remark and partly at the way her Verghastite accent made the Tanith curse sound. She was one of the few from Vervunhive who had cheerfully borrowed that other world’s oath.

  “You, though,” she went on. “Well, there’s no escape, is there? Drink, narcotics… they must only make it worse. The hell of having your kids so near and yet so far away. For you, it must seem like there’s only one escape. An escape from life itself.”

  “You’re a psychiatrist now, then?”

  She blew a raspberry. “There is another way, you know. Another escape.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I tell them. I tell Caff and Tona. I reveal myself to the kids. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Ana, it would hurt them all. Caffran and Criid… it would destroy them. It’d be like taking their children away. And Dalin and Yoncy. Gak, the trauma. They’ve survived losing me. Finding me again might be too much.”

  “I think they’d survive. All of them. I think they’d benefit in many ways. I think it would matter to them. More than you know.”

  He flicked the pages of the text. “Maybe.”

  “Not to mention the good it will do you. Will you think about it?”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Oooh… you’ve no idea how persistent I can be. Or how many unnecessary medical checks I can order for you.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” said Kolea. “The assault on Ouranberg is close. Real close. Let me get through that. Then I’ll… I’ll come clean. If you think it’s for the best.”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “But not before Ouranberg. Caffran and Criid will need their heads together for that. I’ll not drop a bombshell like this just before a big show.”

  Curth nodded and exhaled a plume of smoke. It shone blue in the artificial light as it billowed away. “Fair enough.”

  Kolea fidgeted with the book again, flipping the pages one last time before handing it back.

  He stopped. The text had fallen open on the tide page. A yellowing certificate had been pasted onto the endpaper. It was a scholam prize, awarding Mikal Dorden a merit in elementary comprehension.

  “Dorden lent you this text?”

  “Yes,” she said, leaning over. “Oh. I hadn’t noticed that. It must have been his son’s.”

  For the first few years of the regiment’s life, Mikal and Tolin Dorden had been unique amongst the Ghosts. Father and son. Doc Dorden and his trooper boy. The only blood relationship to survive the fall of Tanith.

  Mikal had died in the battle for Vervunhive.

  Kolea gave her back the ragged old book.

  “Gol?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t leave it too long. Don’t leave it until it’s too late.”

  “I promise you I won’t,” he said.

  SEVEN

  At 08.00 Imperial on the morning of the 222nd, the Ghosts assigned to Operation Larisel met in an office annexe off the training sub-hangar. They had exercised, showered and eaten a good breakfast brought in from the billet kitchens. There was a tension in the air, but it was a fine-tuned, taut feeling of readiness and an eagerness to get on and do.

  The annexe had been cleared so as to accommodate a tactical desk, and folding chairs had been arranged in a circle around it.

  “Take your seats,” Kersherin told them as they filed in. When Captain Daur arrived, everyone was surprised to see him.

  He walked in casually and took off his cap and jacket. “Morning,” he said.

  “Where’s the colonel-commissar?” asked Mkoll.

  “He’s asked me to convey his apologies and take his place. Something came up.”

  Daur walked over to the tac-desk and loaded a data-spool into the slot The unit hummed and information scrolled across its glass screens. Daur typed in the password that would let him access the confidential files.

  “What something?” Adare called out Daur ignored him.

  “Let’s talk about Ouranberg,” he said, getting their attention. The Phantine troopers took their seats amongst the Ghosts.

  Daur keyed a stud on the desk and a large hololithic image of the target city rose majestically into being above the optical emitters. A three-dimensional landscape, covering the table top.

  “There it is,” he said.

  They all craned forward.

  “Stand up, if you want to. You need to get to know this place. Let’s begin with basics. Two linked domes, Alpha and Beta, primary habitation. Built against and between them to the north is the main vapour mill complex. Here, you see? Adjoining that and Beta dome is Gamma, a smaller habitat sector. Minor habitat domes cluster around the north edges of the mill. The main aerodrome is here, in the cleavage between Gamma and Beta, if we want to think in anatomical terms.”

  “Hey, let’s not,” said Banda. Several men laughed. Daur held up an apologetic hand. “Fine. Here… you see? Here at the southern face, the main porta is—”

  “What’s a porta?” asked Larkin.

  “Gateway, Larks.”

  “Just so’s I know,” Larkin said, making careful notes in his jotter.

  “The main porta, anyway. A sixty metre square vacuum hatch called Ourangate. In front of it, extending out on an apron of rock for about a kilometre, give or take, is Pavia Fields, a kind of ornamental platform.”

  What are those? Nessa signed.

  “Standing stones. Monolithic war memorials,” said Daur, catching her gestures easily and answering at once. “It’s called the Avenue of the Polyandrons and it marks the formal approach to Ourangate. Linked to the Pavia Fields platform by a causeway is the Imperial Phantine Landing Station, the main dock point for drogues. Especially if they’re carrying Imperial nobility. Extending on another causeway from the north-east of the city is the secondary vapour mill complex, built on a neighbouring peak. The mountain top Ouranberg is constructed on actually rises up through the city, hence this… Ouranpeak.”

