First and Only

by Dan Abnett

Gaunt crept in. The foyer smelled of damp carpet and mildew. There were no lights, but he found the stairwell lit by hundreds of candles stuck in assorted bottles. The light was yellow and smoky.

  By the time he reached the third floor, he could hear the music. Some kind of old dancehall ballad by the sound of it. The old recording crackled. It sounded like a ghost.

  Sixth floor, the top flat. Shattered plaster littered the worn hall carpet. Somewhere in the shadows, vermin squeaked. The music was louder, murmuring from the room he was approaching on an old audio-caster. The apartment door was ajar, and light, brighter than the hall candles, shone out, the violet glow of a self-powered portable field lamp.

  His fingers around the hilt of the knife in his greatcoat pocket, Gaunt entered.

  FIVE

  The room was bare to the floorboards and the peeling paper. The audio-caster was perched on top of a stack of old books, warbling softly. The lamp was in the corner, casting its spectral violet glow all around the room.

  'Is there anyone here?' Gaunt asked, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

  A shadow moved in an adjoining bathroom.

  'What's the word?' it said.

  'What?'

  'I haven't got time to humour you. The word.'

  'Eagleshard,' Gaunt said, using the code word he and Fereyd had shared years before on Pashen Nine-Sixty.

  The figure seemed to relax. A shabby, elderly man in a dirty civilian suit entered the room so that Gaunt could see him. He was lowering a small, snub-nosed pistol of a type Gaunt wasn't familiar with. Gaunt's heart sank. It wasn't Fereyd.

  'Who are you?' Gaunt asked.

  The man arched his eyebrows in reply. 'Names are really quite inappropriate under these circumstances.'

  'If you say so,' Gaunt said.

  The man crossed to the audio-caster and keyed in another track. Another old-fashioned tune, a jaunty love song full of promises and regrets, started up with a flurry of strings and pipes.

  'I am a facilitator, a courier and also very probably a dead man,' the stranger told Gaunt. 'Have you any idea of the scale and depth of this business?'

  Gaunt shrugged. 'No. I'm not even sure what business you refer to. But I trust my old friend, Fereyd. That is enough for me. By his word, I have no illusions as to the seriousness of this matter, but as to the depth, the complexity…'

  The man studied him. The Navy's intelligence network has established a web of spy systems throughout the Sabbat Worlds to watch over the Crusade.'

  'Indeed.'

  'I'm a part of that cobweb. So are you, if you but knew it. The truth we are uncovering is frightening. There is a grievous power struggle underway in the command echelon of this mighty Crusade, my friend.'

  Gaunt felt impatience rising in him. He hadn't come all this way to listen to arch speculation. 'Why should I care? I'm not part of High Command. Let them squabble and backstab and—'

  'Would you throw it all away? A decade of liberation warfare? All of Warmaster Slaydo's victories?'

  'No,' Gaunt admitted darkly.

  The intrigue threatens everything. How can a Crusade force this vast continue when its commanders are at each other's throats? And if we're fighting each other, how can we fight the foe?'

  'Why am I here?' Gaunt cut in flatly.

  'He said you would be cautious.'

  'Who said? Fereyd?'

  The man paused, but didn't reply directly. Two nights ago, associates of mine here in Cracia intercepted a signal sent via an astropath from a scout ship in the Nubila Reach. It was destined for Lord High Militant General Dravere's Fleet headquarters. Its clearance level was Vermilion.'

  Gaunt blinked. Vermilion level .

  The man took a small crystal from his coat pocket and held it up so that it winked in the violet light.

  The data is stored on this crystal. It took the lives of two psykers to capture the signal and transfer it to this. Dravere must not get his hands on it.'

  He held it out to Gaunt.

  Gaunt shrugged. 'You're giving it to me?'

  The man pursed his lips. 'Since my network here on Cracia intercepted this, we've been taken apart. Dravere's own counter-spy network is after us, desperate to retrieve the data. I have no one left to safeguard this. I contacted my offworld superior, and he told me to await a trusted ally. Whoever you are, friend, you are held in high regard. You are trusted. In this secret war, that means a lot.'

  Gaunt took the crystal from the man's trembling fingers. He didn't quite know what to say. He didn't want this vile, vital thing anywhere near himself, but he was beginning to realise what might be at stake.

  The older man smiled at Gaunt. He began to say something.

