by Dan Abnett
Udol tried to identify, an officer amongst the Guardsmen. These men seemed to have no disclosing marks except a dagger-thrust skull pin and the aquila of the Imperial Guard. Their faces were hidden by crude, bulk-issue rebreather masks.
“Are your boys okay?” asked a deep voice from behind him.
Udol turned. The man addressing him was big and broad, the unruly tufts of a thick black beard emerging around the edges of his mask. His accent was strange.
“What did you say?” Udol asked.
“Your boys. I was asking after them. You were in a bit of a spot there.”
“We—” Udol began. He didn’t quite know what to say. “You came in on drop-ships,” was all he could come up with.
The big stranger jerked a thumb at the sky. We’ve been stacked orbital for the last sixteen hours, then we got the word to go to landers, for which everyone gave thanks. So, we’re on the way down and the word comes up there’s an attack and we gotta abort the drop. Feth that I say, “sides it was too late for going back, if you know what I mean. We spied the LZ from way up, then we spied the feth-stonn—”
“The what?”
“The shooty-shooty. Friends in trouble, says I, so we wriggle out of the pattern and fall in where, as it might be, we could be most advantageous.”
“You… you dropped into the firefight rather than the LZ?” asked Udol.
“Yes, we did. I see it as an economy of effort, myself. If we were going to drop anyways, we might as well drop for a purpose. And so we did. Fething good thing too. By the way, who are you?”
Udol gazed at the gloved hand held out to him. “Major Erik Udol, Third Company, Regiment Civitas Beati.”
“Clearly pleased and all that, Udol. Pardon me but this old wardog’s still riding the combat high. Got my boys here boisterous too. Too many months in a belly hold, too little killing. This is Herodor, eh? Heard so fething much about it.”
“Do you know…” Udol began. “Do you know how counter-regs it is to drop troop landers into the path of an assault?”
The big stranger paused, as if thinking about this. “Fairly sure the answer to that is ‘yes’. Do you know how effective it is to drop-assault an ongoing ground attack? Or would you rather not live forever?”
“I—”
“See for yourself,” the stranger said, extending a big arm in a wide gesture. “Observe the debris, the pleasant lack of incoming fire, and the arses of many enemies fleeing for safety. Was there something else, major?”
“Who are you?”
“Colonel Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only.”
“Oh,” said Udol, understanding at last. “The Tanith. You’re the ones. The ones she’s been waiting for.”
Corbec’s impromptu relief force, four platoons strong, assembled itself into vaguely ordered groups at the edge of the fight zone. Word was the officer in charge of the local force had voxed tactical logistical command to request transports to take them into the city proper.
Major Rawne of the Tanith Ghosts, ranking third officer beneath Gaunt and commander of third platoon, wandered away from the makeshift assembly point and stood alone, slowly turning in a circle to take in the scene This was his first look at Herodor, a world that had taken them months of monotonous travel to reach. A world, so he understood, that contained a great miracle.
It was not a pretty place, and didn’t look at all miraculous, but it had a sort of cold beauty, Rawne conceded. The sky was a flat, bright white, with the merest smudges of grey-blue along the horizon, particularly in the north, where dirty crusts of rock pushed up into the air. The ground around them — an obsidae, the locals called it — was a bare field of blue dust, littered with black volcanic glass. The thin air was cold, and abrasively dry. Rawne had been told most of Herodor was an arctic desert: a dry, sub-zero waste of dust fields, glass crags and crumbling escarpments. It reminded him, unpleasantly, of death, of the cold, desiccated, brittle truth contained in all tombs. The Ghosts had yet to go to a world that did not cost them life and blood. What price was Herodor going to demand? Whose last sight would be these forlorn wastes?
Any of us, he thought. All of us. Death is never choosy, never selective. On Aexe Cardinal, he’d come to within touching distance of death himself. He sensed that cold grasp was still on him, reluctant to let him go again.
Or maybe that was just the chill wind gusting in across the obsidae.
