[Gaunt's Ghosts 03] - Necropolis

by Dan Abnett - (ebook by Undead)

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  NECROPOLIS

  Gaunt’s Ghosts - 03

  (The Founding - 03)

  Dan Abnett

  (An Undead Scan v1.1)

  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 re-learned. 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.

  After the victories at Monthax and Lamacia, Warmaster Macaroth drove his forces swiftly along the trailing edge of the Sabbat Worlds cluster and turned inwards to assault the notorious enemy fortress-worlds in the Cabal system. Successful conquest of the Cabal system was a vital objective in the Imperial crusade to liberate the entire Sabbat Worlds group. To achieve this massive undertaking, the warmaster sent the line ships of his Segmentum Pacificus fleet forward in a pincer formation to begin the onslaught, while assembling and reforming his enormous Imperial Guard reserves ready for ground assault.

  “It took close to eight months for the troop components to convene at Solypsis, thousands of mass-conveyance transports carrying many million Imperial Guardsmen. There were many delays, and many minor skirmishes to settle en route. The Pragar regiments were held up for six weeks engaging the remnants of a Chaos legion on Nonimax, and a warp-storm forced the Samothrace and Sarpoy troop ships to remain at Antioch 148 for three whole months. However, it is the events that took place on the industrial hive-world of Verghast that are of particular interest to any student of Imperium military history…”

  —from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

  ONE

  ZOICA RISING

  “The distinction between Trade and Warfare is seen only by those who have no experience of either.”

  —Heironymo Sondar, House Sondar,

  from his inaugural address

  The klaxons began to wail, though it was still an hour or more to shift-rotation.

  The people of the hive-city paused as one. Millions of eyes checked timepieces, faltered in their work, looked up at the noise. Conversations trailed off. Feeble jokes were cracked to hide unease. Young children began to cry. House soldiery on the Curtain Wall voxed in confirmation and clarification requests to the Main Spine command station. Line supervisors and labour-stewards in the plants and manufactories chivvied their personnel back into production, but they were uneasy too. It was a test, surely? Or a mistake. A few moments more and the alarms would shut down again.

  But the klaxons did not desist.

  After a minute or so, raid-sirens in the central district also began keening. The pattern was picked up by manufactory hooters and mill-whistles all through the lower hive, and in the docks and outer habs across the river too. Even the great ceremonial horns on the top of the Ecclesiarchy Basilica started to sound.

  Vervunhive was screaming with every one of its voices.

  Everywhere, hazard lamps began to spin and flash, and secondary storm shutters cycled down on automatic to block windows. All the public-address plates in the city went black, erasing the glowing lines of weather, temperature, exchange-rate data, the local news and the ongoing output figures. They fuzzed darkly for a few seconds and then the words “Please stand by” scrolled across all of them in steady repeats.

  In the firelit halls of Vervun Smeltery One — part of the primary ore processing district just west of the Spoil — rattling conveyers laden with unprocessed rock shuddered to a halt as automatic safeties locked down. Above the main smelter silo, Plant Supervisor Agun Soric got up from behind a file-covered desk and crossed to the stained-glass window of his bureau. He looked down at the vast, halted plant in disbelief, then pulled on his work-jacket and went out onto the catwalk, staring at the thousands of milling workers below. Vor, his junior, hurried along the walk, his heavily booted feet ringing on the metal grill, the sound lost in the cacophony of hooters and sirens.

  “What is this, chief?” he gasped, coming close to Soric and pulling the tubes of his dust-filter from his mouth-damp.

  Soric shook his head. “It’s fifteen thousand cubits of lost production, that’s what the gak it is! And counting!”

  “What d’you reckon? A malfunction?”

  “In every alert system in the hive at once? Use your brain! A malfunction?”

  “Then what?”

  Soric paused, trying to think. The ideas that were forming in his mind were things he didn’t really want to entertain. “I pray to the Emperor himself that this isn’t…”

  “What, chief?”

  “Zoica… Zoica rising again.”

  “What?”

  Soric looked round at his junior with contempt. He wiped his fat, balding brow on the back of his gold-braided cuff. “Don’t you read the news-picts?”

  Vor shrugged. “Just the weather and the stadium results.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Soric told him. And too young to remember, he thought. Gak, he was too young himself, but his father’s father had told him about the Trade War. What was it, ninety years back, standard? Surely not again? But the picts had been full of it these last few months: Zoica silent, Zoica ceasing to trade, Zoica raising its bulwarks and setting armaments up along its northern walls.

  Those raid-sirens hadn’t sounded since the Trade War. Soric knew that as a bare fact.

  “Let’s hope you’re right, Vor,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s a gakking malfunction.”

  * * *

  In the Commercia, the general mercantile district north of the Main Spine, in the shadow of the Shield Pylon, Guilder Amchanduste Worlin tried to calm the buyers in his barter-house, but the sirens drowned him out. The retinues were leaving, gathering up servant trains and produce bearers, making frantic calls on their vox-links, leaving behind nothing: not a form-contract, not a promissory note, not a business slate and certainly none of their funds.

