SABBAT WAR

by Edited by Dan Abnett

  Lyhan called Hacquet over. ‘We’ve got to make sure there’s no more enemy down at the tunnel face.’

  Hacquet nodded. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘I’ll seal the lift shaft.’

  ‘Fuse?’

  ‘I’ve got the remote detonator.’

  Hacquet nodded, then disappeared through the gap, heading towards the tunnel face.

  Lyhan hefted one of the demo charges that Coppet had already moved up tunnel. Not nearly enough for a mine, but more than sufficient to close off a shaft.

  With charge in one hand and his other holding the knife, Lyhan started up the tunnel towards its head.

  The enemy tunnel was broader and taller than their own, but still not high enough for him to move without stooping. The supports and struts were carved and graffitied with stomach-churning pictures and writing that, though in a script unknown to him, scratched its meaning at his eyes so that they wept.

  Lyhan had advanced about fifteen metres when he heard it: a chitinous, chittering, whirring sound.

  The cutting machine.

  It emerged from a branch tunnel and turned towards Lyhan. It was a thing of metal and bone, of teeth and claws meeting and crossing and cutting, but behind and through the flailing limbs Lyhan saw – the final blasphemy – the quiet brown eyes of someone who had once been a human being before the enemy ruined him, grafting extra cutting limbs to his body, modifying jaws into crushing mandibles, mixing a man with some hideous ground-boring creature. Lyhan looked down at his knife as the creature, chittering, turned towards him, jaws clashing in an idiot rhythm as it advanced.

  Crouching, Lyhan held out his knife, its blade stropped to a finer cutting edge than the rock-blunted teeth of the monstrosity.

  ‘Come on!’

  The thing paused, chittering, whickering, then came scuttling towards him, eyes closing as its jaws opened. Lyhan threw the demo charge into its open maw, flinging himself back as the jaws, feeling contact, closed, then pressed the detonator.

  The charge was a small one. It eviscerated the creature from inside, peeling it open as Lyhan hunkered down on the tunnel floor in a foetal position, arms wrapped over his face and head.

  Hacquet found him there a minute later.

  ‘Face is clear.’ Hacquet pointed. ‘What was that?’

  Lyhan held up his arm and Hacquet hauled him to his feet. ‘Cutting machine.’

  ‘Not much left.’

  ‘I’m going to need another demo charge. Used mine.’

  ‘Wait here. I’ll get it.’

  Lyhan leaned against the wall as Hacquet scurried back to the break point into their own tunnel. With this amount of noise, the enemy would surely send an attack team down the shaft.

  Hacquet hurried back, demo charge and fuse wire in hand. With the bagger leading, the two men made their way up the tunnel, moving as fast as they dared.

  The branch tunnel from which the tunnelling creature had emerged was clear. The tunnel broadened and heightened as they went, so that they were able to stand upright. Hacquet pointed ahead to the bottom of the lift shaft. Lyhan counted off the paces as they rushed forward, tallying the distance from where the branch tunnel left the main channel.

  Lyhan and Hacquet stepped into the tunnel head, moving together, scanning for enemy. But the space was clear, although littered with the filth of his presence, every surface scrawled and daubed with pictures or the vile, eye-scratching script of the Archenemy. There were two other tunnels radiating out from the tunnel head. Lyhan nodded to one, positioned himself by the other.

  Clear, signalled Hacquet.

  Lyhan’s tunnel was clear too. The kicker pointed up.

  ‘We’re right under target.’

  Hacquet hefted the demo charge over to the lift shaft and, standing in it, started to strip the insulation from the end of the fuse wire.

  The lift cable started rolling.

  Hacquet threw one end of the fuse wire to Lyhan and, ramming the charge into the lift wall, started wiring it to the detonator pins while Lyhan unspooled it, spinning the drum as he stepped backwards. Hacquet glanced up, then back to the detonator pins, winding the fuse wire round one, then the other. At the other end, Lyhan cut the wire – he had only unspooled six metres – and, dropping the coil at his feet, started attaching the fuse to the detonator switch.

  Hacquet glanced up again, looked at Lyhan.

  ‘Blow it!’ he yelled.

  But Lyhan was still fixing the second wire to the switch.