Rawne’s slow circle of contemplation brought him up at last looking south at the city itself. The Civitas Beati, the city of the saint, a minor shrine, just another of the many places and many worlds touched by Sabbat thousands of years earlier and made holy. It was a sprawling place the main population centre on Herodor. Three slab-like hive towers of white ashlar stood like bodyguards around a higher, older, darker central steeple, encircled by sloping skirts of lower level habs, manufactories, transitways and brick viaducts. To the west lay the tinted domes of the many agriponic farms that fed the city, farms that were themselves kept alive by the hot mineral springs on which the city had been founded.
That’s what made it a special place, Rawne thought pragmatically. It wasn’t who might have been here or what they might have done. This city was here only by the grace of the thermal water that gushed up through the cold crust of the world in this one place.
Rawne heard someone shout his name. The shout was muffled by a rebreather mask. He turned and saw Mkoll, the regiment’s chief scout, jogging over to him.
“Mkoll?”
“Transport’s here, sir.”
There was an aqueduct at the edge of the obsidae, and a string of battered carriers was rolling out from under the arches.
“Let’s get everybody moving,” Rawne told the chief scout.
By the time the two of them rejoined the main group, the Ghosts were boarding the waiting transports. Mkoll checked his own platoon had their equipment stowed. He looked over and saw Sergeant Soric of five platoon, who seemed to be taking his time getting settled with his men. Mkoll ran across to him. The last of five were finding their places in the carrier’s rear payload bay. Soric, the old rogue, was studying a piece of paper.
“Everything all right?” Mkoll asked him.
Soric looked up, as if Mkoll had made him jump. He balled up the piece of paper, a scrap of blue tissue, and tossed it away. “Everything’s fine!” he told Mkoll, and then reached up to the tailgate so the nearest men could help haul his bulk up into the truck.
Mkoll thumped twice on the rear bodywork and the carrier started away in a splutter of exhaust and over-revved engine. He turned back towards his own transport.
The ball of blue paper blew across his path, carried by the wasteland wind across the flinty shards of the glass field. Mkoll stooped and caught it. It was torn from a despatch pack, one of the flimsy blank forms for written messages if the vox was down. Soric’s vox was fine, wasn’t it?
Mkoll unfolded the paper. A single line was handwritten there: Trouble before you even reach the ground.
What in the name of Terra, Mkoll wondered, did that mean?
TWO
THE GIRL FROM THE HILLS
“That which was will be.
That which dieth will live. That which falleth will rise up.
This, I say to you, is the nature of things,
if you but once believe.”
—Saint Sabbat, Epistles
He stood on one of the highest decks of the inner hive and looked down over the sprawl of Beati City, across the ceramite and white-ashlar slopes of the hive towers, the mosaic of brick-tile rooftops lower down, crosscut by the lines of boulevards and viaducts, the mouldering stone of the old districts, the stained metal sides of the processors and agriponic domes, the maze of alleys and slums, the warrens of low-rise habs.
Not a secure town. Not secure or securable. There were no curtain walls or encircling fortifications, except the natural bowl of rocky headlands around the valley site. There was a shield system, generated by pylon stations around the city limi
ts which, along with main sequence masts on the roofs of the hive towers, could raise a coherent energy field like a carnival marquee above the city. But the shield system had been designed to ward off dust storms and glass blizzards, not munitions.
And that was what was coming. Full-scale war, drawn inexorably towards Herodor as surely as the pilgrim flocks had been drawn. The Civitas Beati would not survive. It hadn’t been constructed for war, and he didn’t know how he would begin to defend it. He thought of Vervunhive — great, solid Vervunhive — and how hard that had been to hold on to. Vervunhive had been designed by military planners with principles of defence uppermost in their minds. Its Main Spine and curtain walls had formed a solid fortress within which the entire hive population could shelter during times of attack and siege. Beati City, in contrast, had simply grown, spilling low-rent, low-rise habs out further and further from its more modest and overcrowded hive towers.
God-Emperor, but this was going to be fething bloody.