  Worlin put his hands to his head and cursed. His embroidered, sleet-silk gown felt suddenly hot and heavy .

  He yelled for his bodyguards and they appeared: Menx and Troor, bull-necked men in ivory-laced body-gloves with the crest of Guild Worlin branded on their cheeks. They had unshrouded their laspistols and the velvet shroud-cloths dangled limply from their cuffs.

  “Consult the high guild data-vox and the Administratum links!” Worlin spat. “Come back and tell me what this is, or don’t
come back at all!”

  They nodded and went off, pushing through the packs of departing traders.

  Worlin paced back into his private ante-room behind the auction hall, cursing at the sirens to shut up. The very last thing he needed now was an interruption to trade. He’d spent months and a great deal of Guild Worlin funds securing mercantile bonds with Noble House Yetch and four of the houses ordinary. All of that work would be for nothing if trade — and income — went slack. The whole deal could collapse. His kin would be aghast at such losses. They might even strip him of his badge and remove his trading rights.

  Worlin was shaking. He crossed to the decanter on the wrought-brass stack table and was about to pour himself a hefty shot of ten-year-old joiliq to calm his brittle mood. But he paused. He went to his desk, unlocked a drawer with the geno-key that he kept around his wrist on a thin chain and took out the compact needle pistol.

  He checked it was primed and armed, then fetched the drink. He sat back on his lifter throne, sipping his liquor and holding his badge of credit — the mark of his rank — gazing at the Worlin crest and its bright ornament. He waited, the weapon in his lap.

  The klaxons continued to wail.

  At carriage station C4/a, panic had begun. Workers and low-classers who had ventured into the mercantile slopes for a day’s resourcing began to mob every brass-framed transit that trundled in along the cogged, funicular trackway. Carriages were moving out towards the Outer Habs and the Main Spine alike, overloaded, some doors only half closed.

  Crowds on the platforms, shivering at each yelp of the alarms, were getting fractious as more and more fully laden transits clattered through without stopping. A slate-seller’s stall was overturned in the press.

  Livy Kolea, hab-wife, was beginning to panic herself. A body-surge of the crowd had pushed her past the pillars of the station atrium. She’d kept a firm grip on the handles of the child-cart and Yoncy was safe, but she’d lost sight of Dalin.

  “My son! Have you seen my son?” she asked, imploring the frenzied crowd that washed around her. “He’s only ten! A good boy! Blond, like his father!”

  She grabbed a passing guilder by the sleeve. A rich, lavish sleeve of painted silk.

  “My son—” she began.

  The guilder’s bodyguard, menacing in his rust-coloured mesh, pushed her aside. He jerked the satin shroud off the weapon in his left hand, just briefly, as a warning, escorting his master on. “Take the hand off, gak-swine,” his vox-enhanced larynx blurted gruffly, without emotion.

  “My son—” Livy repeated, trying to push the child-cart out of the flow of bodies.

  Yoncy was laughing, oblivious in his woollen wrap. Livy bent down under the segmented hood of the cart to stroke him, whispering soft, motherly words.

  But her mind was racing. People slammed into her, teetering the cart and she had to hold on to keep it upright. Why was this happening — to her — now? Why was it happening on the one day a month she carriaged into the lower Commercia to haggle for stuff? Gol had wanted a new pair of canvas mittens. His hands were so sore after a shift at the ore face.

  It was such a simple thing. Now this! And she hadn’t even got the mittens.

  Livy felt tears burst hot onto her cheeks.

  “Dalin!” she called.

  “I’m here, mam,” said a little voice, half hidden by the klaxons.

  Livy embraced her ten-year-old son with fury and conviction, like she would never let go.

  “I found him by the west exit,” a new voice added.

  Livy looked up, not breaking her hug. The girl was about sixteen, she reckoned, a slut from the outer habs, wearing the brands and piercings of a hab-ganger.

  “He’s all right though.”

  Livy looked the boy over quickly, checking for any signs of hurt. “Yes, yes he is… He’s all right. You’re all right, aren’t you, Dalin? Mam’s here.”

  Livy looked up at the outhab girl. “Thank you. Thank you for…”

  The girl pushed a ringed hand through her bleached hair.

  “It’s fine.”

  The girl made Livy uneasy. Those brands, that pierced nose. Gang marks.

  “Yes, yes… I’m in your debt. Now I must be going. Hold on to my hand, Dalin.”

  The girl stepped in front of the cart as Livy tried to turn it.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Don’t try to stop me, outhab! I have a blade in my purse!”

  The girl backed off, smiling. “I’m sure you have. I was just asking. The transits are packed and the exit stairs are no place for a woman with a kid and a cart.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe I could help you get the cart clear of this press?”

  And take my baby… take Yoncy for those things scum like you do down in the outer habs over the river!

