by Dan Abnett
'You detailed, Try?' Corbec asked. I didn't know at that point why Corbec called him 'Try'.
'Yes, chief. Outhab sweep.'
'Take him out for a tour,' he told Bragg, indicating me. 'Show him what it's all about. And look after him, okay?'
I was afraid of Bragg to begin with. He was just so imposing and big. I quickly discovered he had a gentle heart that quite belied his ogrish appearance.
He gave me grey fatigues to wear in place of my rich blue civilian suit, and carefully strapped a spare ballistic vest around my torso. 'It should be quite enough, Mister Thoru,' he said. 'But you can never be too careful.' He had made a special effort to learn my name when we were introduced, and now used it respectfully. I felt I had been taken under his wing.
The men of his patrol assembled in the dusty air of the manufactory shed.
Bragg wasn't in charge. Lead fell to an older, bearded man called Baffels. Baffels was terribly serious about everything, like he had something to prove. I learned later he had only recently been promoted. There were eight others: a sniper called Larkin, a flame-trooper called Brostin, a scout called Doyl and five troopers called Domor, Milo, Feygor, Yael and Mktag.
They were an odd bunch, though they worked well together with the fluid ease that comes with shared experience. They all seemed to defer slightly to Larkin, the marksman, although he seemed to me a skinny, twitchy wretch liable to snap at the slightest provocation. They called him 'Larks' or 'Mad Larkin', neither of which gave me any reassurance. They seemed to respect him, however. Bragg told me that Larkin had given the unit its name, dubbing them all Gaunt's Ghosts early on. I tried to talk to Larkin about that, but he said little. Just being close to him made me edgy. He radiated nervous energy and was forever fiddling with his weapon. After a while, I left him alone for the sake of my own sanity.
Doyl was a handsome man in his mid-twenties, the perfect subject for an uplifting statue. But he was even less forthcoming than Larkin.
'He's a scout,' Bragg told me, as if that explained everything. Brostin, stinking of promethium, was a rough-hewn oaf with a bad line in inappropriate jokes. Domor was a sound type, thoughtful and reserved. He sported augmetic eyes and the men called him 'Shoggy', though they never told me why. His face and arms were pink with freshly healing burn tissue and this was his first patrol since he had been injured. I asked him how he had been hurt. Apparently a lasgun had exploded in his hands during close combat with Heritor Asphodel. I desperately wanted him to tell me more about that, but he wouldn't be drawn.
Mktag and Feygor were both in their thirties. Mktag was a cheery sort with a blue spiral tat around his left eye. Feygor was something else entirely. He had been wounded in the throat during the siege, and fresh augmetics has rebuilt his voice box. He was lean and surly, and, as it seemed to me, by far the most dangerous member of the unit.
Milo was the youngest, just a boy, really. Bragg told me Milo had only recently been awarded the rank of trooper. Before that he had been the only non-com to escape Tanith, saved by the colonel-commissar personally.
Yael wasn't much older. His lean adolescent body was just beginning to fill out with adult bulk. But there was a look in his eyes that showed he had grown up a long time since.
WE WENT OUT into the southern outhabs. The purpose of the patrol, Bragg told me, was to smoke out the last vestiges of the Zoican host. They were lying low in the rubble mass, he said, dug in like splinters.
It all seemed alarmingly casual to me, but Bragg carried the sort of heavy autocannon that normally required a turret to mount it on, so I stuck close to him.
We left the city via what remained of the Hieronymo Sondar Gate. Several of the war's key battles had been fought here, and a few kilometres east along the vast, pock-marked curtain wall was Veyveyr Gate, the railhead that had seen the most savage engagement of the entire conflict.
The scale of the war was apparent to me now. Behind me stood the massive, spired bulk of Vervunhive, ringed by what remained of the great defensive curtain wall. In front, stretching out southwards as far as I could see, lay the outer habitats, the mining districts, the collieries, the manufactories, the great belt of urban structure that skirted the main hive itself. This was where the longest phase of the war had been fought, a relentless, invasive attrition, street to street, as the hosts of Zoica advanced towards the curtain wall and the inner hive. We passed beside the wreckage of some of the Zoican war machines: not just tanks and AFVs, but massive things shaped like spiders or crustaceans. Their colossal hulls were seared black from the fires that had consumed them.
