[Gaunt's Ghosts 05] - The Guns of Tanith

by Dan Abnett

  “I can do it sir, yes sir.”

  Zhyte looked at his wrist-chrono. The beater hand was ticking towards the static marker needle he’d punched and set while giving Belthini and Rhintlemann the order mark.

  “Let’s move like we mean business.”

  In a side hall off the main access to the secondary dome, gun smoke drifting in the cool air, Trooper Wersun was loading his last clip. “Last chance box?” asked Gaunt moving up next to him. Wersun reacted in surprise. “Yes, sir. Last dip, sir.”

  “Use it sparingly.” Gaunt huddled down next to him and slid a fresh sickle pattern magazine for his bolt pistol out of his ammo web. He’d sheathed his power sword for the moment.

  As far as Gaunt knew, most of his men were now, like Wersun, down to their last. If he ever got out of this, he’d use the power blade of Heironymo Sondar to put on a novelty ventriloquist show for the Ghosts, using the Munitorium chief at Hessenville as the screaming puppet.

  Gaunt’s blood was up. This should have been easier. The Blood Pact were damn good. He’d been through a fight in the outer hatches that had been as hard and nasty as anything in his notable career.

  “Caober?”

  “Sir,” replied the Tanith scout huddled up against a fallen pile of ceiling girders. “Anything?”

  “No, sir. Not a fething sign. Where did they go?”

  Gaunt sat back against a block of bullet-chipped masonry. Where indeed? He was overheating in the hood now, and sweat was dribbling down his spine.

  Beltayn, his vox-man, was nearby. Gaunt waved him over.

  “Mic, sir?”

  “No, plug me in.”

  Beltayn wound a small cable from his heavy, high-gain vox-pack and pushed the jack into a socket on the side of Gaunt’s hood. Gaunt’s headset micro-bead now had the added power of Beltayn’s unit.

  “One, two?”

  “Two, one.”

  “Colm? Tell me you see bad guys.”

  “Not so much as a murmur, boss,” Corbec replied over the link. His force was advancing slowly down the access halls parallel to Gaunt’s.

  “Keep me advised. One, three?”

  “Three,” responded Rawne.

  “Any good news where you are?”

  “Negative. We’re at the mouth of an access tunnel. Five zero five if you’ve got your map handy. Where did they go?”

  “I’m open to offers.”

  “Four, one.”

  “Go ahead, Mkoll.”

  “We’ve got the promenade clear. Bray, Tarnash and Burone are holding the west end, Soric and Maroy the east. I think Kolea, Obel and Varl got their squads in through a hatch west of you.”

  “I’ll check. Any movement?”

  “It all went quiet about ten minutes ago, sir.”

  “Stay on top of them, Mkoll.”

  “Understood.”

  “Nine? Six? Twelve?”

  Kolea, Varl and Obel responded almost simultaneously. “We’ve still got contact here, sir!” Varl said urgently. “We-feth!”

  “Six? Six, this is one?”

  “Six, one! Sorry. It’s hot here. Got us a firelight in an antechamber, heavy fire, heavy cover.”

  “One, six, report position. Six?”

  “Twelve, one,” Obel cut in. “Vari’s under fire. Kolea’s boys are moving in support. We’re through to access 588.” Gaunt waved a hand and Beltayn passed him the chart slate.

  Five eight eight. Bless Varl, Obel and Kolea. They were hard in, deeper than any Ghost unit. And from the look of Beltayn’s log, deeper than any Imperial force. They were almost into the main habs inside the secondary dome. Excluding casualties, Gaunt had perhaps seventy-five men almost a kilometre inside the city.

  “Right,” said Gaunt. “They’ve set the pace. Let’s close it up.”

  It was the small, dead hours of the night, and a hard crust of frost had formed over the outer surface of Cirenholm’s secondary dome. The air was black-cold, and polluted snow crystals twinkled down.

  The survivors of drop 2K moved slowly up the bowl of the vast superstructure, their progress hampered by the treacherous conditions and by the injured: Commander Jagdea, who had to be carried: Dremmond with his lacerated shoulder; Guthrie with his head wound; Arilla, who had dislocated an elbow when the drop went down.

