by Dan Abnett
So out of place, he thought as he left them with a last look, six dirty dog-soldiers, fresh from battle, in the middle of the serene vaults of the worthy and powerful.
He paced down the length of the promenade, his shiny boots hushing into the blue carpeting. The air was perfumed and gentle plainsong echoed from hidden speakers. The vault above was glass, supported by thin traceries of iron. Trees, real trees, grew in the centre beds of the long hall and small, bright songbirds fluttered through the branches. This is the privilege of power, Gaunt thought.
The great doors, crafted from single pieces of some vast tree, stood before him, the crest of House Chass raised in varnished bas-relief on their front. Ivy traces clad the walls to either side and small, blue flowers budded from fruit trees in the avenue that led to the doorway. He took out the token-seal and fitted it into a knurled slot in the door lock.
The great doors swung inwards silently. There was a fanfare of choral voices. He stepped inside, entering a high vault that was lit blue by the light falling through stained-glass oriels high above. The walls were mosaics, depicting incidents and histories that were unknown to him. The Chass crest was repeated at intervals in the mosaic.
“Welcome, honoured visitor, to the enclave of House Chass. Your use of a token emblem signifies you to be an invited and worthy guest. Please wait in the anteroom and refreshments will be sent while his lordship is informed of your arrival.”
The servitor’s voice was smooth and warm, and it issued from the air itself. The great doors hushed closed behind Gaunt. He removed his cap and gloves and set them on a teak side table.
A second later, the inner doors opened and three figures entered. Two were house guards dressed in body armour identical to that of the one who had accosted Gaunt outside the Privy Council. They had satin shrouds over their handweapons and nodded to him stiffly. The third, a female servitor, her enhancement implants and plugs made of inlaid gold, carried a tray of refreshments on long, silver, jointed arms which supplemented her natural limbs.
She stopped before Gaunt. “Water, joiliq, berry wine, sweetmeats. Please help yourself, worthy guest. Or if nothing pleases you, tell me, and I will attend your special needs.”
“This is fine,” Gaunt said. “A measure of that local liquor.”
Holding the salver with her extra arms, the female servitor gracefully poured Gaunt a shot of joiliq into a crystal glass and handed it to him.
He took it with a nod and the servitor withdrew to the side of the room. Gaunt sipped the drink thoughtfully. He was beginning to wonder why he had come. It was clear there was a universe of difference between himself and Chass. What could they have in common?
“To be here you must have been invited, but I do not know you.”
Gaunt turned and faced a young noblewoman who had entered from the far side of the anteroom. She wore a long gown of yellow silk, with a fur stole and an ornate headdress of silver wire and jewels. She was almost painfully beautiful and Gaunt saw cunning intelligence in her perfect face.
He nodded respectfully, with a click of his heels.
“I am Gaunt, lady.”
“The off-world commissar?”
“One of them. Several of my stripe arrived with the Guard.”
“But you’re the famous one: Ibram Gaunt. They say the People’s Hero Kowle was beside himself with rage when he heard the famous Gaunt was coming to Vervunhive.”
“Do they?”
The girl circled him. Gaunt remained facing the way he was.
“Indeed they do. War heroes Kowle can manage to stomach, so they report, but a commissar war hero? Famous for his actions on Balhaut, Fortis Binary, the Menazoid Clasp, Monthax? Too much for Kowle. You might eclipse him. Vervunhive is large, but there can be only one famous, dashing commissar hero, can’t there?”
“Perhaps. I’m not interested in rivalry. So… you’re versed in recent military history, lady?”
“No, but my maids are.” She smiled dangerously.
“Your maids have taken an interest in my record?”
“Deeply, you and your — what was it they said? Your ‘scruffy, courageous Ghost warriors’. Apparently, they are so much more exciting than the starchy Volpone Bluebloods.”
“That I can vouch for,” he replied. Though she was lovely, he had already had enough of her superior manner and courtly flirting. Responding to such things could get a man shot.
