by Dan Abnett
That fine record was maintained at Vervunhive. Like the jaws of some vast beast, the opposing Narmenian armour charges tore in towards each other, crushing and destroying everything between them. Grizmund and Nachin's speeding tanks passed through each other's ranks, some vehicles missing others at full speed by only a hull's span.
And they had just begun. In the course of the thirty-fifth afternoon, the Narmenian divisions executed three more precision scissor manouvres, looping back and forth onto each other, slowly chewing the head, neck and shoulders off the vast Zoican incursion.
By four o'clock, the Zoicans had lost nearly two hundred tanks and armoured battle-hulks. The Narmenians had lost only two.
By nightfall, the Narmenians had driven the Zoican armour back into the inner habs, less than ten kilometres from Croe Gate, and cut a slice down the spearhead from Ontabi. With the routes behind them clear of enemy armour, efforts to resupply the Imperial ground troops were now no longer suicidal. Labour forces of the Administratum, the cargo guilds and Vervun Primary spread out in convoys and brought fresh ammunition to the dug-in infantry forces. Many, like Bulwar's, now resupplied with rockets, launchers and grenades, followed the Narmenian thrust out towards the great eastern gates, killing every Zoican tank the Guard armour had missed.
Rising from his seat at the font-desk in the baptistry, Gaunt took the data-slate Petro held out to him and smiled a weary smile as he read the reports of Grizmund's sally. He felt justified: justified in his faith in the general, justified in fighting for him in the stockade, and justified in his tactical plans to hold the hive.
Towards Sondar Gate and Veyveyr, the position was less heartening. The NorthCol armour lacked the genius of leadership or the combat-experienced skill that shone in the Narmenians. Major Clodel, commanding the NorthCol units, had done little more than grind his tanks into a slugfest with the Zoican armour penetrating the hive from the south. He had stopped them, though, halting them at the edge of the southern manufactories, and for that he would get Gaunt's commendation. But now a blistering, static tank-war raged through the southern skirts, and there was no possibility of driving the invaders back and out or of sealing the gates. North of Veyveyr, the NorthCol were losing as many tanks as they were destroying. Gaunt wished for another of Grizmund's ilk to lead them, but he couldn't spare any of the Narmenians from the eastern repulse. He would be content with what he had.
And what he had was a shattered hive spared from the brink of defeat at the eleventh hour. He wasn't winning, but he wasn't losing either. To the east, he was driving the foe out. To the south and west, he was holding them hard. There was still a chance that they could win out and deny Heritor Asphodel and his Zoican zealots.
The baptistry hummed with activity and Gaunt wandered away into the side chapel as tacticians filled in for him at the hololithic chart. Daur was orchestrating the command workforce. A good man, Gaunt thought, rising courageously to his moment in Imperial history.
Can the same be said about me, he wondered?
The side chapel a sacristy, peculiarly calm and softly lit given the apocalypse currently unleashed outside the Spine walls seemed to welcome him. He was dead on his feet with fatigue. He'd spent all day at a desk, with a data-slate in one hand and a vox-horn in the other, and yet he'd fought the greatest and most exhausting battle of his career so far. This was command, true high command, wretched with absolutes and finites. He pulled his newly bestowed powersword from its sheath and leaned it on the edge of the gilt altar rail so he could sit down. Above him, a great, golden statue of the Emperor glowered. The air was full of the continuing song of the Ecclesiarch.
He made no obeisance to the Emperor. He was too tired. He sat on a bench pew in the tiny chapel, removed his cap and buried his face in his hands.
Gaunt thought of Oktar, Dercius, Slaydo and his father, the men who had moulded his life and brought him to this, equipping him, each in their own way, with the skills he now used. He missed them all, missed their confidences and strength. Oktar had trained him, and Gaunt had been at the great commissar-general's side when he had passed, wracked with ork poison on Gylatus Decimus, over twenty years before. Slaydo, the peerless warmaster Gaunt had been at his deathbed too, on Balhaut after the finest victory of all. Gaunt's father had died far away when he was still a child. And Dercius bad, old Uncle Dercius; Gaunt had killed him.