  Hacquet threw himself forward, running, as Lyhan fixed the second contact. He looked up. Hacquet was barely out of the tunnel head but he was screaming, ‘Blow it, blow it,’ and Lyhan pressed the contact.

  The explosion propelled Hacquet like a missile down the tunnel. He slammed into Lyhan, sending him over. The kicker lay on his back for a moment, stunned, ears ringing, then sat up. The lift shaft had collapsed. Whoever had been coming down in that lift would stay in it.

  Hacquet was lying in front of Lyhan, face down. The kicker grabbed him, turned him over. Hacquet stared up at the ceiling, gasping with pain, his right leg bent backwards.

  ‘My leg. I can’t move.’

  ‘You’d better set the charges then.’

  Lyhan looked round. Coppet was standing there, loaded up with demo charges.

  ‘Don’t need no legs for that,’ the trammer added. ‘We’ll carry you out when you’re done.’

  Hacquet nodded. Lyhan hauled him into a sitting position as Coppet dropped the first load of charges by them and set off back down the tunnel, a human explosives mule.

  ‘Go help him,’ said Hacquet.

  Lyhan looked at Hacquet’s face, white and drawn. ‘Sure?’

  For answer, Hacquet set to strapping the demolition charges together.

  Lyhan set off after Coppet. Together, the two men relayed the demo charges from the attack tunnel to where Hacquet sat, fixing the explosives into the face of the shaft fall, his face set into a rictus of concentration and pain.

  They had moved maybe half the demolition charges when Hacquet stopped Lyhan after his latest drop.

  ‘Listen.’

  Lyhan, heart pumping, tried to slow down his breathing so that he could hear, but he did not have to quiet himself much to hear the thrash-cut of the enemy’s cutting machines, like a hundred knives slicing through the earth. The sound was coming from three directions: above, from the shaft, and horizontally from the direction of the two other tunnels that ran to the tunnel head.

  Lyhan turned his head, listening.

  ‘They’re close,’ said Hacquet.

  Lyhan nodded. ‘Not close enough.’

  ‘How long?’

  Lyhan checked his timepiece. ‘Twenty-three minutes.’

  ‘Get a move on, then.’

  The kicker started back down the tunnel while Hacquet set the demo charges he had brought.

  ‘That’s all.’

  Lyhan put the last demo charge down next to Hacquet. He turned his head, listening. The sounds were closer now, much closer. He put his hand on the tunnel wall. He could feel it shaking under his hand.

  Coppet looked at him. ‘They’ll break through soon.’

  Lyhan grinned. ‘They’ll get a surprise if they do.’ He turned to Hacquet. ‘Come on, let’s get you up.’

  But the bagger did not move. He held up the detonator. ‘This is all the fuse wire we’ve got.’

  ‘But I brought a reel,’ said Lyhan.

  Hacquet pointed to the fall blocking the tunnel head. ‘It’s under there. You dropped it when the charge blew.’

  The kicker stared at the clay face, then started pulling at it with his hands, scrabbling at the dirt.

  Coppet grabbed him, pulling him back.

  ‘There’s no time,’ said Hacquet. He looked up at Lyhan and Coppet. ‘I’ll give you as long as I can. Now go.’

  Lyhan stared down at the bagger, sitting with his back propped against the mine, detonator in hand. He nodded.

  Hacquet s
miled. ‘Like you said, they’ll get a surprise when they break through.’

  The kicker and the trammer turned and started running down the enemy tunnel, heads low, the flesh on the back of their necks involuntarily shrinking as they waited for the whoosh of fyceline to come down the tunnel after them, but they reached the break point and dived through into their own attack tunnel.

  They had gone nearly halfway when Coppet stopped, Lyhan running into him.

  ‘Tavish,’ said Coppet.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ said Lyhan. ‘You go. Get the blast doors shut.’

  Coppet set off down the tunnel.

  Lyhan turned back, ran to the cage and picked up the bobbin. Tavish chirped expectantly, as if expecting a seed twist, and then indignantly as he was bumped around in his cage.

  Lyhan checked his timepiece. The final seconds were running down. There was no time to get to the end of the tunnel.

