Ghostmaker

by Dan Abnett

  The thought made Kreff smile. His eyes went back to the dots falling towards the planet and the smile faded.

  Now he doubted he would see either Gaunt or Corbec again.

  Far away, below, he could see the scorching flashes of anti-orbit guns, barking up at the fluttering pepper grains. That was a dog's life, going down there into the mouth of hell. All that noise and death and mayhem.

  Kreff sighed again, and felt suddenly grateful for the tranquil bridge around him. This was the only way to fight wars, he decided.

  Milo opened his eyes, but it hadn't gone away. The world was still convulsing. He glanced about, down the hold of the troopship where another twenty-five Guardsmen sat rigid, clamped in place by the yellow-striped restraint rigs, their equipment shuddering in mesh packs under every seat. The air was sweet with incense, and the ship was shaking so hard that he could not read the inspirational inscriptions etched on the cabin walls. Milo heard the roaring of the outer hull, white-hot from the steep dive. What he couldn't hear was the booming cough of the anti-orbit batteries down below, welcoming them.

  He glanced around for a friendly face. Hulking Bragg was gripping his restraints tight, his eyes closed. Young Trooper Caffran, only three years older than Milo, was gazing at the roof, muttering a charm or prayer. Across from him, Milo found the hard eyes of Major Rawne.

  Rawne smiled and nodded his head encouragingly.

  Milo took a breath. Being encouraged by Major Rawne in these circumstances was like being patted on the back by the Devil at the gates of Hell.

  Milo shut his eyes again.

  In the rear of the slender cockpit, strapped in his G-chair, Commissar Gaunt craned his neck round to see past the pilots and the astropath and look through the narrow front ports. Chart displays flickered across the thick glass and the ship was bucking wildly, but Gaunt could see the target coming up: the hive city called Nero, poking up out of the ochre soil through a caldera ninety kilometres wide, like an encrusted lump of coal set in a plump navel.

  'Sixty seconds to landfall,' the pilot said calmly. His voice was electronically tonal as it rasped via the intercom.

  Gaunt pulled out his bolt pistol and cocked it. He started counting down.

  High above the sunken city of Nero, the troop-ships came down like bullets, scorching in out of the cloud banks. Anti-air batteries thumped the sky.

  Then the cotton-white clouds began to singe. The fluffy corners scorched and wilted. A dark purple stain leached into the sky, billowing through the cumulus like blood through water. Lightning fizzed and lashed.

  Leagues above, Kreff paused and stared. Something was discolouring the atmosphere far below. 'What the—' he began.

  'Weather formation!' the co-pilot yelped, frantically making adjustments. 'We're hitting hail and lightning.'

  Gaunt was about to query further but the shaking had increased. He glanced round at the astropath, suddenly aware that the man was uttering a low, monotone growl.

  He was just in time to see the astropath's head explode. Blood and tissue painted the pilot, co-pilot, Gaunt and the entire cabin interior.

  The pilot was screaming a question.

  It was a psychic storm, Gaunt was horribly sure. Far below them, something of unimaginable daemonic power was trying to keep them out, trying to ward off the assault with a boiling tempest of Chaos.

  The ship was shaking so hard now Gaunt could no longer focus. Multiple warning nines flashed up in series across the main control display, blurring into scarlet streaks before his rattling eyes.

  Something, somewhere exploded.

  The vibration and the shrieking didn't stop, but they changed. Milo suddenly knew that they were no longer crash diving into attack. They were simply crash-diving.

  He wasn't feeling sick any more. But the wicked incincerated-in-a-hypervelocity-crashlanding-voice started to crow: I told you so.

  There was impact…

  …so huge, it felt like every one of his joints had dislocated.

  There was sliding…

  …sudden, shuddering, terrifying.

  And finally…

  …there was roaring fire.

  And, as if as an afterthought…

  …complete excruciating blackness.

