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More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

• GAUNT’S GHOSTS •
Dan Abnett

THE FOUNDING
Book 1: FIRST AND ONLY
Book 2: GHOSTMAKER
Book 3: NECROPOLIS

THE SAINT
Book 4: HONOUR GUARD
Book 5: THE GUNS OF TANITH
Book 6: STRAIGHT SILVER
Book 7: SABBAT MARTYR

THE LOST
Book 8: TRAITOR GENERAL
Book 9: HIS LAST COMMAND
Book 10: THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT
Book 11: ONLY IN DEATH

THE VICTORY
Book 12: BLOOD PACT
Book 13: SALVATION’S REACH
Book 14: THE WARMASTER
Book 15: ANARCH

More tales from the Sabbat Worlds

SABBAT CRUSADE
Edited by Dan Abnett

SABBAT WORLDS
Edited by Dan Abnett

DOUBLE EAGLE
Dan Abnett

TITANICUS
Dan Abnett

BROTHERS OF THE SNAKE
Dan Abnett

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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

BLOOD PACT

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Epilogue

SALVATION’S REACH

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

FAMILY

YOU NEVER KNOW

GHOSTS AND BAD SHADOWS

KILLBOX

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Warmaster’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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 Astra Militarum 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.

BLOOD PACT

At length, the beast fell upon a hunter and devoured him too. But the hunter had an open knife in his pocket, and the knife slit the beast’s belly open from inside, and all of the villagers were spilled out and saved.

– from the Nihtgane legend of the hunter and the beast

‘After a promising period of advance, Warmaster Macaroth’s main battle groups were brought to an unexpected and complete standstill at the frontiers of the Erinyes Group.

Archon Gaur, the Archenemy overlord, managed to withdraw his forces from the Carcaradon Cluster with sufficient alacrity to construct a robust position of resistance along the Erinyes border.

For the Warmaster, no help was to be had from the Crusade’s secondary front. Comprising as it now did the Fifth, Seventh, Ninth and Twelfth Armies, the second battle group was operating trailwards of Macaroth’s principal strengths. Despite years of grinding struggle, the second battle group remained unable to dislodge the legions of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant, from the Cabal Systems.

Between them, the Archon and his magister had created a line of defiance that was entirely frustrating both prongs of Macaroth’s crusade. An attempt to break the deadlock through the establishment of a third front ended in miserable disaster with the loss of the Second Army, under Marshal Aldo, at Helice.

However, far behind the front line, on Sabbat Worlds long pacified by the Imperial crusade, events were taking place that would have, though few recognised it at the time, fundamental consequences for the future of the campaign.

It was 780.M41, the twenty-fifth year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade.’

– from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE

THE SOLACE

The dead seemed to have a knack of finding their way back to Balhaut.

Such had been the opinion of E. F. Montvelt’s uncle, soon after the Famous Victory, and such was the opinion of E. F. Montvelt himself, some fifteen years later. E. F. Montvelt had inherited the opinion from his late uncle, just as he had inherited his uncle’s post as wharfinger of Pier Thirty-One, a large and florid nose, and a carton of personal effects which included a medal from the days of the Khulan Wars, a pot of hair tincture and a pornographic chapbook featuring the celebrated musical theatre performer Adele Coro.

The dead found their way back, in almost unimaginable numbers. It was as if the blood that had soaked into Balhaut’s soil during the accomplishment of the Famous Victory had, by some alchemical reaction, become a lure for the dead: a temptation, a siren song that called them back across space from the far-flung places where they had fallen. E. F. Montvelt had once read, in one of the cyclopedias packed into the bottom of his uncle’s carton of effects, of predatory fish with nostrils so acute that they could detect a drop of blood in an ocean of water, and seek it out. So it was with Balhaut and the dead. Balhaut was the drop of blood, and space the ocean. The dead could smell the place, and the smell drew them back. They had made a pact in blood, after all.

Balhaut, so steeped in blood, had become the place of pilgrimage for the dead, and for many, many living souls too; souls whose lives were tied to the fallen. Balhaut was where people came to be buried, if they were dead, or to mourn, if they were not. This was because of the Famous Victory.

Even after fifteen years, one was obliged to pronounce the words with emphatic capital letters, or else refer to it as Slaydo’s Glory or the Intrepid Action or the Turning Point, or some equally leatherbound phrase. Balhaut was still counted as the most considerable victory of the crusade so far, and was therefore a touchstone of success, emblematic of all Imperial aspirations and, by extension, a place where the dead could be interred and mourned in the uplifting glow of triumph. The caskets of the officer classes were carried back to Balhaut to be shut in the mausoleums and crypts of the new regimental chapels. The tagged bones of common soldiers were shipped back to fill the ever-increasing plots in the endlessly expanding cemetery fields. The ashes of the nameless dead, the faceless and unidentified, were freighted in kegs like gunpowder to be scattered into the wind at the mass public services held five times a day, every day.

The bereaved came too. Some brought their dead with them, in honour or agony, to see them laid to rest in Balhaut’s groaning soil. Others came to pay their respects to the tombs and marble markers of loved ones that had already found their way to Balhaut.

Others, the greatest number of all, came to Balhaut because they did not know the fate or final resting place of the sons and fathers, and brothers and husbands they’d lost, and thus chose Balhaut, with its symbolic value, as a site of memorial. In a decade and a half, Balhaut’s chief imports had become corpses and mourners, and its chief businesses, sericulture and monumental masonry.

E. F. Montvelt’s business was import and export, and the supervision thereof. He oversaw Pier Thirty-One, a radial spar of the giant orbital platform called Highstation, with a diligence and precision that he hoped would have made his uncle proud.

From his glass-floored office, he could look down on the ships moored in the pier’s slipways, and keep track of their comings and goings on a vast hololithic display, projected above him like a canopy of light. His rubricators, at their separate cogitators around the rim of the office, managed the inventories and duties, while vittaling clerks negotiated supply contracts, and fuelling burdens and laytimes were calculated.

All data was routed to him through plugs, but, like his uncle before him, he liked to use his eyes. He liked to watch a vessel in berth, and fret that it was taking too long to unload and clear so that another could take its position and pay a tariff of its own, just as he liked to complain when a slipway remained vacant for more than a day or two. He knew the tugs and lighters by sight, and the flitting cargo-servitors by their paint jobs and codes, and he could identify a pilot boat simply by the style and accomplishment of its attitude manoeuvres.

Above all, he enjoyed the view: from the office, straight down through the glass floor, through the thicket of girderwork and fuelling lines, through the scudding dots that were tugs and handlers, through the open structures and hard shadows of the giant slipways, and the radiation-scorched hulls of the vast ships that sat in them, down through it all into the brilliance of sunlight on slowly-tracking clouds, and the pinsharp clarity of the bright air, and the one hundred and forty-kilometre drop to the blue and grey and brown of Balhaut turning slowly below.

That particular day, the Gemminger Beroff Wakeshift was occupying the fourth slip, the Superluminal Grandee Ulysses the fifth, and the Pride of Tarnagua was beginning its pilot sequence to enter the eighth. The Relativistic Iterations of Hans Feingolt, line-lashed into slip seven, had developed an ignition fault that E. F. Montvelt had been told would delay its departure for a minimum of a week. He had already calculated the penalty tariff. The Eleksander Great Soljor was due to make shift in less than an hour, provided the charter agents could agree on the demurrage. In slip two, the Solace, just arrived, was beginning to discharge its cargo.

E. F. Montvelt hadn’t seen the Solace for two years. It was Plackett’s boat, and Plackett was known for long trailward runs down through Khulan and the Bethan Halo. However, the docket passed to him by the assistant rubricator told E. F. Montvelt that the Solace was eight months out of San Velabo, and had come to them from spinward. Plackett had changed his habits. E. F. Montvelt decided he would ask the shipmaster about it when he came on shore. E. F. Montvelt made a point of greeting each master in person. It was an old-fashioned courtesy that his uncle had taught him.

He already suspected the answer Plackett would give him. War changes fortunes and the contours of trade. The crusade had reopened much of the Khan Group and other spinward territories. Plackett had gone where the business was.

Except it wasn’t Plackett. E. F. Montvelt looked at the docket again. The Solace had changed hands. The name of her new owner was written up as Jonas.

‘Jonas,’ he read. Several of his clerks raised their heads from their work.

‘You spoke, sir?’ one called out.

E. F. Montvelt looked up at the junior man.

‘Jonas,’ he repeated. ‘Docket gives the name of the Solace’s master as Jonas.’

‘Which matters because?’

‘Jonas!’ snapped E. F. Montvelt. ‘You know? As in Jonas?’

‘I don’t catch the significance, sir,’ admitted the clerk.

They were all young idiots these days, E. F. Montvelt often reminded himself, too young. None of them knew the traditions. In his uncle’s day, everybody had known the name Jonas. It was a joke name, a makeweight. You wrote it on the docket as a placeholder when you didn’t know the master’s actual name. Sometimes rogue traders would even run under the name to conceal their identity or divert attention away from an affreightment scam.

‘Jonas!’ E. F. Montvelt repeated. ‘As in, Devil Jonas!’

‘Oh,’ nodded the junior, ‘like in the children’s story? What was it he had again? A box, was it?’

‘A locker,’ E. F. Montvelt sighed.

‘That’s it, a locker,’ the junior laughed, ‘far away in the depths of space, where he kept the souls of poor, shipwrecked wayfarers.’

The junior chuckled at the notion, and shook his head.

E. F. Montvelt went down to slipway two himself.

He made his way through the crowds thronging the quay. Crew and passengers were flooding off the ship, and all kinds of humanity had come to greet it. There were the slipway crews, the excise men in their bicorn hats, the inspectors from the Interior Guard, vittalers, itinerant peddlers, porters, hucksters; grifters offering guided tours of the battlefields, luxurious accommodations or surface transfers; scalpers selling permits and ask-no-questions paperwork; and commercial men and private citizens, who had come up to Highstation to greet the ship. E. F. Montvelt shoved his way through the bustle. He could smell armpits and foul breath, the garlic sweat of meat patties on a stove cart, the burnt sugar of a candy vendor, the ozone coming in off the pier’s atmospheric pressure fields and, behind all other odours, the oddly soapy, rancid fug that hung upon a slipway when a ship exhaled the recycled air that had been wheezing through its oxygen scrubbers for eight months.

Servitors chugged past him, hauling trains of crates. A tug boat whickered by overhead, its running lights flashing. The Solace, a juggernaut of pitted rust and seared void plating, sat up tall in the slip. Service crews were already at work, scaling her carbonised flanks like mountaineers on a rockface. E. F. Montvelt heard the tunk-tunk of magnetised footsteps as servitors crossed the hull perpendicular to him. He leaned over the rail, down into the shadow of the slipway drop. He saw the airgates extended and connected, and the firework sputter of welding teams. Below the gloom of the slip’s shadow, the dazzling white clouds of Balhaut crawled past.

E. F. Montvelt opened his data-slate and took another look at the ship’s paperwork. The Solace, it came as no surprise, was bearing the dead. Amongst the goods on its bill of lading were ‘Fifty mortuary containers, fully certificated, transported for the purpose of internment at Balhaut’. Further fine print revealed that each container held twenty human cadavers or partial cadavers, individually secured in closed caskets. They were men of the 250th Boruna Rifles, a native Balhaut regiment, and casualties of Aldo’s tragic failure on Helice. They were Balhaut lads, coming home.

Accompanying parties of mourners from San Velabo were listed on the passenger manifest. High-borns, some of them, by the look of the titles and honorifics, making the grand tour to Balhaut in a formal display of duty and respect. E. F. Montvelt straightened his collar, and brushed the sleeves of his coat. Courtesy, always courtesy.

The great hold jaws of the Solace were beginning to gape. Cantilevered metal tongues, cargo ramps and hinged bridgeways were extending to link the lamp-lit caverns of the hold spaces with the slipway dock. Bulk servitors were hoisting down the first of the containers. E. F. Montvelt saw more passengers and members of the crew coming down the nearest gangway bridge.

He saw two widows, arm-in-arm, with a single, twin-shafted mourning parasol held above their veiled heads. Behind them came three liveried servants bearing a rosewood chest, and a crewman in oily pressure gear draped with a roll of heavy cable. After them, a tired-looking colonel with an empty sleeve limped down the gangway beside his attentive adjutant, followed by a tall, athletic man in a long coat of beige leather. The man’s shaved head was sculptural and sharp-featured, as if it had been ergonomically designed. The balance of the skull seemed rather off: a cunning, clean-enough face, but a compact and streamlined cranium that seemed a little too small to match it. The man carried himself with a straight neck and a raised head that spoke of military formality.

Then E. F. Montvelt saw the other widow. She was dressed in long weeds of black silk, and carried a sable fan and a purple handkerchief. The skirts of her dress, silk and crepe layered, rustled as she moved. Her hair, white gold, was pinned up, and from it draped a veil of black gauze so fine it hung like smoke. He could not see her face, but he could see the pale, slender rise of her neck. The nape seemed indecent, like wilful nudity.

E. F. Montvelt walked towards the passengers discharging onto the dockside.

‘Master Jonas?’ he inquired. ‘Master Jonas?’

No one seemed bothered to acknowledge him.

‘Where’s your master?’ he asked the crewman with the cable. The man shrugged indifferently. Annoyed at his manner, E. F. Montvelt tapped the badges and buttons of guild, of rank and of Munitorum service that he wore on the left breast of his juniper coat.

‘You’re on my shore now!’ he told the listless fellow.

‘And glad of it,’ the man answered, shifting the heavy coil to his other shoulder.

‘Where is the master of this vessel?’ E. F. Montvelt asked.

‘The lady there, she asked him to check upon her cargoes personal,’ the man replied, nodding towards the widow with the scandalous nape.

‘Mamzel?’ E. F. Montvelt called as he approached her. ‘Begging your pardon, but would you know where the shipmaster is to be found?’

‘Oh dear, he is dead,’ the lady answered. Her voice was small, but perfectly clear, and rounded with a distant accent. There was a wobble to it too, as if she was fighting to contain her emotions.

‘He is dead?’

‘Indeed, most terribly,’ she agreed, with another catch in her voice.

‘But how?’ E. F. Montvelt asked.

‘Why, we were obliged to murder him when he would not cooperate with us,’ she said. E. F. Montvelt could not see her face through the fine mesh of the veil, but he felt her eyes fix upon him, registering his expression of disquiet.

‘What did you say, mamzel?’ he asked.

‘I cannot lie,’ said the veil. ‘I am sorry for it.’

‘Mamzel,’ said E. F. Montvelt, concerned by the rising strength of the catch in her voice, ‘are you quite well?’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I cannot speak a lie. Upon my soul, it is my great burden. I am compelled to tell each and every truth, even the dirty ones.’

‘Perhaps you should sit down?’ E. F. Montvelt suggested.

‘My dear sister, have you over-wrought yourself again?’

The tall man in the long, beige coat appeared at the widow’s side, and was placing a solicitous hand on her sleeve. His hands were gloved.

‘This gentleman asked me about the shipmaster,’ the lady said.

The man looked at E. F. Montvelt. Like the widow, his voice was spiced by a distant accent.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘My sister is rather troubled, and you must excuse her. Grief has terribly affected her mind.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ E. F. Montvelt responded earnestly. ‘It was not my intention to distress her.’