  But there were other ways of sealing off a tunnel. Putting Tavish down, Lyhan grabbed the crosspiece across the gap between the tunnels and began to haul on it. It was here where Hacquet had noticed the bulge, which had made them stop and alerted them to the enemy tunnel. Muscles cracking, bones creaking, Lyhan pulled and pulled and pulled, trying to break the crosspiece from the grip of the rockcrete.

  The enemy, in breaking through, had cracked the rockcrete in many places. Without that, it would have been impossible to shift, but with effort Lyhan felt the crosspiece begin to move. As it did, the bulge in the clay above it swelled and, like a blood blister, popped.

  The flowsand knocked him backwards, immediately covering his legs up to the waist. Lyhan struggled against its force but it was implacable and every moment more of it piled on top of him. It was rising up his chest now, crushing him beneath its weight, and spilling through the skin into the enemy tunnel, filling that too.

  Lyhan flailed with his hands, trying to dig the lower half of his body out, but the flowsand covered each scoop with more. Pressed up against the side of the tunnel, the flowsand up to his armpits, Lyhan struggled desperately but its weight was such that he could not move his legs at all.

  It was up to his neck now, flowing with the speed of a warp tide. Lyhan heard a desperate cheeping and saw Tavish, his cage jammed up against a support, the flowsand rising up and up towards the little bobbin.

  The flowsand rose to his chin. Lyhan held his arms up over the rising sediment, trying to make some sort of air pocket around his face, but he knew it was useless. He was about to drown in sand.

  Then Hacquet blew the mine.

  The pressure wave came down the enemy tunnel and reached the break, pulsing through the flowsand and hitting Lyhan with the suddenness of a hot shot. He did not even have time to remark on Hacquet’s success before the underground dark swallowed him.

  Lyhan woke, choking. Flowsand plugged his nose and filled his mouth. He coughed, but the sand held his body tight as a vice: he could not move. The flowsand rasped in his nose as he struggled not to breathe but, opening his eyes, Lyhan realised he could see, dimly. The top of his head was clear. He strained, strained with all that remained in his body, to turn his head, to move it just a little. The flowsand shifted, trickling back, and he felt air upon his face and in his mouth and he breathed, a great gulping-in breath that became a paroxysm of coughing as the sand in his mouth went down his throat. But he could breathe.

  Lyhan felt the sand shift again, flowing off him and, turning his head, he saw Coppet, using his hands as shovels, scooping the flowsand away from him.

  ‘He did it,’ said Coppet. ‘He did it.’

  Lyhan nodded, spitting flowsand from his mouth as Coppet freed his legs. The kicker stared at the breach. The pressure shock had sealed it as firmly as a rockcrete seal.

  Coppet pulled Tavish’s cage out of the flowsand and then hauled Lyhan to his feet.

  The kicker stared up the tunnel.

  ‘He bloody well did,’ he said.

  Six hours after zero hour, when operational isolation was lifted, the first lift from the deep shelter of the Roane Deepers reached the subsurface bunker. Chief Sapper Markwell, with Sapper Lyhan and Sapper Coppet, emerged into the light.

  Although the light was gloomy, filtered through tunnels to the surface, it seemed blinding to men who had spent the last three weeks below ground. Markwell blinked, trying to see clearly.

  Around him, on makeshift stretchers, were casualties. But the floor of the bunker was not covered: there was space. Between them, medicae circulated, tending to the wounded. One looked round to see the men, standing like ghosts at the entrance to the lift.

  ‘You. Who gave you permission to come here? You’re not wounded.’

  ‘Where’s the colonel?’ asked Markwell.

  ‘He’s moved the colours to the top of the Scar,’ said the medicae.

  Markwell ran his fingers down over his face. ‘They’ve taken it,’ he said.

  The medicae stopped and looked more closely at Markwell, Lyhan and Coppet. ‘You didn’t know? Seems like the earth just exploded and swallowed all the enemy trenches and redoubts as we were about to attack. Most likely their ammunition store. After that, it was straightforward. Pretty bloody elsewhere but we’ve broken through and we’ll turn the front from here.’

  Markwell nodded but Lyhan was looking at the injured men lying on the makeshift beds. He turned to the medicae.