“I’ve six scruffy, courageous Ghost warriors right outside if you’d like me to introduce them to your maids,” he smiled, “or to you.”
She paused. Outrage tried to escape her composed expression. She contained it well. “What do you want, Gaunt?” she asked instead, her tone harder.
“Lord Chass summoned me.”
“My father.”
“I thought so. That would make you…”
“Merity Chass, of House Chass.”
Gaunt bowed gently again. He took another sip of the drink.
“What do you know of my father?” she asked crisply, still circling like a gaud-cock in a mating ritual.
“Master of one of the nine noble houses of Vervunhive. One of the three who opposed General Sturm’s tactical policy. One who took an interest in my counterproposals. An ally, I suppose.”
“Don’t use him. Don’t dare use him!” she said fiercely.
“Use him? Lady—”
“Don’t play games! Chass is one of the most powerful noble houses and one of the oldest, but it is part of the minority. Croe and Anko hold power and opposition. Anko especially. My father is what they call a liberal. He has… lofty ideals and is a generous and honest man. But he is also guileless, vulnerable. A crafty political agent could use his honesty and betray him. It has happened before.”
“Lady Chass, I have no designs on your father’s position. He summoned me here. I have no idea what he wants. I am a warmaker, a leader of soldiers. I’d rather cut off my right arm than get involved in house politics.”
She thought about this. “Promise me, Gaunt. Promise me you won’t use him. Lord Anko would love to see my noble house and its illustrious lineage overthrown.”
He studied her face. She was serious about this — guileless, to use her own word.
“I’m no intriguer. Leave that to Kowle. Simple, honest promises are something I can do. They are what soldiers live by. So I promise you, lady.”
“Swear it!”
“I swear it on the life of the beloved Emperor and the light of the Ray of Hope.”
She swallowed, looked away, and then said, “Come with me.”
With her bodyguards trailing at a respectful distance, she led Gaunt out of the anteroom, along a hallway where soft, gauzy draperies billowed in a cool breeze and out onto a terrace.
The terrace projected from the outer wall of the Main Spine and was covered by a dedicated refractor shield. They were about a kilometre up. Below, the vast sprawl of Vervunhive spread out to the distant bulk of the Curtain Wall. Above them rose the peak of the Spine, glossed in ice, overarched by the huge bowl of the crackling Shield.
The terrace was an ornamental cybernetic garden. Mechanical leaf-forms grew and sprouted in the ordered beds, and bionic vines self-replicated in zigzag patterns of branches to form a dwarf orchard. Metal bees and delicate paper-winged butterflies whirred through the silvery stems and iron branches. Oil-ripe fruit, black like sloes, swung from blossom-joints on the swaying mechanical-tree limbs.
Lord Heymlik Chass, dressed in a gardener’s robes, slight marks of oil-sap on his cuffs and apron, moved down the rows of artificial plants, dead-heading brass-petalled flowerheads with a pair of laser secateurs and pruning back the sprays of aluminium roses.
He looked up as his daughter led the commissar over.
“I was hoping you would come,” Lord Chass said.
“I was delayed by events,” Gaunt said.
“Of course.” Chass nodded and gazed out at the south Curtain for a moment. “A bad night. Your men… survived?”
/> “Most of them. War is war.”
“I was informed of your actions at Hass West. Vervunhive owes you already, commissar.”
Gaunt shrugged. He looked around the metal garden.
“I have never seen anything like this,” he said honestly.
“A private indulgence. House Chass built its success on servitors, cogitators and mechanical development. I make working machines for the Imperium. It pleases me to let them evolve in natural forms here, with no purpose other than their own life.”
Merity stood back from the pair. “I’ll leave you alone, then,” she said.
Chass nodded and the girl stalked away between the wire-vines and the tin blooms.
“You have a fine daughter, lord.”
“Yes, I have. My heir. No sons. She has a gift for mechanical structures that quite dazzles me. She will lead House Chass into the next century.”
