by Dan Abnett
Kowle was about to speak when Gaunt cut across. “Both Kowle and I served on Balhaut. I believe the commissar was deployed on the southwest continent, away from the main battle for the Oligarchy. I encountered the Heritor’s forces personally.”
Kowle conceded. He could barely hide his bitterness at the memory. “The colonel-commissar may… have more experience than me.”
Croe turned his hooded eyes back to Gaunt. “Well?”
“The Heritor was one of Archon Nadzybar’s foremost lieutenants, a warlord in his own right, personally commanding a force of over a million. He was one of the chief commanders Nadzybar gathered in his great retinue to form the vast enemy force which overran the Sabbat Worlds, Emperor damn him. Despite the notoriety of the other warlords — filth like Sholen Skara, Nokad the Blighted, Anakwanar Sek, Qux of the Eyeless — Heritor Asphodel remains the most notorious. His sworn aim, both before and after Archon Nadzybar co-opted him into the pact, was to ‘inherit’ Imperium world after Imperium world and return them to what he saw as the ‘true state’ of Chaos. His ruthlessness is immeasurable, his brutality staggering and the charismatic force of his personality as a leader cannot be underestimated. And with the possible exception of Sek, he is probably the most tactically brilliant of all Nadzybar’s commanders.”
“It almost sounds like you admire the bastard,” sniffed Sturm.
“I do not underestimate him, general,” Gaunt said coldly. “That is different.”
“And he could be here? It could be more than an enemy lie?” Anko asked, failing to disguise the wobble in his voice.
“The Heritor fled Balhaut along with all the surviving warlords after Warmaster Slaydo slew the Archon. This may be his first reappearance. The Zoican forces have encircled us well and swiftly, and they have used both waiting and surprise to great effect. Both are tactics I know the Heritor favours. Furthermore, he delights in war machines. With access to Ferrozoica hive’s fabricating plants, the baroque war machines we have seen are precisely the sort of things I would expect him to send out at us.”
Croe said nothing as he took it in. “Suggestions? Gaunt?”
Astutely, Gaunt deferred to Kowle, aware of how the commissar was bristling at what he would no doubt see as the colonel-commissar’s grandstanding. “I would invite Commissar Kowle’s ideas on how to deal with this information.”
Kowle greedily accepted the scrap thrown to him. “We can’t shut out blanket broadcasts, so we must refute them. All military, municipal and guilder institutions in Vervunhive, along with select representatives of the citizenry and the Legislature, must be clearly and emphatically briefed that this is hollow propaganda. We should prepare statements for the public address plates to repeat denials of this. I also urge we counter with broadcasts of our own. Simple repeats of the statement ‘the Heritor is dead’ should suffice for now.”
“Begin the work. I want regular updates.” Croe waited as Kowle saluted and left, then faced Sturm and Xance. “Battle standby remains in force, but I want all military resources moved into position now. No reserves. We must meet the next thrust with absolute power.”
Both generals nodded.
“I trust the revisions you ordered to the communications net have been affected, General Sturm?”
“New channel settings and new codes have been issued to our forces. The confusions of the last storm should not recur.”
Gaunt hoped Sturm was correct. He had reviewed the general’s revisions and they seemed sound, though they favoured the Volpone Bluebloods and the Vervun Primary with the most accessible bands.
“Have you yet considered my proposal to engage them outside the Wall?” asked Xance.
“Impractical, general,” replied Croe.
“We saw how the Vervun Mechanised were destroyed in the grasslands,” Sturm added.
“But now they are dug in and restricted by the streets of the outer habs. The policy vouched by Nash, Grizmund and Gaunt early on would seem more attractive now. The NorthCol and Narmenian armour could sally out with infantry support and shake them from their forward line.”
Gaunt listened, fascinated. This was the first he had heard of Xance’s plan. Clearly Sturm, Anko and Croe had made efforts to suppress it. It could not be coincidence that Xance was voicing it now in Gaunt’s presence.
“No!” barked Sturm, anger getting the better of him for a moment. “We will not dilute our resistance here by wasting manpower and machines in an external raid.”