  ‘These are Bluebloods,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the medicae. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But it was the Deepers on this sector. Didn’t any of them get hurt?’

  The medicae laughed. ‘That rabble. The general decided two days before zero hour that they would never take this sector so he gave it to us and moved the Deepers down the line. Just as well he did – from what I heard, the Deepers did just what you would expect and messed up their attack. Heard it was over fifty per cent casualties. Still, who would miss them?’

  Lyhan stared at him. ‘Yeah, who would.’

  The medicae turned away but Lyhan grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘One thing. What’s the name of the general?’

  ‘Dorf. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No. No one told us.’

  Warmaster Slaydo looked up from the data-slate to the aide, Commissar Sharma, who had presented it to him.

  ‘So you are telling me that the landslip that swallowed General Dorf’s quarters and took that bloodstained ogre down into the depths was not natural but a deliberately planted mine? A mine planted by his own troops?’

  ‘Yes, lord general,’ said Commissar Sharma. ‘I am afraid I am.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That, I have not yet established. But I thought I had better apprise you of this urgent finding before I return to continue the investigation…’ The commissar’s voice trailed away. He watched as the Warmaster closed the data-slate and, slowly and deliberately, set it to clear all memory.

  ‘Warmaster?’

  Slaydo looked at the commissar. ‘The mad old bastard had his victory. This way, I won’t have to suffer any more of them.’

  ‘But, Warmaster…’

  Slaydo held up his hand. ‘What do you think would happen if there ever grew up among the men the thought, even the hint of the suspicion, that this might be possible? That one of our generals died not by the enemy’s hand, but by the troops under his own command?’ The Warmaster handed the blank data-slate back to Sharma. ‘The investigation is closed, commissar. General Dorf will have his victory memorial, finally, and we can get on with the crusade.’

  ‘Yes, Warmaster.’ Sharma saluted and turned to go.

  ‘Oh, and commissar?’

  ‘Yes, Warmaster?’

  ‘Transfer the Roane Deepers to General Bulledin’s command.’

  ‘Yes, Warmaster.’

  ARMADUKE

  WRITTEN BY JOHN FRENCH

  PREFACE

  Another story set in the crusade’s past continuity, written by another High Lord veteran of the Heresy series. John French absolutely
knows what he’s doing, and what he’s doing is writing memorable, atmospheric and often lyrical stories.

  Here, he delivers a tale about an ‘old favourite’ from the Gaunt’s Ghosts books, exploring events that took place before said favourite’s first appearance (in Salvation’s Reach). It’s gripping, it’s deeply linked to the series’ continuity, and it weaves a fabric of credible myth and old folklore that seems like it’s always existed. It’s about custom, habit, tradition, legend, superstition… plus a modicum of shooty-death-kill-in-space, obviously.

  John’s story is called Armaduke. I’ll say no more than that…

  ‘Out to sea my love waits for me… waits for me…

  But a ghost my love is and will ever be… ever be…

  My love sung to me… sung to me and the shadow at my back I didn’t see…

  Didn’t see, didn’t see… and now my bones my ghost love keeps from me.’

  – Refrain from a gang crew song popular in

  Battlefleet Sabbat during the later crusade

  769.M41

  THE 14TH YEAR OF THE SABBAT WORLDS CRUSADE

  VERGHAST – HIGH ANCHOR

  ‘It’s an active post, front line.’

  ‘The front line has moved.’

  ‘Warships move too.’

  ‘Warship? I looked it up, pulled its records. It’s practically in the wreckers’ yard.’

  ‘The most revered ships of the fleet, of any fleet, are the oldest.’

  ‘Not this one. It doesn’t even have a battle group designation. You know what that means? Escort duty, shepherding transports between back-worlds.’

  ‘Verghast is hardly a back-world, you arse! The size of the shitstorm that went off there! It was a full-sphere engagement – macro casualties, mass enemy engine deployments. The Heritor himself was there, and died.’

  ‘“Was” – the key part being it’s done, and the only reason that a ship like this one is going to have for being there now is to sit guard while the Munitorum pick up the pieces on the surface, or to nursemaid supply ships. My first full fleet commission and it’s one up from a punishment assignment. I mean… tell me I am wrong?’