Ghostmaker

by Dan Abnett

  'Emperor be with you and watch over you, Colm Corbec,' he said. 'And you, Doc.'

  Tremard held the gate. Dark shapes moved across the fields and through the dim hedgerows towards him, crackling out green pulses of laser fire and white-hot bolt rounds. The treacherous moon showed movement and the occasional glint of armour, and he picked his targets well, barking orange slices of laser into the open fenland beyond the farm.

  Ducking the incoming sprays of fire, a figure dropped into the position beside him. It was Colonel Corbec. Corbec grinned at Tremard, made some obscene remark as to the maternal origins of the enemy that had Tremard cackling at its vulgarity, and leaned up over the bags to loose a volley of shots from his lasgun down the lane into the fens.

  Along the ditch walls, the other Chosts opened up. Eight las guns against the encroaching dark, eight lasguns picking their targets through scope and skill, matching the hundreds of fire-points blasting back at them from the fens.

  'Where's Brostin?' Corbec barked into his micro-bead, over the howl of gunplay, sustaining a regular fire-pattern.

  A second later, his query was lost in a withering assault which blasted down the lane and onto his position. A hundred or more warriors of Chaos were forcing their approach at the main gate, charging them, weapons blazing. Corbec and Tremard could see nothing but the light-blur of their guns.

  Corbec ducked under the intense volley. He didn't even curse. It was over, he knew. The end of Colm Corbec. By his side, Tremard, a second too late in ducking, flew backwards, his left arm gone in a shredded waste of flesh below the shoulder, He fell on his back, screaming and writhing. His lasgun, with his left hand still holding the grip, sat miraculously on the parapet where he had rested it.

  Corbec scrambled to him, under the hideous rain of bolt and las-fire, grabbing the struggling man and holding him close. He had to calm him and make him still before he could tie up that awful stump. If he lived that long.

  Tremard screamed and screamed, fighting like a scalded cat, drenching Corbec and himself with the pumping arterial spray of his stump. Corbec glanced up to see black forms in quilted armour, faces covered by gas-hoods, scrambling over the lip of the sandbags towards him. He could smell their rank animal scent, and the badges of the Dark Gods blazoned on their armour burned in his mind even at a glimpse and turned his stomach.

  There was a double click, dry and solid, and then a whoosh of heat as the night lit up. Corbec winced. Trooper Brostin stood over him, raking the tops of the sandbags and the lane beyond with his flamer. The hurricane force of the flame gout cut the enemy away like dry grass.

  'I was wondering where you'd got to,' Corbec said to Brostin. Then he tapped his micro-bead. 'Medic! Medic!'

  Dorden and Lesp were halfway through transporting the injured into the rear of the house when the call came through. Stray shots were punching through the ward hall, exploding rafters and shattering wall-plaster and brick.

  Dorden fumbled with his micro-bead, trying to steady the stretcher he was sharing with the backing Tesp.

  'Dorden! What?'

  'Tremard's down bad. Get out here!' Any more of Corbec's message was lost in crackling static, drowned by the gunfire.

  'Set it down! I'll drag it,' Tesp cried to Dorden as a las-round punched a hole in the plaster near his head.

  Dorden did so and Lesp hauled the stretcher through the archway, its wooden handles screeching on the floor, 'Just like a fish box back home!' Lesp yelled over the onslaught as he disappeared.

  Dorden grabbed his kit. 'Corbec! I'm coming out, but you need to send someone in to help Lesp move the wounded!'

  'Feth that! We're all engaged out here! Can't spare a man!'

  'Don't give me that!' Dorden returned, scuttling under the puncture level of the las-range as the hall fell apart around him. 'Lesp needs help! These men need help!'

  A hand took his shoulder. He looked round. It was the Blueblood Culcis. Several more of the less seriously injured Volpone were with him. 'I can't manage a stretcher with my leg, but I can man a fire-point, doctor. I'll take any lasgun free if it means able bodies can help you here!'

  Dorden smiled at the young man's bravery. Pain was slashed into the Blueblood's thin face.

  He nodded them forward to the door and they looked into the rain of fire.

  'Caffran!' Dorden called on the link. 'I'm sending a Blueblood over to you. Give him your weapon and then return!'