‘I did not for a moment presume it was, sir,’ the man said. He was holding his sister’s arm quite tightly, as if she might otherwise slip her lines and fly away.

‘It is true, though,’ the lady said. ‘I cannot tell any lies. Not ever, anymore. It is quite beyond me to do so. This is the price I must pay. If I desire the truth, I must have all truths, so that only truth can spill out of my mouth and–’

‘Hush now, sister,’ the man said, ‘you will make yourself ill. Let me take you to a quiet place where you can gather your wits.’ He glanced at E. F. Montvelt. ‘Sir?’

‘There is a lounge in the disembarkation hall, there at the end of the slipway,’ said E. F. Montvelt, pointing.

‘You’re most kind,’ the man said. ‘The Lady Eyl appreciates your understanding. She does not know what she says.’

‘Well, that is apparent,’ said E. F. Montvelt. ‘I asked the whereabouts of the shipmaster, and she told me plainly that she had murdered him.’ He laughed. The man did not.

‘It is because I am witched!’ the widow protested.

‘The shipmaster went to hold sixteen aft, to attend to our baggage,’ the man said. ‘I believe you will find him there.’

‘I’m obliged to you,’ said Montvelt.

The man took his sister away. Montvelt went up the gangway and entered the ship. He cued the manifest list back onto the screen of his data-slate and scrolled down it. Lady Eyl. There she was, Lady Ulrike Serepa fon Eyl, of San Velabo, travelling with her brother Baltasar Eyl and a household party.

Still rather discomfited by his encounter with the damaged Lady Eyl, E. F. Montvelt descended into the bowels of the ancient packet ship. He wondered who she had lost. A husband, he felt. Perhaps another brother. Such things she had said. For a mind to be that torn and frayed by grief, well, it did not bear thinking about. The dead came back to Balhaut, and brought their ghosts with them, but the truly frightening apparitions were the souls destroyed by loss.

The underdecks of the Solace were quiet: dark halls, dark companionways, a current of heat against his face, dissipating from the drive vents, the bad odour of air breathed too many times, the sounds of hull fabric creaking and settling as commonplace orbital gravity replaced the distorting insanity of the Empyrean.

Caged lamps glowed soft yellow, their once-white shades stained brown by age. Oily condensation dripped from the pipes of the climate systems running along the ceiling. The Solace was clicking and settling and easing her bones, like the arthritic grand dame she was. E. F. Montvelt enjoyed the smells and sounds of a thoroughbred packet ship. He’d crewed one, the Ganymede Eleison, in his youth, serving three years as junior purser before his uncle’s influence secured him a shore-job at Highstation. The hollow echoes of footsteps on deck grilles, the low stoops of the bulkhead hatches, the scents of priming paint and grease and scrubbed air brought it all back.

Without needing to check the doorframe code markers, for the Solace’s layout matched the deck plan of all ships of her class, E. F. Montvelt found hold sixteen aft.

The air inside was full of vapour. The hold’s jaws were open, so that sunlight shone in, and a magnificent open drop down to ferociously white and snowy clouds was revealed through the cage floor of the stowage space. He stepped out onto the cage floor, Balhaut turning below him, and called out the shipmaster’s name.

No one answered.

Bulk containers were lashed along the cage, ready to be discharged by the servitor-handlers. Their certificates had been pasted to them, and their seals were intact. E. F. Montvelt called the shipmaster’s name again.

He took out his scanning wand, and flashed the nearest container to check that its certificate code matched the number on his dockets.

It did, but there was something odd. The wand had registered a temperature blip.

He put his hand against the container’s side, and then drew it away again sharply.

‘Something wrong?’ asked the man in the beige coat. He came down through the steam onto the cage floor, and approached the wharfinger.

‘These containers,’ E. F. Montvelt replied. ‘They are not what they seem, sir.’

‘How so?’

‘Trace heat,’ the wharfinger replied. ‘There is a mechanism here. These are not containers.’ He showed Baltasar Eyl the dial of his wand. ‘You see?’

‘I do.’

‘Test for yourself.’

The man pressed his gloved hand against the container’s side.

‘No, sir, take off your glove and do it,’ said E. F. Montvelt.

Baltasar Eyl peeled off his right glove. The hand that was revealed was so terribly marked by old scars that the sight of it made E. F. Montvelt baulk. Eyl saw his reaction.

‘I keep them covered, for the most part,’ he explained. ‘I know how they look. They proclaim the pact I have made with my master.’ The wharfinger stared at him, wide-eyed. Eyl smiled.

‘I don’t expect you to understand. Listen to me, I gab like my sister. The isolation of the voyage has made me talkative. I am betraying secrets.’

E. F. Montvelt took a step or two back.

‘I have seen nothing,’ he said. ‘Truly, sir, I have heard nothing.’

‘Why do you say that to me?’ asked Eyl.

‘Because I fear that otherwise you are going to be obliged to kill me,’ said E. F. Montvelt.

‘I think I might,’ said Eyl. ‘Sincerely, I mean nothing by it.’

‘Please, sir,’ said the wharfinger, backing away.

‘A most dreadful thing!’ cried Lady Eyl, running along the slipway quay. ‘A most terrible accident! He fell. He just fell! Please come! There has been the most awful occurrence!’

E. F. Montvelt dropped away from the open hold jaws of the Solace. Arms spread wide, he descended into air and bright cloud. It was a long way down.

He was approaching terminal velocity, already dead. The atmosphere began to ablate him, until a tail of fire was racing out behind him, the sort of shooting star upon which one might make a wish.

He fell towards the planet. He and his late uncle had been quite correct.

The dead did seem to have a knack of finding their way back to Balhaut.

TWO

BACK TO BALHAUT

‘Do you remember Vergule?’ asked Blenner, over lunch at the Mithredates Club.

‘Vergil?’ Gaunt replied. ‘Auguste Vergil? The Oudinot staffer?’

‘No, old man,’ Blenner laughed. ‘Ver-gule. Salman Vergule. Urdeshi fellow, served with the 42nd. We were in the field alongside him at Serpsika.’

‘You maybe,’ said Gaunt. ‘I was never at Serpsika. You’re thinking of somebody else.’

‘Am I?’ asked Blenner, with a touch of concern.

Across the table, Zettsman chuckled at them.

‘You’re like an old married couple, you pair,’ he said. He finished clipping the end of a fine, Khulan-leaf cigar, and lit it with a long, black match.

‘Are we indeed?’ replied Blenner.

‘I’m not sure which one of us should be more offended,’ said Gaunt.

‘Neither am I,’ Blenner agreed.

‘You witter on so,’ remarked Hargiter, sipping caffeine from a little, heavy-bottomed glass.

‘I’ve never wittered in my life,’ said Gaunt.

Hargiter caught the look, and shrugged.

‘Well, maybe not. But he does,’ he said, gesturing at Blenner.

‘I resemble that remark!’ returned Blenner.

‘So what were you saying about this Vergule fellow?’ asked Edur.

Blenner tapped the top sheet of the broadside gazette he had been reading. ‘It turns out he’s been here all this while. Arrived a year ago, about the same time you did, ’Bram.’

‘Wait,’ said Gaunt, putting down the sugar tongs. ‘This Vergule, was he a tall fellow with a hangdog expression?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Blenner.

‘Yes, I do remember him. He was at Phantine, I believe. Anyway, if he’s here, I haven’t seen him around.’

‘You wouldn’t have done,’ replied Blenner. ‘It says here he’s entirely dead. His body’s been in the Urdesh regimental chapel for twelve months.’

‘What did he die of?’ asked Zettsman.

‘Oh, you know, war,’ said Blenner.

‘Where?’ asked Gaunt.

‘It doesn’t say,’ said Blenner, peering at the broadside. ‘Oh, wait, it does. Morlond.’

‘Not the only good soul lost there,’ remarked Edur grimly.

Blenner looked at Gaunt. ‘I was thinking, we should go and pay our respects. This afternoon, perhaps?’

‘I’ve got things to do, Vay.’

Vaynom Blenner sighed. ‘Tomorrow morning then? Come on, old man, we ought to toddle over there and apologise to him for not dropping by sooner. It’s the decent thing.’

‘I suppose,’ said Gaunt.

The majordomo, in crimson, black and gold, hovered beside the table where the five Imperial commissars were sitting.

‘Will there be anything else, sirs?’ he asked.

Gaunt shook his head. ‘Just bring me the tab to sign, would you?’

The majordomo nodded. Blenner looked crestfallen.

‘I was considering another helping of fruit tart,’ he announced plaintively.

‘You’ll end up looking like a fruit tart,’ said Edur.

‘Steady, old man!’ Blenner replied. He looked hurt. He patted the orange Commissariat sash that was stretched around his ample stomach. ‘Solid muscle, that. Solid.’

‘Edur’s right,’ said Gaunt, taking a stylus from the majordomo to sign the bill. ‘When I came back from Gereon the first time, my duty breeches hung off me like a tent. The other morning – and they’re the same pair, mind – I realised I had begun to fasten them on the third button. I used to have a washboard stomach.’

‘Some of us still do, old man,’ said Blenner.

‘Wash-house, more like,’ muttered Hargiter.

‘Oi!’ snorted Blenner. The others laughed.

‘It’s the passage of time,’ said Blenner. ‘That’s what I’m saying. You came back from Gereon in ’76, Ibram. That’s knocking on five years ago. Face facts. We’re all getting old.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ the other four men chorused. There was more laughter.

Gaunt told the majordomo to have his car brought around. He waited for Blenner in the atrium, out of courtesy. His oldest friend had disappeared into the club’s cloakroom, complaining about a missing glove.

The atrium’s marble columns had been draped in swathes of mourning crepe, and white lilies had been set in the onyx jardinières. At the far end of the hall, under the dished window that looked out across the street and north towards the Oligarchy Gate, two craftsmen in overalls were working on the last phase of restoration to the inlaid murals. The night manager of the Mithredates had told Gaunt the work was expected to be finished in another eighteen months. It had taken fifteen years to get that far. The club had been hit by a tank round in the final hours of the war, and the intricate murals had been badly damaged.

Gaunt wondered if there might not be better things to spend fifteen years rebuilding.

‘So what’s on your plate for the rest of the day?’ asked Zettsman, buttoning up his stormcoat as he walked over.

‘I might spend a few hours with the Kapaj,’ Gaunt replied.

‘You rate them?’

‘They’re decent enough,’ Gaunt answered. ‘I’d rather spend time with my own mob, but the Kapaj need to be whipped into shape, and Section is very keen on this mentoring role.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Zettsman replied. ‘I’ve been given a group of cadets and I’m expected to get them through their SP31s. They’re appalling. Throne help me, they manage to make Blenner look like he operates at an acceptable level of competence.’

Gaunt laughed, but it rankled. Lately, Blenner had been taking too many jibes below the waterline.

‘I don’t know why you put up with him,’ said Zettsman.

‘Who?’

‘Blenner, of course.’

Gaunt paused.

‘We were at schola progenium together,’ he said. ‘Vaynom has survived longer than anyone else I’ve known. I have to give him some credit for that.’

‘I suppose,’ replied Zettsman. ‘And he was right, of course, about time rolling on. None of us are getting any younger. It must be strange for you especially.’

‘What must?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Well, we’ve all done our bit over the years, and we’ve all had our moments, but your track record puts most of us to shame. If I’d done half the things you’ve done, I’d have taken a marshal’s baton and a seat at high command years ago.’

‘Not my style.’

‘Oh, and this is? Like I said, it must be very strange for you, this easy life, these leisurely meals, the evenings at the club. It must be odd to accept that your active service is done, and this is the end of it, mentoring new-founds and growing a paunch while you fly a desk towards semi-retirement.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Blenner asked, catching up with Gaunt. He had found the elusive glove.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t give me that, Ibram. There’s a look on your face. Zettsman was here, just a moment ago. I saw him walking away. What did he say to you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Gaunt, again.

‘I’ll wrestle you to the ground, don’t think I won’t.’

Gaunt looked at Blenner. Blenner still hadn’t quite got used to the flash in his old friend’s new eyes.

‘Zettsman just said something,’ Gaunt replied. ‘He didn’t mean anything by it. It was just something I hadn’t really thought of before.’

‘Well, what?’ asked Blenner. ‘That you owe your entire career to my inspirational example?’

‘That part obviously came as a shock,’ said Gaunt. He smiled, but there was frost on it. ‘No, he just assumed that I was done. Didn’t give it a second thought. There was no malice meant. He just took for granted the idea that I’d done my part, and that my front-line career was over.’

‘Ah,’ said Blenner.

‘I have always assumed that, in due course, the routing order will come through, and I’ll take the First and Only back to the line. Crusade main front, secondary front, I don’t care. It never occurred to me it would be any other way.’

‘You worry too much,’ said Blenner.

‘I will get posted again, won’t I?’

‘You worry too much.’

‘But–’

‘Look, old man,’ said Blenner, patting Gaunt on the sleeve, ‘you were on the line a bloody long time. You and the Ghosts, how long was it?’

‘From the Founding? Twelve years.’

‘Twelve bloody years, old man! Twelve bloody years without rotation out of the line! Most regimental commanders would have been sending formal complaints to the top of the chain!’

‘I’d thought about it.’

‘And thank goodness they rotated you out before you had to.’

‘It’s been two years since Jago, Vay.’

‘You needed that long to recover, you old devil. The bastards nearly murdered you.’

Gaunt shrugged.

‘We’re rested now,’ he said. ‘We’ve come all this way back to Balhaut, to a world I never expected to see again, and we’ve sat around for a year, getting fat and bored and out of shape, and none of those things have filled me with anxiety, because I’ve been expecting the routing order any day.’

‘It’ll come,’ said Blenner.

‘Will it?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ll send me back?’

‘Throne’s sake, Ibram, you’re the bloody poster boy for ridiculous Imperial heroism. They won’t be able to do without you at the front line for much longer.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘If you ask me,’ said Blenner, heading for the door, ‘I don’t know why you’re in such a bloody rush.’

Outside, there was a winter chill as hard as Gaunt’s mood. There was a touch of pink in the sky, and the light had turned the cityscape a pale, floury white. They stood on the steps and pulled on their gloves, their breath fuming.

‘I’m sorry for the delay, sirs,’ said the doorman. Gaunt’s staff car had yet to appear. Hargiter was down on the pavement, waiting for his own limousine to arrive from the parking garage. They joined him.

Hargiter was studying the skyline. So many of the spires and domes were still clad in scaffolding and canvas lids. Like a gap-toothed smile, there were pieces missing.

‘You were here, weren’t you?’ Hargiter asked.

‘Oh, it was all very different then,’ said Blenner. ‘I remember the Tower of the Plutocrat–’

‘You weren’t here, Vay,’ said Gaunt. ‘You and the Greygorians were on Hisk.’

‘Fair play,’ pouted Blenner. ‘If you had let me finish, I was going to say “I remember the Tower of the Plutocrat from the many mezzotints and engravings I have seen”. Yes, Ibram was here. In fact, I believe he’s the principal reason there isn’t a Tower of the Plutocrat any more.’

‘I doubt you recognise the place,’ said Hargiter. ‘It took such a pounding, there can’t be much left that was standing when you were here.’

