by Dan Abnett
“Captain,” Kolea nodded as Fencer ducked in.
“Something’s wrong, Gol,” Fencer said. “Something’s different.”
The powerfully built miner grinned at him. “You haven’t noticed?” he asked.
“Noticed?”
“The shelling has stopped.”
Fencer was stunned. It had been so much a part of their daily life for the last fortnight or more, he hadn’t realised it had gone. Indeed, his ears were still ringing with remembered Shockwaves.
“Emperor save us!” he gasped. “I’m so stupid.”
He’d been awake for upwards of twenty minutes and it took a miner to tell him that they were no longer under fire.
“See anything?” Fencer asked, crawling up to the vigil slot in the sandbags next to Kolea for a look.
“No. Dust, smoke, haze… nothing much.”
Fencer was about to reach for his scope when Zoica began its land offensive.
A wave of las-fire peppered the entire defence line of the outhabs, like the flashes of a billion firecrackers. The sheer scale of the salvos was bewildering. Nine of Fencer’s troops died instantly. Three more, all workers, fled, utterly unprepared for the fury of a land assault.
Grenades and rockets dropped in around them, blowing out two communication dug-outs. Another hit the mess hall and torched their precious food supplies.
Fencer’s people began their resistance.
He’d ordered them all to set weapons for single fire to preserve ammunition and power cells. Even the stubbers had been ordered only to fire if they had a target. In response to the Zoican assault, their return seemed meagre and frail.
Fencer got up to the nest top and raised his lasgun. Five hundred metres ahead, through the smoke and the rubble, he saw the first shapes of the enemy, troopers in heavy, ochre-coloured battledress, advancing in steady ranks.
Fencer began firing. Below, Kolea opened up too.
They took thirteen down between them in the first five minutes.
Zoican tanks, mottled ochre and growling like beasts, bellied up the road and fanned out into the ruins, using the available open roadways and other aisles in the rubble sea. Mines took two of them out in huge vomits of flame and armour pieces, and the burning hulks blocked the advance of six more.
Rockets flailed into the bulwark and blew a fifteen-metre section out. Corporal Tanik and three other troops were disintegrated.
Another Zoican tank, covered with mesh netting, rumbled through the ruins and diverted down a dead-snare. Blocked in by rockcrete walls to either side and ahead, it tried to reverse and swing its turret as one of the Vervun flamer positions washed it with incandescent gusts of blowtorch fire and cooked it apart.
Sergeant Grosslyn, with two Vervun Primary regulars and six enlisted habbers, cut a crossfire down at Zoican troops trying to scramble a staked ditch on the eastern end of the file. Between them, they killed fifty or more, many impaled on the railings and wire. When Jada, the female worker next to him, was hit in the chest and dropped, screaming, Grosslyn turned to try and help her. A las-round from one of the dying Zoican assault troops impaled on the stakes took the back of his head off.
Gannen and Calie held the west transit for two hours, taking out dozens of the enemy and at least one armoured vehicle which ruptured and blew out as the loom-girl raked it with armour-piercing stub rounds.
Gannen was torn apart by shrapnel from a rocket when the enemy pushed around to the left.
Calie kept firing, feeding her own gun until a tank round blew her, her stub gun and twenty metres of the defence bulwark into the sky.
Overwhelmed, Fencer’s force fell back into the ruins of the outhab. Some were crushed by the advancing armour. One enlisted clerk, dying of blood-loss from a boltwound, made a suicide run with a belt of grenades and took out a stationary tank. The explosion lit up the low clouds and scraps of tank metal rained down over the surrounding streets.
Others fought a last-ditch attempt as the sheer numbers of the advancing infantry overran them. There were insane pockets of close fighting, bayonet to bayonet, hand to hand. Not a metre of Vervunhive’s outhab territory was given up without the most horrific effort.
Gol Kolea, his las weapon exhausted, met the enemy at the barricade and killed them one by one, to left and right, with savage swings of his axe-rake. He screamed his wife’s name with every blow.