  He didn't wait for an answer.

  Using Chayker's mop as a crutch, Culcis scurried out into the yard and made the inner wall, where Caffran was blasting through a fire-slot. A nod, and Caffran gave up his gun and position to the Blueblood. Culcis settled in, leaning against the flak-boards, and resumed blasting. Caffran ran back to the farmhouse door where Dorden was waiting.

  'Help Lesp! Go! Go!'

  In three minutes, Dorden had substituted three more Volpones on the defence line, men with leg wounds or head wounds, but able-bodied. In return, he got Claig, Gutes and Foskin.

  Dorden told Foskin the drill, and Foskin supervised the five able-bodied Ghosts into a slick pattern of removing the wounded into the rear sections of the house.

  Shaken by the onslaught which lit up the feeble night Dorden reached the gatepost, running in a stoop. Brostin and Corbec were blasting away. Brostin was now using Tremard's lasgun, switching to the big flamer every time the assault became too great.

  Dorden knelt by Tremard, assessed his injury and set to work. 'I need a stretcher for him!' Dorden yelled at Corbec.

  'Help him, Brostin,' Corbec snapped. As Dorden and Brostin carried Tremard back to the farmhouse, Corbec held the gate. Dorden's last view of him was clear: the huge Tanith warrior his hair loose and flowing in the night wind as the storm came down again, crackling and flashing, flamer in one hand, lasgun in the other, dealing death to anything that moved.

  The enemy assault had pivoted to the western side of the horseshoe, and heavy fire slammed against the flak-boarding, throwing some sheets up out of the muck and shattering them Mkoll felt more than saw the change in emphasis and rushed from his position at the east end to support Chayker and a Blueblood called Vengo who had substituted for Gutes. Chaos soldiers were pushing through the holes in the outer flak-board wall and the three Guardsmen, firing single, aimed shots to preserve power on Corbec's orders, dropped dozens into the slime pit of the ditch. Soon bodies blocked the fence holes as well as the missing boards had done.

  Well enough when they come at us with boltguns and las-weapons, Mkoll thought to himself darkly. But what do we do when they bring up flamers, meltas, grenades… or worse?

  The cacophony of the assault was ear-splitting and a double echo rolled back to them from the wide fens like thunder, almost as loud as the real thing. The storm or the storming shook the earth, and Mkoll wasn't sure which.

  Vengo, bandaged up with a gut wound, found his strength failing and his vision swimming. The majesty and fury of the open assault, the desperation and the frantic effort, had quite numbed him to the dull pain of his injuries, but they were telling on him none the less. Drenched by the downpour, he tried to reposition himself, changing spent clip for fresh with cold, wet hands. The fresh power clip slipped away and dropped into the mud under his feet. He stooped.

  A soldier of Chaos, cut down and presumed dead in the ditch, had crawled forward, and now loomed over the inner fence above the scrabbling Volpone. His chest had been blasted open, and blood and tissue dribbled from exposed ribs. His gas-hood was also gone, revealing the fanged snout and grey hide of his corrupted face. He swung up a rusty entrenching tool. Chayker, dazzled by the volleys of las-light and the strobe effect of the lightning, saw his assailant in a flash of white, frozen mid-swing. He wrenched his lasgun out of the fire-slot and blasted down the gully, blowing the attacker out over the fence. Rising with the recovered clip, deafened by the sensory overload of the storm and fighting, Vengo had no idea how he had been spared or how close he had been to death.

  Bo
lt rounds drummed into the flak-boards around Mkoll's slot, and nailed wooden splinters into his cheek and neck. He cried out and dropped back for a second. Rubbing at the bloody grazes in his face, he moved back to the slot, re-aiming. Other dark shapes were stirring in the filth at the bottom of the ditch. Vengo's close call had been a warning. Even killing shots didn't seem to finish all of these abominations. Many of those that they had cut down were far from dead, and now were crawling and clambering up to attack the inner fence.

  'Brace!' he yelled over the comm-link to Chayker and Vengo. He had a few tube-charges left, and he hefted three over the inner fence into the ditch with its half-seen stirrings.

  The triple blast rocked them and pelted the inner flak-boards with liquid mud and liquefied organics.

