[Gaunt's Ghosts 01] - First & Only

by Dan Abnett - (ebook by Undead)

  “And that weasel Macaroth got it,” Corbec said with a rueful grin.

  “That’s Warmaster Weasel Macaroth, colonel,” Gaunt corrected. He let the men chuckle. Good humour would make this easier. “Like him or not, he’s in charge now. And that makes it simple for us. Like me, you are all loyal to the Emperor, and therefore to Warmaster Macaroth. Slaydo chose him to be successor. Macaroth’s word is the word of the Golden Throne itself. He speaks with Imperium authority.”

  Gaunt paused. The men watched him quizzically, as if they had missed the point of some joke.

  “But someone’s not happy about that, are they?” Milo said dourly, from the back. The officers snapped around to stare at him and then turned back equally sharply as they heard the commissar laugh.

  “Indeed. There are probably many who resent his promotion over them. And one in particular we all know, if only by name. Lord Militant General Dravere. The very man who commands our section of the Crusade force.”

  “What are you saying, sir?” Lerod asked with aghast disbelief. Lerod was a large, shaven-headed sergeant with an Imperial eagle tattoo on his temple. He had commanded the militia unit in Tanith Ultima, the Imperial shrine-city on the Ghost’s lost homeworld, and as a result he, along with the other troopers from Ultima, were the most devoted and resolute Imperial servants in the Tanith First. Gaunt knew that Lerod would be perhaps the most difficult to convince. “Are you suggesting that Lord General Dravere has renegade tendencies? That he is… disloyal? But he’s your direct superior, sir!”

  “Which is why this discussion is being held in private. If I’m right, who can we turn to?”

  The men greeted this with uncomfortable silence.

  Gaunt went on. “Dravere has never hidden the fact that he felt Slaydo snubbed him by appointing the younger Macaroth. It must rankle deeply to serve under an upstart who has been promoted past you. I am pretty certain that Dravere plans to usurp the warmaster.”

  “Let them fight for it!” Varl spat, and others concurred. “What’s another dead officer — begging your pardon, sir.”

  Gaunt smiled. “You echo my initial thoughts on the matter, sergeant. But think it through. If Dravere moves his own forces against Macaroth, it will weaken this entire endeavour. Weaken it at the very moment we should be consolidating for the push into new, more hostile territories. What good are we against the forces of the enemy if we’re battling with ourselves? If it came to it, we’d be wide open, weak… and ripe for slaughter. Dravere’s plans threaten the entire future of us all.”

  Another heavy silence. Gaunt rubbed his lean chin. “If Dravere goes through with this, we could throw everything away. Everything we’ve won in the Sabbat Worlds these last ten years.”

  Gaunt leaned forward. “There’s more. If I was going to usurp the Warmaster, I’d want a whole lot more than a few loyal regiments with me. I’d want an edge.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Lerod asked, now hanging on Gaunt’s words.

  “Of course it is. Dravere is after something. Something big. Something so big it will actually place him on an equal footing with the warmaster. Or even make him stronger. And that is where we pitiful few come into the picture.” He paused for a moment.

  “When I was on Pyrites, I came into possession of this…”

  Gaunt held up the crystal.

  “The information encrypted onto this crystal holds the key to it all. Dravere’s spy network was transmitting it back to him and it was intercepted.”

  “By who?” Lerod asked.

  “By Macaroth’s loyal spy network, Imperial intelligence, working to undermine Dravere’s conspiracy. They are covert, vulnerable, few, but they are the only things working against the mechanism of Dravere’s ascendancy.”

  “Why you?” Dorden asked quietly.

  Gaunt paused. Even now, he could not tell them the real reason. That it was foretold. “I was there, and I was trusted. I don’t understand it all. An old friend of mine is part of the intelligence hub, and he contacted me to caretake this precious cargo. It seemed there was no one else on Pyrites close enough or trusted enough to do it.”

  Varl shifted in his seat, scratching his shoulder implant. “So? What’s on it?”

  “I have no idea,” Gaunt said. “It’s encoded.”

  Lerod started to say something else, but Gaunt added, “It’s Vermilion level.”