A las-round punctured Captain Olin Fencer’s body at the hip and exited through his opposite shoulder. As he fell, weeping, he clicked his lasgun to autofire and sprayed his massing killers with laser rounds.
His hand was still squeezing the trigger when the pack ran out.
By then, he was already dead.
SIX
CHAINS OF COMMAND
“A war waged by committee is a war already lost.”
—Sebastian Thor, Sermons, vol. XV, ch. DIV
Gaunt felt the monumental bulk of the Curtain Wall around him actually vibrate. The shellfire falling against its outer skin was a dull roar.
Captain Daur and three other officers of the liaison staff led the oversight party up the stair-drum of a secondary tower in the wall just west of the massive Heironymo Sondar Gate. Gaunt had brought Rawne and Mkoll, with Trooper Milo as his adjutant. General Grizmund — with three of his senior Narmenians — and General Nash — with two of his regimental aides — made up the rest of the party, along with Tarrian of the VPHC. They had a bodyguard detail of thirty Vervun Primary troopers in full battledress.
The oversight party emerged onto the tower-top, where hot breezes, stifling with fycelene fumes, billowed over them. Three missile launchers were raised and ready here, their crews standing by, but additional awnings of flak-board had been erected in preparation for the visit of the dignitaries, and the launchers, with no safe room for their exhaust wash under this extra shelter, had fallen silent. The crews saluted the visitors smartly.
“These are for our benefit?” Gaunt asked Tarrian, indicating the freshly raised awnings.
“Of course.”
“You muzzle an entire defence tower so we can get a safe peek over the Wall?”
Tarrian frowned. “General Sturm has made it a standing requirement every time he visits the Wall. I presumed you and the other eminent generals here would expect the same.”
“We’ve come to fight, not hide. Take them down and get these crews operational.”
Tarrian looked round at Nash and Grizmund. The Narmenian nodded briefly. “Gaunt speaks for us all,” said Nash dryly. “We don’t need any soft-soap.”
Tarrian turned from the group and began issuing orders to the launcher crews.
The rest of the oversight party approached the rampart and took up magnoculars or used the available viewscopes on their tripod stands. Milo handed Gaunt his own scope from its pouch and the commissar dialled the magnification as he raised it and gazed out.
Below them, the miserable wasteland of the southern outer habs lay exposed and broken. There was no discernible sign of life, but a hateful storm of enemy shelling and missiles pounded in across it at the hive. A fair amount fell short into the habs, but a good percentage struck the Curtain Wall itself. Gaunt craned over for a moment, training his scope down the gentle slope of the Wall. Its adamantine surface was peppered and scarred like the face of a moon, as far as he could see. Every few seconds, batteries to either side of them on the Wall fired out, or the great siege guns in the emplacements below in the thickness of the Wall recoiled and volleyed again.
The vibration of the Wall continued.
“No way of knowing numbers or scale—” began Nash.
Grizmund shook his head. “Not so, sir,” he replied, pointing out to the very edge of the vast, outer-hab waste. “As we have been told, this is no longer the work of their long-range artillery out in the grasslands. This is ground assault from closer range — armour moving in through the outer habitations and factories.”
“Are you certain?” asked Gaunt.
“You ca
n see the flashes of tank cannons as they fire. Four, five kilometres out, in the very skirts of the outer habs. Their weapons are on full elevation for maximum range, so the muzzle-flashes are high and exposed. It is a simple matter of observing, counting, estimating.”
Gaunt watched for flashes through his scope. Like Nash, he was an infantry commander, and he always appreciated technical insight from experienced officers with expertise in other schools of warfare. Grizmund had a fine reputation as an armour commander. Gaunt fully trusted the Narmenian’s judgement in this. As he looked, he began to discern the flickering display of brief light points out in the hinterland.
“Your estimate?” asked Nash, also studying the scene and, like Gaunt, willing to listen to an expert opinion.
Grizmund glanced to his attending officers, who all looked up from their scopes.
“Nachin?”