  The wall behind him exploded in a firestorm of light and vaporising bricks. Two fierce blue beams of las fire punched into the room and sliced the man into three distinct sections before he could move.

  SIX

  Gaunt dived for cover in the apartment doorway. He drew Milo's blade, for all the good that would do.

  Feet were thundering up the stairs.

  From his vantage point at the door he watched as two armoured troopers swung in through the exploded wall. They were big, dad in black, insignia-less combat armour, carrying compact, cut-down lasrifles. Adhesion damps on their knees and forearms showed how they had scaled the outside walls to blow their way in with a directional limpet mine.

  They surveyed the room, sweeping their green laser tagger beams. One spotted Gaunt prone in the doorway and opened fire. The blast punched through the doorframe, kicking up splinters and began stitching along the plasterboard wall.

  Gaunt dived headlong. He was dead! Dead, unless—

  The old man's pistol lay on the worn carpet under his nose. It must have skittered there when he was cut down. Gaunt grabbed it, thumbed off the safety and rolled over to fire. The gun was small, but the odd design clearly marked it as an andent and priceless specialised weapon. It had a kick like a mule and a roar like a Basilisk.

  The first shot surprised Gaunt as much as the two stealth troops and it blew a hatch-sized hole in the wall. The second shot exploded one of the attackers.

  A little rune on the grip of the pistol had changed from ''V'' to ''III''. Gaunt sighed. This thing clearly wasn't over-blessed with a capadous magazine.

  The footfalls on the stairway got louder and three more stealth troopers stumbled up, wafting the candle flames as they ran.

  Gaunt dropped to a kneeling pose and blew the head off the first. But the other two opened fire up the well with their las-guns and then the remaining trooper in the apartment behind him began firing too. The cross-blast of three lasguns on rapid-burst tore the top hallway to pieces. Gaunt dropped flat so hard he smashed his hand on the boards and the gun pattered away down the top steps.

  After a moment or two, the firing stopped and the attackers began to edge forward to inspect their kill. Dust and smoke drifted in the half-light. Some of the shots had punched up through the floor and carpet a whisker from Gaunt's nose, leaving smoky, dimpled holes. But Gaunt was intact.

  When the trooper from the apartment poked his head round the door, a cubit of hard-flung Tanith silver impaled his skull and dropped him to the floor, jerking and spasming. Gaunt leapt up. A second, two seconds, and he would have the fallen man's las-gun in his hands, ready to blast down the stairs.

  But the other two from below were in line of sight. There was a flash and he realised their green laser taggers had swept over his face and dotted on his heart. There was a quick and frantic burst of lasgun fire and a billow of noxious burning fumes washed up the stairs over Gaunt.

  Blenner climbed the stairs into view, carefully stepping over the smouldering bodies, a smoking laspistol in his hand.

  'Got tired of waiting,' the commissar sighed. 'Looks like you needed a hand anyway, eh, Bram?'

  SEVEN

  The grey truck, with its single remaining pursuer, slammed into high gear as it went over the rise in the snowy road, leavi
ng the ground for a stomach-shaking moment.

  'What's that?' Rawne said wildly, a moment after they landed again and the thrashing wheels re-engaged the slippery roadway.

  'It's called a roadblock, I believe,' Corbec said.

  Ahead, the cold zone street was closed by a row of oil-can fires, concrete poles and wire. Several armed shapes were waiting for them.

  'Off the road! Get off the road!' Corbec bawled. He leaned over and wrenched at the crescent steering wheel.

  The truck slewed sideways in the slush and barrelled beetle-nose-first through the sheet-wood doors of an old, apparently abandoned warehouse. There, in the dripping darkness, it grumbled to a halt, its firing note choking away to a dull cough.

  'Now what?' Rawne hissed.

  'Well, there's you, me and Feygor…' Corbec began. Already the trooper was beginning to pull himself groggily up in the back. 'Three of Gaunt's Ghosts, the best damn fighting regiment in the Guard. We excel at stealth work and look! We're here in a dark warehouse.'

  Corbec readied his automatic. Rawne pulled his laspistol and did the same. He grinned.

  'Let's do it,' he said.

