by Dan Abnett
When Gaunt heard about them, he sighed. These were either gestures of ignorance or acts of denial against what must surely still await.
But let them have their delights, he decided. They may be their last.
In a grim mood, he’d stayed on at Veyveyr as the light failed, touring his men, noting those lost, restructuring squads around those losses. He gave Trooper Baffels a field promotion to sergeant and placed him in charge of Fols’ unit. The stocky, bearded trooper was almost overcome with emotion as Neskon, Domor, Milo and the others cheered him. He shook Gaunt’s hand and wiped away a tear that trickled down over his blue claw tattoo. There had been a brief rumour that Gaunt would award the sergeant pin to Milo, but that was absurd. He was barely a trooper and it wouldn’t look right, though Milo’s actions and improvised leadership at Veyveyr had won him a considerable respect that sat well with his reputation as the avatar of Gaunt.
Under Corbec’s command, the Tanith units who had seen action at Veyveyr pulled out to a mustering yard north of the Spoil, and fresh units under Rawne, partnered with Volpone forces commanded by Colonel Corday, moved in to hold the gate position. Stonemasons, metalworkers and engineers from the hab workforce were called up to assist the sapper units in defending the gate. Using fallen stone from the gate top, the masons erected two well-finished dyke walls just outside the gate, and the incandescent glare of oxylene torches fizzled in the night rain as the metalwrights crafted pavises and hoardings from broken tank plates. Sections of rail — and there were kilometres of it scattered throughout the railhead — were broken up and welded into cross-frames to carry barbed wire and razorwire strings. In an intensive twelve-hour period, with work continuing throughout the night under lamp-rigs, the workforce raised impressive concentric rings of well-built defences both inside and outside the broken gate. There were ramps along the eastern edge to allow forward access for the NorthCol tank files marshalled behind the troop lines. A forest of howitzers, barrels raised almost upright like slightly leaning trees, was established on the site of the main terminus, with a clear field of fire to bombard up and beyond the gate.
In the mustering yard, weary Tanith and NorthCol units from the front sprawled on rolled up jackets or on the hardpan itself, many falling asleep as soon as they got off their feet. Mess trucks with tureens of soup, baskets of bread and crates of weak beer arrived to tend them. It was estimated that they would be there until dawn, when the arterial routes would be finally clear enough for transports to carry them back to their billets.
In the gloomy rear section of a NorthCol Chimera, Corbec and Bulwar shared a bottle and dissected the day. The performance of the Vervun troops and of Modile especially was cursed frequently. The bottle was vintage sacra from Corbec’s own stock and he broke the wax-foil stamp with relish. Bulwar had set his power-claw on a metal rack and, flexing fingers stiff from the glove, produced two shot glasses from a leather box, and a tin of fat smokes, the best brand the Northern Collective hives produced.
Bulwar had never tasted the Tanith liquor before, but he didn’t flinch and Corbec wasn’t surprised. Bulwar was as grizzled and hardened a soldier as any Corbec had met in his career. They clinked glasses again.
“Anvil,” Corbec toasted, letting blue smoke curl out of his mouth to wreath his face.
Bulwar nodded. “Let’s hope we don’t need it again. But I have an ache in my leg that says there’s a measure left before us.”
“Your leg?”
Bulwar tapped his right thigh. “Metal hip. A stub round during the moon war. Hurts like buggery when it’s damp — and worse when trouble’s coming.”
“Weather’s changing. More rain on the way.”
“That’s not why it’s aching.”
Corbec refilled their glasses.
“But for this moon war, you’ve never been off this place?”
“No,” replied Bulwar. “Wanted to muster for the Guard at the last founding, but I was a major by then and my path was set. Planetary Defence, like my father and his before him.”
“It’s a noble calling. I could have wished for it myself, commanding the garrison of a city back home.”
“Where is that again? Tanith?”
Corbec toyed with the tiny glass in his paw. He pursed his lips. “Dead and gone. We’re the last of it.”
“How?”
