Blood, spreading in a dark circle on the front of her flight suit.
‘Huh,’ Vidal says.
Vidal can’t say how she guides the Spirit down out of the storm. She thinks perhaps the Lightning is the one guiding her. That’s the only explanation for how she ends up making a grinding, messy landing in a bright field of wavering grass, less than fifteen metres from the wreckage of the enemy Hell Blade. The Pact fighter is crushed and bent from the crash, burning steadily. Vidal catches the stink of it as she hits the Spirit’s cockpit release. The harsh reek of burning plastek, and beneath it that same familiar smell. Oil, and blood. Vidal drags herself out onto the Lightning’s wing, then drops onto the grass. The dark circle on her flight suit is wide now. Soaking. She falls several times on her way to the wreckage. Each time, it’s a little harder to stand. To see. To ignore the whispering draw of the soft, green grass at her feet. But Vidal gets up, over and over again, because it’s not over yet. Because she’s too stubborn to lie down and die. She reaches the wreckage and falls against it, leaving a bloody handprint on the bronze plating. The Hell Blade’s forewings are buckled and the cockpit armaglass is completely shattered, leaving nothing but an empty frame. Vidal can see the Blood Pact pilot, still slumped in his flight cradle. His jumpsuit is blood-soaked, his masked face lolling to the side. But Vidal can see the whites of his eyes through the hollows in the pilot’s hook-nosed grotesque. She can see him breathing, fitfully. Vidal raises her sidearm slowly and clicks off the safety.
‘You,’ she slurs. ‘It was you.’
The Pact pilot lifts his masked face towards her. He laughs, wetly.
‘N-nice tag, Vi-dahl,’ he says, in broken Gothic.
Vidal fires. She keeps firing until her pistol’s chamber clicks empty. Until the Pact pilot goes slack in his seat, his flight suit scorched and smoking. Then Vidal collapses against the wreckage of the Hell Blade, sliding down into a sitting position on the grass. She lets go of the pistol. Lets go of everything save for the silver saint, clutched tightly in her left hand. Vidal glances at the Spirit, crouched on its stanchions in the long grass.
‘I almost didn’t recognise you,’ she says, her eyes falling to her legs. They don’t hurt any more. Nothing does. Vidal smiles absently as her eyes flutter closed.
‘Must be all those refits,’ she says, softly.
05
URDESH.
792.M41.
It begins with blood, as all things must.
Hemik, who is called damogaur, marks himself eight upon eight times across his palms with the serrated edge of his rite-blade. All of the marks he makes are new, save for one. The last, which he makes atop his oldest scar. It is a corded, pale thing. Knotted like a noose-rope. Even after so many years, the scar still bears the toothed indentations from its making, when Hemik placed his hands upon the armour plate of the Archon. When he swore himself, body and soul, to he who is called Gaur, the warlord of warlords.
When he made his bloody pact.
Hemik sheathes his rite-blade, and snuffs each of the eight grease-slick candles around him in turn. Then he stands and looks at the silvered aircraft, crouched in the mass carrier’s strobing darkness. It still wears a non-believer’s colours, as it must, for what he means to do. But that does not mean it cannot be anointed. Hemik approaches the interceptor, then circles it slowly, dragging his bloodied, eight-marked hands along the armour plating. He marks the intakes, and the gun mouths. He trails his hand along the leading edge of the wing.
Bump, bump. Bump.
Hemik leaves the interceptor’s tail until last, because that is where it bears its tawdry honours. The Imperial markings are gaudy. Garish. Meaningless. He blacks each one in turn with the pad of his thumb until he comes to the last thing. The most crucial thing. The interceptor’s name. Hemik smiles behind his mask, the cold air crawling over his filed teeth.
‘Indomitable Spirit,’ Hemik whispers, as he wipes away the words.
