[Gaunt's Ghosts 09] - His Last Command

by Dan Abnett

  Gaunt stepped past Eszrah, who rose to follow him. Gaunt shook his head, and motioned that the Nihtgane should stay where he was.

  He went outside into the billet area. Most of the habi-tents around had already been vacated. There really was a hell of a lot of activity going on. Gaunt pulled his shirt and vest off over his head and walked to the standpipe of the nearest service bowser. He cranked the pump handle, and sluiced out cold water to wash his armpits, his neck, and his face.

  More attack ships went over, Valkyries this time. Gaunt stood upright and shook the water off his face like a dog as he watched the gunships slide past. Twenty of them, then another fan of at least thirty. Their combined engine noise was deafening.

  Something about them, or about the cold, grey sky behind them, reminded Gaunt of his dream. He’d been in a room, a small, oblong room, with a door in each of the shorter walls. The room had been open to the sky, lacking a roof. Every time he’d looked up, he’d been able to see a vast stretch of wild heavens, deep and florid with banks of cloud that were ominously edged with a fiery russet.

  In the dream, Gaunt had been aware of a deep compulsion to get out of the room. Some odd part of the dream’s internal logic told him that if he didn’t leave the roofless room, he wouldn’t be able to do any good. Any good at what, the dream wasn’t particularly bothered to identify.

  But every time he walked towards one of the doors, it was no longer there. The doors wouldn’t stay put. He’d move towards a door, and suddenly it would be in another wall.

  For a few weeks on Gereon, early on, he’d been plagued by a recurring dream where he’d been stuck in a stone chamber that had no doors or windows. It had bothered him deeply, scared him, back at a time when he still could be scared. The claustrophobia, the sense of imprisonment, had lingered on him each morning, long after he’d woken. Ana Curth had told him it was simply an anxiety dream, a nightmare about being trapped on Gereon. After a few weeks, it had passed.

  This new dream didn’t scare him, but it left him with an unsettled sensation that fed uncomfortably into his current troubles.

  Gaunt was pulling his vest and shirt back on when Ludd appeared, bleary-eyed.

  “What’s going on, sir?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Something big. I’ll go and see Sautoy. I have to report to him, after all.”

  They’d arrived back late the previous night after their bloody encounter on the road. Ironmeadow had wanted to file a full report at once, but Gaunt had told him to get some sleep. He’d assured the captain he’d make his damning report about post 15 in the morning.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ludd said.

  “No. Stay here and get some caffeine brewed. We both need some. I’ll be back soon.”

  Gaunt put on his coat and cap, and headed down the truckway to post command. There was activity all around. Young troopers, their faces pale and anxious, were boarding transporters or loading munitions onto cargoes and armoured cars. A line of Chimeras grumbled past. The sky was overcast and grim, and there was a real wind picking up. It was hard to tell, but Gaunt was sure he could hear heavy, booming blasts echoing from far away.

  Post command was busy. The place was heaving with officers and tacticae advisors, message runners and technicians. Briefings were underway in some of the side chambers, and a constant flow of shouted updates rang from the bustling vox station.

  Gaunt pushed inside. There was a smell of fear. Stale sweat, morning breath, the ugly odour of men who had been living in the field and now had been roused early, unwillingly, to face a cold, unfriendly day. Faces were pinched, troubled, unfriendly. The younger men in particular looked like a slow horror was dawning on them.

  Sautoy was in the station command room. He looked harried and bothered. The start of his day had evidently been so brusque that he hadn’t even had time to pin his handsome collection of medals to his purple coat. Officers had gathered around his chart table, and Sautoy was throwing orders and directives left and right as he sorted through an increasing pile of status forms and message papers that the runners were bringing in from the vox-station.

  “Gaunt!” he called as he saw the commissar in the doorway. No false bonhomie this morning. “Come in. I just sent Ironmeadow to find you.”

  “I must have crossed him on the way,” Gaunt said. “It’s busy out there.”

  Gaunt stepped inside and took off his cap. Half a dozen of the junior officers around the marshal’s chart table hurried out to get on with their orders. The others remained, bent over the table in a serious huddle, conferring and pointing out various details on the underlit map image.