“We were founding, the first founding Tanith had made. Three regiments assembled to join the warmaster’s crusade. This was just after Balhaut, you understand. Gaunt had been sent to knock us into shape. There was a… a miscalculation. A Chaos fleet slipped through the interdiction set up by the advancing Segmentum Pacificus navy and assaulted Tanith. Gaunt had a choice: Get out with those troop elements he could save, or stay and die with the planet.”
“And he chose the former…”
“Like any good commander would. I like old Ibram Gaunt, but he’s a commissar at heart. Hardline, worships the Emperor above his own life, dedicated to discipline. He took us out, about two thousand of us, and Tanith burned as we left it behind. We’ve been paying back the enemy ever since.”
Bulwar nodded. “That’s why you’re called Ghosts, I suppose?”
Corbec chuckled and poured some more sacra for them both.
Bulwar was silent for a while. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your homeworld.” Corbec didn’t make the reply that flashed into his mind, but Bulwar saw the logic of his own words and spoke the unspoken anyway. “I hope I don’t find out.”
Corbec raised his glass. “By the spirit of my lost world,” he said mischievously, glancing at the sacra, “may we Ghosts ensure there are never any Verghast ghosts.”
They downed their drinks with heartfelt gulps. Bulwar got up and began to rummage in a footlocker bolted to the carrier’s hull. He pulled out map-cases, ammo-cans and a sheaf of signal flags before finding what he was looking for: a tall-shouldered bottle of brown glass. “We’ve toasted with your Tanith brew, which I commend for its fine qualities, but it’s only fair we toast now with a Verghast vintage. Joiliq. Ten year old, cask-fermented.”
Corbec smiled. “I’ll try anything once.” He knocked it back, savoured it, smiled again. “Or twice,” he said, proffering his glass.
By a roaring oil-drum fire, Baffels sat with Milo, Venar, Filain and Domor. Filain and Venar were snoring, propped against each other. Domor was spooning soup into his mouth with weary, almost mechanical motions.
“I want you with me,” Baffels said quietly to Milo.
“Sergeant?”
“Oh, stop it with that crap! These pins should have been yours.”
Milo laughed and Filain looked up at the noise for a moment before slumping and snoring again.
“I’ve been a trooper for all of ten seconds. And I’m the youngest Tanith in the regiment. Gaunt would never have been crazy enough to make me sergeant. You deserve it, Baffels. No one denies it should be yours.”
Baffels shrugged. “You led us today. No one denied that either. You’re trusted.”
“So are you and we worked as a team. If they followed me at all it’s only because you did. They may think of me as some lucky fething charm, touched by the commissar himself, but it’s you they respect.”
“We did okay though, didn’t we?”
Milo nodded.
“Whatever you say, I want you at point, right up near me, okay?”
“You’re the sergeant.”
“And I’m making a command decision. The men respect you, so if you’re near me and with me, they’ll follow me too.”
Milo looked into the fire. He could sense Baffels was scared by his new responsibilities. The man was a great soldier, but he’d never expected unit command. He didn’t want to fail and Milo knew he wouldn’t, just as Gaunt had known when he’d made the promotion. But if it helped Baffels’ confidence, Milo would do as he was asked. Certainly, through that strange, organic process Milo had observed in the firefight that morning, soldiers chose their own leaders in extremis, and Baffe
ls and Milo had been chosen.
“Where’s Tanith, d’you think?”
Milo glanced round, initially assuming Baffels had asked a rhetorical question. But the older man was looking up at the sky.
“Tanith?”
“Which of those stars did we come from?”
Milo gazed up. The Shield was a glowing aura of green light, fizzing with rain that fell outside. But even so, they could just glimpse the starfields pricking the blackness.
Milo chose one at random.
“That one,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
It seemed to please Baffels and he stared at the winking light for a long time.
“D’you still have your pipes?”
Milo had been a musician back on Tanith and before he’d made trooper he’d played the pipes into battle.
“Yes,” he said. “Never go anywhere without them.”