The sky over the forge world is dark, the clouds hanging low and heavy, as though they have been strung from hooks. Rain sheets against the cockpit armaglass in waves as Hemik banks over the city below. Eltath is dark, too. A vast expanse of habitation and industry. Of immense forges that press weapons for war, and high-stacked dwellings, where those who would wield them are raised and made ready to die. Much of the city is burned, or burning, obscured by smoke and low-hanging fog. Now and then, though, Hemik can see tiny flashes through the mire. The Imperials and the Anarch’s packsons, bleeding one another. Hemik pays it no heed. His target lies elsewhere.
The airbase at Zarak East sits out beyond the sluggish waters of the Reach. It looks like scrubland, or dead earth. Just a flat, functional expanse struck through with rockcrete runways. Several large hangars huddle together on the estuary side, watched over by control pylons and defended by anti-aircraft guns. This is where the Lightning took off from before Hemik downed it during a dogfight over the vapour mills. And he plans to return it there. To burn Zarak East to the ground with the full battery of incendiary missiles tucked beneath the Lightning’s wings. It is why he kept the interceptor’s colours and surface damage intact. Why he kept the Lightning’s former pilot alive for ten full days aboard the mass carrier, until there were words to hear amongst the weeping. Serial numbers and names.
Emergency clearance codes.
Hemik dips the Lightning’s nose, beginning his descent. The interceptor snarls at him, airframe shuddering, but it has no choice but to heed his commands. It is pacted, now. Of the Archonate, just as he is. Then there is another snarling. Static-laced, this time.
The vox.
‘Hailing Lightning strike fighter on approach heading to Zarak East. This is serial two-oh-five. Respond and identify.’
Hemik glances sidelong out of the cockpit armaglass to see another Lightning drop from the clouds. It falls into position beside him, trailing from his right wing. The Lightning is an alert fighter, rain-streaked and war-scarred, with red officer’s bars painted across the tail and wing tips.
‘Hailing Lightning strike fighter,’ says the voice again. ‘This is Captain Alys Ferro. Respond and identify.’
Hemik smiles behind his breather mask.
‘Twenty-oh-five,’ he says, in calm, practised Gothic. ‘This is Lightning serial ten-twelve, looking for clearance to land.’
There is a long pause. Hemik does not panic, because he knows his duty is ordained. Intended, by the gods. He knows how desperately the Imperials seek a returning hero.
‘Receiving, serial ten-twelve.’ Ferro’s voice is colder now. Warier. ‘Request clearance code level alpha.’
Hemik thinks of the words, whispered by Flight Commander Evar Trass as he knelt, blinded and bleeding in the dark.
‘Clearance code islumbine,’ he says, tasting bile at the mention of the sacred flower. ‘Borne by way of the wind.’
There is another pause before Ferro speaks again.
‘Evar,’ she says. ‘It can’t be.’
‘It can,’ Hemik says. ‘It is.’
‘Swear it,’ she replies. ‘On the Throne.’
Hemik tastes bile again. His teeth ache as he opens his mouth to speak.
‘On the Throne.’
This time the pause is longer. Leaden. Hemik frees his weapons, his finger resting lightly against the trigger. He glances sidelong at the Lightning hanging from his wing. Ferro is a dim shape in the darkness, but he can see she is looking at him. Then the vox clicks live again. The voice is a whisper. Winter-cold, now.
‘You’re not him.’
‘You’re right,’ Hemik says, and he triggers the air brake, cutting his speed in two and sending Ferro’s Lightning roaring past him.
‘Damn you!’ Ferro roars, over the vox. ‘Archonate bastard!’
She yaws, and rolls. Hemik matches her effortlessly, afterburners bellowing.
‘I cut his eyes from him,’ he voxes to Ferro. ‘His fingers, and toes. I cut him until he gave up every one of his secrets, and then
I took his tongue. His teeth.’
Ferro bleeds her own speed and throws her Lightning into a spiralling dive. Hemik follows her, the world turning around him in a blue-black blur.
‘I took his legacy,’ he tells her. ‘His machine. I bloodied it. Broke it, just as I did Evar Trass.’
