[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

by Dan Abnett

  They helped him sit up. Dorden wiped his face and saw his hand came away bloody. He checked his face and realised his nose was streaming blood. The nosebleed had filled his mask and blinded his eye-slits.

  “Feth!” he snarled, getting up. His head swam and he sat back.

  “Who did we lose?” he asked. “No one,” Haller said.

  Dorden looked around. The shell had taken out the west wall of the building, but all his comrades were intact: Kolea, Cuu, Garond, Rafflan, Mkvenner, Harjeon.

  “Charmed lives,” said Cuu with a chuckle.

  With the help of Wheln and Haller, Dorden got to his feet. He felt like the spirit had been blasted out of him.

  “You all right?” Kolea asked.

  Dorden spat clotted blood and wiped his face. “Just dandy,” he said. “If we’re going, let’s just go, right?”

  Kolea nodded, and signalled the party to their feet.

  Firestorms were ripping down both sides of the street by them, and further shells were adding to the inferno. Behind the dwelling, they found that the shell had blown open a watercourse gurgling below street level in a brick defile.

  Kolea and Mkvenner leapt down into it. The brackish water, perhaps an ancient tributary of the holy river, surged around their boots.

  Dorden followed them down. It was cooler here, and the moving water seemed to wash away the thick smoke.

  “Let’s move along it,” Kolea suggested. No one argued.

  In a tight line, the seven Ghosts tracked up the watercourse through the fires.

  They’d gone no more than a hundred metres when Trooper Cuu suddenly held up his hand. The crude tatts of a skull and crossbones marked his knuckles.

  “Hear that?” he asked. “Las-fire!”

  Corbec’s shots tore through the loading bay. Two Infardi were slammed back off the side of one of the trucks. Another toppled, dropping the crate he had been carrying.

  They started firing back almost immediately, pulling handguns from their sashes or grabbing the lasrifles leaning up against the wall. Glittering laser fire and whining hard rounds hammered into the stacked scaffolding around Corbec.

  He didn’t flinch. Kicking over a stack of scaffolding, he ran down the length of the bay’s side wall, firing from the hip. Another Infardi clutched his throat, fell on his back and slithered off the bed of one of the trucks.

  A bullet creased his tricep. A las-round tore through the thigh pocket of his combat pants.

  He threw himself into cover behind an archway pillar.

  It went unpleasantly quiet. Gunsmoke and the coppery stink of las discharge filled the air.

  Corbec lay still, trying to slow his breathing. He could hear them moving around.

  An Infardi came around the pillar and Corbec shot him through the face. A torrent of shots poured in his direction and the Tanith colonel started to crawl on his hands and knees down the stone passage. The wood-panelled walls above began to splinter and shred into the air as solid and energy rounds rained into them.

  There was a doorway to his left. He rolled across into it, and got up. His hands were shaking. His chest hurt so much he could barely think any longer.

  The room was an office of some sort. There were book cases and a large clerical desk lined with pigeon holes. Sheets of paper coated the floor, some fluttering in the breeze from the small, broken window high in the end wall.

  There was no way out. The window was about large enough for him to stick his arm out of and that was it.

  “Feth me..” Corbec murmured to himself, wiping a hand through his matted beard. He hunched down behind the heavy desk and laid the barrel of his weapon over the desktop, pointing at the doorway.

  The gun’s power cell was all but a quarter spent now. It was an old, battered Imperial issue job, with an L-shaped piece of metal brace welded on in place of the original stock. The makeshift brace jutted into his collarbone, but he aimed up as best he could, remembering all the things Larkin had taught him about spot shooting.

  A figure in green silk darted across the door mouth, too fast for Corbec to hit. His wasted shot smacked into the far wall. Another swung round into the doorway, firing on auto with a small calibre machine pistol. The spray of bullets went high over Corbec’s head and destroyed a bookshelf. Corbec put a single round into the Infardi’s chest and threw him back out of sight.

  “You messed with the wrong man, you bastards!” he yelled. “You should have finished me when you had the chance! I’m gonna take the head off anyone who comes through that door!”

  I just hope they don’t have grenades, he thought.