  There was a long pause, accompanied only by Blane’s long, impressed whistle.

  “Now do you see?” Gaunt asked.

  “What do we do?” Varl said dully.

  “We find out what’s on it. Then we decide.”

  “But how—” Meryn began, but Gaunt held up a calming hand.

  “That’s my job, and I think I can do it. Easily, in fact. After that… well, that’s why I wanted you all in on this. Already, Dravere’s covert network has attempted to kill me and retrieve the crystal. Twice. Once on Pyrites and now here again on the ship. I need you with me, to guard this priceless thing, to keep the Lord Militant General’s spies from it. To cover me until I can see the way clear to the action we should take.”

  Silence reigned in the staff room.

  “Are you with me?” Gaunt asked. The silence beat on, almost stifling. The officers exchanged furtive glances. In the end, it was Lerod who spoke for them. Gaunt was particularly glad it was Lerod.

  “Do you have to ask, commissar?” he said simply.

  Gaunt smiled his thanks. He got up from the display unit and stepped off the dais as the men rose. “Let’s get to it. Rawne’s already setting patrols to keep this barrack deck secure. Support and bolster that effort. I want to feel confident that the area of this ship given over to us is safe ground. Keep intruders out, or escort them directly to me. If the men question the precautions, tell them we think that those damn Patricians might try something to ease their grudge against us. Terra knows, that’s true enough, and there are over four times our number of Patricians aboard this vessel on the other barrack decks. And the Patricians are undoubtedly in Dravere’s pocket.

  “I also want the entire deck searched for hidden vox-relays and vista-lines. Hasker, Varl… use any men you know with technical aptitude to perform the sweep. They may be trying all manner of ways of spying on us. From this moment on, trust no one outside our regiment. No one. There is no way of telling who might be part of the conspiracy around us.”

  The officers seemed eager but unsettled. Gaunt knew that this was strange work for regular soldiers. They filed out, faces grave.

  Gaunt looked at the crystal in his hand. What are you hiding? he wondered.

  SEVEN

  Gaunt returned to his quarters with the silent Milo in tow. Corbec had set two Ghosts to guard the commissar’s private room. Gaunt sat at the cogitator set into a wall alcove, and began to explore the shipboard information he could access through the terminal. Lines of gently flickering amber text scrolled across the dark vista-plate. He was hoping for a personnel manifest, searching for names that might hint at the identity of those that opposed him. But the details were jumbled and incomplete. It wasn’t even clear which other regiments were actually aboard. The Patricians were listed, and a complement of mechanised units from the Bovanian Ninth. But Gaunt knew there must be at least two other regimental strengths aboard, and the listing was blank. He also tried to view the particulars of the Absalom’s officer cadre, and any other senior Imperial servants making the crossing with them, but those levels of data were locked by naval cipher veils, and Gaunt did not have the authority to penetrate them.

  Technology, such as it was, was a sandbagged barricade keeping him out. He sat back in his chair and sighed. His shoulder was sore. The crystal lay on the console near his hand. It was time to try it. Time to try his guess. He’d been putting it off, in case it didn’t work really. He got up.

  Milo had begun to snooze on a seat by the door and the sudden movement startled him.

  “Sir?”

  Gaunt was on his feet, carelessly pulling
his kitbag and luggage trunks from the wall locker.

  “Let’s hope the old man wasn’t lying!” was all Gaunt said.

  Which old man, Milo had no idea.

  Gaunt rifled through his baggage. A silk-swathed dress uniform ended up on the floor. Books and data-slates spewed from pulled-open pouches.

  Milo was fascinated for a moment. The commissar always packed his own effects, and Milo had never seen the few possessions Gaunt valued enough to carry with him. The boy glimpsed a bar of medals wound in tunic doth; a larger, grand silver starburst rosette that fell from its velvet lined case; a faded forage cap with Hyrkan insignia; a glass box of painkiller tablets; a dozen large, yellow slab-like teeth — ork teeth — drilled and threaded onto a cord; an antique scope in a wooden case; a worn buckle brush and a tin of silver polish; a tarot gaming deck which spilled out of its ivory box. The cards were stiff pasteboard, decorated with commemorative images of a liberation festival on somewhere called Gylatus Decimus. Milo bent to collect them up before Gaunt trampled them. They were clean and new, never used; the lid of the box was inscribed with the letters D. O.