His words find their mark. They have Ferro cursing. Angry. Grieving. Careless enough to fall momentarily into the red heart of his firing arc. Hemik smiles, widely.
‘So much for your Throne,’ he voxes, and fires the lascannons, full charge. The triggers click, and the Lightning bucks, but there is no flash. No damage. No smoke.
Nothing.
‘What–’ Hemik rasps. He pulls the trigger again, but the weapons are unresponsive. Dead. Ahead, Ferro pulls out of her dive. Hemik tries to match her, but the flight controls lock in his hands, immovable. Then more systems flicker out, one by one. Augurs. Heading indicator. Fuel measure. Interior lights.
Everything but vox.
‘You can bloody us,’ Ferro says. She positions herself beside him, hanging off his right wing, just as she did before. ‘You can take our eyes. Our teeth. Our tongues. But there is one thing you will never take. Never break.’
Hemik cannot help it. He has to ask, as the Lightning thunders down towards the steel-grey waters of the Eastern Reach.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Our spirit.’
Ferro pulls her dive, then. She breaks away, rocketing back up into the clouds as the Reach fills Hemik’s cockpit view, edge to edge. Around him, the Lightning bellows, and a heavy judder runs through the airframe. An animal snarl that travels from the Lightning’s bones into Hemik’s own. He thinks he feels it, then, as his vision goes grey and the water rushes up to meet him. Something intangible, that cannot be cut away with a knife.
Something bright and pure, that burns him.
An indomitable spirit.
FROM THERE TO HERE
WRITTEN BY DAN ABNETT
PREFACE
And so I bookend this collection with… a bookend. Not first and only, this time, but first and last. We placed my stories at the start and finish mainly to keep them as far apart as we could, because they are mirrors. One is the flip side of the other.
This is a brand new Gaunt’s Ghosts story, also set post-Anarch, also turning to the future and sowing the seeds of things to come. It allowed me the rare opportunity to look at a character in detail, a returning character. This storyline would have been out of place and unbalanced as part of a novel. But it’s a sequel, of sorts, to Anarch, and also an interesting companion piece to the recently published Ghost Dossier, The Vincula Insurgency.
The themes that have run through this collection: victory, the aftermath, consequences, loyalty, the handling of the dead, are all here, and it’s another story that looks at something we don’t usually look at. What happens when your story’s done? Will there be another story for you afterwards? Do we just get one chance to shine? How does it feel when the magic goes away?
Welcome home, Milo.
‘From there to here’ was an Urdeshi pledge. It wasn’t formal, just an off-hand phrase that locals muttered as they took a drink. There was no raising of the cup in salute to another when it was spoken, no clinking. The Urdeshi murmured it to themselves, without emphasis and probably unconsciously, as they slugged another shot of amasec or fobraki.
Brin Milo learned it in the liquor-house on Hainehill Street. No one taught it to him, or advised him to say it. He learned it through observation. The other patrons, mostly Urdeshi Militarum or shift workers from the local fab, muttered it casually as they took their drinks, so he started to say it too, mainly so he wouldn’t stand out.
He stood out enough as it was. Tall, dark-haired, not local, an off-world Militarum in combat blacks that curiously lacked any rank pins or unit insignia. That marked him out. That, and the fish tattoo over his eye.
That, and the fact that he always came in alone.
The waters of the Holy Balneary in Herodor Civitas are warm, blood-heat. They cure and they heal. They will make everything better. He walks down the steps to the edge of the pool and–
He woke.
‘I’d like to see the colonel,’ Milo said.
‘Do you mean Rawne? That’s not possible. He’s in the infirmary. Acting Colonel Baskevyl might be available later in the week.’
The commissar’s name was Fazekiel. She was carrying a recent wound, and walked with a limp, holding herself stiffly. Her pallor suggested she had left the infirmary too soon, and against medical advice, but Milo knew from experience that commissars were all about duty, and Fazekiel seemed the type who was all about duty to the point of clinical obsession.