Xance shook his head and left the upper auditorium without saluting.
Sturm looked over at Gaunt with a scowl. “Don’t even begin to think about supporting Xance, Gaunt. The Imperial Forces here at Vervunhive will not go on the offensive now or in the foreseeable future.”
Gaunt nodded, saluted and left. He knew when it was time to argue, and he’d been sticking his neck out more than enough in the last few days.
The Zoicans recommenced sporadic bombardment at dusk, throwing shells and rockets up at the Curtain Wall at a listless rate, more to annoy than to do any real damage. The Wall positions returned fire intermittently, whenever a target was designated by the spotters.
Zoican ground forces, edging closer to the Wall, fired las — and bolt rounds at the gates from foxhole cover and ditches. At Sondar Gate, Vervun Primary corps under Captain Cargin elevated the armoured domes of the electric rotating turrets and peppered the ground in range outside with torrents of heavy autofire.
The new defences at Veyveyr Gate took their first battering. There was the punk! punk! of mortars dropping shells close to the skirts of the stone siege walls and dirt clouds drifted back across the troops at the parapet.
Feygor swivelled his scope, hunting for a target in the hab waste beyond, and he quickly identified the rising tendrils of smoke from the concealed mortars.
He ordered Bragg up to the wall-line and spotted for him as Bragg loaded rocket grenades into his shoulder launcher. Then Feygor voxed to Rawne for permission to fire.
Rawne was crossing the inner trenches below the gate when he received the request and told Feygor to hold fire.
He hurried down a dugout towards the Volpone command section, a half-smashed rail carriage buried to the axles in ash and rubble and shielded along its length with flak-board, sandbags and piled stone. Rawne had been ordered to co-ordinate the defence with his Volpone opposite number, but despite Sturm’s communication review — or because of it, Rawne grimly suspected — the inter-unit vox links seemed stilted and slow.
Two Bluebloods of the elite 10th Brigade stood guard at the gas-curtained entrance. They were giants in their carapace battledress, the grey and gold of their segmented armaplas and fatigues spotless and austere. Each carried a gleaming black hellgun with a sawn-off pump-gun attached to the bayonet lug under the main barrel.
They blocked his advance.
“Major Rawne, Tanith area commander,” he said briskly and they stood aside to let him enter.
Colonel Nikolaas Taschen DeHante Corday was a true Blueblood: massive, powerful and square-jawed with hooded eyes. He was sitting at his chart desk in the carriage as Rawne entered and he looked the Tanith over like he was something he’d found adhering to his boot.
Rawne nodded. “I wish to commence discriminate return of fire. There are mortars trying to range my positions.”
Corday looked at his chart again and then nodded. “Do you want support?”
“They’re simply harrying, biding their time. But I’d rather not sit my men there while they find their true range.”
“Is it worth drawing up the artillery?”
Rawne shook his head. “Not yet. Let me silence the mortars and see what they try next.”
“Very good.”
Rawne turned to leave.
“Major? Rawne, isn’t it?”
Rawne turned back to see that Corday had risen to his feet. “I am anxious that the Volpone and the Tanith can complement each other in this position,” he said.
“I share your ho
pe.”
“There is not a good record between our regiments.”
Rawne was surprised by the frankness.
“No. No, there isn’t. May I ask… do you know why?”
Corday sighed. “Voltemand. I was not part of that action, but I have reviewed the records. A miscalculation on General Sturm’s part caused artillery to injure your units in the field.”
Rawne coughed gently. It was a polite and rather inaccurate appraisal, but he didn’t want to antagonise the Blueblood officer.
“I don’t believe the Volpone have ever formally apologised to the Tanith for it. For what it’s worth, I make that apology now.”
“Is there a reason?” Rawne asked guardedly.
“One of my men, Culcis, speaks highly of the Ghosts, of your Colonel Corbec in particular. He fought with them on Nacedon. Others have praised Gaunt’s leadership on Monthax.” Corday smiled. The smile seemed genuine, despite the aristocratic languor of the face. Rawne thought it would not be impossible to like Corday.