  Hundreds of Imperial troop-ships were already well below the doudbank when the psychic typhoon exploded into life, and so escaped the worst of its effects, levelling out, they descended on the massive citadel of Nero Hive like a plague of locusts. The air was thick with them, ringing with the roar of their thrusters as they banked in and settled on the wasteland outskirts of the towering black city-hive. Traceries of laser and plasma fire divided the sky in a thousand places, making it look for all the world like some insanely complex set of blueprints. Some struck landing ships which flared, fluttered and died. Flak shells sent loud, black flowers up into the air. Marauder air-support shrieked in at intervals, moving in close, low formations like meteorites hunting as a pack, strafing the ground with stitching firestorms.

  Above it all, the purple sky boiled and thrashed and spat electric ribbons.

  At ground level, Colonel Colm Corbec of the Tanith First-and-Only led his squad down the ramp of the troop-ship and into the firezone. To either side, he could see lines of ships disgorging their troops into the field, a tide of men ten thousand strong.

  They reached the first line of cover – a punctured length of pipeline running along rusted pylons – and dropped down.

  Corbec took a look each way and keyed in his micro-bead comm link. 'Corbec to squad. Sound off.'

  Voices chatted back along the link, responding.

  By Corbec's side, Trooper Larkin was cradling his lasgun and looking up at the sky with trembling fear.

  'Oh, this is bad,' he murmured. 'Psyker madness, very bad. We may think we had it hard at Voltis Watergate or Blackshard deadzone, but they'll seem like a stroll round the garden next to this… '

  'Larks!' Corbec hissed. 'For Feth's sake, shut up! Haven't you never heard of morale?'

  Larkin turned his bony, weasel face to his senior officer and old friend in genuine surprise. 'It's okay, colonel!' he insisted. 'I didn't have me comm link turned on! Nobody heard!'

  Corbec grimaced. 'I heard, and you're scaring the crap out of me.'

  They all ducked down as a swathe of autocannon fire chewed across the lines. Someone a few hundred metres away started screaming. They could hear the piercing shrieks over the roar of the storm and the landing troop-ships and the bombardment.

  Just.

  'Where's the commissar?' Corbec growled. 'He insisted he was going to lead us in.'

  'If he ain't landed, he ain't coming,' Larkin said, looking up at the sky. 'We were the last few to make it through before that happened.'

  Next to Larkin, Trooper Raglon, the squad's communications officer, looked up from the powerful voxcaster set. 'No contact from the commissar's dropcraft, sir. I've been scanning the orbital traffic and the Navy band, colonel. This filthy psyker storm took out a whole heap of troop-ships. They're still counting the crash fires. We was lucky we got down before it really started.'

  Corbec shivered. He didn't feel lucky.

  Raglon went on: 'Our psykers upstairs are trying to break the storm, but…'

  'But what?'

  'It looks pretty certain the commissar's troop-ship was one of those vaporised in the storm.'

  Corbec growled something indistinct. He felt cold, and could see the look on the faces of his men as the word spread down the line.

  Corbec lifted his lasgun and keyed up his micro-bead. He had to rally them fast, get them moving. 'What are you waiting for?' he bawled. 'Diamond formation fire-team spread! Double time! Fire at will! Advance! For the memory of Tanith! Advance!'

  Brin Milo woke up.

  He was upside down, blind, suspended painfully from his restraint rig, his ribs bruised blue
and a taste of blood in his mouth.

  But – unless someone was about to play a really nasty trick on him – he was alive.

  He could hear… very little. The trickle and patter of falling water. A creaking. Someone moaning softly.

  There was a loud bang and light flared into his dark-accustomed eyes. He smelled thermite and realised someone had just ejected the emergency hull-plates using the explosive bolts. Daylight – thin, green, wet daylight – streamed in.

  Bragg's huge face swam up in front of Milo's, upside down.

  'Hang on, Brinny-boy,' Bragg said softly. 'Soon have you down.' He started rattling the restraints and slamming the lock handle back and forth.

  The restraints abruptly stopped restraining and Milo uttered a little yelp as he dropped two and a half metres onto the sloping roof of the troop-ship.

  'Sorry,' Bragg said, helping him up. 'You hurt, lad?'

  Milo shook his head. 'Where are we?' he asked.

  Bragg paused as if he was thinking about this carefully, Then, with deliberation, he said 'We're earlobe deep in doo-doo.'

  The troop-ship, now just a crumpled sleeve of metal, had impacted at a steep angle on its roof.