“Play up, eh?”
“Now?”
“My first order as sergeant.”
Milo pulled the tight roll of pipes and bellows from his knapsack. He cleared the mouth-spout and then puffed the bag alive, making it whine and wail quietly. The hum of conversation died down at fires all around at the first sound.
Pumping his arm, he got the bellows breathing and the drone began, rising up in a clear, keening note. “What shall I play?” he asked, his fingers ready on the chanter.
“My Love Waits in the Nalwoods Green,” Domor said suddenly from beside him.
Milo nodded. The tune was the unofficial anthem of Tanith, more sprightly than the actual planetary anthem, yet melancholy and almost painful for any man of Tanith to hear.
He began to play. The tune rose above the yard, above the flurries of sparks rising from the oil drums. One by one, the men began to sing.
“What is that?” asked Bulwar hoarsely as Corbec sang softly. Across the yard, the NorthCol men were silent as the bitter, haunting melody filled the air. “A song sung by ghosts,” Corbec said as he reached for the sacra..
The Main Spine rang with the sound of massed voices. In the halls of the Legislature and the grand regimental chapel of House Command, victory choirs thousands strong sang victory masses and hymns of deliverance.
Crossing a marble colonnade with Captain Daur and several officers on the approach to House Command, Gaunt paused on a balcony and looked down into the regimental chapel auditorium. He sent his contingent on ahead and stood watching the mass for a while. Twelve hundred singers in golden robes, red-bound hymnals raised to their chests, gave voice to the hymn “Behold! The Triumph of Terra” in perfect harmony, and the air vibrated.
The auditorium’s high, arched roof was adorned with company banners and house flags, and censer smoke billowed into the candlelit air. A procession of Ministorum clerics carrying gilt standards and reliquary boxes, their long ceremonial trains supported by child servitors, shuffled down the main aisle towards the Imperial Shrine, where Intendant Banefail and Master Legislator Anophy waited. There were hooded Administratum officials in the procession and three astropaths from the guild, their satin-wrapped bulks bulging with tubes and pipes and feed-links. The astropaths were carried on litters by adult servitors, and many of the tubes and pipes issuing from the folds of their cloaks were plugged to cogitator systems built into the silver-plated litter-pallets.
“It lifts the heart, does it not?” a voice from behind Gaunt asked.
Gaunt turned. It was Kowle.
“If it lifts the morale of Vervunhive, so be it. In truth, it is premature.”
“Indeed?” Kowle frowned, as if not convinced. “I am going to House Command. Will you walk with me?”
Gaunt nodded and the two grim, black figures in peaked caps strode together down the marble colonnade under the flickering ball-lamps strung along the walls.
“This day has seen victory, yet you seem low in spirit.”
Gaunt grunted. “We drove them off. Call it a victory. It was bought too costly and the cost was unnecessary.”
“May I ask on what you base that assessment, colonel-commissar?”
They strode under a high arch where banners flapped in the cool air. The choir echoed after them.
“Vervunhive’s command and control systems are inadequate for a military endeavour of this magnitude. The system broke down. Deployment was crippled behind the front and devastated at the sharp end. There is much to be criticised in the command structure of the Vervun Primary itself.”
Kowle stopped short. “I would take such criticisms personally. I am, after all, the chief disciplinary officer of this hive.”
Gaunt stopped as well and turned back to face Kowle. There was an immoderate darkness in the man’s face. “You seem to excel in your duties, Commissar Kowle. You understand, better than any man I have ever met, the uses of propaganda and persuasion. But I wonder if you hold the officer ranks in place by force of will and fear rather than sound tactical order. The commanders of Vervun Primary have no experience of war on this scale. They know what they know from texts and treatises. They must be made to acknowledge the experience of active field officers.”
“Such as yourself and the other Guard commanders like General Grizmund?”
“Just so. I trust I can count on your support in this when we meet with House Command. I want you with me, Kowle. We can’t be pushing from different angles.”
“Of course. I am of one mind with you on this, colonel-commissar.”