  Another Infardi ducked in, fired twice with his lasgun and jumped back out. Not fast enough. Corbec’s shot didn’t kill him but it went through his arm. He could hear whimpering outside.

  Now a lasgun came around the doorframe, held out blind and firing. Two shots hit the desk hard enough to jerk it back against him. He shot back and the gun disappeared.

  Now he could smell something. An intense chemical stink.

  Liquid promethium.

  They had a flamer out there.

  Gol Kolea snapped his fingers and made three quick gestures.

  Mkvenner, Harjeon and Haller sprinted forward to the left, down the side of the stonemason’s shop. Domor, Rafflan and Garond ran right, around to the gaping entrance of the loading bay that opened onto the narrow back street. Cuu headed forward, jumped up onto a rainwater tank and from there swung up onto the sloping roof.

  With Dorden at his heels, Kolea moved after them. The chatter of las and solid firing from inside the buildings was audible over the roar of the advancing tank assault down the hill behind them.

  Domor, Rafflan and Garond rushed the bay doors, firing tight bursts. They came in on half a dozen Infardi who turned in abject surprise to meet their deaths.

  Mkvenner, Harjeon and Haller kicked in big leaded windows and fired into the bay, cutting down a trio of Infardi who were running back through, alerted by the sudden firing.

  Cuu shot in a skylight and began picking off targets below.

  Kolea went in through a side door, firing twice to drop an Infardi trying to flee that way.

  Dorden watched the Ghosts at work with awe. It was a stunning display of precision tactics, exactly the sort of work that the Tanith First-and-Only was famous for.

  Caught from several angles at once, the enemy panicked and started to die.

  One of the trucks spluttered into life and spun its heavy wheels as it started to speed out of the bay. Domor and Rafflan were in its way, and stood their ground, firing their lasguns from the shoulder, peppering the cab. Garond, to the side, raked the vehicle as it ran past.

  Sharp-edged punctures stung the cab’s metalwork. The windows shattered. It veered drunkenly, smashing a crate waiting to be stacked and rolling over the sprawled corpses of two Infardi with nauseating crunches.

  At the last moment, Rafflan and Domor dived aside. The truck sped right across the back alley and battered nose-first into the opposite wall, which caved in around it.

  Rafflan and Domor advanced into the bay, joining up with Garond and then with Kolea and Dorden. The soldiers formed a straggled knot, firing safety shots into corners where the collecting weapon-smoke blocked vision.

  Dorden felt his pulse racing. He felt exposed, and more, he felt elated. To be part of this. Killing was misery and war was a bestial waste, but glory and valour… they were something else. Pleasures so intense and so fundamentally contiguous with the horrors he abominated, they made him feel guilty to cherish them. At times like this, he understood why mankind made war, and why it celebrated its warriors above all others. At times like this he could understand Gaunt himself. To see well-trained men like Kolea’s squad take down a significantly larger force with discipline, skill and daring….

  “Check the other vehicle,” Kolea snapped, and Rafflan turned aside to do so. Domor went ahead and covered the corner into a short passageway.

  “Flamer!” he cried, leapin
g back, and a moment later fire gouted out of the passageway mouth.

  Kolea pushed Dorden into cover and keyed his microbead.

  “Haller?”

  “Inside, sir! We’re coming at you from the east. A little light opposition.” From the bay they could all hear the las exchanges.

  “Go slow: we’ve got a flamer.”

  “Understood.”

  “I can get him, sure as sure,” Cuu’s voice crackled. “Do it,” Kolea instructed.

  Trooper Cuu moved across the shop roof and swung his lithe body down through a gap between broken shutters. He could see the Infardi with the flamer now, cowering in a passageway outside some kind of office with two other gunmen.

  Cuu could smell the sweet promethium reek.

  From thirty metres, he put a las-round through the flamer operator’s skull, then picked off the other two as they stumbled up in alarm.

  “Clear!” he reported, gleefully. He crept forward.

  “Who’s out there?” a hoarse voice called from the office.

  “That you, colonel?”

  “Who’s that? Lillo?”

  “Nah, it’s Cuu.”

  “Is it clear?”