  “I wanted to file a report, sir,” Gaunt began. “My visit to post 15 yesterday. Serious code violations led me to—”

  Sautoy held up his hand. “I know all about it, Gaunt. Ironmeadow came to see me last night.”

  “I see.”

  “He was shaken, Gaunt. Understandably. What you found there was vile.”

  “Symptomatic of an underlying—”

  “It’s academic now, anyway, Gaunt.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “Because a total crap-storm broke about two hours ago, Gaunt. Post 15’s gone. Twelve’s maybe about to fall too. The archenemy has decided, this morning, to mount a full scale counter-offensive.”

  He led Gaunt over to the chart table. It took Gaunt very little time to make sense of the markers and deployments on display.

  “Significant enemy forces struck through compartments seven and nine just before first light,” Sautoy said anyway. “They stormed out of the ninth compartment and overran post 15. Our forces there abandoned the site rather hastily. They’ve also pushed us entirely out of the seventh compartment. We’re currently throwing everything we’ve got into this compartment to try and establish some resistance in the lowland sector here, behind post 12. Trouble is, as it stands, post 12 is pretty much cut off and taking the brunt of both advances. We’ve had no contact with them for thirty-eight minutes.”

  Sautoy beckoned Gaunt away from the junior officers and lowered his voice. “We’ve not seen anything on this scale since we first chased the bastards into this step-city. It’s barely credible that they’ve got such resources built up in here. Our boys are rattled. Seriously rattled, and on the back foot. There’s a real danger we could get pushed right back out of the third compartment unless we rally soon.”

  A vox-officer came in, saluted Sautoy and gave him a message wafer. Sautoy’s face darkened as he read it. “Throne above,” he whispered, and handed the slip to Gaunt. Post 36 in the fifth compartment was reporting a major enemy offensive too.

  Gaunt sighed. He’d had a plan that morning. He’d intended, one way or another, to find a way of persuading Sautoy to allow him to transfer to fifth compartment operations. It was a long shot, and Sautoy was certainly no ally. Gaunt had already debated with himself at least a dozen possible excuses or reasons for the transfer, none of them satisfactory. He’d even considered contacting Van Voytz and going over Sautoy’s head. But now this had happened, and everything, as Sautoy had remarked, was academic. There was no point even asking.

  Gaunt did, anyway.

  “I’d like to request permission to transfer to the fifth compartment, sir,” he said.

  Sautoy blinked. “Out of the question, man. Why would you even ask that?”

  Gaunt paused. In the light of the current situation, he quickly decided which of his excuses sounded the most plausible. “My old outfit, the Tanith First, is up in the Fifth, sir. If this is as bad as it sounds, I’d like to be with them and try—”

  Sautoy shook his head. “Admirable, Gaunt. Very admirable. Loyal. I like that. It’s why I’ve always liked you. But the answer’s still no. I need you here, for Throne’s sake. I need you right here, you and every experienced cadre officer I’ve got. I want you forward in the line as soon as possible. Intelligence says the greener regiments, especially those falling back from 15, are in total disarray. We have to rally these young men, and
that’ll take veterans like yourself.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Get into the field and start whipping those boys back into shape. Get them forming up a proper line of resistance. I’ll be sending all the officers I can forward to help get the situation under control.”

  “Will… you be joining us, sir?” Gaunt asked.

  Sautoy stared at him. “Damn you, Gaunt. Of course I will. Now get about it.”

  Gaunt saluted. “My apologies, marshal. I intended no slight.” He turned for the door, then looked back at Sautoy. Why today, sir?”

  “What?”

  “Why is this happening today, I wonder?”

  “I have no idea, Gaunt!” Sautoy snapped.

  “Then you might want to relay that question back to Frag Flats Command and get the tacticae advisors thinking about it. Historically, ritually, there may be a reason the archenemy is stirring in such force this morning.”

