by Dan Abnett
Gaunt glanced round at Bwelt. There's a bottle on the side table in the bedroom. Fetch him a glass.
Pater refused to speak further until the crystal glass was in his withered hand and the first sip in his mouth. The cane lay across his lap.
Gaunt began. An Imperial Guard General Grizmund of the Narmenian Armour and four of his staff officers are charged with insubordination. They're being held in the VPHC stockade, pending prosecution by a VPHC court. The charges are spurious. I want them freed and back to duty immediately. I think the matter founders on a formality the VPHC cannot prosecute Imperial Guard personnel. If there is a crime to answer, it is an Imperial Commissariat matter. I am the highest representative of that authority on Verghast.
Pater adjusted his spectacles and studied the data-slate Gaunt handed him.
Hmm clear-cut enough, I suppose. You're citing Imperial Commissariat Edict 4368b. The VPHC won't like it. Tarrian, in particular, will hate you for it.
There's no love lost between us.
Bwelt? What is it? You gurn like a fool or a man with chronic gas.
It's 4378b, Advocate. The edict is 4378b. Bwelt's voice was almost a whisper.
Just so, Pater said, brushing off the correction and returning his gaze to the slate. It may come to court. Tarrian has a miserable record of dragging cases through all the due processes, even if he is bound to lose. To him, there's some satisfaction in prolonging the agony.
I want it thrown out before then. We can't be without Grizmund any longer. In the next few days, Vervunhive's future may depend upon skilled armour.
Tricky. But the edict is well-precedented. A brief hearing, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, and we should be able to pull the rug out from under the VPHC Pater looked up at Gaunt. I'll derive satisfaction from that. The VPHC have deemed themselves above Imperial Law for many years. It's been nigh on impossible to practise clean law in the hive. With your prestige involved, we can win.
Good. At least we know the VPHC can't act before then. However they argue it, they know an Imperial Commissar must be present for a tribunal to be conducted.
Indeed. Even if they press for a court of their own, we can stall them as long as you refuse to participate. Then Bwelt? Again, you screw up your face! What now?
Bwelt paused and seemed to choose every word with great care. The tribunal is in session now, advocate. You told me to collate all information relating to this case before we came here and that fact was diarised in the judiciary case-roll.
What?
Th-they are proceeding because they have an Imperial commissar present. Commissar Kowle has agreed to represent the Imperial interests and
Gaunt's vicious curse shut Bwelt up and made the old man start. Pulling on his jacket, cap and weapon belt, Gaunt reeled off a colourful and descriptive tirade outlining what he would do to Tarrian, Kowle and the entire VPHC in four-letter words.
Come with me! Now! he told the advocate and his trembling clerk, then flew out of the room.
At the eastern edge of the hive, the sky was on fire. From the outer dark of the river bend, enemy shelling had begun to hammer at the damage done to the adamantine Curtain Wall and the ramparts of Mass East Fort by the mines.
Varl stumbled through the firestorm, trying to regroup his men and get them down into the deep-wall bunkers. Zoican assaulters were everywhere. The defenders couldn't fight this. Varl tried to vox House Command or Tanith control, but the energy flare of the bombardment had scrambled the communication bands.
He got maybe twenty men around him, mostly Ghosts but some Roane and Vervun Primary, and ran them down the tower steps into the bowels of the fort. The stone walls were sweating as the heat of the burning levels above leeched into them. Plaster facings shrivelled and wilted, and the air was oven-hot and hurt the soldiers' lungs. At one point, a shell-fall punched through the corridor twenty metres behind them and passed on through the opposite wall, slicing stone so it dribbled like heated butter. The superheated air that slammed down the hall from the impart flattened them. They met groups of Zoicans and Varl's men cut them apart.
Two levels down, they ran into a stream of nearly sixty Vervun Primary and Roane Deepers with Major Rodyin amongst them. Several had bad burns.
Where's Willard? screamed Varl over the klaxons and the explosive hurricane roar.
Haven't seen him! barked Rodyin. One lens of his spectacles was crazed and he had a cut on his cheek.
We have to get the men down! Down lower! Varl yelled and the two officers began routing the surviving troops down a back staircase as firestorms billowed down the hallways towards them.