The brigadier answered directly, his voice rich with the taut vowel sounds of the Narmenian accent. “At a first estimate, armour to the magnitude of twenty thousand pieces. Straight-form advance, with perhaps a forced salient to the east, near those tall cooling towers still standing. Innumerable rockets and mortars, harder to trace, but all mobile. Forty, maybe forty-five thousand.”
The other Narmenians concurred. Grizmund turned back to Gaunt and Nash as Tarrian rejoined the group. “Nachin knows his stuff as well as me. You heard his numbers. A multiple regiment-strength assault. Grand-scale armour attack. Yet — if what Commissar Kowle says is correct — not even a fraction of their numbers.”
“We can presume other army strengths are moving round through the mining district, the mud flats, perhaps the eastern outer habs and the Hass East river junction too,” said Nash dourly.
“I can make no estimates of troop strength, however,” Grizmund added.
“With permission, sir,” Rawne said, and Gaunt nodded for him to continue.
Rawne indicated the scene below with precise gestures of his nimble hands, his killer’s hands. “If you watch the armour flashes as General Grizmund has suggested, they form a rough line, like a contour. Compare that to the fall of shells. The edge of the shortest falling shells — you can see that from the explosions and from the smoke fires — approximately matches that line, with a break of perhaps a kilometre and a half between armour and line of fire. That is the space we might expect the infantry advancing before the armour, to occupy.”
Nash nodded, impressed by the junior Tanith’s insight.
“We can’t judge their tactics by our own,” Rawne went on, “Feth, I’ve seen the forces of the Chaos-scum perform many tactical aberrations on the fields of war, but assuming they are not intent on slaughtering their own troops, and assuming the widest margin of error, that shows us a clear belt of infantry advance. Even single line abreast, I’d say we were welcoming over half a million down there. Double the line, double the figure, triple it—”
“We may be senior cadre, but we follow your maths, major,” said Gaunt and the others laughed darkly. “A fine assessment. Thank you.”
“At least a million,” said Mkoll, suddenly.
They all looked round at him.
“Scout-sergeant?”
“Listen, sir,” said Mkoll and they all did, hearing nothing more than the persistent wail and wail-echoes of the shelling and the crumps of explosions.
“Behind the impacts, a higher note, like a creaking, like the wind.”
Gaunt fought hard to screen out the sounds of the assault bombing. He heard vague whispers of the sound Mkoll described.
“Lasguns, sir. So many lasguns firing over each other that their individual sounds have become one shrieking note. You’d need a… a feth of a lot of lasguns to make that sound.”
At the back of the group, Daur noticed that Gaunt’s adjutant, Milo, had crossed to the western lip of the tower and was gazing out. The adjutant was no more than a youth, his pale skin marked by a strange blue tattoo as seemed to be the custom with so many of the Ghosts.
Daur crossed to him, limping. “What do you see?” he asked.
“What’s that?” asked Milo, pointing down to the east. Far away, round the curve of the massive Curtain Wall, past the Sondar and Veyveyr Gates and the ruin of the Ore Works, a great, black slope extended down out of the hive, two kilometres wide and five deep. It looked like a tide of tar. The Curtain Wall broke in a gap fourteen hundred metres wide to let it out.
“The Spoil,” Daur replied. “It’s a… a mountain of rock refuse and processed ore waste from the smelteries and mine workings. One of the landmarks of Vervunhive,” he laughed.
“The Wall is broken there.”
“The Spoil’s been there longer than the Wall. The Wall was built around it.”
“But still, it’s a break in the defence.”
“Don’t worry, it’s well protected. The fifth division of my Regiment, the ‘Spoilers’, are dedicated to guarding that area: twenty thousand men. They take their work seriously. Besides, the Spoil itself is bloody treacherous: steep, unsafe, constantly slipping. It’s probably harder to get past than the Curtain Wall itself. An enemy would waste thousands trying a foolish gambit like that!”
Daur smiled encouragingly at Milo and then turned away and rejoined the oversight tour.
Milo felt sorry for him. Daur had no experience of the enemy, no knowledge of the way they expended and used their troops wholesale to gain their objectives. The soldiers of Vervunhive and the tactics they had evolved were too deeply focused upon the experience of fighting sane enemies.