  Unheeding, Gaunt pulled handfuls of clothes out of his kit-bag and flung them aside. Milo grinned. He felt somehow privileged to see this stuff, as if the commissar had let him into his mind for a while.

  Then something else bounced off the accumulating clutter on the deck and Milo paused. It was a toy battleship, rudely carved from a hunk of plastene. Enamel paint was flaking away, and some of the towers and gun turrets had broken off. Milo turned away. There was something painful about the toy, something that let him glimpse further into Ibram Gaunt’s private realm of loss than he wanted to go.

  The feeling surprised him. He retreated a little, dropping some of the cards he had been shuffling back into their ivory box, and was glad of the excuse to busy himself picking them up.

  Gaunt suddenly turned from the mess, a look of triumph in his eyes. He held up a tarnished, old signet ring between his fingers.

  “What you were looking for, commissar?” Milo asked brightly, feeling a comment was expected.

  “Oh yes. Dear old Uncle Dercius, that bastard. Gave it me as a distraction that night—” Gaunt stopped suddenly, thoughts clouding his face.

  He sat down on the bunk next to Milo, glancing over and chuckling sadly as he saw the deck the boy was sorting. “Souvenirs. Hnh. Emperor knows why I keep them. Never glance at them for years and then they only dredge up black memories.”

  He took the cards and rifled through them, holding up some to show Milo, laughing sourly as he did so, as if the Tanith youth could understand the reason for humour. One card showed a Hyrkan flag flying from some tower or other, another showed a heraldic design with an ork’s skull, another a moon struck by lightning from the beak of an Imperial eagle.

  “Seventy-two reasons to forget our noble victory in the Gylatus World Flock,” he said mockingly.

  “And the ring?” Milo asked.

  Gaunt put the cards aside. He turned the milling on the signet mount and a short beam of light stabbed out of the ring. “Feth! Still power in the cell, after all this time!”

  Milo smiled, uncertain.

  “A decryption ring. Officer level. A key to let senior staff access private or veiled data. A general’s plaything. They used to be quite popular. This was issued to the commander-in-chief of the noble Jantine regiments, a lord of the very highest standing. And that old bastard gave it to a little boy on Manzipor.”

  Gaunt dug the crystal out of his tunic pocket and held it over the ring’s beam. He glanced at Milo for a second. There was a surprisingly impish, youthful glee in Gaunt’s eyes that made Milo snort with laughter.

  “Here goes,” Gaunt said. He slipped the base of the crystal onto the ring mount. It fitted perfectly and engaged with a tiny whirr. Locked in place, as if the stone was now set on the ring band like an outrageously showy gem, it was illuminated by the beam of light. The crystal glowed.

  “Come on, come on…” Gaunt said.

  Something started to form in the air a few centimetres above the ring, a pict-form, neon bright and lambent in the dimness of the cabin.

  The tight, small holographic runes hanging in the air read: “Authority denied. This document may only be opened by Vermilion level decryption as set by order of Senthis, Administratum Elector, Pacificus calendar 403457.M41. Any attempts to tamper with this data-receptacle will result in memory wipe.”

  Gaunt cursed and slipped the crystal off the mount, cancelling the ring’s beam. “Too old, too damn old! Feth, I thought I had it!”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “The clearance levels remain the same, but they revise the codes required to read them at regular intervals. Dercius’ ring would certainly have opened a Vermilion text thirty years ago, but the sequences have been overwritten since then. I should have expected Dravere to have set his own confidence codes. Damn!”

  Gaunt looked like he was going to continue cursing, but there was a sharp knock at the door of his quarters. Gaunt pocketed the crystal smartly and opened the door. Trooper Uan, one of the corridor sentries, looked in at him.

  “Sergeant Blane has brought visitors to you, sir. We’ve checked them for weapons, and they’re clean. Will you see them?”