  Milo climbed down and gazed back up at the mangled wreck. What amazed him only slightly less than the fact he was still alive, was that they had come down in what appeared to be a jungle. Enormous pinkish trees that looked like swollen, magnified root vegetables, formed a dense forest of flaccid trunks around them. The huge growths were strung with thick ropey vines, creepers and flowering tendrils, and thorny fern and horsetail covered the moist, steaming ground. Everything was green, as all light – except for a single clear shaft which slanted down through the trees where the troop-ship had burst through – was filtered by the dense canopy of foliage above their heads. It was humid, and sticky, and sappy water dripped from the trees. There was a sweet stink of fungoid flowers.

  Bragg clambered down from the wreck, and joined the boy. A dozen other Ghosts had clambered out and were sat down or leaning against trees, waiting for spinning heads and ringing ears to clear. All had minor cuts and scrapes, except Trooper Obel who lay on a makeshift stretcher, his chest bloody and torn. Corporal Meryn had taken charge. He and Caffran were trying to open other emergency hatches to look for more survivors.

  Milo saw Rawne had survived. The major stood to one side with a tall, pale Ghost called I'eygor, who served as his aide.

  'I didn't know there were any jungles on this world,' Milo said.

  'Me neither,' Bragg answered. He was catching and piling equipment packs Meryn was tossing down from the side of the wreck. 'Actually, I didn't even know what this world was called.'

  Milo found Rawne by his side.

  'We're in a forest hollow,' Rawne said. 'The surface of Caligula is barren pumice, but it's punctured in many places by deep rift basins, many of them old craters or volcanic sinks. The cities are built down into the largest of them, but others sustain microclimates wet enough for these forests. I think some of them were actually farmed… before the fething enemy came in.'

  'So… where are we?' I'eygor asked.

  Rawne rubbed his throat, thoughtful. 'We've come down a good way off target. I think there were some forest calderas north of Nero. On the wrong side of the lines.'

  I'eygor swore.

  'I think the major is correct,' said a voice.

  Gaunt appeared, sliding down from a side vent in the punctured hull. He was tattered and bruised, with blood soaking the shoulder and side of his tunic under his coat. Meryn hurried over to him to assist.

  'Not me,' Gaunt said, waving him off. 'The co-pilot's alive and he needs to be cut free.'

  'It's a miracle anyone got out of that front end,' Meryn said with a whistle.

  Gaunt crossed to Milo, Rawne and the others.

  'Report, major,' he said.

  'Unless we find anyone else alive in there, we've got twelve able-bodied men, plus yourself, the boy Milo and the co-pilot. Minor injuries all round, though Trooper Grogan has a broken arm. But he can walk. Obel has chest injuries. Pretty bad. Brennan is inside. He's a real mess and pinned, but he's alive. The rest are pulp.'

  Rawne looked up at the wreck. 'Lucky shot got us, I guess. Missile—'

  'Psykers!' Gaunt growled. 'They threw some freakshow storm up. Smashed us out of the sky.'

  Everyone fell silent at the thought. Fear prickled them. Some looked away, uneasy and shaken.

  Gaunt crossed to the pile of equipment packs Bragg and Caffran were offloading and opened a compact carry-box. Out of this he slid a topolabe from its cushioned slot and held it up by the knurled handgrip. The small brass machine whirred and the concentric dials span and clicked as the gravimetric gyros turned in the glass bubble of inert gas.

  After a moment, the machine chimed and published a readout on a back-lit blue display.

  'We're in a forest caldera called K7-75, about forty kilometres north north east of the Nero city perimeter. Your assessment was good, major. We're on the wrong side of the lines and in pretty damn inhospitable country. There's dense forest for at least eight kilometres in any direction, and this sinkhole's about a kilometre deep. We'd better get ready to move.'

  'Move?' Feygor asked. 'Commissar… we can get the crash beacon up and running…'

  'No we can't,' Meryn said. He showed them the molten res-due of the beacon unit.