In the main group, Gaunt looked to his fellow regiment commanders. “Assessments?”
“Way too much armour for an infantry-based counterjab just now, but I’d as soon not let those bastards reach the walls,” said Nash.
“I’d like to deploy my tank divisions to engage them out there,” Grizmund said. “Supported by whatever the NorthCol armour units can supply. We’re not overwhelmed yet. If we can stop them in the outer habs clear of the main hive, we can push an advance spearhead right down into the heart of them. For all their infamous numbers, they are extended over a massive area. That’s how I’d go. Armoured counter-assault, direct and sudden, take the ground out from under them, if only a section, then open a way to turn and flank them, cutting into their reserve lines. And dig a path for the infantry too.”
Nash agreed vehemently. “I’ll happily support an organised push of that sort.”
“So will I,” Gaunt said. “They’ve taken more than enough ground. We should stop them dead, even if only in this west sector.”
Grizmund nodded. “The gates this side of the hive must be opened. I’ll gladly fight these bastards, no matter how many there are, but I need room for my machines to mobilise and manoeuvre. I’d rather do that out there in the habs than wait until they’re at the Wall.”
“Or inside it,” Rawne added.
“Something of a first,” Gaunt smiled at his colleagues. “Three regimental officers agreed on a tactical approach.”
There was more general laughter, cut short by the first shrieks of the missile launchers on the tower reopening fire now the awnings were down.
“That assessment does not jibe with General Sturm’s strategy,” Tarrian said from the side.
Gaunt looked round at him. “I feel uneasy whenever a political officer uses a vague word like ‘jibe’, Commissar Tarrian. What do you mean?”
“I understand General Sturm’s tactical recommendations for the prosecution of this conflict are already drawn up and under examination by Marshal Croe, the House Command Strategy Committee and representatives of the noble houses. I hear they have the full support of Vice Marshal Anko and Commissar Kowle.”
“It sounds like they’re as good as decided!” Nash snarled, his heavy chin with its bristle of grey stubble set hard.
“Are we wasting our time up here? What good is this oversight tour if they’ve already set on a course?” Grizmund asked.
“I have had past dealings with the general of the
Volpone,” Gaunt remarked sourly. “I have no doubt he feels himself to be the senior Guard officer in this theatre and the hive elders have lauded him as such. But he is not a man for personal confrontation. Better he gives us something to occupy our attentions while he makes his own decisions. Hence this… sight-seeing.”
Gaunt turned sharply to look at Tarrian. “And you’d know what those decisions were, wouldn’t you, Tarrian?”
“It is not my place to say, colonel-commissar,” Tarrian said flatly.
“To hold the Wall, to keep the gates sealed, to give up all territory outside and to dig in for a sustained siege, trusting the Shield, the Curtain Wall and the army strengths within Vervunhive to hold the enemy off forever, or at least until the winter breaks them.”
They all looked round. As he finished speaking, Captain Daur shrugged, ignoring the murderous look the VPHC commander was giving him. “The plans were circulated this morning, with a magenta clearance rating. I have no reason to assume that clearance excluded senior echelon Guard officers.”
“Thank you, Daur,” Gaunt said. He looked back at Tarrian. “The generals and I wish to see Sturm and the marshal. Immediately.”
Quietly, the quintet of ochre-clad troops picked their way down the corridor of the bombed-out workshop, moving through the dust-filled air. Outside, a tank grated past down the river of debris that had once been Outhab Transit Street 287/fd.
The soldiers wore ochre battledress, shiny, black leather webbing straps, and polished, newly stamped lasguns. On their heads were full-face composite helmets with flared, sneering features like blurred skulls and the crest of Ferrozoica inlayed on the brow.
The squad checked each doorway and damage section they came to. Gol Kolea could hear the hollow crackle of their terse vox-signals barking back and forth.
He slid back into cover and made a hand gesture that his company could read. They moved back, swallowed by the shadows and the dust.
Gol let the five troopers advance down the corridor far enough until the last one was standing on the false flooring. Then he connected the bare end of the loose wire in his hand to the terminals of the battery pack.