‘I meant, uh, Gaunt,’ he said.
She looked at him sharply, as though he had no business speaking the name without an honorific. She’d been briefed, of course. She’d been told Milo was true Tanith, from the old days, from the Founding, returning to the fold, but still, her expression suggested that he had spoken out of turn.
‘You mean the Lord Executor?’ she said.
‘Yes. I’m sorry, I forget he’s called that now.’
‘There are papers to endorse, Milo,’ she said. Fazekiel had a sheaf of them.
‘For?’
‘For enlistment, essentially,’ she replied. ‘Re-enlistment, I suppose, is more correct. I don’t have the forms for that. Munitorum paperwork is all over the place, as you can imagine, but I found these. I’m sure they’ll serve. I’ll annotate and authorise any amendments.’
They were basic sign-ups, pro-forma, the commitment dockets a trooper made his mark on when he enlisted or was drafted. They were for young men. They were for boys. There were highlighted blocks to fill in, sections that, at a glance, seemed ridiculous. ‘Place of Birth’, ‘Next of Kin’… did he have to fill them in if those things didn’t exist? There was no blank section for prior service record, because the forms were meant for boys who had no prior service to write down. He did, but he had no idea how he’d summarise it, even if there had been a space.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Your service history is… ah…’ Fazekiel paused. ‘Spotty. Admin really hasn’t got a record of you since, ah, Herodor. So this is really just procedural, to get you back in the Militarum system, so you can be assigned and pay-graded and so forth.’
‘No, I mean why…’ Milo said. ‘Why any of that?’
Fazekiel frowned.
‘You’re staying with the regiment, aren’t you? Transferring back? That’s what Chief Mkoll led me to believe.’
‘I’d like to see the colonel,’ said Milo. ‘The Lord Executor.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible,’ she said.
The walls of Brachis City start to fall. He raises the old pipes to his lips, to triumph them in through the breach and–
He woke.
There were celebrations rolling through Eltath City, day and night. Firecrackers, street parades, feasts in the open air, riotous assemblies of civilians and service personnel. Milo was told it was like that right across the face of the planet. Urdesh was free. The nightmare of the Anarch was over. It was an Imperial victory. Spontaneous rejoicing filled every thoroughfare and habway. Temple bells rang. Fireworks shivered the skies. It was louder and more explosive than the final, bleak years of the war. Citizens who had flinched at every distant blast and fled for shelter at the sound of aircraft now unleashed skyrockets with manic abandon.
It was in the days following his return from hell that he found the liquor-house.
At the cry, clear and keening, they come up out of the trenches. Eboris has started to burn, fire all the way along the western ramparts. They start to run, to charge. He sees her up ahead, sword raised. If he runs faster, he can catch up with her, and be at her side when–
He woke.
Urdesh had a long and lauded history. It was a proud world of proud people. It was the beating heartworld of Sabbat industry, a world of forge
s and fabs, second only to Balhaut in significance. Here had been stamped and pressed half the arms that had made the crusade possible and, as some liked to jibe, half the arms that had made resistance to that crusade possible too. Urdeshi weapons and war machines were reliable, well-made, as enduring as the spirit of its people, and ubiquitous. They were stockpiled and used by both sides, because Urdesh had, during its long and lauded history, been on both sides.
The Urdeshi were stoic to a degree that Milo found amusing. Their cultural demeanour was fatalistic, their passions phlegmatic, their warriors fierce as a point of principle, their liquor-house songs woeful and bitter. They had endured wars and invasions, they had weathered occupations and purges, they had withstood enslavements and kill-camps. They had known the loss of being conquered and the sacrifice of being liberated, and they had known both of those things several times over. Milo didn’t fault them for their indigenous temperament, nor did he believe it was excessive or affected, but still he found it funny.
Lose your whole world, he thought, then play me one of your morose fething woe-songs on your fething fiddle.
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