‘No,’ Gaunt agreed. ‘Time passes and things change. You tend to see things with different eyes.’

‘Of course, in his case,’ said Blenner, ‘he means that literally.’

THREE

CAPTAIN DAUR AND THE JACK OF CUPS

He walked to the end of Selwire Street and then, on a drafty corner, checked the directions that had been written on the scrap of paper. Daylight was bleeding away fast, and it felt as if it was taking the heat with it. He wondered if there was going to be snow. He wondered if it was going to be as heavy as the trouble he was getting into.

Left at the corner, the instructions read, along an underwalk, and then across a small court hidden behind a merchant’s townhouse and a busy garmentfab loft. Follow the six steps down from street level, the ones with a black iron handrail ending in a gryphon’s beak. There’ll be a red door, the colour of a victory medal’s ribbon.

Also, he thought, the colour that tended to edge the pages of a Commissariat charge-sheet.

There was no point thinking like that. He’d come too far to turn back. He went down the steps, and pressed the ivory button of the bell. He waited. The court above was lit by the lights of the garmentfab loft. They were working late. He could hear the clatter of stitching machines and thread-runners, like distant stub-fire.

The door opened, and a handsome woman in a green dress looked out at him. She seemed faintly amused, as if someone he couldn’t see had told her something funny just before she’d opened the door.

‘Captain,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ he replied.

‘I take it you haven’t rung the wrong bell by mistake?’

‘Not if this is Zolunder’s,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t say so above the door,’ she replied, ‘but it is. You’ll need two things to get in.’

He showed her the fat roll of bills that had been sitting like a hot coal in his trouser pocket.

‘That’s one,’ she said. ‘The other’s a name.’

‘Daur,’ said Ban Daur.

The hostess took him along a chilly corridor and downstairs into the main area of the parlour. The air smelled of quality spice from the burners, and music was provided by the cantor-finches fluttering and trilling in their delicate, suspended cages. Zolunder’s was several levels removed from the common gaming dens and rowdy-houses where enlisted men lost their pay. It was demure and exclusive, catering for officers and aristocrats.

Three games were in progress around the broad, lacquer-work tables arranged in bays around the room. Attentive girls in long gowns drifted about with trays of drinks.

‘Why did you need my name?’ Daur asked the hostess, but he knew why. Zolunder’s had an illegal hardwire link to the Munitorum database, which they used to check identities. To get past the red door and the hostess in green, you had to be who you said you were. Deception did not go down at all well.

‘Security,’ she replied.

She took him to the bar. He was amused to see that it was made of a single, polished section of nalwood. Now was that a good omen or a bad one?

‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You haven’t done this before, have you?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s not really my speed,’ he said.

‘Then why?’ she asked

Daur shrugged. ‘I need to make a little money.’

‘You’ve got a little money in your pocket.’

‘A little more.’

‘You’re in trouble?’

‘Isn’t everyone?’ he asked.

The hostess frowned. It was a decent answer. Pretty much everyone she saw through the red door was in trouble, even if that trouble was just an over-fondness for cards. She always felt sorry for the punters who came along with desperate dreams of turning a little into a lot. It never happened.

She always felt especially sorry for the men, like the nice-looking captain before her, who seemed honest and good-hearted, but who were about to ruin their good character forever.

‘I’ll send someone over,’ she said.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘To keep you company until a space opens at a table,’ she replied.

‘I thought you were keeping me company?’ he said.

She laughed.

‘You can’t afford me, captain,’ she said.

He blushed immediately.

‘I didn’t mean–’ he began.

She was genuinely surprised by the offence he imagined had been taken.

‘I’ll send someone over,’ she said.

The hostess left Daur at the bar and went away through a curtain into the private rooms. Urbano was watching the bar area on a monitor. He seemed in a particularly foul mood.

‘What’s up with this one, Elodie?’ he asked, gesturing at the screen image of Daur. ‘He’s got a fidget I don’t like.’

‘Well, he’s got a stake in his pocket that you will,’ she replied. ‘He’s a proper gentleman, and as pure as the driven. You can take him for everything. I’m sure you’ll enjoy that.’

‘How much has he got?’ Urbano asked. He was daintily cleaning his teeth with a stainless steel pick. Elodie had worked for Cyrus Urbano for eight years, and she still could not reconcile his gentile mannerisms with the frenzied brutality she knew he was capable of.

‘I didn’t take it and count it,’ she replied snidely, ‘but I’d say a thousand at least.’

Urbano whistled. ‘Where did a man like that get a thousand?’

‘Maybe he borrowed it from Guard payroll. That might explain his nerves.’

‘The wirelink says he’s an officer in the Tanith First,’ said Urbano, reading off the data-log.

‘He’s obviously got problems on his shoulders,’ said Elodie. ‘That makes him desperate, which makes him careless.’ She looked around at the girls waiting on the couches.

‘I need someone to charm him,’ she said. Two or three of her regulars were about to raise their hands.

‘Did you say he was Tanith?’ asked the new girl.

‘That’s right,’ said Elodie.

The girl got up.

‘I’ll take this one,’ she said.

‘That’s right, you’re from the dead world too, aren’t you?’ asked Elodie.

The girl nodded. She was good-looking, with the dark hair and pale skin of the Tanith. She’d only been with them two nights, on probation still, and she hadn’t yet hosted a customer.

‘Send someone with a bit more experience,’ Urbano told Elodie.

‘No, let’s give her a chance. The Tanith connection’s too good to miss out on. This Captain Daur needs careful handling if he’s going to owe the house.’

Urbano shrugged his heavy shoulders. He looked over at the new girl and nodded.

‘Off you go then,’ Elodie told her. The new girl smiled, checked her reflection in the mirror, straightened her red silk gown, and headed for the exit.

‘Just remember,’ Elodie called after her. The new girl stopped and looked back.

‘Try not to screw it up, Banda,’ Elodie said.

The new girl smiled.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said.

‘We should get a drink,’ she said.

Daur looked up. He’d been watching the cantor-finches in the nearest cage.

‘I wanted to keep my head straight,’ he said.

‘You here to play?’ she asked, sitting down next to him, and draping the skirts of her red silk dress over her legs elegantly.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Then you’re here to have a good time,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a drink, and then perhaps another.’ She made a two-fingered gesture at the drinks servitor. ‘Sacra,’ she said.

‘That’s hard stuff,’ said Daur.

‘You don’t drink sacra?’

She leaned close to him, and sniffed him.

‘You’re not Tanith at all, are you?’ she asked.

‘Verghast,’ he said. ‘The regiments amalgamated after the siege of Vervunhive, and it was restructured–’

The girl in the red dress made her hand mimic a chattering mouth.

‘Lots of words, none of them interesting,’ she said. ‘What’s your name, Verghast?’

‘Ban. Ban Daur.’

‘Ban, eh? Well, I’m Ban-da.’

‘Really? Do you know, there’s a Tanith girl in the First called Jessi Banda. She looks just like you.’

‘Does she?’ asked Banda. ‘And I thought I was a one-off.’

‘Well,’ said Daur, ‘she’s quite beautiful too.’

Banda smiled. ‘There, you see. Mouth moving, better words coming out. That was almost charming.’

‘Oh, I can be,’ said Daur.

‘When?’ she asked.

The servitor put two small glasses of sacra in front of them.

‘I’ll warn you when it’s going to happen again,’ he said.

They clinked glasses.

‘You’re nervous,’ she said quietly.

‘This is all very new to me,’ he said.

‘Then why come here?’

‘I didn’t have much choice.’

‘Under pressure to perform are we?’ she asked.

‘Something like that.’

‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘There’s an evil superior officer, and you’re horribly beholden to him, in debt somehow. He’s sent you here tonight to raise funds to get him off your back, because you’re such a butter-wouldn’t-melt innocent that you’ll take the house. You’re his secret weapon.’

Daur turned pale.

‘Don’t,’ he shuddered.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Why did you say that?’

‘I was just joking. Throne, did I hit a little too close to home?’

Daur took another sip of his drink.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘Rawne,’ he replied.

‘Are you his secret weapon?’

‘How can I be if you’ve already seen through me?’

She shrugged. She saw Elodie signal from the curtain.

‘There’s a seat opening,’ she told Daur. ‘Are you feeling lucky?’

Urbano watched the monitor as the Tanith captain took his place at one of the lacquer-work tables. The girl in the red dress stood at his side, draping an over-familiar arm across his shoulder.

‘This is going to be painful,’ he smiled. ‘The ninker’s terrified. Way out of his comfort zone. Easy meat.’

‘Either that,’ said Elodie, ‘or the best hustler you’ve ever seen. He’s almost too good to be true.’

‘He’s the genuine article,’ Urbano scoffed. ‘It’s right there on the data-log. We need to make him reckless. Let him play a couple of hands, and then take twenty thousand out of the safe and move it to the dealer’s drawer. Make sure he sees it. Make sure his mouth waters. I want his safety catches to flip all the way off.’

The cards were tall and hand-coloured. They flowed from the dealer’s hands like punch-tokens from a cogitator. There was a charged atmosphere around the table.

Rawne had taught Daur the rudiments of the game, a trick-and-trade variety called Suicide Kings, but he was hardly an expert. With each hand, it was a constant struggle to remember the basic combination hierarchy and the correct moments to discard, let alone the tips he’d been given. Three of a kind sweeps two pairs, and quads sweep everything except the dynasties. The odds of a straight or regal dynasty are 649,739 to 1, so a lousy player always chases hands that are statistically unlikely. The deuce of swords reverses the march, the sequence of play, and allows for out-of-turn wagers. The king of cups, Blue Sejanus as he is called, is wild when the march is clockwise, and the ace of swords, its single pip bloated and enlarged to incorporate the tax-paid duty stamp, is wild counter-clock. Base your wagers on a calculation of your available outs. Certain court cards are magic kickers that could break tied hands.

So much to remember. Daur focused on the two chief rules. Limp, to stay in as long as possible, but make them aware of just how much you have in your pocket.

He played the minimal bets on every hand, but between deals, or when the march switched, he took out his roll of bills and pretended to count them under the edge of the table. He played through four hands, won nothing, and lost the minimum.

‘For Throne’s sake, have a real bid, why don’t you?’ the Tanith girl whispered into his ear.

Just before the fifth hand was dealt, the hostess in green came over to the table with a flat leather case. She unlocked the wooden drawer under the tabletop where the dealer was standing, and slid it out. There was cash in its wooden tray already, about fifteen hundred in mixed bills. She opened the case and loaded the tray with twenty thousand in crisp bricks of currency. Daur watched the whole process, his blink-rate rising.

‘Could I get a drink?’ he asked the Tanith girl. ‘My mouth’s a little dry.’

‘Of course,’ she said, and left the table.

The hostess closed the drawer and went away with the case. The fifth hand came out. Daur had a pair of sevens. He began to bid with a little more vigour.

The Tanith girl came back, and put his drink on the table beside his wrist.

‘All done,’ she whispered in his ear. She looked at the table. ‘Getting a little bolder?’ she teased. The bidding went around the table again. It came down to Daur and another player, a sour-looking Navy officer, who called him.

They each had a pair sevens. The Navy man sniffed and turned his kicker. It was a ten of swords.

Daur flipped his own kicker.

The jack of cups.

The dealer swept the pot across to Daur. He’d just taken over a hundred on a single hand.

‘I’m beginning to like you,’ chuckled the Tanith girl, stroking his ear.

There was a sudden crash. It was the sort of crash that a door the colour of a victory medal’s ribbon would make if it got kicked in. There was a commotion, and some shouting. Players jumped up from the tables, cards knocked askew. Four men in battledress burst into the parlour aiming service pistols. Some of the players and girls tried to leave, but the soldiers had all the exits blocked.

‘What the hell is this?’ Urbano demanded, storming out from the private areas. Elodie shrank back. She hoped her boss would have the sense not to kick off.

‘Looks like an illegal game to me,’ replied the Imperial commissar who wandered into the room through the soldiers aiming the pistols.

‘Oh, come on!’ said Urbano. ‘You know this is a waste of your time.’

The commissar looked around. ‘Huh. This is the famous Zolunder’s, eh? You’ve no idea how long the Commissariat has been trying to close you down.’

He looked at Urbano. ‘Nice place. I mean, tasteful. You’ve got a pattern on your carpet that’s not the consequence of vomit. That’s rare, by gambling parlour standards.’

‘You’re making a mistake, commissar…’

‘Hark,’ replied the commissar.

‘Well, Commissar Hark,’ said Urbano, ‘you should know that the Commissariat has tried this before, to no avail.’

‘Oh, I know how you cover yourself,’ said the commissar. ‘The oh-so-expensive lawyers you keep on retainer throw out any raid as an illegal search, and you keep your considerable cash supplies locked up in a safe, knowing that we can only confiscate monies in game circulation. So we take a few hundred off your tables, stick you with a nuisance fine for unlicensed gaming, and go away with our tails between our legs.’

The commissar smiled at Urbano. ‘The thing is, pal, we’re not here to mount another pointless raid on Zolunder’s tonight. But you’re going to wish we were.’

‘What are you talking about?’ growled Urbano. ‘Just give me the fine notice and get out.’

The commissar placed his hand on Daur’s shoulder. Daur kept staring at the cards on the table, but he shivered.

‘Hello, Daur.’

‘Sir,’ Daur whispered.

The commissar looked at Urbano. ‘We’re here for Captain Daur.’

‘What’s he done?’ asked Urbano.

‘Not your business, but it wasn’t pretty,’ said the commissar. ‘And it was enough to send him here tonight in a desperate attempt to raise enough cash for a ticket off-world. Let’s have him, boys.’

The soldiers closed in around Daur and got him to his feet. One of them cuffed him and began to lead him away.

‘Let him be!’ the Tanith girl snapped.

‘Bring her too,’ the commissar told his men. ‘Let’s see what she knows about his activities.’

The Tanith girl began to scream and shout as another of the soldiers manhandled her off the premises.

The commissar looked back at Urbano.

‘One last piece of bad news for you,’ he said. ‘We’ve just apprehended a deserter in flight. That’ll make felony two, and it means we can seize all assets involved in said commission.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Urbano breathed, his eyes wide with rage.

The commissar shook his head sweetly. His two remaining men cleared the table of all cash, emptied the pockets of the other players, and then opened the table drawer and removed the fat, crisp bricks of notes that Elodie had put in the tray. They dumped the takings into three canvas evidence bags.

‘Do you want a receipt?’ asked the commissar.

‘Get out,’ said Urbano.

Outside, it had begun to snow. The garmentfab had closed for the night and its windows were dark. The night sky over the ancient city was a threatening maroon haze. The men bundled Daur and the Tanith girl into the back of a cargo-8 and clambered aboard. The truck started up, and rolled down out of the court onto the empty street.

In the back of the truck, the commissar sat down on the bench facing Daur and the girl. He weighed the evidence sacks in his hands.

‘About twenty-two, twenty-three thousand,’ he said.

Daur stared back at him.

‘Commissar Hark’ he smiled. ‘Nice work, captain.’

‘Thanks,’ replied Daur. ‘You look a complete gimp in that commissar suit, by the way.’

Rawne took off the commissar’s cap.

‘Well, it did the trick,’ he said.