  Bonin moved ahead, at point. The whole, vast roof was creaking as the temperature contracted the metal. On occasions, their rubber soled boots stuck fast if they stood in one place too long.

  The light wash in the sky from the main assault behind the curve of the dome seemed to have died down. Had they lost? Won? All Bonin could see were the bars of smoke drifting up from the domes and the fathomless night punctuated by stars.

  His mother, God-Emperor rest and protect her, had always said he had been born under a lucky star. She said this, he was sure, because his life had not been easy from the start.

  His had been a difficult birth, during a cold spring in County Cuhulic, marked by inauspicious signs and portents. Berries out late, haw-twist turning to white flowers without seeding, the larisel hibernating until Watchfrost. While still a babe in arms, he had been blighted by illness. Then, while he was still in the cradle, forest fires had taken their home in the summer of 745. The whole county had suffered then, and the Bonin family, fruiters by trade, had suffered with the best. It had taken two hard years of living in tents while his father and uncles rebuilt the homestead.

  Until the age of eight, Bonin had been known as Mach by all the family. His mother had always had this thing about Lord Solar Macharius, especially since a copy of his Life had been the only thing she had been able to save from the family home during the fire. An often bewildered and contradictory devotee of the fates, his mother had considered this another of her signs.

  At eight, as was the custom with most old Tanith families, Bonin had been baptised and given his true names. It was considered that a child grew into the names he or she would need, and formally naming a child at birth was premature. The custom wasn’t observed much now.

  Bonin stopped his reverie and gazed up at the cold night sky. The custom wasn’t observed at all now, he corrected himself. All those billions of lights up there, and not one of them was Tanith.

  He remembered the day of his baptism. Coming down to the river on a chilly spring afternoon, the sky over the nal-woods a sullen white. Shivering in his baptismal smock, his older sisters hugging him to keep him warm and stop his tears.

  The village minister at the waterside.

  His mother, in her best dress, so proud.

  Dunked in freezing, rapid river water and coming up crying, he had been given the name Simen Urvin Macharius Bonin. Simen, after his father. Urvin after a charismatic uncle who had helped rebuild their home.

  Bonin remembered his mother, soft, warm and excited, drying him off after the baptism in the private shrine of their house, under the painted nalwood panels.

  “You’ve been through so much, you’re lucky. Lucky. Born under a lucky star.”

  Which one, Bonin wondered now, halting and looking up at the curve of the dome as the ice gleamed.

  Not Tanith, that was certain.

  But the luck had never left him. He was sure his mother had rubbed raw luck into him that day with the rough folds of the towel.

  He had survived the fall of Tanith. On Menazoid Epsilon, he had walked away without a scratch when a concussion round vapourised the three men in the fox-hole with him. On Monthax, he had seen a las-bolt pass so close to his face he could taste its acrid wake. On Verghast, he had been part of Gaunt’s and Kolea’s team in the assault on the Heritor’s Spike. During the boarding, he had lost his grip and fallen off. He should have died. Even Gaunt, who’d seen him fall, presumed him lost, and was stunned to find out he had survived.

  There were sixteen vertebrae in his back made of composite steel, and an augmetic socket on his pelvis. But he was alive. Lucky. Fated. Just like his mother had always told him. A sign.

  Born under a lucky
star.

  But he often wondered, how long would it burn?

  The deck under his boots was glossy wet, not caked in frost.

  Bonin knelt down and felt the roof plating. Even through his glove, he could feel the warmth.

  Ahead, a quarter of a kilometre away, rose the stacks and smoking flues of Cirenholm’s vapour mill. The drizzle of wet heat was keeping this part of the roof thawed.

  Bonin consulted the map Gaunt had given him. The mill superstructure was the only thing that penetrated the roof of the secondary dome. There were inspection hatches up here, ventilator pipes.

  A way inside.

  Whatever the star was, it was still watching over him.

  The access tunnel marked on the map as 505 gave out into what had once been an ordered little park. High overhead, in the girders of the dome roof, sunlamps and environment processors hung in bolted cages, but they had long since been deactivated and the trimmed fruit trees and arbors had died off. Leaf litter, grey and dry, covered the mosaic paths and the areas of dead grass. Brittle-branched grey-trunked trees filled the beds, grim as gravestones.