They walked on. Gaunt could read Kowle’s soothing tone — and he despised it. He was well aware of the two dozen requests for transfer back into the active Guard which Kowle had made in the past three years. A master politico, Kowle was clearly courting Gaunt’s favour, assuming Gaunt could make a good report and effect him that transfer.
“I understand you executed Modile,” Kowle said matter-of-factly.
“A necessary measure. His negligence was criminal.”
“It was, as you described, his inexperience, that let him down. Was summary execution too harsh for a man who might yet learn?”
“I hope you would have done the same, Kowle. Modile caused many deaths by his inaction and fear. That cannot be conscienced. He ignored both pre-orders and direct commands from above.”
Kowle nodded. “Where a seasoned Guard commander would have held fast to the chain of command.”
“Indeed.”
Kowle smiled. It was an alarming expression on such a cruel face. “Actually, I applaud your action. Decisive, forceful, true to the spirit of the Commissariat. Many have feared the great Gaunt has grown soft now he has a command of his own, that his commissarial instinct might have been diluted. But you disabused that notion today with Modile.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
They had arrived at a set of great doors ornate with golden bas-relief. Vervun Elite troops in dress uniforms crusted with brocade, with plumes sprouting from their helmet spikes, opened the doors to admit them.
Beyond the doors, the audience theatre of House Command was seething with voices and commotion.
General Nash was at the lectern, trying to speak, but the noble houses were shouting him down. Junior Vervun Primary officers were stamping in their tiered seats and jeering, and Roane Deeper adjutants were yelling back at them, urged on by officers from NorthCol, the Narmenians and the Volpone.
Vice Marshal Anko rose to his feet, slamming his white-gloved hand into the bench-head for silence.
“While I welcome the aid our off-world kin have rendered us, I find this an affront. General Nash condemns our military organisations and says we are ill-equipped to deal with this fight. An insult, no less, no more! Does his highness General Sturm share this view?”
Sturm rose. “War, honoured gentlemen,” he began in soothing, mellow tones, “is a confusion. Emotions run high. It is hard to say if a system is right or wrong until it is found wanting in the fire of battle. The Vervun Primary are exemplary soldiers, well-drilled and highly motivated. Their b
ravery is beyond question. That our command channels clashed during today’s engagement is simply unfortunate. It is not the fault of Vervun officers. I have already issued standing orders to range the vox-channels so that there will be no further overlap. Any deaths that have resulted from this misfortune are greatly regretted. Such incidents will not recur.”
“What about discipline?” Gaunt’s voice cut across the great hall and all the faces turned to look. Gaunt walked to the end of the chamber and stepped up to the lectern. Kowle took his place on the front bench next to Anko.
“Colonel-commissar?” Marshal Croe rose and looked down the vast hall into Gaunt’s eyes. “Is there another matter? General Nash has already been unkind enough to reprimand Vervunhive for its weakness in command. Do you share that view?”
“In part, marshal. The communication problems General Sturm has referred to were only a piece of the crisis we faced today. We were lucky to survive the Veyveyr assault.”
Anko jumped to his feet. “And have we not our own hero, Commissar Kowle, to thank for turning that crisis around?”
The hall broke out in ripples of applause and cheers, mainly from the Vervun majority. Kowle accepted the applause with a gracious, modest nod. Gaunt knew better than to point out the cosmetic nature of Kowle’s involvement.
“Commissar Kowle’s actions are a matter of record. History will record the nature of his contribution to the Vervunhive war.” Gaunt couched his response carefully. “But the line of command failed severely during Veyveyr. Field commanders of the Vervun Primary, whose bravery is beyond question, failed to relay strategic orders or were unable — or unwilling — to redirect their forces in the face of the assault.”
leers and boos thundered down at Gaunt.
“I understand you have already exacted discipline, colonel-commissar,” Anko said stiffly.
“And I will do so again,” Gaunt raised his voice above the background roar. “But that simply punishes the symptoms of the problem. It does not address the heart of it.”