‘I’ll say,’ chuckled Meryn, sitting back and unbuttoning the collar of his battledress.

‘Can I hold the stash?’ Banda asked Rawne. ‘Just hold it, for a moment?’

Rawne laughed and tossed her the evidence sacks.

She opened the canvas pouches and sniffed.

‘We’ll make a career criminal out of you yet, Daur,’ said Meryn.

‘This was strictly a one-time thing, Meryn,’ Daur replied.

‘Oh, they all say that,’ said Varl. ‘They absolutely all say that.’

The truck began to slow down. Rawne leaned over and rapped his fist against the partition.

‘Leyr? Cant? Why are we slowing down?’ he called.

‘Looks like the road’s shut, boss,’ Leyr’s voice came back from the cab. ‘We’re going to go left instead.’

The truck swung around.

‘As I was saying,’ said Varl, waggling a cheeky finger at Daur. ‘You have the poise of a master conman.’

Daur was about to respond when the truck slammed to a halt.

‘What the feth?’ asked Varl. ‘What the feth’s the matter, Cant?’ he shouted through the partition into the cab.

‘Roadblock!’ Trooper Cant’s voice answered.

‘What?’

‘It’s only the fething Commissariat!’ they heard Cant yell. ‘The real one, I mean!’

Rawne looked at Meryn, Varl, Banda and Daur.

‘Oh, not good,’ said Varl.

‘Yeah,’ said Rawne, ‘this is absolutely what not good feels like.’

FOUR

AARLEM FORTRESS

It was dark by the time the limousine brought him back to Aarlem Fortress. As they raced down the hill road, he looked out at the sodium lights flashing past, the perimeter line, and the blur of chain-link and razorwire. Snowflakes caught the light, and turned the air into white noise.

Beyond the ditch and double fence, like a theatre’s stage brilliantly lime-lit for a performance, he could see the main exercise quad fringed with lights, and the strings of pole-lamps radiating off the quad, lighting the rows of modular sheds. Aarlem Fortress was so named because a fortress called Aarlem had once stood on the spot. It had been razed during the Famous Victory, and the garrison erected on its rendered foundations.

It had been their home for a year.

Gaunt had never expected to go back to Balhaut, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be stationed there for any length of time. He divided, arbitrarily, he supposed, his life into three parts: his cadet-ship, his service with the Hyrkans, and his command of the Ghosts. Balhaut was the end-stop of the Hyrkan period, before the Tanith watershed. It was like revisiting a past life.

Then again, everything had been like revisiting a past life since Jago.

They’d given him skin-grafts, significant skin-grafts, and somehow patched his brutalised organs back together. It was the organ damage that had come closest to ending him in the weeks after his rescue from the hands of the Archenemy torturers, and it had come fething close half a dozen times.

The eyes, oddly, were the most superficial injuries. Augmetics could be easily fitted into emptied sockets. General Van Voytz, perhaps nagged by guilt, had authorised particularly sophisticated implants of ceramic and stainless steel. In terms of performance, they were better than Gaunt’s original eyes. He had greater range and depth perception, and appreciably enhanced cold-light and latent-heat vision. And they sat in his face well enough. They looked like… eyes. A little like the porcelain eyes of an expensive doll, he often thought when he saw them in a mirror, but at least they were alive, not dull like a doll’s. When you caught them right, there was a flash of green fire in them.

It was the eyes, though, that bothered him most, more than the months of itching grafts, and more than the regime of drugs and procedures to heal his sutured innards. The eyes didn’t hurt, they worked perfectly, and they didn’t scare children; they just weren’t his.

And every now and then, he saw…

It wasn’t entirely clear what it was he saw. It was too fast, too subliminal. Doc Dorden said the phenomenon wasn’t anything to do with his new eyes at all. It was a memory of the trauma of losing his old eyes. The memory was haunting his optic nerves.

This seemed likely. Gaunt couldn’t remember much about what the Blood Pact had done to him, and the glimpses conveyed more of a feeling than anything visual, but he could taste pain in them. He was convinced that the intermittent glimpses were flashes of the very last thing his old eyes had seen.

The limousine’s tyres drummed over the ribbed decking of the ditch bridge, and they swung up to the main gate. The headlamps picked up the black-and-yellow chevrons of the barrier as they rose like the jaws of a beast.

The Tanith barracks were on the west side of the quad, facing the drab blockhouses used by the 52nd Bremenen. It was still snowing lightly, though nothing had settled. The fat snowflakes looked yellow as they milled down into the amber glow of the sodium lamps. The air was full of a raw, metal cold that you could taste in the back of your lungs.

Gaunt got out of the limousine beside the steps of the command post. The Munitorum driver held the door for him.

‘What time tomorrow, sir?’ the driver asked.

‘Don’t bother,’ Gaunt replied. He looked at the man, who stiffened suddenly. ‘I’ll be requesting another driver.’

‘Sir?’ the man mumbled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You kept me waiting,’ said Gaunt.

‘I… I have apologised about that, sir,’ the man said, standing rigidly to attention and trying not to catch Gaunt’s ceramic eyes. ‘There was a delay at the parking garage, and–’

‘There was a card school at the parking garage. You and the other drivers. A good hand you didn’t want to toss in, so you kept me waiting.’

The man opened his mouth, but then shut it quickly. It was bad enough to get a notice of reprimand from a commissar, far worse to be caught by a commissar in a lie.

‘That’ll be all,’ said Gaunt.

The man saluted, got back into the motor, and drove away.

Gaunt walked up the steps into the post. The card school had been a lucky guess. Where had that come from? Were these idiots getting so predictable in their malingering and incompetence, or was he just getting too old and cynical? He’d seen it all before. He’d made an educated guess.

Except, it felt as if he’d somehow witnessed the man’s crime: the drivers, hunched around an upturned crate beside a brazier in the chilly garage, the cards going down, a steward from the club coming in, calling out the numbers for the staff cars requested, a dismissive wave of the hand and the words, ‘Let the bastard wait a minute.’

Clear as day.

He laughed. Too many years a discipline officer: he knew all the tricks and dodges. He’d seen them all a thousand times.

Captain Obel had the watch. He got up from his desk beside the clerical pool, which was empty for the night, and saluted. The troopers stationed at the doors snapped to attention.

Gaunt waved an ‘at ease’ in their direction as he came in, pulling off his gloves.

‘What’s on the scope tonight, Obel?’ he asked.

Obel shrugged.

‘Square root of feth all, sir,’ he said.

‘Can I see the log?’

Obel reached towards his desk, and passed Gaunt the data-slate holding the regiment’s day-book and activity log. Gaunt sped through it.

‘Major Rawne off-base?’

‘Three-day pass, sir.’

Gaunt nodded. ‘Yes, I remember signing it. You got the whole night?’

‘I’m on till two; Gol Kolea has lates. Did your adjutant find you, by the way?’

Gaunt looked up at Obel. ‘Beltayn? He was looking for me?’

‘Yes, sir. Earlier on.’

‘Know what it was about?’ Gaunt asked.

Obel shook his head. ‘He didn’t say, sir. Sorry.’

Gaunt handed the log back to Obel. ‘Anything I should know about?’

‘There was some rowdy business this afternoon on the quad between some of ours and some of the Bremenen boys. Lot of hot air. Commissar Ludd put a lid on it.’

Gaunt made a mental note to have words with the Bremenen CO. Base-bound boredom was beginning to sour the once-friendly rivalry between the neighbouring regiments.

‘Anything else?’

‘Commissar Hark got called out to the city about an hour ago, sir,’ said Obel.

‘Official?’

‘It sounded like it, sir.’

Gaunt sighed. There were at least three hundred Ghosts off-base on passes at any one time. That meant drinking, betting, whoring, and a list of other, less savoury activities. One of the regiment’s commissars was getting dragged up to the hive every couple of days.

We’re getting fat, Gaunt thought. We’re getting fat and idle, and our patience is wearing thin, but it’s the thin that’s going to cause the worst trouble.

Gaunt wandered along the blockhouse hall towards his quarters, and saw a man sitting on one of the chairs outside his office. He was a civilian: a young, slightly scruffy fellow in a black, buttoned suit and cravat. Several leather carrying boxes and instrument cases sat on the floor beside him. When Gaunt appeared, he rose to his feet.

‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt?’ he began.

Gaunt held up an index finger.

‘Just a moment,’ he said. He walked past the man and entered his office.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked Beltayn.

Gaunt raised his eyebrows, looked at his adjutant, and calmly closed the office door behind him.

Beltayn blinked and composed himself. He put the sheaf of papers he had been sorting on Gaunt’s desk and executed a trim salute.

‘My apologies, sir, that was out of line. Good evening.’

‘Good evening, adjutant,’ Gaunt replied, taking off his coat.

‘So where the… where have you been, sir?’ asked Beltayn.

‘I spent the afternoon with the Kapaj. Is that all right?’

‘It would have b…’ Beltayn began. He changed his mind. ‘It’s unfortunate we weren’t able to speak during the course of the day, sir. You did have several commitments.’

‘Did I?’

‘A three o’clock meeting of the joint review board,’ said Beltayn.

‘Well, it’s probably a mercy I was spared, then, isn’t it?’

‘And you were due here at five for Mr Jaume.’

‘Who’s Mr Jaume?’ Gaunt asked.

His adjutant raised his arm in a swan-neck and pointed towards the office door.

‘The civilian outside?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What the feth is his business?’

‘He’s a portraitist,’ replied Beltayn. ‘He’s been commissioned to make portraits of officers who served during the Balhaut War.’

‘I’m not sitting for a painting.’

‘He makes photographic exposures, sir. There was a letter of introduction. I showed it to you. You authorised the appointment.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘The portrait’s for a memorial chapel, or something.’

‘I’m not dead,’ said Gaunt.

‘Clearly,’ replied Beltayn. ‘Mr Jaume presented himself at the appointed time, and you weren’t here. He’s been waiting ever since.’

Gaunt sat down at his desk. ‘Just send him home with my apologies, and reschedule. Tell him I didn’t know anything about an appointment.’

‘You did, though,’ said Beltayn.

‘What?’

‘I pinned a note of your schedule to your copybook first thing this morning and left it on your blotter.’

Gaunt looked down at his desk. He shifted the pile of documents to one side. His brown leather copybook, a sheet of yellow notepaper attached to the cover, lay on the tabletop.

‘You didn’t take it with you,’ said Beltayn.

‘It would appear not,’ replied Gaunt.

Beltayn sighed.

‘I’ll go and rearrange the meeting,’ he said. Gaunt looked at him. He could see Beltayn’s exasperation. He could see him saying, You’ve got to be more focused! There’s work to be done, and you treat everything like a game! There’s no rigour in you anymore! You’d rather duck out and go off gallivanting! That drunken idiot friend of yours, Blenner, he’s the ruin of you!

Of course, Dughan Beltayn would never say anything like that to him, but, just for a moment, Gaunt could see him saying it, standing there beside the desk. Gaunt could see the adjutant blowing his whole career in one infuriated outburst.

Beltayn said nothing. Nevertheless, with a slightly queasy feeling, Gaunt realised that was exactly what the adjutant was thinking.

‘How about tomorrow morning?’ Beltayn asked.

‘Nine o’clock sharp, Bel, that’ll be fine.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Beltayn headed for the door. Before he got there, it opened, and Dorden walked in.

‘I heard you were back.’

‘Come in,’ said Gaunt, with a careless wave of his hand.

Beltayn went out into the hall to speak to the portraitist, and closed the door. Dorden sat down in the chair facing Gaunt’s desk. With one exception, Chief Medicae Dorden was the oldest person in the regimental company. Gaunt realised just how old the doctor was beginning to look. Out in the field, Dorden had been grizzled and haggard, but two years off the line had put a little meat back on his bones and ruddied his complexion. He’d gone from being a prematurely aged whipcord of a man to a soft, slightly plump country doctor. The tarnish of grey in his wiry hair had turned as white as the Saint’s gown.

‘I’ve been looking for you all day,’ Dorden began.

‘Don’t you start,’ replied Gaunt.

‘I will, actually,’ Dorden said. ‘Medicae and Section are breathing down my neck. Quarterly certification was due two days ago, and it can’t be completed until all regimental medicals are done and submitted.’

‘So do them,’ said Gaunt.

‘Ha ha,’ replied Dorden. ‘It’s all right for you. If the certification is late, you might get a slap on the hand from Section. As the delay is medical-related, I get fined or worse. Can you please get this sorted out?’

‘And the root of the problem is?’

Dorden shrugged as if he barely needed to say it. ‘The regimental medicals can’t be completed because one member of this company is refusing the examination.’

‘Is it who I think it is?’

Dorden nodded.

‘Is he refusing the medical on religious grounds?’

‘I believe he’s refusing it on the basis of being a cantankerous old bastard.’

‘I’ll speak to him.’

‘Tonight?’

‘I’ll go now,’ replied Gaunt.

The temple house adjoined the command post on its east side, just another modular blockhouse like all the other structures in the camp. It could easily have been put to use as a dorm or a storage barn, but they’d taken out the internal floor, so that the square chamber was two storeys deep, filled it with benches, and had a shrine consecrated on the north wall facing the seating. It was a typical Imperial Guard conversion.

Father Zweil, the old ayatani, had attached himself like a barnacle to the Tanith First during the tour on Hagia, and he had never let go. Nor had they ever had the heart to scrape him off their hull. By default, by habit, and by convenience, he had become the company chaplain. He was inconsistent, unpredictable, ill-tempered and belligerent. His age and experience had invested him with a degree of wisdom, but it was generally a challenge to mine that wisdom out of him. On paper, in regimental reports, it was often hard to justify his continued association with the unit.

On the other hand, Zweil had a certain quality that Gaunt found as difficult to deny as it was to identify. Apart from anything else, Zweil had been with them, steadfast, all the way since Hagia. He had been through every fight, every brawl, every set-piece; he’d survived the knife-edge of Herodor, the compartment war of Sparshad Mons, the liberation of Gereon, and the siege of Hinzerhaus. Every step of the way, he had ministered to the needs of the dying and the dead. His blood had become tied to Tanith blood in a way that could not be unworked.

Zweil ran daily services in the temple house, and other notable observances when they cropped up on the calendar. Every morning, without regard to the weather, he walked from Aarlem Fortress to the Templum Ministoria at Aarlem-Sachsen, four kilometres away, and spent an hour there in private worship. This daily, eight kilometre pilgrimage was, he declared, his way of justifying the imhava or ‘roving’ part of his title as imhava ayatani. Years before (how many years Gaunt did not know), Zweil had taken up a life of wandering devotion to travel through the Sabbat Worlds in the footsteps of the Saint, and repeat the epic circuit she had made. When they’d met him on Hagia, he’d claimed that his great journey was nearly finished. He’d walked with them and followed their route ever since, but he had always insisted that, eventually, he would have to finish his devotion. ‘One day, you know,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll part company. Oh yes. You’ll be going your way, and your way won’t suit me any more. So, we’ll say our goodbyes, and I’ll take off on the way I need to go. I’ve spent too much time as it is, following after you. You’ll miss me when I’m gone. I know you will. You’ll all be heartbroken and rudderless. I can’t help that. I’ve got devotions, devotions I must attend to. The Saint expects it of me. In fact, now I come to think of it, I may start tomorrow, or the day after. Is it dumplings tomorrow? It is, isn’t it? Right, I’ll start the day after.’