It was a bright, sunny day but the veils of smoke had stained the light almost green and settled a skein of haze across the middle distance like mist. A light wind from the southern grasslands lifted dust in little flurries and eddies. Speeders, drop-ships and shrieking Imperial interceptors crossed the sky back and forth, and the horizon to the south was flickering with flashes and tremors of light. Out in the grasslands, the fleeing remnants of the Zoican army were being hunted down to extinction.
For a while, there was activity everywhere. Columns of refugees, limping towards the city, laden with handcarts and baby carriages full of salvaged belongings. Foot patrols of Imperial Guardsmen. Trains of injured and, far worse, caravans of dead being shipped away for mass burial. Munitorium work crews and pioneer regiments engaged in the hopeless task of restoring some order to the carnage. I jumped with fright when a loud explosion roared through the manufactory block just west of us, but Bragg reassured me it was just an engineering detail blowing up some structure that was too dangerous to leave standing.
Narmenian tanks with dozer blades were clearing rubble and human debris from the main arterials, allowing light military convoys to speed more freely through the ruins. The Ghosts I was with had nothing but praise for the Narmenians, and saluted each tank that passed with waves and raised fists. From the reports I had read, Grizmund's Narmenian Armour had made a vital contribution to the victory, as had the Roane Deepers, the Vervun Primary and the 'scratch companies' of Vervunhive guerrillas. But Lady Chass had been quite specific. Gaunt's Ghosts were the ones she wished to celebrate. I wondered why her affections lay specifically with them. I supposed it was because of Gaunt himself. He had taken overall command at the crucial time, and secured the eventual victory almost personally.
I wished then I could have met him, rather than seeing his near-dead body in an infirmary bed.
The outhabs were terribly desolated. They had been pulverised by artillery so hard that barely a building was left standing. The ground was a tangle mass of shattered rockcrete and twisted metal spars. The air was thick with oily smoke, and where it wasn't, it was heavy with dust sifted off the rubble. There were fragments of human bone in the litter underfoot, white and burned clean. At first I thought they were shards of broken porcelain, until I saw one with an eye socket.
The piteous ruin that had befallen these worker habs was evident in every metre of the soil.
I began to feel unwell. This was upsetting, overwhelming. The genial Colonel Corbec had sent me on this trip deliberately. He obviously thought I could do with some sort of wake up call.
I resented that. I was fully awake to Vervunhive's misery. I didn't need to be shown it like this.
And there was no end to it. We crossed a sub-street that was littered with bodies. The air was noxious with corruption and full of flies. Corbec was a bastard, I decided. Whatever he thought of me and my commission, I wasn't looking for this kind of inspiration.
I realised Larkin was crying. It shook me to see it. And, though I know what you're thinking, it didn't diminish him in any way. I'd known from the first moment I saw him he was an emotionally vulnerable man. He didn't falter in his duty for a moment. He kept up the pace, covered all the angles he was asked to. He didn't even seem to be aware that he was crying. But he wept.
I have seen women weep. I have seen children weep. I have seen weak men sob.
I have never, in the sixt
y years since then, seen a soldier weep. This is the most aching sadness of all. Larkin's tears washed his filthy cheeks clean in long runnels. He kept about his business. To see a man trained and ready to kill cry for the fallen is to see true tragedy.
'Larkin... won't you shut the feth up?' Feygur said.
'I've... I've got something in my eye' Larkin said. I wanted to step forward and speak up in his defence, but Feygor looked meaner than ever. Besides, he had a lasrifle.
'Just shut up with the fething sobbing' Feygor said, his voice flat and toneless because of the augmetic larynx sewn into his throat.
'Leave him alone' said Baffela.
'Yeah,' said Mktag. 'We'll all be crying if Gaunt dies'
Feygor spat. 'He's dead already'
'He is not!' Domor said. 'He's hurt bad, but he's not dead.'
'Like they'd tell us if he was,' Feygor commented.
'They would!' said Domon
'Those eyes make you blind, Shoggy?' asked Brostin. 'We're just the poor simple dog-soldiers. They wouldn't tell us until it mattered. Bad for morale.'