Gaunt turned from the tinted observation window and scribbled some more notes down on the data-slate he’d kept at his side since arriving, every last idea he had to make the city as proof against assault as possible. Stronger shield generators, for a start. Mobile artillery batteries, and some real armour. Reinforcements, naturally. The damnably wide boulevards would have to be blocked, and the aqua system managed. Food and power and munitions had to be stockpiled. According to the last Navy report, the Munitorum fleet was two days out, and a three regiment force, including armour, was inbound from Khan. Herodor needed battlefleet cover too, and he’d put in a request, through channels, for assistance from the Adeptus Mechanicus, though no answer had yet come.
He heard the door to the wood-panelled deck open and presumed it was Beltayn, returning at long last with caffeine and a snack. It wasn’t.
“Nice of you to decide to join me,” Gaunt said. Corbec grinned and nodded. He was munching on a cut of bread filled with salt-meat, and carried a hot cup of caffeine in his other hand. Rawne, coming in behind him, carried two more cups and handed one to Gaunt.
“We intercepted Beltayn on the way in,” Rawne said.
“There was supposed to be food too,” said Gaunt. Corbec stopped chewing immediately and looked down at the cut in his hand guiltily. “Sorry,” he said.
Gaunt shook his head dismissively. “Take seats. You’ve had a busy day, as I understand it.”
“Couldn’t just leave ’em to fly out there. It was a pretty major assault, worst they’ve had, so I’m told,” said Corbec. Both he and Rawne had dust adhering to their uniforms, and Corbec’s face still displayed the ruddy pressure marks where his rebreather mask had cut into his skin.
“Armour?”
“Three stalk-tanks. Light stuff, but even so. Caff and Feygor messed them up good with a brace of tread-fethers. More particularly, we got a positive ID.”
He reached into his musette bag and pulled out a snarling iron visor. There was a las-hole in the middle of the mask’s forehead.
“Feth,” said Gaunt.
“The Blood Pact are here. In big numbers.”
Gaunt gestured to the iron visor Corbec was holding. “It could just be—”
“I’d know the fethers anywhere,” said Rawne.
Gaunt nodded. “The local military seems to think the raids are down to some heretic-dissident cells. They’ve been hitting the city for the last four days.” He took the mask from Corbec’s hand. “They have no idea, have they?”
“About time they did,” said Corbec.
Gaunt put the mask down. “I think we’re dealing with an advanced unit ordered to keep us busy until the main force arrives.”
“And you think that main force is inbound?”
Gaunt laughed darkly at Rawne’s question. “Find me someone in this sector who doesn’t know what’s happening here! If you were the enemy—”
“If?” smiled Rawne.
“If you were the enemy,” Gaunt continued, passing over the jibe, “wouldn’t you consider this world a primary target?”
Rawne looked at Corbec, who simply shrugged. “So… any sign of this impending doom?”
Gaunt shook his head again. “Fleet has nothing. Too many pilgrim ships confusing the picture.”
“Forget what might be. What about an operational base for the ones already here?” asked Rawne.
“Orbital surveys found what might be some landers in a deep glass desert a thousand kilometres west of here, but there were no life readings. The active hostiles here on Herodor are well hidden. Probably in the range of volcanic uplands called the Stove Hills, but that’s just conjecture.”
“I say we—” Rawne started.
“We haven’t got the manpower, Rawne. It’d take us weeks to find them, even with our skills. This is a big, bleak world with a lot of corners and holes to hide in.”
“But not an important world,” said Rawne darkly.
“No, major,” agreed Gaunt. “Not an important world at all.”
“Then why—” Rawne began, and stopped dead when he saw the look in Gaunt’s eyes.
“Have you… seen her?” Rawne said instead.
“Not yet.”
“You said the pilgrim ships were confusing things,” Corbec said. “There are plenty of pilgrims here already. Hundreds of thousands. Orbital space is thick with them.”
“More ships arriving all the time,” Gaunt said. “Some have come from beyond the subsector.”
“Probably should stop them,” Corbec ventured. “I mean, we have to get this place locked tight. Can’t just have anyone wandering in, even if they are harmless happy-dappies. Remember on Hagia, the way they came in with the pilgrim traffic?”