  “Clear as clear.”

  Corbec limped cautiously out of the doorway, gun raised, glancing around.

  “Gak, ain’t you a mess, Tanith,” smiled Cuu. He flicked open his bead.

  “I found Colonel Corbec. Do I win a prize?”

  “That’ll do until we reach a proper aid post,” Dorden said, taping the last dressing tightly across Corbec’s chest. “You can forget about the war, colonel. This’ll see you bed-ridden for a good two weeks.”

  Weary and broken by pain, Corbec simply nodded. They were seated on crates in the bay while the other Ghosts regrouped. Cuu and Wheln were checking bodies.

  “You find Sin?” Corbec asked.

  Kolea shook his head. “We count twenty-two dead. No sign of Sin, leastways not anybody who matches your description.”

  Outside, the tremulous rumble of the armour wave was closer.

  “What’s Gaunt doing sending the infantry ahead of the tanks?” Corbec asked. Kolea didn’t reply. Rafflan looked away, embarrassed. “Sergeant?”

  “This is unofficial,” Dorden replied for Kolea. “We came hunting for you.”

  Corbec shook his head. “Against orders?”

  “The Pardus armour is putting Old Town to the torch. The assault on the Citadel has begun. The commissar ordered all infantry groups out.”

  “But you came looking for me? Feth, was this your idea, Kolea?”

  “We all kind of went along,” said Dorden. “I thought you had more sense, doc,” Corbec growled. “Help me up.”

  Dorden supported Corbec as he shuffled over to the bay doors.

  The colonel took a long look down the hill at the nightmare of fire and destruction moving up towards them.

  “We’re dead if we stay here,” Corbec said glumly.

  “Right enough,” Mkvenner said. “I reckon we should use that truck. Drive on over the hill, away from the assault.”

  “That’s Infardi territory!” Garond exclaimed.

  “True, but I rate our chances that way higher. Besides, I’d guess they were falling back by now.”

  “What’s the matter, colonel?” Dorden asked, seeing a look on Corbec’s face.

  “Pater Sin,” he said. “I can’t figure it. We thought he was up in the Capital. I don’t understand why he was down here in Old Town.”

  “Driving his men? Hands-on, like Gaunt?”

  Corbec shook his head. “There was something else. He almost told me.”

  Haller got up into the cab of the truck and turned the engine over. On the flatbed, Harjeon had opened one of the crates.

  “What’s this?” he called.

  The crate was full of icons and holy statuettes, prayer texts, reliquaries. The men opened the other crates and found them all to be full of similar artefacts.

  “Where is this all from?” asked Rafflan.

  Kolea shrugged.

  “The shrines of the Citadel. They must have plundered them all.” Corbec gazed down into one of the open crates.

  “But why? Why take all this stuff? Why not just smash it? It’s not sacred to them, is it?”

  “Let’s work it out later.”

  The Ghosts climbed up into the rear of the truck. Haller took the wheel with Wheln riding shotgun beside him.

  They rolled out of the battle-torn bay onto the backstreet, edged around the wreck of the other truck, and sped away up the hill.

  “Just after six o’clock,” local time, a brigade-strength force of Brevian Centennials led by Major Szabo scaled the Holy Causeway and entered the Citadel. They met no resistance. The storm assault of the Pardus tanks had broken the back of the Infardi grip on the Doctrinopolis. Sixteen square kilometres of the city, the areas of Old Town flanking the noble plateau, were on fire and dead. Scout recons estimated what little numbers the Infardi could still muster had fled north, out of the city and into the rainwoods of the hinterland.

  A victory, Gaunt realised, as Szabo’s initial reports were relayed to him by the vox-operator. They had taken the Doctrinopolis and driven the foe out. Pockets of resistance remained — there was a hell of a street fight raging in the western suburbs — and it would take months to hunt out the Infardi who had gone to ground outside the city. But it was a victory. Lord General Lugo would be pleased. Or at least satisfied. In short order, Szabo’s men would raise the Imperial standard above the Citadel, and under the fluttering aquila, the place would be theirs again. Hagia was theirs. A world liberated.