'Think what you want,' said Yael. 'I reckon they'd tell us.'
'Gaunt's not dead,' said Milo.
'How so?' asked Feygor.
'I visit him every day. He wasn't dead this morning.'
'Yeah,' said Brostin, 'but was he alive?'
Milo didn't reply
'He was an hour ago,' I ventured.
'Who asked you?' Feygor spat.
'His name is Mister Thuro,' said Bragg. 'Be respectful.'
'Feth to respect,' said Feygor
'Shut up, all of you!' Doyl hissed.
We took cover in an old bakery, the side of which had been blown out. Doyl, with Feygor, scouted forward. I began to be convinced that I shouldn't have come.
'This Act of Consolation thing,' Mktag said as we hunkered low. 'Do you think anybody will take it?'
'They'd be mad to,' said Yael.
'I think some will,' Domor disagreed.
'Yeah, some... the crazies... ' said Brostin.
'Keep it down, will you?' Baffels called.
Brostin dropped his voice. 'You'd have to be mad to sign up. And these hivers, I don't know about them. Do we want their kind in our ranks?'
'I've seen them fight,' said Domor. 'The scratch companies. They're good. I'd be proud to have them with us.'
'They're not Tanith!' Brostin growled.
'No, they're not,' said Bragg. 'But I've seen them too. They fight like bastards.'
'Maybe, but would you be happy for them to take the Tanith colours? Eh?' Brostin asked. 'They're not Tanith! Feth this Act of Consolation... let them found their own regiment. They're not fething Tanith!'
'I was with Gaunt on the Spike raid, with a bunch of Verghast scratchers,' said Larkin suddenly. 'You were there too, Bragg. And you, Shoggy. The scratch company gave everything. That leader of theirs - what was his name?'
'Kolea,' said Bragg.
'Yeah... he was a piece of work. Totally driven.'
'Whatever.' Brostin said, unconvinced.
Doyl and Feygor returned to us. The way ahead was clear. We trawled forward through the landscape.
I think it was about then that I saved several lives. I had been looking at the devastation with a sculptor's eye for engineering. I said to Bragg: 'That way ahead. The slump of rockcrete looks like it's been disturbed.'
'How can you tell?' he asked.
I shrugged. 'I don't know. I just know from the feel of things how they should lie. That's not true. It's been drilled.'
Bragg called a halt. He tossed a rock onto the slumped slab and the resultant blast took out the ground and flung masonry debris through the air.
'Good call, Mister Thuro,' said Feygor
'If you can't be anything except sarcastic, Feygor shut the feth up!' Domor said.
'I'm not being sarcastic,' Feygor said, sarcastically.
'Shut the feth up!' several of them chorused.
'It's this thing! This thing!' Feygor insisted, rapping at the aug-unit in his throat with a dirty finger 'It makes me sound fething sarcastic even when I'm not!'
It was perfectly true. The raspy monotone of the implant rendered every word he uttered in a deadpan flatness. He was going to be sarcastic for the rest of his life.
'Be fair, you're sarcastic most of the time anyway,' said Brostin.
'Not always.'
'How can we tell when you're not being sarcastic?' asked Yael.
'Maybe he could hold up a hand when he's actually being sarcastic for real,' Mktag suggested. 'Like a signal.'
'Oh, that's a good idea,' said Feygon
Everyone looked at him. Slowly, reluctantly, he raised a hand.
I think we were all about to explode out laughing, even Feygor, but Doyl suddenly raised a hand himself, and the gesture had nothing to do with sarcasm.
We were all huddled low, and the dust from the booby-trap blast was still falling and settling. Wordlessly, Doyl pointed at two sites in the ruins ahead that seemed to me to be no different from the rest of the place. Then he made a couple of swift, deft hand signals.
Baffels nodded, and made a few gestures of his own. At once, Domor, Yael and Doyl slid to the left, crawling through the jumbled wasteland, and Feygor, Brostin and Milo went to the right.