  Gaunt left the command room. Instead of heading outside, he pushed through the men hurrying to and fro along the internal corridor and entered the vox room. Twenty-five vox-officers worked at independent high-gain sets, all of them speaking at the same time as reports came in and went out.

  Gaunt wandered to the nearest one. The operator, a small man with a pencil moustache, looked up and took off his heavy earphones.

  “Commissar, can I help you?”

  “I need you to patch me a link, operator,” Gaunt said.

  “On what authority?” the officer asked.

  “On the authority I’m wearing, soldier,” Gaunt said. The operator swallowed. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Gaunt told him the comm-code he required. The operator tuned it in. He didn’t look entirely comfortable.

  “This is… non-standard, commissar,” he said as he adjusted the dials. “It will have to be recorded in my day-book.”

  “You do what you have to do,” Gaunt said. “By all means note it was a direct order from the Commissariat.”

  “I have contact, sir,” the operator reported. He indicated a spare set of headphones on the desk, and keyed the channel through as Gaunt put them on.

  “Unit receiving,” said a voice on the line, cut by static. “Identify sender, over.”

  “This is One. That you, Beltayn, over?”

  A pause. “Yes. Yes, it is, sir. Didn’t expect to hear your voice, over.”

  “Sorry I don’t have time to catch up, Bel,” Gaunt said. “I need to talk to Rawne or Mkoll. That possible, over?”

  “Stand by, over.” Gaunt waited, listening. Burbles and fluting wails of distortion echoed over the channel.

  “This is Rawne. That you, Ibram, over?”

  “Affirmative. What’s the situation, over?”

  “A fair mess, Bram. Hell in a handcart. Where are you, over?”

  “Not as close as I’d like to be, Eli. Listen up. I’ve got very little time to explain this to you, but I need you and Mkoll working on something, over.”

  “Copy that. We’re a little busy right now, but go ahead, over.”

  “All right. Listen to this, and tell me what you think…”

  Once he’d finished the brief conversation, Gaunt handed the phones back to the vox-man, thanked him, and left the command post. The operator, a little bemused, wrote up the track in his day-book, and was about to resume his work when another voice said, “May I see that, operator?”

  The operator looked up and saw a second commissar standing by his caster set. What was this?

  “Your day-book, please,” the second commissar said. The operator handed it to him. This was a confirmed patch?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Authority?”

  “The commissar’s own, sir. He said it was Commissariat business.”

  “And this is authenticated? The code?”

  “Yes, sir. A field vox-caster. Ident 11012K. That’s with the Eighty-First First.”

  “Patch me to Commissariat command, Frag Flats. Immediately, please. Use this code.” The commissar wrote a numeric serial down on the vox-man’s message pad.

  “Channel open,” the vox-officer announced a moment later.

  The commissar picked up the speaker set. “Command, this is Ludd. Put me through to Commissar-General Balshin.”

  Gaunt returned to his billet.

  “Where’s Ludd?” he asked Eszrah. The Nihtgane shrugged.

  “Get your stuff together,” Gaunt told him. “We’ll be leaving shortly.”

  The wind was quite strong now. There seemed to be spots of rain in it. Gaunt touched his cheek where he’d felt the droplets land. Rain? The sky was a mass of crinkled grey cloud above the towering walls.

  Ludd appeared, hurrying down the track between the habi-tents. Empty, they stood on either side of him like an honour guard, their door flaps rippling like cloaks in the rising air.

  “Where did you go?” Gaunt asked him.

  “I went looking for you, sir,” Ludd said.

  “I told you to stay here, Ludd.”

  “Yes, sir. I know. But Ironmeadow came by just after you’d left. He had transport placings for us. We’re to move up because—”

  “I know, Ludd. Where is he?”

  “Waiting with our transportation, sir. So I came looking for you. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Gaunt looked at him. Ludd seemed a little more tense than usual, but then this day was doing that to everyone. “Where did you look, Ludd?”

  “Oh, in the command station. Around there. One of the Binar officers said they’d seen you heading back this way.”

  Gaunt held Ludd’s gaze a little longer. “All right, Ludd. Grab your things.”