Every night since they’d taken up post at Aarlem Fortress and converted the temple house, Father Zweil had offered what he described as ‘occasions of enlightenment’. After supper, any member of the regiment without duties, and any member of the regimental train, was welcome to come to the temple house for a couple of hours and listen to him discourse on whatever subject had piqued his interest that day. Sometimes, the occasions were out-and-out sermons, full of piss and vinegar if Zweil’s dander was up. Sometimes, they were more like lectures, methodical and instructive, and delivered with reference to the teetering stack of texts he’d dragged over from the library of the Templum Ministoria. Sometimes, he simply read aloud, covering topics from history to poetics and philosophy or even basic ethics. Sometimes, he handed books out so that everyone present could read privately for an hour. Sometimes, he went amongst them, and used the occasion to help a few of the less-well educated to brush up on their literacy.

In the course of any week, his homilies would veer from the sacred to the profane and back. He would talk about the Saint, or other saints, or the tradition of the ayatani. He would digress at length on the history and customs of the Sabbat Worlds. He would seize enthusiastically on a news story of the day, and use it to ignite animated discussion and debate amongst his congregation. He would teach, directly or indirectly, grammar and numeracy, history and politics, music and poetry. He would air, almost at random, one of the many attics of his mind, and lay out the contents for all to examine.

Gaunt went along whenever he got the chance. Whenever, apropos of nothing, Zweil came out with a fact or detail that he hadn’t previously encountered, Gaunt would make a brief note of it in his copybook. In a year on Balhaut, Gaunt had been obliged to request three copybooks from stores.

That evening, when Gaunt entered the temple house, the chosen subject appeared to be either the history of poetry or the poetry of history. There were about forty Ghosts present, and Zweil, perching at the lectern like a roosting vulture, was getting them to read verses aloud from faded, green-bound schola copies of the Early Sabbatists.

It was Shoggy Domor’s turn. He was on his feet, carefully reading short cantos that Gaunt reckoned were either Ahmud or some middle period Feyaytan. Gaunt waited a while. When Domor had done enough, Zweil gestured for him to sit down, and then picked on Chiria, Domor’s adjutant. She got up, wiped her palm across her scarred cheek uncertainly, and started up where Domor had left off.

Gaunt found a seat near the back, and listened. When Chiria, halting and clumsy, had done, Costin got up and embarked on an over-hasty run at one of the Odes of Sarpedon. After Costin, Sergeant Raglon read a Niciezian sonnet, and after Raglon, Wheln, who offered up a surprisingly fluid and spirited recital of Kongress’s Intimations. After Wheln, it was Eszrah’s turn.

The Nihtgane rose to his feet, a tall and considerable presence, and read one of Locaster’s Parables. It was peculiar to hear his Untill vowel-sounds rounding out Low Gothic. In the two years since Jago, and especially in that last year on Balhaut, Zweil and Gaunt between them had taught Eszrah ap Niht his letters. The Nihtgane virtually never missed one of the ayatani’s ‘occasions of enlightenment’. He read well. He even removed his battered old sunshades when required to read from a book indoors. When he wrote out his name, he spelled it Ezra Night.

If a year on Balhaut has civilised Eszrah, Gaunt thought, what has it done to the rest of us? How soft have we become? How much of our bite have we lost? Is there an edge left on us at all?

When the meeting broke up, Gaunt went down the front to speak to Zweil. The old ayatani looked up from a discussion he was having with Bool, and saw Gaunt approaching.

‘This can’t be good,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Gaunt.

‘If it’s about that amasec in Baskevyl’s quarters, somebody had already drunk most of it.’

‘It isn’t about that,’ said Gaunt.

‘Well, if this is about the Oudinot mascot, I didn’t roast it, nor did I suggest to anybody that it should be roasted, and I certainly didn’t supply any recipe for ploin and forcemeat stuffing.’

‘This isn’t about the Oudinot mascot,’ said Gaunt. He paused. ‘What Oudinot mascot?’

‘Oh, they don’t have one,’ said Zweil hurriedly.

‘They don’t?’

‘Not since someone roasted it,’ Zweil added.

Gaunt shook his head. ‘It’s not about any of that. I just need a little help, father.’

‘Help?’

‘That’s right. The benefit of your great experience.’

‘And my wisdom?’

‘And that. There’s a problem with one of the men, and I’d like your advice.’

Zweil furrowed his brow, concentrating. ‘Oh, certainly. No problem. Hit me.’

‘There’s a member of the regimental company–’

‘Do I know him?’ asked Zweil.

‘Yes, father.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘This member of the regimental company, he’s causing a big bureaucratic problem.’

‘Oh, the little fether!’ Zweil hissed, nodding conspiratorially. ‘Are you going to have him flogged?’

‘Flogged?’

‘Flogging’s too good for him. I know, have him tied to a rocket and fired into the heart of the local star,’ said Zweil.

‘Well, that’s certainly on my list of possibilities.’

‘Is it? Good.’

‘The problem,’ said Gaunt, ‘is that the man is refusing to take his medical.’

‘Refusing?’

‘Everyone needs to be certified fit, and he’s refusing to submit himself for the exam.’

‘There’s always one, isn’t there?’ said Zweil. He frowned more deeply and tapped his finger against his chin. ‘I’d make an example of him, if I were you.’

‘You would?’

‘You can’t have insubordination like that, Gaunt. You’re meant to have some authority. Don’t stand for it. Have the man drummed up and down the quad, and then maybe tied to something heavy while the rest of us throw blunt objects at him.’

‘So, in your opinion, this man’s definitely out of line?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Absolutely, categorically, inexcusably out of line. He needs to be certified fit, and he knows it. It’s just pure bloody-mindedness, is what it is. He has to be made to follow the rules down to the letter of the– Waitaminute. It’s me, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ said Gaunt.

‘Hmm,’ said Zweil. ‘That was very sly of you.’

‘I know. Will you go and see Dorden?’

‘I suppose.’

‘What’s the problem?’

Zweil rocked his head from side to side and shrugged. ‘I’ve never liked doctors. Yurk. Poking their noses in places where noses weren’t supposed to fit. I won’t have it.’

‘You’ll have this.’

Zweil stuck his tongue out at Gaunt.

‘What are you afraid they’ll find?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I’m old. I’m very, very old. What aren’t they going to find?’

Gaunt smiled. ‘Tomorrow morning, please. Don’t make me have this conversation with you again.’

Zweil scowled.

‘Now bless me.’

Zweil waved some half-hearted business with his hands. ‘Bless you, in the name of the God-thingumy, blah blah.’

‘Thank you.’

Zweil returned to the conversation he had been having with Bool. Haller was waiting to ask a question of his own. Gaunt wandered over to the seat where Eszrah was working. The Nihtgane was patiently writing in a copybook. He was concentrating, threading the pen across the paper in a slow, exact hand.

‘Histye, soule,’ Gaunt said.

Eszrah looked up. ‘Histye.’

Gaunt sat down beside him. ‘Busy?’

Eszrah nodded. He carefully blotted out the paragraph he had already written, using a square of tan blotting paper.

‘The father, he asked of me to written down stories that have belonged to my regiment,’ he said.

‘Zweil asked you?’

Eszrah nodded. By regiment, Eszrah meant his people, the Nihtgane of the Gereon Untill. His vocabulary was expanding every day, often with nuanced meanings, but he understood the word regiment in a very particular way. He could not be encouraged to use ‘tribe’ or ‘people’ or even ‘community’ in relation to the Nihtgane, nor could he be persuaded of the specific military definition of regiment. The Tanith First was a regiment and, to Eszrah, it exhibited precisely the same dynamics of loyalty and collective reliance as a tribe or a family.

‘He’s asked you to record Nihtgane stories? Do you mean histories?’

Eszrah shook his head. ‘Not of things that were done, but of older than things.’

‘You mean like folklore?’ Gaunt asked.

Eszrah shrugged. ‘Soule not know word.’

‘I mean legends. Myths,’ Gaunt said.

Eszrah smiled. ‘Aye. That is word how the father says it.’

‘Do the Nihtgane have many myths?’ Gaunt asked.

Eszrah puffed out his lips and turned his eyes up to indicate the level of Gaunt’s understatement.

‘They have belong many, many,’ he said. ‘There is the story of the sleeping walker, which I have writ here, and the story of the moth and the jar, and the story of the snake and the branch, which I have writ here and writ here both. Also there is the story of the walking sleeper, and the story of the old sun, and the story of the hunter and the beast–’

‘How many have you written?’

‘Four and ten,’ said Eszrah. He looked at the open copybook. ‘This I am written, it is the story of the hunter and the pool. It will make five and ten. The hunter, he walks in many of my regiment their stories.’

‘Can I read them?’

Eszrah nodded willingly, and then hesitated. ‘But I must need the book to written down more of them.’

‘Here’s what,’ said Gaunt. ‘Why don’t I get you a second copybook. You write a story down in one book while I’m reading another, then we’ll swap. How’s that?’

Eszrah seemed quite satisfied by this compromise. Abruptly, he touched Gaunt on the sleeve and nodded towards the door of the temple house.

Beltayn had just entered, followed by Nahum Ludd, the regiment’s junior commissar. Ludd was in full uniform, and thawing snowflakes speckled his stormcoat.

‘There he is,’ said Beltayn.

Gaunt got up. ‘Something awry, Bel?’

Beltayn gestured to Ludd. The junior commissar drew an envelope from his coat. Gaunt could see that it was trimmed with a blue stripe, indicating an order despatch from the Commissariat.

‘A courier just brought this in, sir,’ said Ludd. ‘It’s come direct from Section, for your eyes only.’

Gaunt slit the envelope open quickly, took out the tissue-thin sheet inside and opened it to read it.

‘You’re going to have to reschedule Mr Jaume, Bel,’ he said.

‘How come, sir?’

‘Because I’ve got to report to Section at daybreak tomorrow.’

‘Does it say why?’ asked Ludd.

‘No,’ said Gaunt, ‘it doesn’t say anything else at all.’

FIVE

ENNISKER’S PERISHABLES

Long after the last of the clock towers in the Oligarchy, and away down the hill below in the sprawl of Balopolis, had finished chiming midnight, the men in Ennisker’s Perishables began to die.

The night was as cold and hard as quenched iron, and flurries of snow came and went under the yellow street lighting. Traffic on the New Polis Bridge and the Old Crossing lit up the skeletal girderwork with their headlights, and caught the snowflakes like dust in sunlight. Light rippled across the oil slick river.

Ennisker’s Perishables was a meat-packing plant on the north bank, a large outcrop of ouslite and travertine that dominated the city wall in the shadow of the New Polis Bridge. There was ground access to the place through the warren of streets threading the land-side of the city wall, and water access via pulleys and cage-lifts on the river side.

The plant was grim, and smelled of dank stone. The ooze-breath of the river pushed up into it through its deep basements, and through the vent holes that dotted its stained facade above the waterline like arrow slits in the curtain wall of a donjon. It had been essentially derelict since the war. The Henotic League, a beneficial order founded for the relief of veterans and unhabs, had used it as a hostel for a few years until they had secured larger and less miasmal accommodations up near Arkwround Square. The phantom remnants of a notice announcing this shift of venue, and inviting lost and needy souls to come looking for the ‘hall with the yellow doors’ on Arkwround, still lingered on one of the plant’s paint-scabbed loading doors. A subsequent attempt to revive the plant’s fortunes as a meat-packing site had foundered badly in ’81, but the power, waterlines and heating systems installed at the time had never been disconnected, a fact that Valdyke had noticed with satisfaction while sourcing the venue for his employer.

Nado Valdyke had come recommended by a man who knew a man who knew a man. His reputation was as a fixer, an arranger. A lack of scruples, and a willingness to get on with a job no matter how sound its legality, rounded out his resumé nicely. Though he had enjoyed correspondence with his employer, a series of letters that set out the employer’s requirements in some detail, Valdyke had not met his employer personally.

His employer was from off-world.

When Valdyke received notice that, after a long and arduous voyage, his employer had finally arrived at Balhaut Highstation, Valdyke left his apartment in the Polis stacks and set out to make sure all the arrangements were in place.

He took four men with him, four thugs from the stacks that he’d paid very well to mind him. Valdyke did not intend to leave himself vulnerable to some off-worlder he’d never met.

The employer turned up at Ennisker’s Perishables late, riding in a car leased from the city landing grounds. A few minutes behind the car came two hired tractors, towing cargo trailers that barely fitted down the narrow, riverside streets.

Two of Valdyke’s thugs obediently trundled open the loading doors at the first hint of approaching lights. Valdyke already had the power running in the plant, and had brought in, as instructed, two bulk servitors for lifting work, and a medicae, a man called Arbus, who asked no questions and took what work he could get, due to the small matter of him having been struck off the community registry for malpractice.

The three vehicles drove into the plant’s vast loading dock, a musty cavern lit by sputtering naphtha flares. The bay’s floor had been stained brick-red by decades of blood-letting. At a sign from Valdyke, the thugs rumbled the doors shut.

‘I’m Valdyke,’ said Valdyke, walking up to the man getting out of the leased car. ‘Are you Master Eyl?’

The man brushed off his beige leather coat, and looked Valdyke up and down.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Pleasure to meet you at last,’ said Valdyke. He thought about proffering his hand, but the man didn’t seem like the sort. Not the sort at all.

‘So, you want these shipments unloaded,’ Valdyke began, ‘and th–’

‘Did you receive my instructions?’ Eyl asked him, in an accented voice.

‘Yes, I got them.’

‘Were they clear in all particulars?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Valdyke

‘And the remuneration that I wired across, that was received correctly?’

‘It’s the down payment we agreed,’ Valdyke noted with a nod.

‘Then I’m not entirely sure why any further conversation is required,’ said Baltasar Eyl.

Valdyke hesitated for a second. The man had come in with his attitude set to ‘arsehole’, and Valdyke had diced men for less, for a lot less. Valdyke decided, however, to respond with an agreeable smile and a courteous nod. The smile-and-nod combo was inspired by two things. For one, the balance payment promised for the job was considerable, and Valdyke knew the only way to guarantee getting it was to finish the job properly.

For afters, the man, this off-worlder, had an air about him, something that said he was more than just dangerous. Dangerous was too small a word. He was still and contained, and his gestures were small and restrained, but Valdyke felt that was because an effort of sheer willpower was going on. Eyl’s flesh and behaviour were tightly controlled so that they could hold something in check, the way a straitjacket pinned a man’s arms. They were keeping a tight grip on something that smoked with feral cruelty, something that none of them, not even Eyl, wanted to see get out.

So Valdyke did his smile-and-nod, and clapped his hands. The thugs dragged open the dock’s inner shutters, exposing a second cavern-space, wreathed in steam, and filled with oily black machinery. Arbus the medicae readied his kit, and the servitors plodded forwards, bright orange and pincered like tusker crabs, to unload the containers.