'Keep low,' Bragg mouthed at me and I needed no encouragement. Damn House Chass should have paid me danger money for this. Bragg extended the bipod stand of his heavy weapon and nested it in pile of rubble. Mktag crouched beside him, unclasping ammo drums from his pack and feeding them to the munition port in the side of Bragg's support gun. Then he spread out the camouflage capes both he and Bragg were carrying and draped them out over their shoulders. Baffels was laying on his belly a few metres to the right, using a spotter periscope to survey out over the shattered brickwork. I realised I couldn't see Larkin. Then I realised he was immediately to my left, prone, with his sniper rifle raised in a firing position. Like the support gunners, he was draped in his camo-cape and though he was almost close enough for me to reach out and touch him, I had to look hard to see him. His concealment was extraordinary. I understand that is a trademark skill of the Tanith Ghosts.
I felt exposed, and entirely in the wrong place. I tried to curl up tighter against a cleft in the wall, but my feet dislodged loose stones and I got a dirty look from Larkin.
I could hear my own heart. I could smell brick dust and sweat, my own included. The sunlight seemed unpleasantly hot. There was the barest whisper of close-link vox exchanges.
Time seemed to slow down and stretch out, like a quiet, slow passage in a piece of music. It occurred to me then that I could never be a soldier. The waiting would kill me. It's ironic, I know. I can spend months on a work, whole weeks minutely carving some tiny part of it. I am obsessive with detail, and never care how long it takes to get something perfect, because the success of the whole might depend on one small part.
And this was the same, the same sort of meticulous craft. But here it was applied to war. The Guardsmen were singularly mindful to get this small preparation right, to have the patience to succeed. If a victory in war and a statue can be compared, and you'll forgive me but I'm not entirely sure they can, then achieving them, creating them, depends on detail and effort and patience. Curled up there in that outhab ruin, cursing the wait and the intolerable delay, I was about to live through the worst ten minutes of my life. And I am utterly convinced that I would not be alive now if the Ghosts had rushed a second of it.
I'd never heard a las-weapon discharge before, not for real. I'd seen plenty of newsreels, of course, displaying our glorious soldiery in acts of staged victory, but I know now that the deep, resonating bangs of those weapons were dubbed on afterwards. Real guns make a sharp, cracking nose, like breaking sticks. It's thin, dry and it doesn't sound at all important. I heard the cracking noise and wondered what it was, I was about to be educated.
I was about to be educated in all sorts of ways.
; Baffels was suddenly whispering urgently into his vox. I knew something was happening, and then there was a very loud crack right next to me. Larkin had fired. He fired again, and I recognised my own stupidity. The cracking sounds I had been hearing was the fight already underway.
There was a strange strobing of the light around me, like the daylight was flickering. Dust kicked up from a half-fallen wall behind our position and several clumps of stone fell out. I realised we were being fired at. The flickering of the daylight was being caused by bright las-rounds passing over us, almost invisible against the hard glare of the sky. Then a shot stung by against the bricks and I saw it clearly. A dart of seething fire, tinged red, the size of a man's middle finger, so bright it hurt my eyes, so fast it was barely there.
Bragg's cannon woke up. It also didn't make the sound I was expecting. It rattled metallically like the rock drills I sometimes use on larger works. It burped out irregular bursts of hard, spitting bangs, strung together very fast and overlayed by the tinny rattle of the mechanism and the feeding ammunition belt. Spent cases rained down underneath the heavy weapon and made a tinkling, pinging sound as they bounced off the rocks.
Milo. Feygor and Brostin suddenly reappeared, running back frantically and throwing themselves down into cover with us. As soon as they were down, Feygor and Milo rose on their knees and started firing indiscriminate shots over the cover wall with their lasrifles.
Brostin was struggling with his flamer unit.
'What the feth's the problem?' Baffels cried.
'We came up on a gang of them. Maybe six or seven, and we had them cold, but Brostin's damn burner jammed!' Feygor rasped out the explanation as he continued with his firing. Heavier shots were falling around us now, each one making a dull, hollow sound as it exploded into the rubble.
'Get it working?' Baffels yelled.
'I'm trying!' Brostin replied. 'The igniter's dead.'
'Feth! They're coming!' Milo called. 'I see them moving!'
'Larkin!' Baffels almost screamed.
'Can't get a clear shot,' Larkin hissed,
'Fething thing!' said Baffels, now unscrewing the blackened cover of the flamer's nozzle. I dared to raise my head.