They mined the Curtain Wall! From inside! Rodyin bellowed as he and Varl pushed man after man past them onto the stairs.
I know, feth it! How the hell did they get in?
Rodyin didn't answer.
On a section of wall below the mauled fort, Corporal Meryn was leading a straggle of panicking troops to cover. Two squads of Ghosts Brostin, Ixjgris, Nehn and Mkteeg amongst them pushed forward past him, but there were twenty or more Vervun Primary soldiers stumbling in their wake. Meryn bawled at them, waving his arms, trying to be heard above the shriek of the shelling and the detonations all around. Flames from the fort were reaching a hundred metres into the sky and billows of soot and burning fabric squalled around them. The heat was overwhelming. Somewhere close, a loader full of ammo had caught fire and heated rounds were firing off wildly, spanking off the stonework and cutting zigzag tracer paths in the air.
A shot hit the Vervun Primary trooper nearest to Meryn and exploded his spiked helmet.
There was a flash and some vast cutting beam drawn up outside the Wall swept over them. Meryn saw it and threw himself flat as the inexorable beam raked the parapet at chest height, vaporising the hurrying line of Vervun troopers in a murderous sequence. They simply vanished in turn, obliterated, leaving nothing but clouds of steam and the occasional smouldering boot behind.
The beam swept right over the prone Tanith Corporal, searing the back of his breeches, jacket and head-hair right off. He winced at the low throb of superficial burns, but he was startled to be alive.
He got to his feet, his black fatigues shredded and falling off his body, and stumbled to the nearest stairhead.
Hundreds of men Tanith, Roane and Vervun Primary fled the Wall fortifications and Ontabi Gate and ran for cover in the streets and habs adjacent to the docks. Enemy shelling and beam-fire were punching clean through the Wall and the fort structure now and blasting into the edges of the worker habs. The Shield, ignited above them, mocked the scene. What good was an energy screen when the enemy was blasting through ceramite and adamantium?
Stretches of the habs were engulfed in flame and thousands of hab-dwellers filled the streets in panic, mingling with the fleeing soldiery, choking the access routes and transits in a panicked stampede. Hass East Fort convulsed and collapsed volcanically, the great hatches of Ontabi Gate melting like ice. A breach had been cut in the Curtain Wall of Vervunhive more terrible and more extensive than any damage done so far, even than at the brutalised Veyveyr Railhead.
At Croe Gate, the next main fortification down the Curtain Wall from Hass East, some ten kilometres south of Ontabi, the wall troops and observers watched in incredulous horror as beams of destruction and heavy shelling punished the riverside defences. A plume of fire underlit the storm clouds and blazed up into the sky like a rising sun.
General Nash was at Croe Gate still and he dismally voxed the situation to House Command. He urgently requested significant reinforcements to his position. In the wake of a major breach like this, ground forces couldn't be far behind.
As if on cue, one of his spotters reported movement on the Vannick Highway, twenty kilometres north-east. Nash used his magnoculars on heat-see and gazed out at the shimmering, green phantoms of tanks and armoured vehicles, thousands of them, roaming towards Ontabi in a spearhead formation.
I have contacts! Repeat, I have contacts! At least a thousand mechanised arm
our units advancing down the Vannick Highway and the surrounding hinterlands! They'll be on top of Hass East in under an hour! Reinforce my position now! I need armour! Lots of bloody armour! House Command! Do you respond? Do you bloody respond?
An almost eerie silence fell across the main auditorium of House Command. Only the desperate chatter of vox-traffic could be heard, reeling out reports of fearful destruction from a thousand different locations.
His face pinched and pale, Marshal Croe looked down at the chart table on the upper level. Hass East was gone. A mass armour force was approaching from the eastern levels. Artillery was beginning to pound Croe Gate and the eastern wall circuit. Zoican troops were assaulting the Spoil and the defences at Veyveyr. Heavy tanks and infantry columns were hitting Sondar Gate and the wall stretches towards Hass Gate and Hass West Fort. Hass West Fort itself was receiving ferocious ranged shelling.
An attack on all fronts. The defences of Vervunhive were already at full stretch and Croe knew this was only the beginning.