  They took only their weapons and basic field kit. Eszrah zipped the rest of their kit up in the habi-tent, and then hurried after Gaunt and Ludd.

  The main assembly yards were packed with transports filing out along the east trackway. Most of the transports were carrying men dressed in the beige battledress of the Fortis Binars.

  Ironmeadow waved them over to a pair of Salamander command vehicles, both of which had been newly painted in Binar livery.

  “Sir!” Ironmeadow said, saluting and handing over a message wafer. The marshal asked me to find you and—”

  “Old news, Ironmeadow, I’ve spoken with him.” Gaunt read the paper slip. It was a brief, curt order-tag requiring Gaunt to advance with the Second Binars into the hotzone, and “accomplish the maintenance of decent battlefield morale and discipline.”

  Gaunt handed the wafer to Ludd. “Keep that for me, Ludd. If I get a chance later I may want to choke Sautoy with it.”

  “You and your sense of humour, sir,” Ironmeadow laughed.

  “Did you think I was joking, Ironmeadow?” Gaunt asked. Ironmeadow half-laughed again, then blinked.

  Gaunt could tell how desperately scared the young officer was. He remembered how little combat experience Ironmeadow had—how little anyone of his regiment had. Sautoy was sending novice, frightened boys up country to assist novice, frightened boys. On top of that, Ironmeadow was most likely still very rattled by the events of the previous day.

  Just for a moment, Gaunt reminded himself who and what they all thought he was. “Things will be fine, Ironmeadow,” he said. “Our spirits may be tested today, but if we keep our faith in the Throne and remember our training, we will prevail.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ironmeadow nodded.

  “Make it known that I regard it as a privilege to be advancing alongside the men of the Second Fortis Binars.”

  That actually got a flush of pride into Ironmeadow’s face. “Thank you, sir. I will.”

  One of the open-topped Salamanders had been reserved for Gaunt, with a driver, gunner and vox-operator assigned. The other belonged to Major Jernon Whitesmith, Ironmeadow’s direct superior. He was a slender, craggy man in his fifties, with receding hair, and the look of a veteran about him.

  “PDF?” Gaunt asked him as he was introduced. Whitesmith smiled, as if impressed that Gaunt should notice. “Yes,
sir. It was my honour to serve in the liberation war.”

  In founding their regiments to assist the Crusade, the people of Fortis Binary had selected some of their planetary defence force veterans to serve as line officers. That was something at least, Gaunt mused. It would be the experience and steadiness of the few older men like Whitesmith that would keep the rookie companies together.

  There was no time for further conversation. Whitesmith climbed into his Salamander and set off down the truckway, the vehicle’s heavy track sections clattering. Gaunt, Ludd and Eszrah followed Ironmeadow aboard the second machine, and rattled off after him, the light tanks skirting swiftly around the column of slow-moving troop trucks on the road. Heavier tanks and armour pieces formed the bulk of the column’s front portion, including Trojan tractor units tugging heavy field artillery.

  The inky grey storm clouds were firmly settled above the compartment, leaching most of the daylight away. Again, Gaunt felt the cold spits of rain in the air. It was so overcast that many vehicles had activated their headlamps and running lights.

  “Damned weather!” Ironmeadow said, raising his voice over the roar of the Salamander’s engines. “It’s getting as black as night out here!”

  He’s right, Gaunt thought. As black as night. Then he wondered if anyone in high command or the senior staff had considered just how literally nocturnal the stalkers were.

  Less than an hour later, powering north-east into the middle lowlands of the third compartment, they met hell coming the other way.

  It was an astonishing sight. The scrubby, shelving landscape that Gaunt and Ludd had driven up through the previous day was masked with wind-driven smoke-banks, great tidal waves of choking black soot and ash that billowed off firestorms raging across the central compartment. From wall to wall, it seemed that the whole landscape was ablaze, except where it was broken by the lakes and deep ponds, stretches of water that now flashed back the reflected flame-light like mirrors. There were men and machines moving everywhere, not just on the trackways. Thousands of Guardsmen and a ramshackle multitude of vehicles were crawling back across country, chased by the firestorms.