  Years later, in the speakeasies and clubs of the Cracian cold zones, the story of the shoot-out at the old Vinchy Warehouse would do the rounds. Thousands of shots were heard, they say, mostly the bass chatter of the autogun sidearms carried by twenty armed men, mob overbaron Vulnor Habshept kal Geel's feared enforcers, who went in to smoke out the offworld gangsters.

  All twenty died. Twenty further shots, some from laspistols, some from a big-bore autogun, were heard. No more, no less. No one ever saw the offworld gangsters again, or found the truck laden with stolen contraband that had sparked off the whole affair.

  The staff-track whipped along down the cold zone street, heading back to the safety of the city core. In the back, Blenner poured another two measures of his expensive brandy. This time, Gaunt took the one offered and knocked it back.

  You don't have to tell me what's going on, Bram. Not if you don't want to.'

  Gaunt sighed. 'If I had to, would you listen?'

  Blenner chuckled. 'I'm loyal to the Emperor, Gaunt, and doubly loyal to my old friends. What else do you need to know?'

  Gaunt smiled and held his glass out as Blenner refilled it.

  'Nothing, I suppose.'

  Blenner leaned forward, earnest for the first time in years. 'Look, Bram… I may seem like an old fogey to you, grown fat on the luxuries of having a damn near perfect regiment… but I haven't forgotten what the fire feels like. I haven't forgotten the reason I'm here. You can trust me to hell and back, and I'll be there for you.'

  'And the Emperor,' Gaunt reminded him with a grin.

  'And the bloody Emperor,' Blenner said and they clinked glasses.

  'I say,' Blenner said a moment later, 'Why is your boy slowing down?'

  Milo pulled up, wary. The two tracked vehicles blocking the road ahead had their headlamps on full beam, but Milo could see they were painted in the colours of the Jantine Patricians. Large, shaven-headed figures armed with batons and entrenching tools were climbing out to meet them.

  Gaunt climbed out of the cabin as Milo brought them to a halt. Snow drifted down. He squinted at the men beyond the lights.

  'Brochuss,' he hissed.

  'Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,' replied Major Brochuss of the Jantine Patricians, stepping forward. He was stripped to his vest and oiled like a prize fighter. The wooden spoke in his hands slapped into a meaty palm.

  'A reckoning, I think,' he said. 'You and your scum-boys cheated us of a victory on Fortis. You bastards. Playing at soldiers when the real thing was ready to take the day. You and your pathetic ghosts should have died on the wire where you belong.'

  Gaunt sighed. That's not the real reason, is it, Brochuss? Oh, you're still smarting over the stolen glory of Fortis, but that's not it. After all, why were you so unhappy we won the day back there? It's the old honour thing, isn't it? The old debt you and Flense still think has to be paid. You're fools. There's no honour in this, in back-street murder out here, in the cold zones, where our bodies won't be reported for months.'

  'I don't believe you're in a position to argue,' said Brochuss. 'We of Jant will take our repayment in blood where it presents itself. Here is as good a place as any other.'

  'So you'd act with dishonour, to avenge a slight to honour? Brochuss, you ass – if you could only see the irony! There was no dishonour to begin with. I only corrected what was already at fault. You know where the real fault lies. All I did was expose the cowardice in the Jantine action.'

  'Bram!' Blenner hissed in Gaunt's ear. 'You never were a diplomat! These men want blood! Insulting them isn't going to help their mood.'

  'I'm dealing with this, Vay,' Gaunt said archly.

  'No you're not, I am…'Blenner pushed Gaunt back and faced the Jamine mob. 'Major… if it's a fight you want I won't disappoint you. A moment? Please?' Blenner said holding up a finger. He turned to Milo and whispered, 'Boy, just how fast can you drive this buggy?'

  'Fast enough,' Milo whispered, 'and I know exactly where to go…'

  Blenner turned back to the Patrician heavies in the lamplight and smiled. 'After due consultation with my colleagues, Major Brochuss, I can now safely say… burn in hell, you shit-eating dog!'

  He leapt back aboard, pushing Gaunt into the cabin ahead of him. Milo had the staff-track gunned and slewed around in a moment, even as the enraged troopers rushed them.

  Another three seconds and Gaunt's ride was roaring off down the snowy street at a dangerous velocity, the engines raging. Squabbling and cursing, Brochuss and his men leapt into their own machines and gave chase.

  'So glad I left that to you, Vay,' Gaunt grinned. 'I don't think I would've have been that diplomatic.'