What what do we do? stammered Anko, his face as white as his dress uniform. Marshal? Marshal Croe? What do we do, Croe? Speak, you bastard!
Croe struck Anko across his fat mouth and sent him whimpering to the ironwork floor. Croe looked across at Sturm. Your thoughts, general? There was venom and ice in equal parts in Croe's voice.
I Sturm began. He faltered.
Don't even begin to suggest an evacuation, Sturm, or I'll kill you where you stand. Evacuation is not an option. You were sent here to defend Vervunhive, and that's what you'll do. He handed Sturm his ducal signet. Go to the stockade. Take troops with you. Release Grizmund and set him to command the armour before its strength is wasted. If that bastard Tarrian or any VPHC resists, deal with them. I expect you back at Veyveyr Gate to assume command there as soon as Grizmund is free. We have spent too much time arguing amongst ourselves. Vervunhive lives or dies tonight.
Sturm nodded stiffly and took the ring. Where will you be, marshal?
I will take personal command of Sondar Gate. The hive will not die while I yet live.
The shutter hatch of the stockade remained resolutely shut. Gaunt hammered on it with the butt of his bolt pistol, but there was no response. Gaunt, Pater and Bwelt stood pinioned by the floodlights, locked out in the damp cold of Level Sub-40. Captain Daur was with them, bleary and pale with sleep. Gaunt had dragged the liaison officer from his quarters on his way down to the stockade.
Gaunt turned to the advocate, who was wheezing for breath and leaning on his cane after the exertions of the frantic journey down into the bottom of the Spine. Don't you have an override, an authorisation?
Pater held up his badge of office. Administratum pass level magenta but the VPHC are a law to themselves. They have their own lock codes. Besides, colonel-commissar, do you see a keyhole?
Gaunt pulled off his leather coat and threw it to Bwelt. Hold that, he said bluntly and swung out his chainsword. The weapon whined as he cycled it up to full power.
He stabbed it at the armoured shutter. It rode aside, shrieking, leaving scratch marks and sending broken saw-teeth away in a flurry of sparks. He dug again and sliced into the metal, cutting a jagged slot a few centimetres across before the sword meshed and over-revved. With the sheer force of his upper arms and his shoulders, Gaunt heaved down, snarling a curse out at the top of his lungs, tearing down another few centimetres.
Sir? Daur said sharply behind him.
Gaunt spun around, raising the chainsword, in time to see the armoured lift cage descend and clank to rest. The grill-doors squealed open. General Sturm, flanked by Colonel Gilbear and ten Blueblood stormtroops, emerged from the lift car.
Sturm, don't make this worse by
Oh, shut up, you stupid fool, and put that weapon away, snapped Sturm. He and his men approached and surrounded the quartet at the shutter. Gilbear was oozing a dreadfully superior smile at Gaunt.
Get him out of my face, Sturm, or I'll practise what I'm doing to the door on him.
Gilbear raised his hellgun, but Sturm slapped it aside. You know, Gaunt, Sturm said, I almost respect you. I could do with a few men of your passion in my regiment. But still and all, you are a benighted fool and beneath the contempt of civilised men. You've spent too much time with those Tanith savages and what are you doing, you old fool?
This last remark was directed at Pater, who was carefully and quietly dictating material for Bwelt to set down on his slate.
Transcribing your words, general, in case the colonel-commissar wishes to press a slander action against you later on. The old advocate's voice was utterly empty of expression or nuance: a true lawyer. Gaunt laughed out loud.
Sturm looked away from the old man. He held up Croe's ducal signet. If you want to get inside, you need one of these. He pressed it against the centre of the shutter. There was a dull thunk, a noise of servos churning and the shutter, with its chainsword tear, rose.
The group entered and Sturm opened the inner shutter. They passed on into the sodium-lit inner hall of the stockade.
Marshal Croe has ordered me to release Grizmund. The world is going all to hell above our heads, Gaunt. Zoica assaults on all fronts. It is time to forget all petty bickering.
Three VPHC troopers ran forward to confront them. One started to ask what they were doing in the stockade. Gilbear and his pointman cut them down with loose, brutal shots.