  Rawne moved his squad out into the park, using the trees as cover. Feygor swung to the left at the head of a fireteam ready to lay down protective fire on the main force. Leyr, the platoon’s scout, edged forward. The air was cold and dry.

  Tona Criid, on the right hand edge of the formation, suddenly started and turned, her weapon rising.

  “Movement, four o’clock,” she whispered briefly into her micro-bead.

  Rawne held his hand out, palm down, and everyone dropped low. Then he pointed to Criid, Caffran and Wheln, circled his hand and pointed ahead with a trident of three fingers.

  Immediately, the three troopers rose and ran forward, fanning out keeping their heads low. Criid dropped behind a rusty bench, and Caffran tucked down behind the plinth of a stone centaur whose rearing forelimbs had been shot off. Wheln got in behind a brake of dead trees.

  Rawne glanced to his left and saw Neskon crawling forward with the hose of his flamer ready. Leclan was covering him. To Rawne’s right, Banda had her long-las resting on the elbow of a low branch. Like Criid, Jessi Banda was one of the Verghastite females who had joined the Ghosts. They seemed to have a particular expertise for marksmanship, and sniper was the one regimental speciality where there were as many Verghastites as Tanith. And as many women as men.

  Rawne’s opposition to women in the regiment was so old now it was gathering dust and everyone was tired of hearing it. He’d never questioned their fighting ability. He just didn’t like the added stress of sexual tension it put on the ranks.

  Jessi Banda was a good example. Cheerful, sharp tongue, playful, she was a good-looking girl with short, curly brown hair and curves that the matt-black battledress couldn’t hide. She’d been a loom-worker in Vervunhive, and then a member of Kolea’s scratch company guerillas. Now she was a specialist sniper in the Imperial Guard, and a damn good one. The death of one of the Tanith snipers had forced her rotation into Rawne’s platoon.

  He found her distracting. He found Criid, the surly ex-gang girl, distracting. Both of them were very easy on the eye. He tried not to think about Nessa, the sniper in Kolea’s unit. She was downright beautiful…

  “Sir?” whispered Banda, cocking her head at Rawne. Through the lenses of her gas-hood, Rawne could see a smile in her eyes.

  Feth! I’m doing it again! Rawne cursed himself. Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was him…

  “Anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Movement!” Wheln hissed over the vox.

  Rawne saw them for a brief moment. Four, maybe five enemy troopers in muddy red, moving hurriedly down the walkway on the far right hand edge of the park.

  Wheln’s lasrifle cracked, and Caffran and Criid quickly opened up too.

  One of the figures buckled and dropped and las-shots splintered against the wall of the park. Two of the others turned and started to fire into the park. Rawne saw their iron-masked faces, sneering above the flashing muzzles of their weapons.

  There was a loud report from his right. Banda had fired, loosing one of the sniper-variant long-las’ overpowered “hot shot” rounds. One of the firing enemy was thrown back against the wall as if he’d been struck by a wrecking ball.

  A flurry of fire whipped back and forth through the park edge now. There must have been more than five of them, Rawne decided. He couldn’t see. He ran forward, dodging between tree trunks. A sapling just behind him ruptured at head height and swished back and forth from the recoil like a metronome arm.

  “Seven one, three!”

  “Seven one, sir!” Caffran responded. Rawne could hear the background fire echoed and distorted over the vox-link. “Sit-rep!”

  “I count eight. Five in the bushes at my ten, three back in the doorway. We’ve splashed another four.”

  “I can’t eyeball! Call it!” Rawne ordered.

  From behind the statue’s plinth, Caffran glanced around. Whatever faults you could lay at Major Rawne’s door — and heartlessness, lack of humour, deceit and cruelty would be amongst them — he was a damn fine troop leader. Here, with no view of his own, he was devolving command to Caffran without hesitation, allowing the young private to order the deployment. Rawne trusted Caffran. He trusted them all. That was enough to make him a far greater leader than many of the so-called “good guys” Caffran had seen in his Guard career.

  “Wheln! Criid! Tight and right. Hit the door. Leclan! Osket! Melwid! Concentrate on those bushes! Neskon, up and forward!”