As the work got underway (and Valdyke congratulated himself on his choice of venue, because it was a noisy business of clanks and thumps and piston-whines and vapour-hisses and, anywhere except the half-derelict piles of the riverside, it would have woken the neighbourhood and attracted the attention of the Magistratum), Valdyke assessed his employer a little further. There were three others in Eyl’s party, two men and a woman. The men were whip-cord, dog-eyed men like their master, and Valdyke presumed they were purchased muscle, though they were close with Eyl, their conversations tight and intimate. They were wearing leather bodygloves, boots, gloves and patched, Guard surplus jackets, but then so was every other thug in the sub. The two men had driven the tractors. Eyl had driven the leased car. Given the respect he apparently commanded, it seemed odd that he didn’t have a driver.

The fourth member of his party was a woman, a widow, weeded in a veil and black silks. She’d been riding in the back of Eyl’s motor, as if he was her chauffeur. There was something off about her too. When Valdyke looked at her – and widow or no widow, she was a handsome woman who deserved being looked at – it was as if she kept popping in and out of focus, like a film image distorting slightly as it was exposed to heat. It made Valdyke feel pretty sick to watch, so after a while he stopped.

The servitors detached the containers from the tractor flatbeds, and rolled them back up the dock into the adjoining chamber. Valdyke personally connected them up to the plant’s power source, just as if they were crates of meat, cold-stored, switching their refrigeration supply from mobile to static. Ducting systems inside the containers began to chatter and hum. Display lights lit up on the control panels.

Valdyke checked the lights. It was looking good.

‘Ambient’s coming up, and I’ve got clean green on the vital boost.’

He looked over at Eyl.

‘They look just like shipping pods,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ replied Eyl.

‘But they’re hibernaculums.’

Eyl stared back at him.

‘What?’ asked Valdyke. ‘Come on, I’ve been around. Even if I was so stupid that I couldn’t add together the resources you needed and the medical expertise you wanted on hand, you’re not the first person to smuggle live bodies onto Balhaut inside mortuary boxes.’

‘Am I not?’ asked Eyl lightly. His face, half-lit by the fluttering naphtha flares, was unreadable.

Valdyke shrugged. ‘Deserters, illegal immigrants, people who’d prefer to avoid the light of the Throne, it happens a lot.’ He grinned. ‘Sometimes the poor stiffs inside actually survive the process.’

Valdyke picked up a locking bar and wandered around to the hatch of the first container.

‘Shall we?’ he asked.

Eyl nodded. Valdyke beckoned the medicae over, and then unscrewed the lid of a little pot of commiphora and wiped a smear of the gum resin across his philtrum. The astringent scent filled his nose. Eyl certainly wasn’t the first person to smuggle living contraband onto Balhaut as part of the mortuary trade, and Valdyke had assisted several of his predecessors. The low-berth survival rate was worse than Valdyke had joked. Most of the time, you really didn’t want to smell what was thawing out in the box.

He broke the shipping seal, slid the locking bar into the slot, and rotated it. It took a push and a grunt of exertion, but the teeth of the lock popped, and the main drum of the lock swung away on its hinges. Valdyke pulled it wide, uncoupled the bar, inserted it into the inner socket, and heaved on it again.

The hatch seals released. There was a deep and nasty groan of bad air, an exhalation like the long, lingering and last breath a man ever took, one final lung-emptying exhalation for the ages, after which no more breaths would ever be drawn. Valdyke pulled the hatch open.

‘Oh, Throne,’ the medicae said, coughing, and fanning the air in front of his face.

‘Yeah, that’s ripe,’ said Valdyke, who could smell it despite the commiphora. It was a warm, gorge-raising stink of off-meat, of dirty blood, of gangrene. Stained meltwater ran out over the lip of the hatch and spattered on the dock. It was viscous, and filled, like broth, with lumps of organic matter.

‘Mind your shoes, doc,’ Valdyke said. Arbus muttered a caustic reply, and took a snifter of something medicinal from a hip-flask. Valdyke dropped the locking bar, and pulled out a hooked packing knife, a bent spar of blade forty centimetres long with the edge on the inside of the curve. He chokked the tip in through the polymer sheeting wrapping the pod’s contents, and cut down in a half-sawing, half-slicing motion. The smell got worse. Valdyke could see the first of the packets inside. Glad of his gloves, he reached in and slid it out on its telescoping rail. It came out like a side of meat, wrapped in a polymer shroud, clamped to the suspension rail by heavy-weight metal runners.

The corpse inside the bag was human. The hair had been burned off, and it was uniformly the colour of rare steak, except for the cinder-pits of its eyes and the pearl wince of its teeth. Its arms were crossed over its shrunken breast.

‘Do you think you can save him?’ Valdyke asked.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Arbus replied.

Valdyke laughed and clattered out the second packet. This one was even more mutilated. Both corpses had dog-tags threaded around their ankles and secured through the seals of their shrouds.

Valdyke turned and looked at Eyl. Eyl was standing a way back, at the edge of the dock, with the widow and the two men, watching the work.

‘You got dead meat here, sir,’ said Valdyke. ‘Just dead meat. In fact, it looks like a regular shipment of cannon fodder back from the front line.’

‘No,’ said Eyl. ‘Look harder.’

Valdyke frowned, and then a smile spread across his face and became a leer.

‘Did you pack the front end with stiffs?’ he asked, jerking his thumb at the pod. ‘Is that what you did? You packed the front end with genuine stiffs, in case the container got inspected?’

‘No,’ the widow replied suddenly, speaking for the first time. ‘The bodies and blood, they are for the sealing ritual, or the casket won’t be–’

‘Hush, sister,’ said Eyl gently, patting her arm.

‘What did she say?’ asked Valdyke.

‘She said you’re right,’ said Eyl.

‘Sneaky,’ said Valdyke, nodding appreciatively. ‘Very sneaky, my friend.’

‘I’m not your friend,’ said Eyl.

Valdyke brushed that off with a shrug of his shoulders. He had no great desire to be the off-worlder’s pal either. He reached back into the container, and rattled out the third sack of meat.

‘Ah, damn,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Eyl, taking a step closer.

‘This one’s gone too. Sorry, you must have had a pretty serious failure in the hiber systems. Face looks like it’s been gnawed off.’

‘Valdyke?’ Arbus whispered at his side.

‘What?’

‘This one’s alive.’

‘What?’ Valdyke turned and looked down at the body hanging in the stained sack. There was blood pooling in the slack parts of the polymer sheaf, and the poor bastard’s face and shoulders looked like someone had taken a razor blade to them.

‘That’s nonsense,’ Valdyke said.

Arbus shook his head. He was using a receptor wand to scan the body for trace levels.

‘The vitals are low, but they’re what I would associate with coming out of hibernetic suspension.’ He looked at Valdyke, and Valdyke saw something akin to terror lighting the wretched old quack’s eyes.

‘You’re reading it wrong, you old fool,’ Valdyke told him.

‘I’m not, I swear!’ Arbus replied. Then he let out an exclamation of horror, and recoiled from the hanging sack.

‘What?’ Valdyke cried.

‘The eyes! The eyes!’ the medicae stammered.

Valdyke looked back down at the body. Its eyes were open, slots of yellowed irises and small, black pupils staring filmily out of the bloody mask. They were staring right at him.

‘Holy Throne of Terra,’ Valdyke said, and stepped back. ‘What is this?’ he asked. He looked at Eyl. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘It is what it is,’ said Eyl. ‘The scars are ritual marks of allegiance. I don’t expect you to understand.’

Behind him, Valdyke could hear short, muffled gasps of breath, and the wet crackle of polymer sheathing as slippery weight moved around inside it. He heard scrabbling noises and the occasional hiss or thump from inside the pod.

‘I think I’ll be going now,’ Valdyke said.

Eyl shook his head. The widow started to shudder. Valdyke thought for a moment that she had burst into tears behind her veil, but then he realised she was sniggering.

Nado Valdyke yelled for his thugs. No one answered. When he turned to look, all four of his men were lying on the ground. They were lying in curiously slack, unnatural poses. Eyl’s two men were standing over them, hands limp by their sides, staring at Valdyke with their dog-eyes narrowed.

Valdyke spat an oath at them, and one of the men smiled back at him, baring his teeth. The teeth were pink. Blood flowed out over his lip.

Valdyke yelped and turned to run. He slammed into something solid, as solid as a wall. It was Eyl.

Valdyke scrambled at him, but Eyl felt like stone, cold and unrelenting. Eyl shoved him, a light shove that nevertheless felt like the impact of a wrecking ball.

Valdyke staggered backwards, breathlessly sure that some of his ribs had just parted. He felt entirely disorientated. Eyl suddenly had the packing knife that Valdyke had been using.

He put it through Valdyke’s throat, splitting the adam’s apple and driving the blade so deep that the tip poked out through the back of the neck under Valdyke’s hairline. Valdyke hung for a moment like a fish on a hook. His hands clenched and unclenched. His mouth gagged open as if he was gasping for air. Blood welled out over his chin. His eyes were shock-wide as he tried to cope with the massive pain, and tried to deal with the comprehension that he hadn’t just been hurt, he’d suffered a catastrophic injury that had destroyed his life, and which could not be repaired.

Eyl let him fall.

The medicae, Arbus, was cowering and sobbing beside the open container. He looked up as Eyl approached.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘please, are you going to kill me too?’

‘I need you to successfully revive my men,’ said Eyl, frankly.

‘A-and after that?’ Arbus sniffed.

Eyl did not reply.

‘What in the name of Terra are you?’ Arbus wailed.

Eyl looked down at him.

‘We are nothing in the name of Terra,’ he said. ‘We are Blood Pact.’

SIX

AN INTERVIEW AT SECTION

The grey brick mansion known as Section stood near the heart of the Oligarchy, and dominated both Avenue Regnum Khulan, which it peeped into over high walls and black railings on its western side, and the gardens of Viceroy Square, which it faced. Its official names were Viceroy House, or the Ministrative Officio of the Commissariat, Balopolis (Balhaut), but it was referred to by everyone as Section, which was shorthand for the highest local stratum of Commissariat authority.

It was not an inviting place. Second only to the manse of the ordos on Melkanor Street, it was the most dreaded building on Balhaut. It was part administrative hub, with whole floors devoted to bureaucratic activity, part courthouse, and part gaol. Though there were several penitentiary facilities in north-hemisphere Balhaut for the detention of military offenders, a lower level of Section contained a maximum security cell-block where the most sensitive prisoners were held.

Gaunt arrived before first light.

Though the chronometer on his wrist put the sun at less than five minutes away, there was no trace of dawn in the sky. Daybreak, the order despatch had said. He’d never been late for anything, and he was not going to start now.

He got out of the car. Over to the west, above the lights of the city, another lit city passed over head. It was like a brown thunderhead cloud moving against the night sky, speckled with lights, like a mirage, as if the sky was a still lake that was reflecting Balopolis beneath. It was one of the orbital docks, Highstation probably, gliding past on its cyclical turn, catching the sun earlier than the land below it.

Behind the wheel of the car, Scout Trooper Wes Maggs yawned. Gaunt bent down and looked at him.

‘Too early for you?’

Maggs straightened up fast. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘You’re going to have to wait,’ Gaunt said. ‘There’s a gate around the side where you can show your pass and park. I’ll send for you when I need you.’

Maggs nodded.

The previous evening, frustrated by the poor service provided by the local drivers, Gaunt had told Beltayn to detail one of the Tanith instead. He had suggested making it someone who had punishment duties to work off. As a consequence, he’d got up that morning to find himself with Wes Maggs as a chauffeur.

Maggs was a Belladon trooper, one of the first Belladon to make it into the Tanith scout cadre. He had a mouth on him, and certain unruly ways that reminded Gaunt of Varl, but he was a damn fine soldier, and an excellent stealth fighter.

‘What did you do?’ Gaunt had asked him.

Maggs had murmured something in reply.

‘I can’t hear you, Maggs.’

‘Commissar Hark put me on a charge for disreputable behaviour, sir. I’ve got to do sixty hours of punishment duty.’

‘Looks like you’ll be doing them with me, Maggs. You know how to drive a staff car?’

Gaunt entered the main lobby of Viceroy House. The lights were down, just glow-globes fixed over the reception desks. A man was up a long ladder, changing filaments in one of the massive but unilluminated chandeliers. Three Commissariat cadets were on their hands and knees, scrubbing the marble floor with bristle brushes.

Whhshrrk, whhshrrk, whhshrrk! went the brushes as Gaunt walked past. None of them dared to look up.

Been there, done that, Gaunt thought.

The duty officer at the desk had been alerted to Gaunt’s arrival by the outer gate, and was waiting, on his feet.

He saluted. ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning.’ Gaunt handed him the slip, and the man read it quickly, as if he already knew what it said.

‘Thank you, sir. I’ve called through and announced you. Someone will come for you in a moment, if you’d just wait.’

Gaunt nodded, and stepped away from the desk, removing his gloves and unbuttoning his stormcoat. The duty officer resumed his seat and got back to work. A minute passed. The brushes continued to go Whhshrrk, whhshrrk, whhshrrk! A courier ran down the hall and out through the main doors. The man fixing the chandelier climbed down off his ladder, folded it up, and carried it away.

Gaunt heard more footsteps, and turned.

It was Viktor Hark.

‘Where did you come from?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I’ve been here all night,’ replied Hark. Gaunt could see how much sleep Hark hadn’t had. Hark was the only man in the regiment whose workload and responsibilities seemed to have increased since they’d moved off the line. War gave men something to do, and when you took that away…

‘It must be bad.’

‘You don’t want to know,’ said Hark. ‘Sometimes I think we’re in charge of a penal unit.’

‘Who is it?’

Hark sighed. ‘It’s a little team this time. A little team of hustlers that includes two captains and a major.’

‘Not Rawne?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

It was Gaunt’s turn to sigh. In the two idle years since Hinzerhaus, Major Rawne seemed to have slowly regressed back to the venomous and untrustworthy malcontent that Gaunt had first encountered in Tanith Magna.

‘And Meryn too, if Rawne’s involved?’

Hark nodded.

‘Who’s the other captain?’

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Hark replied. ‘Ban Daur.’

‘Well, that’s got to be a mistake. Not Daur. He’d only be involved by accident.’

Hark shrugged.

‘So it’s bad?’

Hark nodded again. ‘It’s a genuine mess, and the charges are going to be severe. I’m not sure how we’re going to pull their arses out of this little conflagration.’

‘So why was I only called in this morning if you’ve been here since last night?’ asked Gaunt.

Hark paused. ‘Well, I was handling it. I was going to go back to Aarlem about an hour ago, but someone told me you had been summoned, so I waited.’

‘You didn’t send for me?’

‘No,’ said Hark.

Gaunt showed him the slip. ‘They sent me this last night.’

Hark looked it over. ‘Damn, Ibram. This isn’t anything to do with Rawne’s latest disgrace. This is something else entirely.’

Somehow, Gaunt already knew that. He’d known it the moment he’d seen Hark coming across the lobby to meet him.

Gaunt sent Hark back to Aarlem to get some sleep, and waited to be seen. It was another twenty minutes before anyone appeared.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Gaunt,’ Commissar Edur offered as he approached. Gaunt shrugged a no-matter, and decided against asking, right away at least, why he was being received by an officer he’d lunched with just the day before.