But each, in their own way, had made him. Oktar had taught him command and discipline; Dercius: ruthlessness and confidence; Slaydo: the merits of command and the selflessness of Imperial service. And his father? What he had gleaned from his father was more difficult to identify. What a father leaves to his child is always the most indefinable quality.
Lord commander?
Gaunt looked up from his reverie. Merity Chass, dressed in a simple, black gown of mourning, stood behind him in the arch of the sacristy. She held something in her hands.
Gaunt got up. Lady Chass?
I need to speak with you, she began, about my father.
SIXTEEN
THE LEGACY
That our beloved hive should be conquered, or should fall into the controlling hands of unwise or unfit masters, I greatly fear and sadly anticipate. For this reason, I entrust this ultimate sanction to you. Use it wisely.
Heironymo Sondar, to Lord Chass
It has been in the trust of my family since the Trade War, she explained, her voice broken and exhausted.
Gaunt took the amulet from her hands and felt it purr and whisper between his fingers.
Sondar made this?
It was his provision for the future. It is in its own way treachery.
Explain it again. I cannot see how this is treachery.
Merity Chass looked up into Gaunt's tired eyes fretfully.
Vervunhive is a democratic legislative. The High Lord is voted in by his noble peers. It is written in the sacred acts of constitution that absolute power should never be allowed to rest with any one individual who could not be unseated by the Legislature should it become necessary.
Yet the hive has suffered under one individual: Salvadore.
Precisely the kind of evil Heironymo dreaded, commander. My father told me that after the Trade War, great Heironymo wished to vouchsafe the future security of Vervunhive. Above all else, he feared a loss of control. That an invader or a ruler not fit for the role would seize control of Vervunhive so entirely that nothing could unseat him. What usurper or tyrant observes the mechanisms of constitution and law?
Gaunt began to understand the far-reaching political dilemma attached to the device in his gloved hand. So this was his failsafe: the ultimate sanction, so very undemocratic, to be used when democracy was overturned?
And so you understand why it had to be a secret. Heironymo knew that by constructing such a device he would lay himself open to accusations of tyranny and dictatorship.
She gestured towards the amulet. He made that and entrusted it to House Chass, whom he considered the most humanitarian and neutral noble house. It was never made to fall into the hands of any ruler. It was the safeguard against totalitarian rule.
And if House Chass became the High House?
We were to entrust it to another, as surety against our misuse of power.
And you give it to me?
You are the future of Vervunhive now, Gaunt. Why do you think my father made such efforts to evaluate you? He needed to be certain such insurance would not be handed to one who might abuse it. He knew you were no tyrant in the making, and I see that too. You are a soldier, true and brave, with nothing but the survival of our hive in your dreams.
Your father died well, Merity Chass.
I am glad to hear it. Honour him and the duty borne by his house, Ibram Gaunt. Do not prove him wrong.
Gaunt studied the amulet. It was a system-slayer and, from what the girl said, quite the most powerful and formidable example of its kind he had ever heard of. In the time of Heironymo, House Sondar had specialised in codifier systems and sentient
cogitators, and they had enjoyed long-term trade partnerships and research pacts with the tech-mages of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This was the masterpiece: in the event of anyone achieving total technological mastery of Vervunhive, the activation of this amulet would annihilate the command and control systems, erase all data and function programs, corrupt all codifiers and lobotomise all cogitators. It would cripple Vervunhive and allow the device's wielders to free the hive from would-be conquerors now rendered helpless.
In its peculiar way, it was more potent than atomics or a chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. It was an ultimate weapon, forged for arenas of battle far beyond the remit of a dog-soldier like Gaunt. It was war on a refined, decisive level, light years away from the mud and las-fire theatres that Gaunt regularly experienced.