  'Keep checking the ditch!' Mkoll voxed. 'They don't die easy.'

  Vengo caught the hint at once, and lowered his aim to pick off two more of the supposed dead who were writhing through the mire towards him. Others clustered around the breaches in the outer fence, cut down by the trap as fast as they gathered and pressed in.

  How many of them are there out there, Chayker wondered'? The force of the assault seemed to be increasing with every moment.

  On the eastern turn of the horseshoe, Culcis held the line with his other two Volpone substitutes, Drado and Speers. Brostin had returned from his stretcher run to the house and fell in beside Culcis, hefting a misfiring Volpone heavy stubber he'd found leaning against the wall in the long hall. It had a drum of sixty rounds left in it, and he'd resolved to use them all before switching to his laspistol. His flamer was in Corbec's meaty hands at the gate. All they could hear or see from the gate area, at the southern point of the horseshoe, were belches of flame and las-chatter and Corbec's increasingly colourful exclamations over the vox-link.

  Brostin settled in, getting to know the unfamiliar stubber. Its cyclic rate was poor and it jammed frequently, but when it fired, the thump and blast was satisfying. Me shredded half a dozen shapes that loomed beyond the outer fence. At the eastern side, the tree-line and woods were closer than at the west, which looked out over fenland interrupted only by hedges and dykes. Here, the enemy was on them with little warning, rushing out of the trees to assault the double fence and the ditch.

  Brostin found himself admiring the shooting skills of the Blueblood Culcis. Arrogantly, against Corbec's orders, he had adjusted the power setting to full and was firing off searing orange blasts. But each one counted.

  His eye's as good as Mad Larkin's, thought the heavy-set Ghost, and that's a real compliment.

  Drado and Speers were doing their part too, but Drado's aim was off. Though able-bodied, the man had a head wound and one eye bandaged. The lack of binocular range-finding was ruining his shot. Brostin hunkered down and moved along the fence to him.

  'Aim left!' he yelled over the barrage and the thunder. 'You're shooting wide!'

  Drado turned on him, his noble, half-bandaged face curled into a haughty sneer. 'No low-life gutter-dog tells a Volpone how to fight!'

  Brostin smacked him hard with the side of his fist and slammed the Blueblood into the mud.

  'Get up!' Brostin said fiercely, fist raised. 'This is a last stand of the Tanith First-and-Only. We're only here because of you and your kinsmen! Tight like a Ghost or stand aside and let someone else do it!'

  Drado hauled himself up and spat at Brostin. 'You'll pay…' he began.

  Firing his stubber out at the enemy, Brostin laughed. 'Pay? Of course I'll pay! But not to you! If we live through this, my Blueblood friend, you can hammer me to hell, and get your oh-so-noble brothers to help! See me care! If we don't die here, tonight, guarding the line to protect your precious wounded, then I'll go laughing into any retribution you care to dish out! What could be worse than this?'

  Drado didn't answer. He set to firing again, and Brostin noted with approval that he was compensating now and favouring the left side. He made hits.

  'Much better, you feth-wit,' he muttered.

  Inside rut manor house, Dorden checked the state of the wounded they had moved. With the help of Tesp, Gutes, Caffran, Toskin and Claig, he had transferred the patients back, one at a time, through to the rear chambers and then down in the long undercroft. This low, vaulted cellar space was made of thick stone. The best protection they could afford. They might survive the attack here – or be buried like rats.

  With Foskin's help, he treated Tremard's wound and got him stable. Then he ordered all the Ghosts back out to the defence, all except Tesp, whom he needed. Another comatose Volpone had woken during the rough relocation and was convulsing.

  Caffran, Toskin, Gutes and Claig made their way up the cellar steps, taking their pick of the broken Volpone weapons stacked in the stable-block on their way to rejoin the defence.

  The convulsing Volpone died. Though he showed no outward signs of injuring except severe bruising, Dorden knew his innards had been turned to jelly by artillery concussion. Lesp helped him haul the corpse back up the undercroft stairs and dump it in the hall.

  They went back down. The undercroft was damp and pun gent, lit by hissing chemical lamps the Ghosts had set up hurriedly. The injured moaned and sighed. Some slept like they were dead. The earth around them all shook and trickles of liquid mud spurted down from the roof every now and then as the onslaught rattled the foundations of the house.