  Gaunt nodded, pulling on his cap and longcoat. He stepped out into the corridor. When he saw the identity of the visitors, Gaunt waved his men back and walked down to greet them.

  It was Colonel Zoren, the Vitrian commander, and three of his officers.

  “Well met, commissar,” Zoren said curtly. He and his men were dressed in ochre fatigues and soft caps.

  “I didn’t realise you Vitrians were aboard,” Gaunt said.

  “Last minute change. We were bound for the Japhet but there was a problem with the boarding tubes. They re-routed us here. The regiments scheduled for the Absalom took our places on the Japhet once the technical problems were solved. My platoons have been given the barrack decks aft of here.”

  “It’s good to see you, colonel.”

  Zoren nodded, but there was something he was holding back, Gaunt sensed. “When I learned we were sharing the same transport as the Tanith, I thought perhaps an interaction would be appropriate. We have a mutual victory to celebrate. But—”

  “But?”

  Zoren dropped his voice. “I was attacked in my quarters this morning. A man dressed in unmarked navy overalls was searching my belongings. He rounded on me when I came in. There was a struggle. He escaped.”

  Gaunt felt his anger return. “Go on.”

  “He was looking for something. Something he thought I might have, something he had failed to find elsewhere. I thought I should tell you directly.”

  Milo, Uan and everyone in the corridor, including Zoren himself, was surprised when Gaunt grabbed the Vitrian colonel by the front of his tunic and dragged him into his quarters. Gaunt slammed the door shut after them.

  Alone in the room, Gaunt turned on Zoren, who looked hurt but somehow not surprised.

  “That was a terribly well-informed statement, colonel.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Start making sense, Zoren, or I’ll forget our friendship.”

  “No need for unpleasantness, Gaunt. I know more than you imagine and, I assure you, I am a friend.”

  “Of whom?”

  “Of you, of the Throne of Terra, and of a mutual acquaintance I know him as Bel Torthute. You know him as Fereyd.”

  EIGHT

  “It’s…” Colonel Draker Flense began. “It’s a lot to think about.”

  He was answered by a snigger that did nothing to calm his nerves. The snigger came from a tall, hooded shape at the rear of the room, a figure silhouetted against a window of stained glass imagery which was lit by the flashes and glints of the immaterium.

  “You’re a soldier, Flense. I don’t believe thinking is part of the job description.”

  Flense bit back on a sharp answer. He was afraid, terribly afraid o
f the man in the multi-coloured shadows of the window. He shifted uneasily, dying for a breathe of fresh air, his throat parched. The chamber was thick with the smoke from the obscura water-pipe on its slate plinth by the steps to the window. The nectar-sweet opiate smoke swirled around him and stole all humidity from the air. His mind was slack and torpid from breathing it in.

  Warrant Officer Lekulanzi, stood by the door and the three shrouded astropaths grouped in a huddle in the shadows to his left didn’t seem to mind. The astropaths were a law unto themselves, and Flense had recognised the pallor of an obscura addict in Lekulanzi’s face the moment the warrant officer had arrived at his quarters to summon him. Flense had lead an assault into an addict-hive on Poscol years before. He had never forgotten the sweet stench, nor the pallor of the halfhearted resistance.

  The figure at the windows stepped slowly down to face him. Flense, two metres tall without his jackboots, found himself looking up into the darkness of the cowl.

  “Well, colonel?” whispered the voice inside the hood.

  “I — I don’t really understand what is expected of me, my lord.”

  Inquisitor Golesh Constantine Pheppos Heldane sniggered again. He reached up with his ring-heavy fingers and turned back his cowl. Flense blinked. Heldane’s face was high and long, like some equine beast. His wet, sneering mouth was full of blunt teeth and his eyes were round and dark. Fluid tubes and fibre-wires laced his long, sloped skull like hair braids. His huge skull was hairless, but Flense could see the matted fur that coated his neck and throat. He was human, but his features had been surgically altered to inspire terror and obedience in those he… studied. At least, Flense hoped it was a surgical alteration.

  “You seem uneasy, colonel. Is it the circumstance, or my words?”

  Flense found himself floundering for speech again. “I’ve never been admitted to a sacrosanctorium before, lord,” he began.