Still, he understood it. But he didn't like it. Such ancient high technology was a fearful thing, like psyker witchcraft.
He set it down on the pew next to him. It gurgled and hummed, system patterns reconfiguring like sunlight on moving water across its smooth casing.
We don't need it.
Merity Chass stiffened and stared up at the stained-glass rosette of the sacristy.
I was afraid you'd say that.
She turned to face him. Her face was pale, and her eyes were angry and dark. Multi-coloured light from the window behind her created a halo around her slim form. My father agonised about using it. When I reached the shelters and found he had hidden it in my belongings, I agonised too. Even as I came here to find you, I realised we had left it too late. You have already unseated cursed Salvador. Our dire situation is no longer a matter of control.
We have control, Gaunt agreed. The problem is now simply one of physical warfare. Though Vervunhive stands at the brink of doom, it is not the doom Heironymo feared or planned for with this.
She sat down next to him, smouldering with rage. If only I had brought it sooner or urged my father to do the same. We could have used it to overthrow Salvador
Praise the Throne we did not!
She glanced around at him sharply.
Gaunt shrugged. We'd have crippled ourselves, crippled the hive systems, left ourselves with nothing to use to regain control. A system-slayer is an absolute weapon, lady.
So, my soul-searching, my father's painstaking deliberations were all pointless anyway? She laughed a thin, scratchy laugh. How fitting! House Chass, so gakking intellectual and refined, agonising over nothings while the hive bleeds and burns!
He pulled off his gloves and tossed them aside. Heironymo's legacy was never to be taken lightly. That we can't use it now does not reflect badly on the care and devotion with which House Chass held that trust.
She reached out her hand and clasped his callused fingers. What happens now, Gaunt?
Slowly, he looked round at her. We fight a simple war, men and machines, lasguns and shells. We fight and try to drive them out. If we win, we live. If we lose, we die.
It sounds so bleak.
It's all I know, the crude equation of battle. It's not so bad. It's simple at least. There's no deliberation involved.
How long?
How long what?
Her eyes, more alive than anything Gaunt had ever seen, gazed into his. How long before we know?
Ibram Gaunt exhaled deeply, shaking his head. Just hours now. Perhaps a day, perhaps two. Then it will be over, one way or another.
She pulled him to her, her arms stretched tightly around his broad back. He could smell her hair and her perfume, faint and almost worn away but still tangible despite the odours of cold and damp and dirt she had been exposed to in the shelters.
Gaunt had long forgotten the simple consolation of another's body warmth. He held her gently, swimming with fatigue, as the low voices of the Ecclesiarch choir ebbed through the sacristy. Her mouth found his.
He pulled back. I don't think he began.
A common soldier messing with a high-born lady? She smiled. Even if that mattered once, it doesn't now. This war has made us all equals.
They kissed again, neither resisting. For a while, their passion was all that mattered to either of them. Two human souls, intimate and wordless, shutting the apocalypse out.
Midnight was long past. Bray's Tanith units, after a day and night of tank-busting in the slag-reaches of the chem plant district, fell back through the battered central hab zone towards the Shield Pylon. All the Zoican southern efforts seemed to be directed at the pylon and Bray knew that its strategic importance was unmatched by anything in the hive. Bray had about two hundred and eighty Tanith left, augmented by four hundred more Vervun Primary, Volpone, Roane and NorthCol stragglers, plus around six hundred hivers. The hivers were mostly non-coms, who looked to the troops for protection, and Bray and his colleague officers found themselves managing more of a refugee exodus than a troop retreat.
But some of the hivers had consolidated into scratch units, adding about one hundred and seventy fighting bodies to Bray's forces.
More than half of the scratch companies were made up of women, and Bray was amazed. He'd never seen women fight. Back on Tanith war was a masculine profession. But he couldn't deny their determination. And he understood it. This was their fething home, after all.
Bray's immediate command chain was formed by Vervun Primary and NorthCol, but though some of them outranked him, they looked to him for leadership. Bray suspected this was because Gaunt was now field commander. Everyone deferred to the Tanith now the endgame had begun.
