[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

by Dan Abnett - (ebook by Undead)

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  HONOUR GUARD

  Gaunt’s Ghosts - 04

  (The Saint - 01)

  Dan Abnett

  (An Undead Scan v1.1)

  For Colin Fender, honorary guardsman and Marco, patience of a saint.

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  The monumental imperial crusade to liberate the Sabbat Worlds cluster from the grip of Chaos had been raging for over a decade and a half when Warmaster Macaroth began his daring assaults on the strategically vital Cabal system. This phase of reconquest lasted almost two whole years, and featured a bravura, multi-point invasion scheme devised by Macaroth himself. Simultaneous Imperial assaults were launched against nineteen key planets, including three of the notorious fortress-worlds, shaking the dug-in resolve of the numerically superior but less well-orchestrated enemy.

  From his war room logs, we know that Macaroth fully appreciated the scale of his gamble. If successful, this phase of assault would virtually guarantee an overall Imperial victory for the campaign. If it failed, his whole crusade force, an armed host over a billion strong, might well be entirely overrun. For two bloody, bitter years, the fate of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade hung in the balance.

  Serious analysis of this period inevitably focuses on the large-scale fortress-world theatres, most particularly on the eighteen month war to take the massive fortress-world Morlond. But several of the subsidiary crusade assaults conducted during this phase are deserving of close study, especially the liberation of the shrineworld Hagia and the remarkable events that afterwards unfolded there…

  —from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

  ONE

  A DAY FOR HEROES

  “Betwixt the wash of the river and the waft of the wind, let my sins be transfigured to virtues.”

  —Catechism of Hagia,

  bk I, chp 3, vrs XXXII

  They’d strung the king up with razor wire in a city square north of the river.

  It was called the Square of Sublime Tranquillity, an eight-hectare court of sun-baked, pink basalt surrounded by the elegant, mosaic walls of the Universitariate Doctrinus. Little in the way of sublime tranquillity had happened there in the last ten days. The Pater’s Pilgrims had seen to that.

  Ibram Gaunt made a sharp, bat-like shadow on the flagstones as he ran to new cover, his storm coat flying out behind him. The sun was at its highest and a stark glare scorched the hard ground. Gaunt knew the light must be burning his skin too, but he felt nothing except the cool, blustering wind that filled the wide square.

  He dropped into shelter behind an overturned, burnt-out Chimera troop carrier, and dumped the empty clip from his bolt pistol with a flick-click of his gloved thumb. He could hear a popping sound from far away, and raw metal dents appeared in the blackened armour of the dead Chimera’s hull. Distant shots, their sound stolen by the wind.

  Far behind, across the cooking pink stones of the open square, he could see black-uniformed Imperial Guardsmen edging out to follow him.

  His men. Troopers of the Tanith First-and-Only. Gaunt noted their dispersal and glanced back at the king. The high king indeed, as he had been. What was his name again?

  Rotten, swollen, humiliated, the noble corpse swung from a gibbet made of tie-beams and rusting truck-axles and couldn’t answer. Most of his immediate court and family were dangling next to him.

  More popping. A hard, sharp dent appeared in the resilient metal next to Gaunt’s head. Crumbs of paint flecked off with the impact.

  Mkoll ducked into cover beside him, lasrifle braced.

  “Took your time,” Gaunt teased.

  “Hah! I trained you too fething well, colonel-commissar, that’s all it is.” They grinned at each other.

  More troopers joined them, running the gauntlet across the open square. One jerked and fell, halfway across. His body would remain, sprawled and unmourned in the open, for at least another hour.

  Larkin, Caffran, Lillo, Vamberfeld and Derin made it across. The five scurried in beside the Ghosts’ leader and Mkoll, the regiment’s scout commander.

  Gaunt assayed a look out past the Chimera cover.

  He ducked back as distant pops threw rounds at him.

  “Four shooters. In the north-west corner.”

  Mkoll smiled and shook his head, scolding like a parent. “Nine at least. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve told you, Gaunt?”

  Larkin, Derin and Caffran laughed. They were all Tanith, original Ghosts, veterans.

  Lillo and Vamberfeld watched the apparently disrespectful exchange with alarm. They were Vervunhivers, newcomers to the Ghosts regiment. The Tanith called them “fresh blood” if they were being charitable, “scratchers” if they weren’t really thinking, or “cannon trash” if they were feeling cruel.

  The new Vervunhive recruits wore the same matt-black fatigues and body armour as the Tanith, but their colouring and demeanour stood them apart.

  As did their newly stamped, metal-stocked lasguns and the special silver axe-rake studs they wore on their collars.

  “Don’t worry,” said Gaunt, noting their unease and smiling. “Mkoll regularly gets too big for his boots. I’ll reprimand him when this is done.”

  More pops, more dents.

  Larkin fidgeted round to get a good look, resting his fine, nalwood-finished sniper weapon in a jag of broken armour with experienced grace. He was the regiment’s best marksman.

  “Got a target?” Gaunt asked.