Gaunt pushed forward past the bodies and kicked open a set of wooden double doors to the left of the inner concourse.
There was a large circular chamber beyond, lit by bracketed wall-lamps with glass chimneys. Grizmund and his officers, hands tied behind their backs and hoods over their heads, stood on a raised dais under spotlights in the centre of the room. Kowle, Tarrian and nine senior VPHC officers sat on a tiered rank of wooden stalls before them, and a dozen VPHC troops with riot-guns lined the walls.
What the gak is this? Tarrian roared, getting to his feet.
Sturm held up the ducal signet. By order of the marshal himself, this court is overthrown. The prisoners will be freed.
Kowle rose too. The meeting is in session and obeys the edicts of both planetary and Imperial law. We
Shut your damn face, Kowle! snapped Gaunt. The hive is dying above us and you waste your time persecuting good, honest men for the sake of some political point-scoring. You have no idea what real war is, do you, you bastard? You didn't on Balhaut and you don't here!
Kowle's face went purple with rage, but the furious Tarrian pushed him aside. Interference with VPHC proceedings is a capital offence, Gaunt! Your maverick actions won't get you anywhere except to the sharp end of a firing squad detail!
Actually, that's not correct, said Bwelt firmly. Imperial Edict 95674, sub-clause 45, states that an Imperial judicial officer, such as a full commissar, may interrupt and foreclose any planetary legal affair without restraint or penalty.
You tell him, boy! cackled Pater.
Gaunt stared at Tarrian. Don't push them, Tarrian.
Who?
Gilbear and the other Bluebloods. Sturm can't control them and I sure as feth can't either. From me, you'll get tough honesty. From them, you'll get a hell-round between the eyes. Even as he spat the words, Gaunt felt them all crossing an almost imperceptible line. The line between a precarious confrontation and total mayhem.
Gak you, you wretched off-world scum! bawled Tarrian as he pulled his autopistol from its holster. Gilbear dropped him with a shot to the chest. Tarrian's body exploded out through the back of the wooden seating.
The VPHC guards surged forward, racking riot-guns and firing. Gaunt saw a Blueblood fly backwards, hit in the shoulder. Sturm was cursing and blasting with his regimental service pistol. The Bluebloods opened up and sprayed the room.
Grizmund and his officers, blind under their hoods, dropped to the floor in terror. Gaunt wrestled the gasping advocate and his stunned clerk to the ground out of harm's way. Daur's laspistol cracked repeatedly.
Point-blank, in the tig
ht confines of the court chamber, Volpone met VPHC head on, hellgun against riot-gun, filling the air with smoke, blood-mist and death.
Salvador Sondar slumped. A dribble of blood-bubbles fluttered from his ear towards the roof of the tank. He gave in. The chatter filled him, eating into his flesh, his blood, his marrow, his mind.
He did what it told him to do.
He deactivated the Shield.
THIRTEEN
THE HARROWING
Never.
Warmaster Slaydo, on being asked under what
circumstances he would signal surrender
There was a loud, subsonic bang of pressure as the great Shield collapsed.
Windows blew out all across the hive. The ambient temperature dropped by six whole degrees as the insulation of the energy dome vanished and the cold of the Verghast night swept in. The vortex of collapsing air whisked up the vast smoke banks collected around the Curtain Wall and blew them into the hive itself like acrid fog. Disconnected energies crackled up out of the great pylon and the anchor stations and burned themselves out ferociously in the blackness.
A shuddering and terrifying noise drove in across Vervunhive. It was the unified howl of triumph from the millions of Zoicans outside.
Marshal Croe, majestic in his robes and armour, had just reached Sondar Gate with his staff retinue, and he stopped in his tracks, gazing up incredulously into the cold dark. His first thought was mechanical failure or even sabotage, but the Shield generators were the most securely guarded installations in the hive, and he had expressly ordered work-teams to inspect them every hour.
This was unthinkable. Inside the ceramite of his freshly donned war armour, Croe felt his heart grow as cold as the night around him. The ungifted powersword of Heironymo Sondar, most valued of all the hive's war-icons, felt heavy and useless in his hand. He caught himself and glanced around. The bannerpoles of his colour-sergeants drooped and fluttered dismally about him.