Shells from Zoican armour whooped over his head and Bray sprinted into a trench-stretch between a blown-out meat-curing plant and a guild estate mansion. In the trench, Sergeant Zweck of the NorthCol and Major Bunce of the Vervun Primary were directing the men around the curing plant to engage the enemy's forward push.
Las-fire zagged down at them. Most of the Imperial shooters fired from shallow foxholes at the ranks of Zoican assault troops advancing, bayonets fixed, across the rubble. Mortar shells rebounded off the rockcrete slag and exploded as airbursts, causing significantly more damage.
Behind the toppling lines of Zoican infantry, tanks rumbled in, many carrying troops clinging to the hull netting like apes.
Bray fired his weapon over the trench lip. Beside him, Zweck was decapitated by air-burst splinters. Blood saturated the side of Bray's dark fatigues.
He reached for another clip.
What are their names? Caffran yelled over the pounding thunder of the tanks. He had Yoncy under one arm and was leading Dalin by the hand. Tona hurried after him.
Scratch companies to their west were holding the Zoican front back, and they were struggling to keep up with a straggle of civilian refugees fleeing into the northern sectors. Caffran yelled again.
Tona Criid was busy and didn't answer Caffran.
She was firing her laspistol at the Zoican assault troops crossing into the street behind her. But she was in trouble. There was no one to cover her.
Hold tight to your sister and get down! Caffran cried at Dalin, pressing the swaddled baby into the boy's arms. I'm going back for your mother!
She's not my mother. She's Auntie Tona, said Dalin.
Caffran glanced back confused and then ran on as lasbursts flickered around him.
He fired his lasgun wildly and dropped into the shell-hole where Tona cowered.
Fresh clip! she called.
He tossed her one. Reloaded, both rose and sent a stinging waft of kill-fire down the street at the Zoicans. Ochre bodies crumpled.
Good shots. You're scary, Tona.
I do what I do. Fresh clip!
He tossed her another.
So they aren't yours? I thought you looked too young.
Tona swung round to him, her face hard. They're all I have! Gak you! You won't take them from me, and neither will these bastards!
She swung up and fired her gun, killing one, two, three
Savage fighting continued unabated on all fronts right through into the early hours of the thirty-sixth day. By then, two
thirds of the hive's immense civilian population were packed into the north-eastern sectors and docks, making desperate efforts to flee to the north bank. The flow was far beyond the abilities of the river ferries to manage. Working through the night, with only brief pauses to refuel, boats like the Magnificat shuttled back and forth across the Hass. Over two million refugees were now in the outhabs of the north shore or clogging the Northern Collective Highway. The night was cold and wet, and many wounded, shocked, or unfed suffered with exposure and fever.
In the hive it was worse. Millions choked the approaches to the wharves or lined the river in ranks as thick as the crowds on the terraces of the stadium watching a big game. Brutal battles broke out as citizens fought to win places on the approaching boats. Thousands died, almost two hundred of them aboard a ferry that they overloaded and capsized in a panic rush to get aboard. Hundreds more were trampled or simply crushed in the press or were pushed into the river by the mounting weight of bodies behind them. Those that didn't drown immediately died slowly, floundering in the cold of the water, unable to find enough room on the docks to clamber back ashore. An entire pier stretch collapsed under the weight of the refugees, spilling hundreds into the Hass. Rioting and panic fighting spread like wildfire back through the crowds. Like a wounded, enraged animal, Vervunhive began to claw and tear at itself.
Every small boat or craft that could be found was stolen and put to the water, usually overfilled and often guided by men or women with no idea of watercraft. Hundreds of others elected to try to swim or paddle across, clinging to packing bales or other items of floating material. The Hass was almost three kilometres wide, icy cold and plagued with strong currents. No one who tried to swim made it more than halfway before perishing, except for a very few who were pulled out of the water by passing ferry crews.