  There was a crackle of barely verbal acknowledgements. The las-fire coming out of the park’s tree-line into the path-edge bushes increased in intensity.

  Caffran got off a few more shots, but something heavy like a stubber was bracketing his position, chipping shards of stone off the plinth and gouging divots out of the dead grass. He threw himself back as one rebounding shell scarred his boot and another pinged hard off his warknife’s blade, leaving an ugly notch in the fine-honed edge.

  “Banda! See the panels on the end wall?”

  “Got ’em, Caff.”

  “Fifth one in from the left, middle rivet. Aim on that, but drop the shot about five metres.”

  “Uh huh…”

  There was another sharp whine-crack and part of the straggled bushes blew apart as the hot-shot went through it. The stub fire ceased. If she hadn’t actually killed him, Banda had certainly discouraged the bastard.

  “Got one!” whooped Melwid meanwhile.

  Criid fired from behind the bench until a trio of close shots splintered the seat-back. She got down onto her belly in time to see two of the enemy running from the doorway towards another dump of bushes near the end of the path. She flicked her toggle to full-auto and raked them from her prone position. One of them dropped a stick grenade he had been about to toss, and the blast threw fine grit and dry dumps of dirt into the park.

  Rawne had moved in close now, into the stands of dead trees by the edge of the fighting. Leyr was nearby. With a coughing rush, flames spewed out across the line of bushes as Neskon finally got range. Rawne heard harsh, short screams and the firecracker blitz of ammunition cooking off.

  “Breakers!” Leyr shouted.

  Rawne turned, and caught a glimpse of two red-tunicked figures sprinting from the path into the trees, moving past them into the park. He jumped up and ran, leaping fallen boughs and kicking up stones and dead leaves.

  “Left! Left!” he shouted to Leyr who was running too.

  Rawne ran on. Breathing came hard when you exerted yourself in a rebreather. Running jarred the hood so that visibility was impaired.

  He caught a glimpse of red, and fired once, but the shot simply skinned the bark of a tree. Leyr fired too, off to his left.

  Rawne came round the side of a particularly large tree and slammed into the Blood Pact trooper who had been dodging the other way. They went sprawling.

  Swearing, Rawne grappled wit
h the man. The enemy trooper was hefty and strong. His arms and body seemed hard, as if packed with augmetic systems. His big, filthy hands were bare and showed the scar tissue of deep, old wounds across the palms, made during his ritual pledge of allegiance to the obscenity Urlock Gaur.

  He fought back, kicking Rawne hard and spitting out a string of curses in a language Rawne didn’t know and had no intention of looking up later.

  They rolled in the dirt. Rawne’s weapon, damped between them, fired wildly. All Rawne could see was the front of the foe’s tunic: old, frayed, stained a dull red the colour of dried blood. It occurred to Rawne that it probably was dried blood.

  Rawne got an arm free and threw a short but brutal punch that lurched the growling brute off him. For a moment, he saw the man’s face: the battered iron grotesque fashioned in the shape of a hook-nosed, leering fright mask, hinged in place under a worn bowl helmet covered in flaking crimson paint and finger-daubed runes of obscenity.

  Then the Blood Pact trooper head-butted him.

  Rawne heard a crack, and felt the stunning impact and a stab of white-hot pain in his left eye. He reeled away. The hooked nose of the iron grotesque had punched in through the left lens of Rawne’s gas-hood like a blunt hatchet, breaking the plastic and digging deep. His head was swimming. He couldn’t see out of his left eye and he could feel blood running down inside his hood.

  Raging, Rawne threw a hooking punch that hit the enemy in the side of the neck. His assailant fell sideways, choking.

  Rawne drew his silver Tanith knife, grabbed the man around the left elbow to yank his arm up against the side of his head, and stabbed the blade up to the hilt in the man’s armpit.

  The soldier of Chaos went into violent spasms. Rawne rolled back onto his knees.

  Leyr came out of the bushes nearby. “The other one’s dead. Ran straight into Feygor. I-feth! Medic!”

  Ledan was the platoon’s corpsman, one of the troopers trained in the rudiments of field aid by Dorden and Curth. As soon as he saw Rawne, he checked the brass air-tester sewn into the side of his kit.