  Gaunt climbed down from the command tractor and wandered alone down the street. He felt oddly out of sorts. There had been precious little glory in this theatre. His men had acquitted themselves well, of course, and he was happy to see the Tanith working confidently and efficiently alongside the Verghastite newcomers.

  But it hadn’t gone the way he would have liked. It might have cost him more in time and casualties, but he resented the fact that Lugo hadn’t allowed him to clear Old Town and make a clean job of it. The Pardus were exemplary soldiers, and they’d cracked this nut. But the city had suffered unnecessarily.

  He stood alone for a while in a prayer yard, watching the votive flags and kites dancing in the wind. The yard was littered with chips of stained glass thrown out when tank shells had gutted a nearby shrine.

  This was the sacred bead’s world, Saint Sabbat’s world. He would have taken it whole, out of respect for her, not ruined it to crush the foe.

  The darkening evening sky was thick with sooty smoke. Thanks to Lugo and his hunger for victory, they had razed a third of one of the most holy sites in the Imperium. He would resent this all his life, he realised. If Lugo had left him alone, he could have liberated the Doctrinopolis and left it standing.

  Macaroth would hear of this.

  Gaunt stepped into the cold silence of the ruined shrine and removed his brocaded cap before advancing down the temple aisle. Glass shards cracked under his jack boots with every pace. He reached the altar and knelt down.

  Sabbat Martyr!

  Gaunt started and looked round. The whisper had come from right behind him, in his ear. There was no one in sight. His imagination…

  He settled back onto one knee. He wanted to make his peace with the saint in this holy place, to see if he could make amends for the excessive way they had driven out the infidel. And there was Corbec too, a loss that he would really feel.

  But his mouth was dry. The words of the Imperial catechism would not form. He tried to relax, and his mind sought out the words of the Throne Grace he’d been taught as a child at the Scholam Progenium on Ignatius Cardinal.

  Even that simple, elementary prayer would not come.

  Gaunt cleared his throat. The wind moaned through the broken window lights.

  He bowed his head and—

  Sabbat Martyr!

  The hiss again, right beside him. He l
eapt up, drawing his boltgun and holding it out at arm’s length.

  “Who’s there? Come out! Show yourself!”

  Nothing stirred. Gaunt snapped his aim around, left, right left again.

  Slowly, he slid the heavy hand gun back into his leather button-down holster. He turned back to the altar and knelt again.

  He let out a long breath and tried to pray again. “Sir! Commissar, sir!”

  Vox-trooper Beltayn was running frantically in through the temple doors, his vox-set falling off his shoulder and swinging round on its strap to bump against the end of the pews.

  “Sir!”

  “What is it, Beltayn?”

  “You’ve got to hear this, sir! Something’s awry!”

  Awry. Beltayn’s favourite word, always used as a masterpiece of understatement. “The invading orks have killed everyone, sir! Something’s awry!”… “Everything’s been awry since the genestealers turned up, sir…!”

  “What?”

  Beltayn thrust out the headset to his commander. “Listen!”

  Major Szabo’s Brevoans moved into the Citadel, fanning out weapons ready. The towering shrines were silent and empty, pinkish stone gleaming in the light of the setting sun.

  As they moved out of the sunlight into the slanted shadows of the temple pylons, Szabo felt a chill, as cold as anything he’d suffered in the winter-wars on Aex Eleven.

  The men had been chatting freely and confidently as they advanced up the Citadel hill. Now their voices were gone, as if stolen by the silence of these ancient tombs and empty temples.

  There was nothing, Szabo realised. No priests, no Infardi, no bodies, not even a speck of litter or a sign of damage.

  He fanned the Brevians out with a few brisk hand signals. In their mustard-drab fatigues and body armour, the fire-teams clattered forward down parallel avenues of stelae Szabo selected a vox-channel.

  “Brevia one. Zero resistance in the Citadel. It’s damn quiet.” He looked around, and sent Sergeant Vulle ahead into the lofty Chapel of the Avenging Heart with twenty men. Szabo himself advanced into a smaller chapter house where the Ecclesiarchy choir had lived.

  Inside the portico, he saw the row of empty alcoves where the household shrine should have been.