The truth was, he hadn’t known Usain Edur long, and he didn’t know him well. Hargiter and Zettsman had been regulars at the club for seven or eight months, and Gaunt knew them and the regiments they were attached to. He counted them as decent acquaintances, two of the semi-regular faces that frequented the Mithredates for lunch or supper. Edur had only been in the city for a week or two. He’d gravitated into their company easily enough; Gaunt had a feeling that Zettsman had introduced him. Edur was affable, a reasonable conversationalist, and expressed an attitude towards duty that Gaunt found appealing, but he had no idea of Edur’s background, service or attachment, and as he followed Edur along the hall, he realised that was unusual. That kind of talk always came out. Men talked about their service, and looked for points of shared experience. They noted the places, people and battles they had in common.

Over the two or three times Gaunt had been in Edur’s company, Edur had not volunteered anything of the sort, which meant that he was either a remarkably private individual, or he was concealing something.

Gaunt could see that now, too.

Edur led him into a side office. There was a stenographic servitor, and a desk with a chair on either side of it. Edur gestured to one of the chairs.

‘Has anybody offered you caffeine?’ he asked as he took the other seat.

‘No one’s even offered me an explanation,’ replied Gaunt.

Edur looked up from the closed dossier on the desk in front of him and held Gaunt’s gaze. Edur was a few years younger than Gaunt and a few centimetres shorter, and he was good-looking in a clean-cut but bloodless way, like a classical statue. His skin was regally black, and he reminded Gaunt of the Vitrians he’d served alongside. Edur smiled, and the smile was relaxed and genuine.

‘Let’s just ease our way into this,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just been put on this one, so I’m coming up to speed. I know it’s a little awkward that you and I have encountered each other socially in the last week or so, but I think that’s why I was put on the matter. I’m known to you, and so this brief can be a little less formal before–’

‘Before what?’ asked Gaunt.

‘We’ll get to that,’ said Edur.

You’re not really known to me at all, Gaunt thought. Where is this going? How much of a chance was it that you suddenly started coming to the club and moving in my circle of comrades? I can almost see through you.

Edur nodded to the servitor, which whirred into life. Delicate cogs chattered the drum of transcript paper around, and the blocks of letter keys lowered into place on their servos.

‘Preliminary interview, Ibram Gaunt,’ Edur began, and followed that with the date and time. The servitor started to chatter, the little keys tapping the paper, the paper advancing under the platen with a soft ratchet sound. Edur opened the dossier, creased the first page flat with a slide of his hand and read out Gaunt’s service summary, which was also duly recorded by the servitor.

‘Can you confirm those details?’ he asked.

‘I confirm them,’ Gaunt replied.

Edur nodded. ‘You’re the CO of the Tanith First?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘A position you’ve held for twelve years?’

‘Correct, aside from a hiatus period about five years ago.’

Edur turned a couple of pages. ‘That would have been during the… ah… insert mission to Gereon?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that mission was?’

‘A security mission.’

Edur looked up at Gaunt and smiled as if expecting more.

‘And classified,’ said Gaunt.

Edur pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. ‘Your command was restored on your return?’

‘It wasn’t quite as clear-cut as that, but yes.’

‘You’re a colonel-commissar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Split rank. That’s unusual.’

‘It is what it is.’

Edur fixed Gaunt with an amused look again. ‘Did you take the Commissariat’s “Advanced Interview Techniques and Methodology” class?’

‘Is that one of your questions?’ asked Gaunt.

Edur shook his head, still amused by something. ‘No, I just thought I’d ask. I’ve seen less deflection in a sword fight.’ He looked back at the dossier, and turned another page.

‘The Tanith First was retired from the front line two years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you transitted here to Balhaut for resupply and retraining?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been here a year?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you finding it?’

‘Dull,’ said Gaunt.

‘Why?’

‘People keep telling me things I already know.’

Edur laughed. ‘I’m just asking what they’ve told me to ask, Gaunt. It’s a pain in the arse, I know.’

‘Well, let’s get to the part where you tell me why they’ve told you to ask me these questions.’

Edur nodded. ‘We will. You’ve been here a year? Yes, we established that. Anything odd to report in that time?’

Gaunt sat back. ‘What sort of odd?’

Edur shrugged. ‘Odd approaches? Odd contacts? Anybody shadowing you or hanging around Aarlem?’

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Note head-shake,’ Edur told the steno. ‘Nothing strange at all, then? In the last month especially?’

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘One way or another, there’s a whole bundle of odd in the Tanith First, but nothing I’m not familiar with.’

Edur pursed his lips again and nodded. ‘All right, Gaunt, here’s what it is. We’ve got a prisoner here. A significant capture, very sensitive. There’s some talk he should have just been executed, but Section believes there’s a potential high value to his intelligence, so they’ve kept him alive. He’s downstairs.’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’

‘We need to get inside his head, and find out what he’s got.’

‘I understand that,’ said Gaunt, ‘but again, what’s this got to do with me?’

‘The prisoner clearly appreciates that the remaining duration of his life, and the comparative quality of that life, will rather depend on how he gives up his secrets. He knows that he will be disposed of the moment we feel he’s exhausted his usefulness.’

‘So he’s not talking?’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Edur.

‘Did you bring me down here just so I could suggest you employ methods of persuasion?’

‘No,’ Edur replied. ‘We’d already thought of that, funnily enough. He’s quite resistant to pain. Our thinking was, we’d try a different approach. Offer him something he wants in return for his submission.’

‘I see. At the risk of sounding like a vox stuck on auto-send, what’s this got to do with me?’

‘Everything, Gaunt,’ said Edur. ‘He wants you.’

SEVEN

PRISONER B

An armoured elevator took them down into the detention level. The cell-block area, heavily guarded, was tiled in white stone, and felt more like the surgical zone of a medicae facility than a prison. Edur took Gaunt to an observation room that looked into a simple tank cell through a murky one-way mirror.

When the sanctioned torturers, their sackcloth hoods tucked into their belts for the time being, led the prisoner into the cell, caged phosphor lights flickered on, and bathed the cell in a sick, green glare. The torturers, burly men with bitter faces, strapped the prisoner onto the single cage chair screwed to the deck in the centre of the cell floor.

‘I don’t know him,’ said Gaunt.

The prisoner was a soldier. Gaunt could tell that from a glance. It wasn’t so much the size of him, which was considerable and heavily muscled, it was his bearing. He was straight-backed and upright. He was somehow noble. He was underweight, and he had evidently suffered physical abuse, but he was not cowed. He held himself the way a soldier holds himself.

The prisoner was dressed in a simple prison-issue tunic and breeches, and he had been given hessian slippers to cover his feet.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Edur.

‘I don’t know him,’ Gaunt repeated.

‘Please, make certain.’

‘Edur, don’t be an idiot. I’d remember a face like that.’

The prisoner’s face and head were not noble. The scalp was shaved, and the flesh was covered with deep ritual scars, old scars, scars that signified the most mortal and bloody pact.

‘He asked for you by name,’ said Edur. ‘He has made it clear that he will speak only to you.’

‘How does he know me?’ asked Gaunt. ‘How does he know I’m here, on this world?’

Edur shrugged. Gaunt could see that Edur was watching him for tell-tale body language, any little slip or give-away. He also knew that just as they were watching the prisoner in the cell, they were in turn being watched.

‘You’re desperate to unlock him,’ Gaunt observed to Edur, ‘and I’m the best hope you’ve got, but you don’t trust me either.’

‘This is a complicated matter,’ Edur replied, his genial tone unable to mask his tension. ‘It’s very sensitive. Objections were raised at the idea of bringing anyone else in. Your clearance is not as high as they would have liked.’

‘My clearance levels have been pitiful since I came back from the Gereon mission,’ replied Gaunt. ‘I imagine your colleagues have reviewed that, and they’ll have read the dossiers compiled on me by Commissar-General Balshin, Commissar Faragut, and a number of other individuals, including a servant of the holy ordos.’

‘I think they probably have,’ agreed Edur.

‘I imagine they don’t present me as an attractive participant in this business, which is why you’ve spent the last week or two vetting me, and why they’re watching us now.’

Gaunt looked up at the ceiling, and ran his gaze along the walls.

‘But, for all that, the Gereon mission is precisely why I’m here, isn’t it?’ he asked.

Edur nodded.

‘This man is connected to Gereon?’

‘Specifically, your mission there,’ said Edur.

Gaunt paused and looked back at the prisoner in the cell. The man wasn’t moving. He was just staring blankly at the mirror wall.

‘He has told us that his name is Mabbon Etogaur,’ said Edur.

‘Well, that’s not strictly accurate,’ said Gaunt.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mabbon may be his name, though I doubt it’s his given one. It’s probably a saint name he adopted when he took his pact.’

‘A saint name?’ asked Edur.

‘They have saints too, Edur,’ replied Gaunt. He looked at the prisoner again. ‘Etogaur isn’t a name. It’s his rank. He gave you his name and rank. An etogaur is roughly the equivalent of a general.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s a senior rank in the army of the Blood Pact.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Edur.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Yes. For all that, he’s not Blood Pact.’

‘He isn’t?’

‘The ritual scarring on the face and the scalp, those are pact-marks, definitely, but look at his hands.’

They looked through the mirror wall. The prisoner’s forearms were buckled to the arms of the cage chair. His hands were resting, limp and open, against the ends of the chair-arms.

‘I don’t see anything,’ said Edur.

‘Exactly.’

Edur glanced sideways at Gaunt. ‘If you know something, say it.’

‘There are no scars on his hands,’ said Gaunt, still staring at the silent prisoner. ‘None on the backs, none on the palms. Of all the pact-marks, the hand scars are the most significant. When a warrior of the Blood Pact makes his oath, he slices the palms of his hand against the sharpened edges of his heathen master’s armour. That solemnises the pact. That is the pact. This man has no scars.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Edur.

Gaunt narrowed his eyes to peer harder. ‘It’s hard to tell in this light, but the flesh of his hands looks new. It’s unblemished. A little smooth. I can’t be sure, but I’d wager he’s had grafting done to conceal or remove the rite scars. The chances are, this man was Blood Pact, but he isn’t any more.’

‘So you suppose he has renounced his pact?’

‘Quite possibly. He’s a man of significance in their world, and he’s gone to a lot of trouble and expense to have those grafts to erase his scars. It’s quite a statement.’

‘Could he not just be concealing what he really is?’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘This isn’t about concealment. He’d have had the rite scars on his head done, otherwise. They show his connection to the Sanguinary Worlds clearly enough. No, the hands are telling. He’s not hiding his scars, he’s deleting them. He’s actively rejecting the pact.’

‘What does that make him?’

‘It could make him any number of things, Edur, but at the very least it makes him a traitor. A traitor general.’

‘Interesting,’ said Edur.

‘Not really. You know all of this already,’ Gaunt replied.

Edur raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, come on, commissar,’ Gaunt sighed. ‘The idea that you, and our invisible handlers, and the whole of Section’s intelligence division hadn’t already worked all of that out is frankly insulting. We’ve been studying the Pact for years. This was all about you finding out how much I know.’

Edur smiled and raised his hands submissively. ‘Fair play, Gaunt. You can’t blame us.’

‘So how did I do?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Not bad at all. What else can you tell me?’

Gaunt took a deep breath and looked back at the prisoner. ‘The key thing, I suppose, is that he’s changed sides. That’s a huge psychological marker. He is capable of being sworn to something, to be absolutely committed to it, and then to switch away and renounce it. If he’s done it once, he can do it again. It’s like infidelity.’

Edur chuckled. ‘What sort of switch are we talking about, do you think?’

Gaunt shrugged. ‘An awful lot of Blood Pact start out as Imperial Guard or PDF. Most of the time, it’s a “join us or die” dynamic, but sometimes the choice is rather more personal. Like all converts, willing or not, they can often be the most radical, the most zealous. This man may have been Imperial once. Then he took the blood pact. Then he renounced that too. For some reason, he’s serially unfaithful.’

‘What do you suppose he is now?’ Edur asked.

‘It’s just a hunch,’ Gaunt replied, ‘but I think he’s one of the Sons of Sek.’

‘Explain your logic,’ said Edur.

‘The Blood Pact is a warrior cadre sworn to the personal service of the Archon. Magister Sek, called by some the Anarch, is Archon Gaur’s foremost lieutenant. It’s a king and prince dynamic, a father and son thing. Sek is ambitious, and envies the Gaur’s Blood Pact shamelessly. When I was on Gereon, we heard that Sek’s agents had set out to build a Blood Pact of their own, the Sons of Sek. Just as the Blood Pact have stolen bodies from the Imperial Guard over the years, so the Sons have begun to pilfer from the Pact. Officers, particularly, men with experience to help them shape the Sons quickly and robustly. This man says he’s an etogaur, and the Sons have pretty much the same rank system. It’s the best reason I can think of to explain why he still holds the rank, but has erased the scars from his palms.’

Edur smiled and nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what we thought.’

‘Two questions stand, then,’ said Gaunt. ‘What does our etogaur know, and why does he want to talk to me about it?’

‘Indeed,’ Edur replied.

‘So, do you want me to talk to him?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Or am I too great a liability?’

Edur hesitated.

The vox-plate mounted on the tiled wall beside the mirror jangled suddenly. Edur lifted the handset before it could complete its first ring.

‘Yes?’ he said. Gaunt waited. He could just hear a whisper of voices talking on the other end of the line.

‘Very well. Thank you.’

Edur hooked the handset back on its cradle. He looked at Gaunt.

‘You can go in,’ he said.

EIGHT

ETOGAUR

‘I’m Gaunt.’

The prisoner, clamped into his seat, turned his head to look. He stared at Gaunt for a long while, expressionless. The tank door closed behind Gaunt with an anvil clang. It was airless in the cell.

The prisoner began to speak. His voice sounded dry, almost dusty, as if it had been left neglected and unused for years.

‘I never met you,’ he said. ‘On Gereon. I never met you in person. I will need some… verification.’

Prisoner B’s command of Low Gothic was excellent, but he had an accent, an out-worlds accent that put a burr on the words, and made each syllable sound as though it was draped in razor-wire.

Gaunt walked around the cage chair once, and came to a halt facing the prisoner. The prisoner made direct and immediate eye contact without flinching. His eyes seemed to loom at Gaunt in the phosphor-green glow of the tank. Gaunt could see–

Nothing. There was nothing there to see!

Gaunt cleared his throat.

‘My unit eliminated the traitor general Noches Sturm at Lectica Bastion,’ he said, skidding matter-of-factly through the account as if it was a summary of how he’d spent an idle morning off-duty. ‘The headshot that ended him was self-inflicted, a last moment of honour in an otherwise despicable life. Out of respect for that, I covered his face with a cloth from his bed chamber before I left the body. The cloth was green silk.’

The prisoner nodded.

‘Now how do you know me?’ asked Gaunt. It was still and airless in the tank cell. Gaunt wanted to rap on his side of the one-way mirror and urge Edur to crank up the air-cycling.

‘I was a senior officer in the occupation forces of Gereon,’ the prisoner replied in that voice of dust and barbed wire. ‘My remit was to examine Sturm and, by means of interrogation and interview, extract as much useful intelligence from him as I could. After his death, a great effort was made to identify, locate and execute his killers.’

‘I remember. I was there,’ said Gaunt.