  “No! Thank you, but… No!” Livy barked and pushed the gang-girl aside with the cart. She dragged the boy after her, pushing into the thicket of panic.

  “Only trying to help,” Tona Criid shrugged.

  The river tides were ebbing and thick, ore-rich spumes were coursing down the waters of the Hass. Longshoreman Folik edged his dirty, juddering flatbed ferry, the Magnificat, out from the north shore and began the eight-minute crossing to the main wharves. The diesel motor coughed and spluttered. Folik eased the revs and coasted between garbage scows and derelicts, following the dredged channel. Grey estuary birds, with hooked pink beaks, rose from the scows in a raucous swirl. To the Magnificat’s port side, the stone stilts of the Hass Viaduct, two hundred metres tall, cast long, cold shadows across the water.

  Those damn sirens! What was that about?

  Mincer sat at the prow, watching the low-water for new impediments. He gestured and Folik inched the ferry to starboard, swishing in between the trash hulks and the river-sound buoys.

  Folik could see the crowds on the jetty. Big crowds. He grinned to himself.

  “We’ll make a sweet bundle on this, Fol!” Mincer shouted, unlooping the tarred rope from the catheads.

  “I think so,” Folik murmured. “I just hope we have a chance to spend it…”

  * * *

  Merity Chass had been trying on long-gowns in the dressing suites of the gown-maker when the klaxons first began to sound. She froze, catching sight of her own pale, startled face in the dressing mirror. The klaxons were distant, almost plaintive, from up here in mid-Spine, but local alarms shortly joined in. Her handmaids came rushing in from the cloth-maker’s vestibule and helped her lace up her own dress.

  “They say Zoica goes to war!” said Maid Francer.

  “Like in the old times, like in the Trade War!” Maid Wholt added, pulling on a bodice string.

  “I have been educated by the best tutors in the hive. I know about the Trade War. It was the most bloody and production-costly event in hive history! Why do you giggle about it?”

  The maids curtseyed and backed away from Merity.

  “Soldiers!” Maid Wholt sniggered.

  “Handsome and hungry, coming here!” squealed Maid Francer.

  “Shut up, both of you!” Merity ordered. She pulled her muslin fichu around her shoulders and fastened the pin. Then she picked up her credit wand from the top of the rosewood credenza. Though the wand was a tool that gave her access to her personal expense account in the House Chass treasury, it was ornamental in design, a delicate lace fan which she flipped open and waved in front of her face as the built-in ioniser hummed.

  The maids looked down, stifling enthusiastic giggles.

  “Where is the gown maker?”

  “Hiding in the next room, under his desk,” Francer said.

  “I said you’d require transportation to be summoned, but he refuses to come out,” Wholt added.

  “Then this establishment will no longer enjoy the custom of Noble House Chass. We will find our own transport,” Merity said. Head high, she led her giggling maids out of the thickly carpeted gown-hall, through drapes that drew back automatically at their
approach and out into the perfumed elegance of the Promenade.

  Gol Kolea put down his axe-rake and pulled off his head-lamp. His hands were bloody and sore. The air was black with rock-soot, like fog. Gol sucked a mouthful of electrolyte fluid from his drinking pipe and refastened it to his collar.

  “What is that noise?” he asked Trug Vereas.

  Trug shrugged. “Sounds like an alarm, up there somewhere.” The work face of Number Seventeen Deep Working was way below the conduits and mine-head wheels of the mighty ore district. Gol and Trug were sixteen hundred metres underground.

  Another work gang passed them, also looking up and speaking in low voices.

  “Some kind of exercise?”

  “Must be,” Trug said. He and Gol stepped aside as a laden string of ore-carts loaded with loose conglomerate rattled by along the greasy mono-track. Somewhere nearby, a rock-drill began to chatter.

  “Okay…” Gol raised his tool and paused.

  “I worry about Livy.”

  “She’ll be fine. Trust me. And we’ve got a quota to fill.”

  Gol swung his axe-rake and dug in. He just wished the scrape and crack of his blade would drown out the distant sirens.

  Captain Ban Daur paused to button his double-breasted uniform coat and pull the leather harness into place. He forced his mind to be calm. As an officer, he would have been informed of any drill and usually he got wind even of surprise practises. But this was real. He could feel it.

  He picked up his gloves and his spiked helmet and left his quarters. The corridors of the Hass West wall-fort were bustling with troop details. All wore the blue cloth uniform and spiked helmets of the Vervun Primary, the city’s standing army. Five hundred thousand troops all told, plus another 70,000 auxiliaries and armour crews, a mighty force that manned the Curtain Wall and the wall forts of Vervunhive. The regiment had a noble heritage and had proved itself in the Trade War, from which time they had been maintained as a permanent institution. When foundings were ordered for the Imperial Guard, Vervunhive raised them from its forty billion-plus population. The men of Vervun Primary were never touched or transferred. It was a life-duty, a career. But though their predecessors had fought bravely, none of the men currently composing the ranks of Vervun Primary had ever seen combat.