  “Oh, you bet,” assured the grizzled Larkin, working his weapon into optimum position with a lover’s softness. “Blow their fething faces off then, if you please.”

  “You got it.”

  “How… How can he see?” gasped Lillo, craning up. Caffran tugged him into cover, saving him an abrupt death as las-shots hissed around them.

  “Sharpest eyes of all the Ghosts,” smiled Caffran.

  Lillo nodded back, but resented the Tanith’s cocky attitude. He was Marco Lillo, career soldier, twenty-one years in the Vervun Primary, and here was a kid, no more than twenty years old all told, telling him what to do.

  Lillo shuffled round, aiming his long lasgun. />
  “I want the king, high king whatever-his-name-is,” said Gaunt softly. Distractedly, he rubbed at a ridge of an old scar across his right palm. “I want him down. It’s not right for him to be rotting up there.”

  “Okay,” said Mkoll.

  Lillo thought he had a shot and fired a sustained burst at the far side of the square. Lattice windows along the side of the Universitariat exploded inwards, but the hard breeze muffled the noise of the impacts.

  Gaunt grabbed Lillo’s weapon and pulled him down.

  “Don’t waste ammo, Marco,” he said.

  He knows my name! He knows my name! Lillo was almost beside himself with the fact. He stared at Gaunt, basking in every moment of the brief acknowledgement. Ibram Gaunt was like a god to him. He had led Vervunhive to victory out of the surest defeat ten months past. He carried the sword to prove it.

  Lillo regarded the colonel-commissar now: the tall, powerful build, the close-cropped blond hair half hidden by the commissar’s cap, the lean cut of his intense face that so matched his name. Gaunt was dressed in the black uniform of his breed, overtopped by a long, leather storm coat and the trademark Tanith camo-cape. Maybe not a god, because he’s flesh and blood, Lillo thought… but a hero, none the less.

  Larkin was firing. Hard, scratchy rasps issued from his gun.

  The rate of fire spitting over their ducked heads reduced.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Vamberfeld.

  Mkoll caught his sleeve and nodded back at the buildings behind them.

  Vamberfeld saw a big man… a very big man… rise from cover and fire a missile launcher.

  The snaking missile, trailing smoke, struck a coronet on the west of the square.

  “Try again, Bragg!” Derin, Mkoll and Larkin chorused with a laugh.

  Another missile soared over them, and blew the far corner of the square apart. Stone debris scattered across the open plaza.

  Gaunt was up and running now, as were Mkoll, Caffran and Derin. Larkin continued to fire his expert shots from cover.

  Vamberfeld and Lillo leapt up after the Tanith.

  Lillo saw Derin buckle and fall as las-fire cut through him.

  He paused and tried to help. The Tanith trooper’s chest was a bloody mess and he was convulsing so hard it was impossible for Lillo to get a good grip on him. Mkoll appeared beside the struggling Lillo and together they dragged Derin into cover behind the makeshift gibbet as more las-fire peppered the flagstones.

  Gaunt, Caffran and Vamberfeld made it to the far corner of the square.

  Gaunt disappeared in through the jagged hole that Bragg’s missile had made, his power sword raised and humming. It was the ceremonial weapon of Heironymo Sondar, once-lord of Vervunhive, and Gaunt now carried it as a mark of honour for his courageous defence of that hive. The keening, electric-blue blade flashed as it struck at shapes inside the hole.

  Caffran ducked in after him, blasting from the hip. Few of the Ghosts were better than him in storm clearance. He was fast and ruthless.

  He blocked Gaunt’s back, gun flaring.

  Niceg Vamberfeld had been a commercia cleric on Verghast before the Art of Consolation. He’d trained hard, and well, but this was all new to him. He followed the pair inside, plunging into a suddenly gloomy world of shadows, shadow-shapes and blazing energy weapons.

  He shot something point blank as he came through the crumpled stone opening. Something else reared up at him, cackling, and he lanced it with his bayonet. He couldn’t see the commissar-colonel or the young Tanith trooper anymore. He couldn’t see a gakking thing, in fact. He started to panic. Something else shot at him from close range and a las-round spat past his ear.

  He fired again, blinded by the close shot, and heard a dead weight fall.

  Something grabbed him from behind.

  There was an impact, and a spray of dust and blood. Vamberfeld fell over clumsily, a corpse on top of him. Face down in the hot dirt, Vamberfeld found his vision returning. He was suffused in blue light.

  Power sword smoking, Ibram Gaunt dragged him up by the hand.

  “Good work, Vamberfeld. We’ve taken the breach,” he said.

  Vamberfeld was dumbstruck. And also covered in blood.

  “Stay sane,” Gaunt told him, “It gets better…”

  They were in a cloister, or a circumambulatory, as far as the dazed Verghastite could tell. Bright shafts of sunlight stippled down through the complex sandstone lattices, but the main window sections were screened with ornately mosaiced wood panels. The air was dry and dead, and rich with the afterscents of las-fire, fyceline and fresh blood.