  EIGHT

  Trooper Bragg kissed his lucky dice and let all three of them fly. A cheer went up across the wagering room and piles of chips were pushed his way.

  'Go on, Bragg!' Mad Larkin chuckled at his side. 'Do it again, you fething old drunk!'

  Bragg chuckled and scooped up the dice.

  This was the life, he thought. Far away from the warzone of Fortis, and the mayhem, and the death, here in a smoke-filled dome in the cold zone back-end of an ancient city, him and his few true friends, a good number of pretty girls and wager tables open all night.

  Varl was suddenly at his side. His intended friendly slap was hard and stinging – Varl had still to get used to the cybernetic implant shoulder joint the medics had fitted him with on Fortis.

  The game can wait, Bragg. We've got business.'

  Bragg and Larkin kissed their painted lady-friends goodbye and followed Varl out through the rear exit of the gaming dub onto the boarding ramp. Suth was there; Melyr, Meryn, Caffran, Curral, Coll, Baru, Mkoll, Raglon… almost twenty of the Ghosts.

  'What's going on?' Bragg asked.

  Melyr jerked his thumb down to where Corbec, Rawne and Feygor were unloading booze and smokes from a battered six wheeler.

  'Colonel's got us some tasty stuff to share, bless his Tanith heart.'

  'Very nice,' Bragg said, licking his lips, not entirely sure why Rawne and Feygor looked so annoyed. Corbec smiled up at them all.

  'Get everyone out here! We're having a party, boys! For Tanith! For us!'

  There was cheering and dapping. Varl leapt down into the bay and opened a box with his Tanith knife. He threw bottles up to those clustered around.

  'Hey!' Raglon said suddenly, pointing out into the snowy darkness beyond the club's bay. 'Incoming!'

  The staff track slid into the bay behind Corbec's truck and Gaunt leapt out. A cheer went up and somebody tossed him a bottle. Gaunt tore off the stopper and took a deep swig, before pointing back out into the darkness.

  'Lads! I could do with a hand…' he began.

  Major Brochuss leaned forward in the cab of his speeding staff-track and looked through the screen where the wiper was slapping
snow away.

  'Now we have him! He's stopped at that place ahead!'

  Brochuss flexed his hand and struck it with his baton.

  Then he saw the crowds of jeering Ghosts around the drive-in bay. A hundred… two hundred.

  'Oh balls,' he managed.

  The bar was almost empty and it was nearly dawn. Ibram Gaunt sipped the last of his drink and eyed Vaynom Blenner who was asleep face down on the bar beside him.

  Gaunt took out the crystal from the inside pocket where he had secreted it and tossed it up in his hand once, twice.

  Corbec was suddenly beside him.

  'A long night, eh, commissar?'

  Gaunt looked at him, catching the crystal in a tight fist.

  'Maybe the longest so far, Colm. I hear you had some fun.'

  'Aye, and at Rawne's expense, you'll no doubt be pleased to hear. Do you want to tell me about what's going on?'

  Gaunt smiled. 'I'd rather buy you a drink,' he said, motioning to the weary barkeep. 'And yes, I'd love to tell you. And I will, when the time comes. Are you loyal, Colm Corbec?'

  Corbec looked faintly hurt. 'To the Emperor, I'd give my life,' he said, without hesitating.

  Gaunt nodded. 'Me too. The path ahead may be truly hard. As long as I can count on you.'

  Corbec said nothing but held out his glass. Gaunt touched it with his own. There was a tiny chime.

  'First and Last,' Corbec said.

  Gaunt smiled softly. 'First and Only,' he replied.

  A MEMORY

  MANZIPOR, THIRTY YEARS EARLIER

  They had a house on the summit of Mount Resyde, with long colonnades that overlooked the cataracts. The sky was golden, until sunset, when it caught fire. Light-bugs, heavy with pol-lenfibres, ambled through the warm air in the atrium each evening. Ibram imagined they were navigators, charting secret paths through the Empyrean, between the hidden torments of the Warp.

  He played on the sundecks overlooking the mists of the deep cataract falls that thundered down into the eight kilometre chasms of the Northern Rift. Sometimes from there, you could see fighting ships and Imperium cutters lifting or making plan-etfall at the great landing silos at Lanatre Fields. From this distance they looked just like light-bugs in the dark evening sky.