“Sturm, Emperor honour him… Gilbear… many of the upper echelon will of course despise the Tanith for eternity!” They both laughed. “But you’ll find me a fair man, Rawne. We Bluebloods have prided ourselves on our superiority for a long time. It is time we learned from others and realised that the Imperial Guard has other fine regiments within it that we might be honoured and educated to serve alongside.”
Rawne was quietly astonished. Like all the Ghosts, he had come to loathe the Bluebloods, and for a damaged, hating soul like Rawne that loathing came easy. He could never have believed he would hear such comradeship from one of them, especially a senior officer.
“I appreciate your words, colonel. I will bear them in mind and circulate your thoughts amongst my own men. It’s fair to say that unless we learn to fight together, we will die here. In the spirit of co-operation, may I note that our inter-unit vox-links are still unreliable?”
Corday nodded and made a note on his data-slate with a stylus. “Select band pi as a working link, with band kappa as reserve. I think I’ll send one of my subalterns with a vox-set to work as liaison. I suggest you reciprocate.”
Rawne nodded, saluted and left the carriage.
Corday called his bodyguard in to join him. “Send Graven to the Tanith position with a vox-set. Tell him to act as intermediary. I want these disgusting Ghost scum kept sweet, make that clear to him. We don’t want them hanging our arses out to dry when the fighting starts.”
Returning down the trench, Rawne sent a confirmation to Feygor at the leading wall. Bragg’s launcher thumped and the mortar position erupted in a sheet of flame and debris as its munitions were hit.
After a while, las-fire began to pepper back from the Zoican lines. The Ghosts kept their heads down and waited.
At Hass East Fort, overlooking the estuary inlet, it was deathly quiet. Hass East had been spared all the fighting so far, but the position was still vital, as it watched the Vannick Highway and guarded the Ontabi Gate entrance to the hive, the only one of the five great city gates not yet assaulted.
On the high top of the tower, Sergeant Varl gazed out across the dusk settling on the reed-beds and islets of the matt-grey river. Waders and flycatchers darted and warbled over the water and rushes, and the riverside air was crazy with billowing gnats. The great bulk of the Hiraldi road-bridge to the north was just a silhouette.
The rain had eased off. There was a smell of thunder in the air. Varl, with two platoons of Tanith, was sharing defence of the Fort with three platoons of Roane Deepers under Captain Willard, and three hundred Vervun Primary gunners and wall artillerymen answering to Major Rodyin, a junior member of one of the lesser noble houses.
Varl got on with Willard. The Roane was about twenty-five, tanned and shaggy blond, with penetrating, brown eyes and an earthy sense of humour. Like Varl, Willard had a metallic implant — in his case, the fingers and palm of his right hand. They joked together about their experiences of body automation.
Rodyin was rather more difficult. Although they all faced death here, Rodyin had a more personal stake because this was his home. He was pale, earnest and prematurely balding, though he was only in his early twenties. He seemed utterly mystified by the jokes and quips that rattled freely between his two fellow officers, and he would stare at them myopically though the half-moon glasses that were permanently perched on the bridge of his nose. Varl understood that House Rodyin was one of the liberal families in the hive, more humanitarian and forward-thinking than the old noble houses or the guilders. House Rodyin’s fortunes were built on food sources and their harvester-machines grazed the great pastoral uplands north of the Hass, gathering grain for the vast granaries in the dock district.
Varl liked Rodyin, but he didn’t seem much of a soldier.
The Tanith sergeant crossed the tower top, slapping gnats off his skin, and toured the emplacements as the daylight faded.
He heard laughter and saw Willard and some of his tan-uniformed troops joking by a rocket station. Rodyin stood a little apart, scoping the river and the road with a high-power set of magnoculars.
Willard greeted Varl. “But for these bloody flies, Ghost, I’d say we’ve pulled the best duty here! None of that bloody fighting stuff up here at Hass East, eh?”
Varl had already seen fighting in Vervunhive and was actually glad of the calm and quiet up here on the far eastern side of the city. But still, waiting was sometimes the mind-killer. “Wouldn’t object to a few Zoicans to pop though,” he grinned.
“Hell, no! A few of those bloody yellows to keep my eye in, eh?”