  Vamberfeld could see Gaunt and Caffran moving ahead, Caffran hugging the cloister walls and searching for targets as Gaunt perused the enemy dead.

  The dead. The dreaded Infardi.

  When they had seized Hagia, the Chaos forces had taken the name Infardi, which meant “pilgrims” in the local language, and adopted a green silk uniform that mocked the shrineworld’s religion. The name was meant to mock it too; by choosing a name in the local tongue, the enemy were defiling the very sanctity of the place. For six thousand years, this had been the shrineworld of Saint Sabbat, one of the most beloved of Imperial saints, after whom this entire star cluster — and this Imperial crusade — were named. By taking Hagia and proclaiming themselves pilgrims, the foe were committing the ultimate desecration. What unholy rites they had conducted here in Hagia’s holy places did not bear thinking about.

  Vamberfeld had learned all about Pater Sin and his Chaos filth from the regimental briefings on the troop ship. Seeing it was something else. He glanced at the corpse nearest him: a large, gnarled man swathed in green silk wraps. Where the wraps parted or were torn away, Vamberfeld could see a wealth of tattoos: images of Saint Sabbat in grotesque congress with lascivious daemons, images of hell, runes of Chaos overstamping and polluting blessed symbols.

  He felt light-headed. Despite the months of training he had endured after joining the Ghosts, he was still out of shape: a desk-bound cleric playing at being soldier.

  His panic deepened.

  Caffran was suddenly firing again, splintering the dark with his muzzle-flashes. Vamberfeld couldn’t see Gaunt anymore. He threw himself flat on his belly and propped his gun as Colonel Corbec had taught him during Fundamental and Preparatory. His shots rattled up the colonnade past Caffran, supporting the young Tanith’s salvoes.

  Ahead, a flock of figures in shimmering green flickered down the cloister, firing lasguns and automatic hard-slug weapons at them. Vamberfeld could hear chanting too.

  Chanting wasn’t the right word, he realised. As they approached, the figures were murmuring, muttering long and complex phrases that overlapped and intertwined. He felt the sweat on his back go cold. He fired again. These troops were Infardi, the elite of Pater Sin. Emperor save him, he was in it up to his neck!

  Gaunt dropped to his knee next to him, aiming and firing his bolt pistol in a two-handed brace The trio of Imperial guns pummelled the Infardi advance in the narrow space.

  There was a flash and a dull roar, and then light streamed in ahead of them, cutting into the side of the Infardi charge. Blowing another breach in the cloister, more Ghosts poured in, slaughtering the advancing foe.

  Gaunt rose. The half-seen fighting ahead was sporadic now. He keyed his microbead intercom.

  There was a click of static that Vamberfeld felt in his own earpiece, then: “One, this is three. Clearing the space.” A pause, gunfire. “Clearance confirmed.”

  “One, three. Good work, Rawne. Fan inward and secure the precinct of the Universitariat.”

  “Three, acknowledged.”

  Gaunt looked down at Vamberfeld. “You can get up now,” he said.

  Dizzy, his heart pounding, Vamberfeld almost fell back out into the sunlight and wind of the square. He thought he might pass out, or worse, vomit. He stood with his back to the hot cloister stonework and breathed deeply, aware of how cold his skin was.

  He tried to f
ind something to focus his attention on. Above the stupa and gilt domes of the Universitariat thousands of flags, pennants and banners fluttered in the eternal wind of Hagia. He had been told the faithful raised them in the belief that by inscribing their sins onto the banners they would have them blown away and absolved. There were so many… so many colours, shapes, designs…

  Vamberfeld looked away.

  The Square of Sublime Tranquillity was now full of advancing Ghosts, a hundred or more, spilling out across the pink flagstones, checking doors and cloister entranceways. A large group had formed around the gibbet where Mkoll was cutting the corpses down.

  Vamberfeld slid down the wall until he was sitting on the stone flags of the square. He began to shake. He was still shaking when the medics found him.

  Mkoll, Lillo and Larkin were lowering the king’s pitiful corpse when Gaunt approached. The colonel-commissar looked dourly at the tortured remains. Kings were two a penny on Hagia: a feudal world, controlled by city-states in the name of the hallowed God-Emperor, and every town had a king. But the king of Doctrinopolis, Hagia’s first city, was the most exalted, the closest Hagia had to a planetary lord, and to see the highest officer of the Imperium disfigured so gravely offended Gaunt’s heart.

  “Infareem Infardus,” Gaunt muttered, remembering at last the high king’s name from his briefing slates. He took off his cap and bowed his head. “May the beloved Emperor rest you.”

  “What do we do with them, sir?” Mkoll asked, gesturing to the miserable bodies.

  “Whatever local custom decrees,” Gaunt answered. He looked about. “Trooper! Over here!”

  Trooper Brin Milo, the youngest Ghost, came running over at his commander’s cry. The only civilian saved from Tanith, saved by Gaunt personally, Milo had served as Gaunt’s adjutant until he had been old enough to join the ranks. All the Ghosts respected his close association with the colonel-commissar. Though an ordinary trooper, Milo was held in special regard.