“I remember, Colm. I just don’t know how we stop it. Some of these ships are old, barely serviceable and woefully unsupplied. If we try to form a picket and turn them away, we’ll be consigning Imperial citizens to their deaths. Tac logis here tells me that ninety per cent of the pilgrim ships would not survive the return voyage. In most cases, they’ve spent their last savings on a one-way trip here. A trip to salvation.”
Corbec set down his empty cup and brushed crumbs off his tunic. “The poor, sorry bastards,” he said bitterly.
Gaunt shrugged. “The whole cluster and beyond knows what’s happening here on Herodor, so you can bet the enemy does too. I can’t begin to imagine why the information was released publicly.”
“Because she insisted,” said a voice behind him. Rawne had left the door open and no one had heard the newcomer walk in. They leapt to their feet and saluted.
“At ease,” said Lord General Lugo.
“I was told to report to you at 1700, sir,” said Gaunt.
“I know. I finished up earlier than expected and thought I’d move things along. Welcome to Herodor, Gaunt.”
“Thank you, lord general.”
Lugo glanced at Corbec and Rawne. “Perhaps a moment alone…?” he suggested.
“Of course.” Gaunt turned to the others and waved them out. “Dismissed, you two. Get the regiment settled.”
Corbec and Rawne hastened from the room and closed the door behind them.
“Feth,” whispered Corbec as soon as he was outside. “I had hoped we’d never see that bastard again.”
“Not as much as Gaunt had, I’ll be bound,” said Rawne.
“I suggest, if I may, man to man,” said Lugo, “that we put all previous unpleasantness behind us.” Lugo was a tall, bony individual with thin, greasy skin that dung like parchment to the curves of his shaved skull. He wore a stark white dress uniform, the chest covered in medals.
“That might be advantageous, sir,” said Gaunt.
“Things were said on Hagia, Gaunt. Deeds were done. You redeemed your reputation and abilities in my eyes with that little excursion to the Shrinehold. So… say no more about it, that’s my motto.”
Gaunt nodded. He found it difficult to answer. Lord General Lugo was, in his opinion, one of the most inept and self-aggrandising offi
cers in the Crusade’s upper command echelon, a political animal rather than a military leader. In 770, he had negotiated for himself command of the liberation of the shrineworld Hagja, believing it to be a simple task that would win him much glory and bolster his political ambitions. When the liberation effort went disastrously wrong, he had blamed Gaunt and tried to make the Tanith First’s commander carry the can. In doing so, he nearly lost the entire shrineworld to Chaos, a calamity only averted by the Tanith during the peculiar happenings at the Shrinehold itself. After Hagia, his slate clean, Gaunt had been transferred with his forces to the Phantine theatre. Lugo, though not actually disgraced, had remained on Hagia as Imperial Governor, his ambitions in tatters.
Sadly, that meant he had been in exactly the right place to benefit from the extraordinary events that then took place there. His star was now in the ascendant again. He was, by default in control of what might prove to be the most influential part of the entire Imperial interest in the Sabbat Worlds. Rumours were already spreading that Lugo could be looking to replace Macaroth as Warmaster if the current stagnation continued. He was very much the coming man.
Gaunt could almost smell that confidence and ambition on the lord general. It was actually the smell of hair tonic and cologne, but to Gaunt such pampering scents were the same thing. Lugo had his sights on power. Real power. It gave him an appetite so great you could almost hear his stomach growling.
And it was absolutely obvious that the last thing Lugo wanted in his path was Ibram Gaunt who had shamed him so on Hagia.
“Why is there a smile on your face, Gaunt?”
Gaunt shrugged. “No reason, my lord. Just pleased that things can be square between us.” No reason indeed. Gaunt was smiling because, for the first time since he’d received his orders on Aexe Cardinal, he was pleased to be on Herodor.
As he understood it he was only here because she had requested it. Lugo would never have sent for Gaunt. Whoever — whatever — she was, she had clout. She was in charge here, really in charge, and Lugo was forced to obey her will. Lugo and his tacticians were taking her seriously. Either that, or Lugo’s capacity for intrigue was so great Gaunt couldn’t even begin to see its devious mechanisms.