  Daur indicated the fang of rock that jutted out of the top of the city model, between the Beta and Gamma domes.

  “What are those extensions to the west and north?” Mkvenner asked.

  “Stacks,” Daur said. “Linked by supported pipelines to the main mill. They use them to flare off waste gases.”

  He looked round the room. “Okay so far? Let’s talk about drop zones. Any questions up to this point?”

  “Yeah,” said Varl. “What did you say Gaunt was doing again?”

  “You’ve started?” Gaunt said.

  “Yes we have,” Commissar Del Mar said wearily. “Time is precious, so we moved the sessions up by half an hour.”

  “I wasn’t noti
fied.”

  “Gaunt, I understood you weren’t bringing a challenge to this hearing.”

  “I changed my mind,” said Gaunt. He stepped up onto the platform and walked to the empty row of seats on the defence side.

  Cuu, hunched, shackled and defeated, stood where Caffran had been the morning before.

  “Approach the bench,” said Del Mar. Gaunt walked over to him and lent down on the table.

  “I just about tolerated your showboating with Caffran yesterday. Gaunt,” whispered Del Mar. “I can’t believe you’ve got the brass neck to turn up again today. This is the devil you put in the frame for the killing. It’s a done thing. You said yourself he was the one.”

  “I may have been wrong. A moment, please.”

  Before Del Mar could protest, Gaunt walked back down the stage and faced Cuu.

  “Did you do it?” he said simply.

  “No, sir!” There was animal fear in Cuu’s ugly, piercing eyes. “I looted gold, enemy gold, for that I’ll put my hand up. But I didn’t do no killing. Sure as sure.”

  Gaunt hesitated. Then he walked back to Del Mar, took a pack off his shoulder, and emptied the contents onto the desk in front of the commissar.

  Ghost daggers, nine of them, each one wrapped in plastene.

  “What is this?” asked Del Mar.

  “Warknives. Straight silver, Tanith issue. Some are notched, as you can see. Any one of them might be the murder weapon.”

  “And why should I believe that?”

  “Because these were recovered from a Blood Pact cell operating in the undercity. They had acquired several sets of Tanith fatigues and these knives. They were using defaced coinage to bribe the locals. The evidence I sent you— the blade shard, the coin under the bath — it all points to Cuu there. Unless you take into account the notion that not everyone dressed as a Ghost that night was a Ghost.”

  “You’re truly pissing me off now, Gaunt,” said Del Mar. “I won’t stand for this.”

  “I don’t care. All I care about is my duty. There are reasonable grounds for the dismissal of charges against Trooper Cuu. As reasonable as the grounds you threw Caffran’s case out on.”

  “I’m warning you—”

  “Don’t even try. You know I’m right.”

  Del Mar sat back, shaking his head. “What about the old man? The witness?”

  “I showed him a picture of Cuu and he didn’t recognise him either.”

  “I see. So the Ghost who was seen, the one who undoubtedly slew Onti Flyte…”

  “…was very likely a Blood Pact trooper masquerading as a Ghost, yes.”

  Del Mar sighed.

  “Reasonable doubt,” said Gaunt.

  “Damn you, Gaunt.”

  “Sir, can we square this away so that I can get on with my real duties?” Gaunt said, sarcastically stressing the word “real”.

  “He admits looting?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then he’ll be flogged. Case dismissed.”

  Gaunt didn’t stay to see the sentence carried out. As he came down the steps of the Chamber of Justice, he met Hark hurrying in. The man looked tired, his eyes still puffy with sleep, and he was trying to smooth down his hair with his fingers.

  Hark stopped in his tracks when he saw Gaunt “Sir?”

  “It’s done. Cuu has been cleared of the murder.” Hark fell into step with him as they descended into the yard.

  “I… I wish you had kept me informed, sir.”

  “Informed, Viktor?”

  “That you’d changed your mind about Cuu’s guilt.” Gaunt glanced at him. “It was an eleventh hour decision. I thought you’d be pleased. Between the pair of you, you and ayatani Zweil have been on at me for days about being even-handed towards the Verghastites. And you were right. A popular Ghost gets into trouble, and I move heaven and earth to get him out of the mess. A less-popular Verghastite gets in trouble, and I cut him adrift. I dread to think what it would have done to Verghastite morale if I’d left Cuu to face the court alone this morning.”

  “I am pleased, sir. For inevitable reasons, you do seem to have favoured the Tanith until now. Even if you didn’t think that’s what you were doing.”

  “Captain Daur brought me up sharp, I’m glad to say.” He stopped walking and turned to Hark. “You still seem… put out Viktor.”

  “Like I said, I wish you’d told me you had decided to go to bat for Cuu. I could have helped.”

  “I managed fine.”

  “Of course. But I could have done some leg work, organised evidence. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Gaunt raised a hand and the staff driver assigned to him started up the waiting car and drove it across the yard to collect him.