  'We're all going to die here, aren't we, sir?' Lesp asked, his voice clear and certain.

  Dorden stammered for a moment, lost for words. He thought, desperately, what Gaunt might say in such circumstances. What would a trained political officer do here, trying to raise the spirits of men looking death in he face? He couldn't do it. It wasn't in him. He couldn't compose any deft line about 'the greater good of the Imperial Guard' or the ''lifeblood of the Emperor''. Instead, all he could manage was something entirely personal.

  'I'm not,' he told Lesp. 'When I die, my wife and daughter and granddaughter die too, their memories lost with me. Tor them, I'll not die here, Tesp.'

  Tesp nodded, his big Adam's apple gulping in his narrow throat, He thought of the memories he carried: mother, father, brothers, crew mates on the archipelago trawler.

  'Neither will I, then,' he managed.

  Dorden turned towards the stairs.

  'Where are you going?' Lesp asked.

  'You manage things here. I'm going to take a look up top. From the sound of things, they may need a medic.'

  Tesp pulled out his laspistol and offered it, butt-first, to the chief medic.

  Dorden shook his head. 'I can't start that now,' he said.

  Upstairs, the old ruin was quiet. It seemed as if the storm and the assault had abated together for the moment. Dorden edged into the vacated long hall and tried his micro-bead but it was dead. The ceiling lamps swung and loose debris fluttered down. Tree of bodies, the stinking cots looked pitiful and sadly spoiled. Dorden stepped over pools of blood and shreds of discarded clothing.

  He strode into the outer kitchen, looking once at the stained table where he had excised a part of Regara's leg. He saw the old fireplace for the first time. Black iron, just like the one he had sat before at home on Tanith. He and his wife, at the end of a long night, with a book and a glass of something warming, before the grate-light.

  Along the mantle, small blocks of what looked like chalk sat in a row. He moved over and took one in his hand. A tusk. The small, shed tusk of a pig. The inhabitants of this manor, whoever they were, had raised swine, cared for them enough to treasure the trophies of their growth and development. Pig teeth, each marked in a delicate hand with a name… Emperor, Sire, His lordship… and dates.

  This touch of frugal humanity, the day-to-day chronicle of a farmstead, affected him deeply. It wasn't mawkish, it mattered somehow. Why pigs? Who had lived here, raised the swine, toiled in the fens, brought up a family?

  A sound from the long hall brought him up to the surface of his thoughts. He moved back t
o meet a gaggle of men as they limped and blundered in through the hall doors from the outside. The Volpone substitutes and the Ghosts, all except Corbec. They were shell-shocked and dazed, weary on their feet.

  Dorden found Mkoll at the rear of the group.

  'They've fallen back,' Mkoll said. 'It's dead quiet out there. That can mean only one thing…'

  'I'm a medic, not a soldier, Mkoll! What does it mean?'

  Mkoll sighed as Dorden attended to the splinter wounds in his face. They've failed with a physical assault. 'They're drawing back so they can bring up artillery.'

  Dorden nodded. 'Get below, into the undercroft, all of you. Foskin – Lesp will help you cook up some food for all. Do it! Artillery or not, I want everyone sustained.'

  The men filed away towards the steps into the cellar. Dorden was alone again in the hall.

  Corbec entered, covered in blood and fire-soot. He dropped Brostin's empty flamer onto one cot and threw Tamard's spent lasgun the other way.

  'Time's trickling away, Doc,' he said. 'We held them – feth but we held them! – but they're gonna hammer us now. I scoped movement over the fens, big guns being wheeled into place. An hour, if we're lucky, and then they'll level us from a distance.'

  'Colm… I thank you for all you and the men have done tonight. I hope it was worth it.'

  'It's always worth it, Doc.'

  'So what do we do now? Bury ourselves in the cellar?'

  Corbec shrugged. That won't save us from their shells. Don't know about you, but I'm going to do the only thing I can think of at a time like this?'

  'Which is?'

  'Pray to the Emperor. Mkoll said there was an old shrine out back of this place. Prayers are all we have left.'