He paused, snicked a rusting flowerhead off into his waist-slung sack and sighed. “If there is a next century for Vervunhive.”
“This war will be won by the Imperial force, lord. I have no doubt.”
Chass smiled round at the commissar. “Spoken like a true political animal, Commissar Gaunt.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a platitude.”
“Nor did I take it as one. But you are a political animal, aren’t you, Gaunt?”
“I am a colonel of the Imperial Guard. A warrior for the almighty Emperor, praise His name. My politics extend as far as raising troop morale, no further.”
Chass nodded. “Walk with me,” he said.
They moved through a grove of platinum trees heavy with brass oranges. Frills of wire-lace creepers were soldered to the burnished trunks. Beyond the grove, crossing iron lawns that creaked under their footsteps, they walked down a row of bushes with broad, inlaid leaves of soft bronze.
“I suppose my daughter has been bending your ear with warnings about my liberal ways?”
“You are correct, lord.”
Chass laughed. “She is hugely protective of me. She thinks I’m vulnerable.”
“She said as much.”
“Indeed. Let me show you this.” Chass led Gaunt into a maze of hedges. The hedgerows crackled with energised life, like veils of illusions.
“Fractal topiary,” Chass said proudly. “Mathematical structures generated by the stem-forms of the cogitators planted here.”
“It is a wonder.”
Lord Chass looked around at Gaunt. “It leaves you cold, doesn’t it, Gaunt?”
“Cold is too strong a word. It leaves me… puzzled. Why am I here?”
“You are an unusual officer, Gaunt. I have studied your record files carefully.”
“So have the housemaids,” Gaunt said.
Chass snorted, taking a cropping wand from his belt. He began to use it to shape the glowing, fractal hedges nearby. “For different reasons, I assure you. The maids want husbands. I want friends. Your record shows me that you are a surprisingly moral creature.”
“Does it?” Gaunt watched the noble trim the light-buds of the bush, disinclined to speak further.
“True to the Imperial Cause, to the crusade, but not always true to your direct superiors when those motives clash. With Dravere on Menazoid Epsilon, for example. With our own General Sturm on Voltemand. You seek your own way, and like a true commissar you are never negligent in punishing those of your own side who counter the common good.”
Gaunt looked out across the vast hive below them. “Another sentence or two and you’ll be speaking treason, Lord Chass.”
“And who will hear me? A man who roots out treason professionally? If I speak treason, Gaunt, you can kill me here.”
“I hope we can avoid that, lord,” Gaunt said quietly.
“So do I. From the incident in the Privy Council the other day, I understand you do not agree with General Sturm’s tactical plan?”
Gaunt’s measured nod spoke for him.
“We have something in common then. I don’t agree with House Sondar’s leadership either. Sondar controls Croe and Anko is its lapdog. They will lead us to annihilation.”
“Such machinations are far above me, Lord Chass,” Gaunt pointed out diplomatically.
Chass wanded the hedge again. He was forming a perfect Imperial eagle from the blister-tendrils of light. “But we are both affected. Bad policy and bad leadership will destroy this hive. You and I will suffer then.”
Gaunt cleared his throat. “With respect, is there a point to this, Lord Chass?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. I wanted to speak with you, Gaunt, get the measure of you. I wanted to understand your inner mind and see if there was any kindred flame there. I have a great responsibility to Vervunhive, greater than the leadership of this noble house. You wouldn’t understand and I’m not about to explain it. Trust me.”
Gaunt said nothing.
“I will preserve the life of this hive to my dying breath — and beyond it if necessary. I need to know who I can count on. You may go now. I will send for you again in time. Perhaps.”
Gaunt nodded and turned away. The Imperial eagle in the fractal topiary was now complete.
“Gaunt?”
He turned back. Lord Chass reached into his waist-sack and pulled out a rose. It was perfect, made of steel, just budding and faintly edged with rust. The silver stem was stiff and aluminium thorns split out of it.
Chass held it out.
“Wear this for honour.”
Gaunt took the metal rose and hooked it into the lapel of his jacket, over his heart.