  “I suppose you could have talked to witnesses. You probably would have preferred to do that yourself, rather than let me do it.”

  “Sir?”

  “I went to visit Mr. Absolom, Hark. He’d seen the killer, after all. I had to make sure he didn’t recognise Cuu. Mr. Absolom’s a fine old fellow. A service veteran, isn’t he? He’d do anything for the Imperial Guard. Especially if a persuasive commissar came to see him and convinced him it was his duty.”

  Hark’s eyes darkened. “You told me to guarantee Caffran’s acquittal.”

  “And a key witness would do that wouldn’t it? Absolom didn’t recognise Cuu’s picture, of course. But you knew that. He wouldn’t recognise any picture. Because he didn’t see the killer at all, did he, Viktor?”

  Hark looked away. “I suppose you’ll want my resignation from the regiment?” he said bitterly.

  “No. But I want you to learn from this. I will not break Imperial law. Better that Caffran had gone to execution innocent than lie to get him off. Commissars are often thought of as devious, Viktor. That reputation is justified. They are political animals who use all the tricks of politics to achieve their goals. That is not my way. And I will never sanction it in any man in my command. You could make an exemplary officer, Hark. My oh-so naive idea of an exemplary officer, anyway. Don’t stoop to those methods again, or I will drum you out of this company and the Commissariate. Do we have an understanding?”

  Hark nodded. Gaunt got into his car and was driven away out through the gate. Hark watched him go. “Naive. You said it.”

  Gaunt stepped up onto an empty ammo crate that Beltayn had lugged in. He raised his voice, and the sound of it silenced the men gathered round in the main billet.

  “Men of Tanith, men of Verghast. Ghosts. The word has just been given. Weather permitting, we go for Ouranberg at dawn on the 226th. Make ready for the Emperor’s work. That is all.”

  As he got off the box and put his cap back on, Gaunt thought about the information he hadn’t been at liberty to announce. By the time the invasion began, the squads of Operation Larisel would have been active in Ouranberg for over twenty-four hours.

  God-Emperor willing.

  THE DROP

  OURANBERG, PHANTINE, 224.771, M41

  “Never, ever, ever fething again!”

  —Trooper Larkin, 2nd Team marksman, Tanith First

  Just after midnight, in the first hour of the 224th, Scald-storms rose cyclonically in the cloud oceans north of Cirenholm. Jarring, superheated belts of fire, dozens of kilometres long, crackled up into the higher reaches of the sky, and the borealis flickered and roiled in queasy, phantom coils.

  Air visibility and sensor ranges were cut to less than five kilometres. Plumes of rising ash blotted out the stars. The poisonous heart of Phantine raged against the night.

  The storms had been predicted by the Navy’s long-range auspex, and the twitching senses of the taskforce astropaths. This was what the tacticians had been waiting for.

  The drogues Zephyr and Trenchant had reached their holding position several hours before midnight. Hugging a dense reef of altocumulus cloud forty kilometres across, they kept station in a shallow gulf of sky called the Leaward Races, almost in the dead centre of the great air desert known as the Wester
n Continental Reaches.

  On the flight deck of the Zephyr, Admiral Ornoff ordered the launch.

  Ornoff had used the drogues judiciously to pursue his policy of nightly raids. By releasing the bomber shoals from carriers that varied their positions, he ensured that the defences of Ouranberg never knew from which direction to expect the next raid. Enemy hunter squadrons searched for the drogues by day, hoping to surprise them before they could unleash their armadas, but the Western Continental Reaches were vast, and Ornoff used the mammatocumulus of the regular Scald-storms as cover.

  The night raid of the 224th would approach Ouranberg from the south-east covering a distance to the target of about three hundred and forty kilometres. They would use the prevailing jet streams of the Reaches to maximise speed, hugging the ultra-violet void where the troposphere became the stratosphere.

  Including the fighter escort of Imperial Navy Lightnings and Thunderbolts, the raiding force numbered some six hundred aircraft. Thirty matt-grey Marauders of the Phantine Air Corps took the role of the pathfinders, pressing ahead clear of the main formation to light up the target with illumination-mines and incendiary payloads. Six minutes behind them came a mass wave of over three hundred heavy bombers. Most of these were lumbering, six-engined Magogs, painted an unreflective black. The Magog was a prop-driven, atmospheric type that had been in service for centuries, but the wave also included two dozen Behemoths, the awesome and ancient giants of Phantine Bomber Command.

  Following the first wave came a second pack of Marauders, from either Imperial Navy or Urdeshi regimental squadrons. The green mottle-camo of the former distinguished them from the silver-belly/beige-top two-tone of the latter. All seventy of them were laden with fuel-air explosive payloads.

  The third wave numbered almost two hundred craft. More Magogs, as well as twenty Urdeshi Marauder Destroyers and thirty Phantine Shrikes. These destroyers, and the elderly hook-winged, single-engined Shrike jets, were specialist dive bombers that would finish the raid by carrying out pinpoint low-level runs into a target zone that, by then, should have been grievously punished.