More laughter. Varl saw how Rodyin shifted uncomfortably, unwilling to be drawn in. The major took his duties and his war seriously — too seriously in Varl’s opinion — probably because he’d never been in one before.
“See anything?” Varl asked, joining Rodyin at the parapet.
“A little river traffic. Barges, ferries. Most of them are crossing from the north bank with munition hauls. House Command has embargoed all but vital supply runs.”
Varl took his own single-lens scope from his pack and scanned the area. To the north of their position, near the bridge, sat the bulky promethium tanks of the dockside fuel depot, the main facility serving Vervunhive. On stilt legs, pipelines tracked away to the north and east, as far into the distance as Varl could see. They’d once pumped the fuel in from Vannick Hive, before it was lost. Now the only liquid fuel supplies available to Vervunhive were coming from NorthCol.
“Looks quiet enough,” Varl said.
Behind them, Willard finished a particularly coarse joke and the laughter of his men echoed down the battlements into the deepening gloom.
Guilder Worlin returned to his guild house at nightfall. He was grinning broadly and his face was shiny with the glow of too much joiliq. An extraordinary guild meeting conducted in an armoured bunker under the Commercia had left his personal resources three times the size they had been that dawn. The considerable promethium reserves he had to bargain with had been snapped up greedily in a bidding war between five major guild cadres, and he’d also managed to draw up a resourcing agreement with representatives of Vervun Primary. His pipeline was still drawing fuel into the massive steel bowsers in the Worlin commercial estates on the river. Vannick Hive might be dead, but its legacy lingered on and Worlin was amassing a trade fortune with every drop of it. By the time the war was over, Worlin was assured of a place in the high circle of the Commercia guilds. House Worlin would affect a promotion to the senior echelon of hive trade institutions. Its stock price alone had quadrupled since the First Storm.
He sat in his private office, at a teak-topped desk with built-in pict-plates, and sipped an overfilled glass of joiliq as he reviewed the messages his communicator had collected during the day.
One stopped him in his tracks. It was a notification of enquiry from some nobody called Curth at Inner Hab Collective Medical Hall 67/mv. It wanted to know his whereabouts on the first day of attack. Had he been
anywhere near Carriage Station C7/d? There were irregularities that demanded investigation and they were taking statements from anybody who had been in the area at that time. Monitor viewers along the access ramp had recorded him and two of his houseguard crossing that way during the bombardment of the Commercia. The message was signed “Curth, A.” and copied to an off-worlder medic named Dorden, one of the Imperial Guard.
Worlin realised his hand was shaking and he was slopping joiliq out of the glass. He set it down and sucked the drops off the ball of his thumb.
He checked his weapon was still in the drawer of the desk. This annoyance would need to be dealt with quickly.
The chatter was now so persistent that there was no other sign or meaning to the world. Salvador Sondar spasmed gently in his fluid world, gnawing at his lips. The voice of his worthy Ferrozoican cousin Clatch had been whittled away until it simply repeated two words, over and again. A name. A daemonic name.
Sondar was emaciated and weak with hunger. His feeder tubes had long since run dry and he had not the presence of mind to cycle the automated systems to refresh them. Even his meat puppets were forgotten and slowly rotting as they dangled lifelessly from their strings.
A rich smell of decay filled the High Master’s chambers.
He was oblivious.
He knew what the chatter wanted. The notion appealed to him, because the chatter made it so appealing.
He couldn’t form a coherent thought. He simply listened. Perhaps he would do it… just to shut the chatter up. Any time now.
Larkin had been perfectly still for over an hour. His eye never left the scope-sight. The Spoil-head manufactory around him was quiet and dark, but he was aware of the Vervun sniper Lotin crouched behind rubble further down the second-storey room.
Ten minutes before, Larkin had sensed movement down on the Spoil. He’d watched for it again and now he saw it: a brief flash of moonlight on armour.
He retrained his aim. Breathed.
The Zoicans were advancing up the Spoil. They were well-drilled and as stealthy as any practised insurgency team. It was clear they had either switched their distinctive ochre armour for dull, night-fighting kit or had covered the livid yellow with soot.