  'And even if we could, Feygor?' Gaunt shook his head sadly. 'About fifty kilometres south of us, the Imperial Guard is engaged in a massive assault. Thousands are dying. Every ship, and craft and man is committed to the attack. There will be nothing to spare to come looking – across enemy lines, mark you – for a few lost souls like us. They'll have already written us off. Besides, there's a psyker-bred storm raging up there, remember? No one could get to us even if they wanted to.'

  Rawne spat and cursed. 'So what do we do?' Gaunt grinned, but without humour. 'We see how far we can get. Better that than just wait here to die.'

  In fifteen minutes, the survivors were assembled and injuries tended. Salvageable equipment and weapons were divided up. Both Milo and the dazed co-pilot were given a laspistol and a few spare power cells. Obel and the now-freed Brennan lay unconscious on stretcher pallets.

  Rawne looked grimly at Gaunt. He nodded his head at the two injured men. 'We should… be merciful.'

  Gaunt frowned. 'We're taking them with us.'

  Rawne shook his head. 'With respect, they'll probably both be dead in an hour. Taking them will tie up four able-bodied soldiers as stretcher bearers.'

  'We're taking them,' Gaunt repeated.

  'If you lashed 'em both to a frame,' Bragg put in thoughtfully, 'I could drag 'em along. Better me than four other boys.'

  Meryn and Feygor raised the two stretcher cases onto an A-frame of wood and Bragg took the weight of the point on his shoulder. Caffran had used his silver Tanith knife to cut lengths of waxy creeper and bound them on for a grip.

  'I won't be fast, mind,' Bragg noted. But with the party clearing the way, he could pull them along on the sling-bed efficiently enough.

  The commissar checked the topolabe again, scanning for closer detail.

  'Interesting,' he murmured. 'About four kilometres east there's some kind of structure. Maybe an old farming complex or something. Might provide us with some shelter. Let's see.' Gaunt had armed himself with a lasgun from one of the dead. He handed his chainsword to Rawne. 'Take point please, major,' he said.

  Rawne moved to the head of the column and started to slice his way through the dense, wet forest.

  The Tanith Ghosts advanced through the outer complexes of the hive city, surging down an embankment and across the blasted ferrocrete of a six-lane arterial highway.

  Broken vehicles littered the lanes, and great pools of motor oil blazed up curtains of fire. Corbec urged the G
hosts forward, under traffic control boards that still flashed and winked speed limits and direction pointers. Guns blazing, they began to assault a vast block of worker residences on the far side.

  As the battle group swept into the shattered hallways of the old worker residences, where peeling placards exhorted the citizen workers to meet production targets and praise the Emperor at all times, fighting became a close-quarter business with the enemy forces, now seen face to face for the first time. Humans, corrupted by Chaos, cult worshippers whose physical forms had become twisted and warped. Most wore the black, vulcanised work suits of the hive workforce, daubed now with Chaos patterns, their heads protected with tight grey hoods and industrial glare visors. They were well armed too.

  Bodies littered the concourses and galleries of the residences, shattered glass and twisted plastic covered the ground. Intense fires blazed through some areas, and the air was full of drifting cinders, like incandescent snow.

  And flies: dark, fat-bodied flies.

  Blasting as he advanced, Corbec fired to left and right, through doorways and thin plastic-board walls, cutting down or exploding the foe all around.

  Flanked in a fire-team, Larkin, Suth, Varl, Mallor, Durcan and Billad worked in immediate support. Larkin snatched off the occasional shot, his aim as fine as usual, though Corbec knew that thanks to the storm, he was closer to snapping than ever. Suth had the squad's melta, and seared them a path.

  Bolt fire and las-shot cut their way. Billad jerked as he was hit repeatedly, sprawling back against a wall and sliding down.

  Corbec sent a steady stream of shot into the smoke haze.

  The flies buzzed.

  Radio chatter was almost as deafening as the firefight. Guard forces had begun to pincer the city. A combined force of Royal Volpone 50th and Raymian 13th and 16th had driven a steel fist into the ore-smelter heartland of the hive, meeting the enemy's main motorised units in an armoured battle in the vast, echoing barns of the starship yards and dry-docks. Rumours were a battalion of Lakkarii Gundogs and some Raven Guard Space Marines had punched through into the upper levels, into the Administratum tower itself.