He nodded. “For honour, I’ll wear anything.”
Chass stood alone as Gaunt threaded his way out of the metal garden and departed. Chass remained stationary in thought for a long time.
“Father?” Merity appeared out of the brass-orange grove.
“What did you make of him?”
“An honourable man. Slightly stiff, but not shy. He has spirit and courage.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Can we trust him?”
“What do you think?”
Merity paused, stroking the fractal blooms absently.
“It’s your choice, master of our house.”
Heymlick Chass laughed. “It is. But you like him? That’s important. You asked me to keep you informed.”
“I like him. Yes.”
Chass nodded. He took the amulet from the waist sack where it had been all the time, buried in the garden scraps.
He turned it over in his hands. It writhed and clicked.
“We’ll know soon enough,” he told his daughter.
Day thirty-one passed without major incident. Shelling whined back and forth between the wall defenders and the waiting Zoican army. At dawn on the thirty-second day, the second Zoican assault began.
NINE
VEYVEYR GATE
“Do not ask how you may give your life for the Emperor. Ask instead how you may give your death.”
—Warmaster Slaydo, on his deathbed
It was a dismal, hollow dawn. The early daylight was diffused by cliffs of grey cloud that prolonged the night. Rain began to fall: spots at first for a half hour, then heavier, sheeting across the vastness of the hive and the wastelands beyond. Visibility dropped to a few hundred metres. The torrential downpour made the Shield crackle and short in edgy, disturbing patterns.
At the Veyveyr position, in the first hour of light, Colm Corbec walked the Tanith line, the eastern positions of the ruined railhead. His piebald camo-cloak, the distinctive garb of the Tanith, was pulled around him like a shroud, and he had acquired a wide-brimmed bowl helmet from somewhere — the NorthCol troops most likely — which made more than a few of his Ghosts chuckle at the sight of it. It was cold, but at least the Shield high above was keeping the rain off.
Corbec had surveyed the Ghost positions a dozen times and liked them less each time he did. There was a group of engine sheds and cargo halls through which sidings ran, all of them bombed-out, and then a forest of rub
ble and exploded fuel tanks leading down to the vast main gate, the white stone of its great mouth scorched black. Beyond the rear extremity of the railyard’s eastern border rose the burned-out smelteries. A regiment of Vervun Primary troops — called the Spoilers, Corbec had been told — held that position and watched the approach up the treacherous slag-mountain. Corbec had around two hundred Ghosts dug in through the engine sheds and the rubble beyond, with forward scout teams at the leading edge towards the gate.
Colonel Modile’s Vervun Primary units, almost five thousand strong, manned the main trenches and rubble glacis in the central sector of the wide railyard. Bulwar’s NorthCol troops, two thousand or more, were positioned along the west, towards proud and grimy rows of as yet undamaged manufactories. Fifty units of NorthCol armour waited at the north end of the railhead in access roads and marshalling yards, ready to drive forward in the event of a breakthrough.
Corbec crossed between fire-blackened, roofless engine sheds, his hefty boots crunching into the thick crust of ash and rubble that littered the place despite the pioneer teams’ clearance work.
In the shed, twenty Ghosts were standing easy, all except their spotters at blast-holes and windows, looking south. The roof was bare ribs and tangles of reinforcing metal strands poked from broken rockcrete.
Corbec crossed to where Scout MkVenner and Trooper Mochran squatted on a makeshift firestep of oil drums, gazing out through holes in the brickwork.
“You’ve a good angle here, boys,” Corbec said, pulling himself up onto the rusty drums and taking a look.
“Good for dying, sir,” MkVenner muttered dryly. He was a scout in the true mould of Scout Sergeant Mkoll, dour and terse. Mkoll had trained most of them personally. MkVenner was a tall man in his thirties with a blue, half-moon tattoo under his right eye.
“How’s that, MkVenner?”
MkVenner pointed out at the gates. “We’re square on if they make a frontal, us and the locals in the main yard.”