‘You were active on Gereon for quite some time after the assassination. You worked with the resistance. You effectively built the resistance from the ground up. Though we never caught you, your name was known to us. The name Gaunt, the names of your elite team… They were notorious.’

‘That almost sounds like you’re paying me a compliment,’ said Gaunt.

The prisoner shrugged as much as the restraints would allow. ‘“Any soldier who does not respect another soldier’s achievements is a fool”.’

‘You’re going to quote Slaydo at me now, are you?’

‘I’d quote the Archon Gaur, but your ears would bleed.’

Gaunt walked over to the tank door.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the prisoner.

‘I don’t think we’ve got much to talk about,’ Gaunt replied.

‘We’ve only just begun,’ the prisoner said.

Gaunt looked back at him. ‘The Imperium wastes very little time capturing or interrogating soldiers of the Archenemy. Their corruption is considered too pernicious. No intelligence obtained from them can be considered reliable, and there is always the risk of contamination to the interrogators. You should have been executed before now, not preserved in detention.’

‘I have managed to convince my captors to allow me to remain alive this long. You are my last chance.’

‘Why should I care?’

‘For the sake of the Imperium,’ said the prisoner.

‘Is that something you care about?’ Gaunt asked, making no effort to disguise his sarcastic tone.

‘I have pretty much ceased to care about anything,’ said the prisoner. ‘But I know you care, and that’s enough. I can help the Imperium, Gaunt, but in order to do that, the Imperium has got to learn to trust me.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘I believe you are the one person who can convince them to listen to me.’

‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.

‘You were on Gereon for a year,’ said the prisoner. ‘An occupied world, Gaunt. A tainted world. It doesn’t matter what you did or how bravely you served the Golden Throne, you ought to have been executed on your return. No one lasts that long without falling prey to the taint of Chaos. But you’re alive, and still in service. Somehow, you convinced your masters that you were clean.’

‘By the skin of my teeth,’ said Gaunt, ‘and there is still dissent.’

‘But you did it. There is no one better equipped to judge me, to estimate how genuine I am, and then convince the powers that be to listen.’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I want to do that. I’d be damning myself.’

‘If you refuse me, I’ll be dead before the day’s out,’ said the prisoner. ‘I’m an asset, Gaunt, and only you can see it, if you look.’

Gaunt had walked back to the cell door, and was reaching out his hand to bang on it. He hesitated.

‘When you say you can help the Imperium, what do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I mean,’ the prisoner replied, ‘that I can help the Imperium win the war for the Sabbat Worlds.’

NINE

SWEET TOOTH

That morning, cold and overcast in the west, the enemy was a slice of almonotte. It had a layer of cream, and another of rotchka, and the soft cake was scented with popoi nuts, and capped with a caul of blue sugar icing.

She ran north, along the Wharfblade, her usual route, keeping the river to her right and the glower of the Oligarchy to her left. She crossed the wide rockcrete paddocks where the old markets and commercias had met before the war, and paused overlooking the reservoirs to sip a little rehyde from her flask and flex out her calf muscles.

Overnight, it had snowed. The vast, mesh-covered filtration tanks that processed river water for municipal needs looked like winter-issue camo-nets. In the outhab streets, black lines in the street snow described the routes of early vehicles. When she ran on, her own trail began again.

An outhabber market was assembling on the concourse behind the Polis power mills. She could smell the brazier smoke as she approached. Hundreds of sink-dwellers and stack-rats had gathered, draped in shawls and weatherproofs, to erect the plastic tent roofs for the stalls and lay out their wares. It was a community barter moot, nothing more.

She’d been running the route so regularly, many of them waved to her as she went by. She was the girl who ran past, every morning, sun or snow. She was the girl who sometimes waved back. She was the lean, off-world girl with the cropped blonde hair and the shabby, Guard-issue exercise kit and the long legs.

From the market, she jinked left along Sloman’s Concourse, and then crossed the empty cisterns of the tidal docks on the pedestrian footbridge, enjoying the spring of the metal pans shivering under her running steps. Then she was back on the northern tip of the Wharfblade and heading for the Limecut Bridge.

The slice of almonotte lurked at the back of her mind.

She could see vermin birds mobbing the garbage barges moored out in the middle of the river. Their rasping calls floated to her on the cold air, hard and shrill, like the distant squeal of las-fire.

How far today? Across the bridge and into the Oligarchy proper? That would make the round-and-back to Aarlem more than sixteen kilometres. No one ran that far, except her. The enemy forced her to do it.

Two figures were coming towards her along the tow path, in step, a good rhythm going. It was Vadim and Haller, the only two Ghosts she knew who had a running regime even slightly as rigorous as her own. She saw them on this route every few days. The Limecut Bridge was as far as they ever went.

‘Hey, Tona,’ Haller called out as they came up to her. All three of them jogged on the spot as they stopped to talk.

‘Cold today,’ said Vadim.

‘Yeah, cold and getting colder,’ Criid agreed.

‘How far are you going?’ Haller asked.

She shrugged.

‘Maybe up as far as Tournament Square,’ she said.

Vadim whistled. He and Haller took their training seriously, and the running had kept them in shape on Balhaut, especially Haller, who was a big guy and prone to a little flab. By regular regimental standards, they were super-fit. By their standards, she was a fanatic.

‘You going to swing by Section and wave to Rawne?’ asked Haller with a snort.

‘I don’t get it,’ Criid replied.

‘Didn’t you hear?’ Vadim asked her. ‘Last night?’

She shook her head.

‘Rawne got busted real bad,’ Haller told her, with some glee. ‘That’s what I heard anyway. Hark got called in. It’s going to go to sanctions.’

‘What did he do?’ Criid asked.

‘We don’t know,’ said Vadim, ‘but he wasn’t the only one in it. Meryn. Leyr. Varl.’

‘Gak! You’re kidding?’

‘No, and Daur too.’

‘Daur? Now I know you’re kidding!’

‘Seriously, Tona,’ said Haller. ‘It was some kind of big scam and they got busted hard, and Daur was in it too.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It’s off the leash,’ Vadim agreed.

‘It really is,’ Haller said. Haller was ex-Vervun Primary, and he’d known Ban Daur and his clean-cut ways for a long time. If Haller considered the story genuine, that was good enough for Criid.

‘They took them all up to Section,’ said Haller.

‘I heard they were sent to the Stockade at Braunhem,’ Vadim put in.

‘Section,’ Haller insisted. He looked at Tona and smiled. ‘On the bright side, there may be some promotion slots to fill soon, eh, “Captain” Criid?’

‘Yeah, shut up,’ she replied.

Tona Criid had started running about a month after they’d arrived on Balhaut. It was all down to her past, and the years she’d spent growing up on the bad side of Vervunhive. It was all down to her sweet tooth.

As a sink-kid on Verghast, she’d been raised as much by her peers in the stacks as by her parents. Her parents had been penniless. In fact, they’d been short on a lot of things, including parental instinct, a work ethic, a desire to abide by Imperial Law, an interest in their offspring, or a reliable method of birth control.

She’d learned to fend for herself early on. She’d run with others who’d taught her some life-skills. She’d spent a lot of early years as a sink-kid and a ganger, doing things that she wasn’t especially proud of. War, the ruin of Verghast and Balhaut, had been the making of her.

She could remember the old days, days spent with empty pockets and an emptier belly, when she and some of the others would venture up-hive to try to score a little food or readies. They’d lift a few bill-folds, or bait and switch at a food stall, even menace if the back street was private enough and someone had bothered to bring a blade.

Up-hive was a wonderland. It was big and sparkly, and bustling with people in good clothes with expensive augmetics, people who owned more than her family’s collective wealth in the outfits they were standing up in, people whose conversations, when she overheard them, were about culture and politics and art, and the financial systems, and all sorts of other ridiculous issues that seemed to her a waste of breath. The up-hive commercias were glittering pavilions of luxury merchandise: silks, laces, jewellery, body-augs, xeno-pets, carpets, servitors, crystal ware, spices, gee-gaws, so much stuff, it made her laugh in disbelief. What would make anybody dream of wanting this stuff? And if they did dream, how did they possibly afford those dreams?

She would spend hours pressed against the glass of display windows, gazing at extravagance, until irate shopkeepers chased her away.

She was about nine or ten years old when she first saw the pastry maker’s in the Main Spine Commercia. She never knew its name, because it was written in such ornate golden script on the shop-board that she couldn’t tease out the individual letters. She’d seen luxury food stores before, many times, but the pastry maker’s was something else. Under its candy-stripe canopy display, behind the panes of its window, there were cakes, slices, puffs, timbales, tarts, éclairs, strudels, rosettes, buns, pin-wheels, gems, and a thousand other confections of sugar and art that were every bit as exquisite as the displays in the jewellers’ quarter. The colours, the structures, the decorations, all of these things made her marvel. So did the exotic names handwritten on the cards beside each work of art. And the prices…

If they cost so much, what in the name of the Golden Throne did they taste like?

At the age of nine or ten, Tona Criid could cheerfully scoff at almost all the luxury trappings of up-hive life, but in the pastry maker’s she’d discovered her own dream. To her young mind, the cakes and ices were the epitome of wealthy living, not just their cost or their beauty, but the fact that if you bought one it would not last forever like a bracelet. It would vanish in the time it took you to wolf it down. That was luxury. That was high living.

It became her habit, every week or so, to find one of the up-hive pastry shops or bakers, and spend a few, wet-mouthed moments admiring the unobtainable things in their windows, and wondering what they tasted of.

When the Ghosts came back to Balhaut, Tona Criid was confronted by a life she’d never known before. Before the Guard and the war, she’d been a sink-kid, and then she’d been a Ghost, rattling wearily from one gak-hole zone to another.

Suddenly she was a grown woman, an officer, with responsibilities, and a pretty comfortable billet, and the best part of ten years’ back-pay stagnating in her service account. There was nothing to do except wait and drill, and prep, and sit around and find something to spend your pay on. There was no immediate sign of active deployment in the offing.

Any line veteran can tell you that adjusting to retired life is a hard slog, like kicking a stimm habit. Your body is too used to living on an adrenaline high for months at a time. You grow detached. You get jumpy, antsy, restless. You suffer migraines, dizziness, anxiety. Your sleep suffers. Your hands sweat. If you’re really unlucky, you get phobic or develop anti-social habits. You experience memory flashes cued by something innocent, like the sound of shouting or the smell of a bonfire, and wind up on a medicae scrip taking lithium or some anti-stress pharm cocktail, or in the cage on a formal statement.

Criid had taken to running to burn off the withdrawal.

She’d been on Balhaut about a week and a half when she’d found the bakery, during an exercise loop around the Old Side of Balopolis. The window display had stopped her, and made her jog backwards to peer in. The work of a high-class pastry maker was spread out before her, a memory flash to her childhood in the Vervunhive commercias.

This time, she had enough money to just walk right in and buy a slice.

The counter-staff had regarded the lean, tough-looking woman in sweat-damp gear with a great deal of suspicion.

It was a treat she repeated three or four times in the following weeks. Running was mindless, but a bakery gave her a destination, a point. She began to scout out others, increase her range, vary her routes. She noticed, to her disgust, that she was putting on a little weight, so she started adding distance to counteract the calories she was ingesting. Long, hard runs became obsessively long, hard runs. A strict, controlling part of her mind, an unhealthy part, she was pretty fething certain, required her to run until she was almost lost in fatigue and muscle pain every time she gobbled down another intricate sugar creation. It was a penance. It was punishment for her sweet tooth. Robbed of a conventional foe to fight, the confections had become her nemesis.

Tona Criid was not a stupid woman. She was well aware that the pathology was pretty twisted, which is why she hadn’t shared its details with anybody. She counselled herself that it was a reward system, that it kept her fit, and that it beat descending into the hell of stimm abuse, or drink, or much, much worse.

She upped her pace and went across the Limecut Bridge, smelling the cold metal scent of the river beneath her. The sky was the colour and texture of a jammed pict-feed. Once on the Oligarchy side of the river, she turned east along the causeways and industrial paths that followed the north bank all the way through the old wharf area to the New Polis Bridge. A greater part of the area was derelict: old warehouses and fab-shops fallen into decay and disuse, invaded by vermin and wind-gathered refuse, their windows dimmed with cataracts of dirt, their roofs patched and punctured, their breath sour with mildew, rot and stagnant rainwater. That morning, the sills and eaves and rooflines were all crowned with snow, like ermine trim, like a dusting of icing sugar.

The area could be a little rough, but Criid kept her straight silver strapped under her vest. She wanted to head east, and then turn up into the centre of the Oligarchy. Her original plan had been to run to Tournament Square, and eat a slice of almonotte at Zinvan’s on the parade behind the Ministorum College.

She’d ditched that idea. She was going to head to Section, like Haller had suggested. She was going to take a look: just a look. There was a place a few streets from Section where she could get a passable lime soforso.

The box skeleton of the Old Crossing and, behind it, the New Polis Bridge, loomed up ahead.

Any line veteran can tell you that adjusting to retired life is a hard slog. That morning, Criid felt particularly twitchy. It could have been the news about Rawne, but her palms were damp, and there was a coppery taste in her mouth. It felt like adrenaline, combat adrenaline, the feeling you got in the zone, the feeling of being on all the time. She hadn’t had it this bad in weeks, and it seemed to be getting worse and worse as she jogged in under the shadow of the bridge.

She came to a halt, pulse thumping, and looked around. For an overwhelming few seconds, it felt as if she was back on the line, advancing through some hab burb, knowing the enemy was behind every wall and window. She had to fight back a desire to duck for cover.

What was doing it? What had set her off? She looked around, turning a full circle, but there was nothing to see and no one around. She was hyper-aware of the distant hum of traffic, the iron shadow of the bridge, the sky like arctic camo, the crusts of snow, hard and bright in the morning sun, the languid lap of a river running glossy with ice mush, the drab black of the dank stone walls, the ouslite and travertine, the smells of river-rot and sewage outfall and gnawed stone, the fume of her breath in the air, the beat of her heart, a golden aquila on a steeple across the river catching the light, and the flaked and faded paint of the name Ennisker’s Perishables on a nearby building.

Nothing.

She sniffed a breath, and took off again, running east.

Baltasar Eyl relaxed his grip on the handle of the packing knife. There had been someone right outside, and he had braced himself to deal with an intruder.

Whoever it was, whatever it was, it had gone now. Eyl climbed up into one of the crumbling arches that overlooked the riverside walk. There was no one down there. He kept watch for another minute, and then went back down to the loading dock.

In the dock space, both containers were open, and all those who would ever wake had been woken. One of Eyl’s two headmen, his sirdar Karhunen, was supervising the revival of the philia in the fluttering naphtha light. Some of the company, the most recently roused, were just sitting and shivering, too numb to do anything except rock and stare blankly. Others had become more mobile, flexing their sore limbs to get the circulation going, or prostrating themselves in prayer and offering fierce words of thanks to the Kings of the Warp.

A few were injecting stimm shots from what remained of the medicae’s pack. Valdyke’s medicae had done everything in his power to bring the men out of their hibernation torpor. Karhunen had eventually decided that the medicae’s blood was more useful to them than his skills, and had found a packing knife of his own.

The most alert members of the philia had begun their duties. Ritual marks of gratitude to the High Powers were finger-drawn on their cheeks and foreheads with the blood of the medicae, Valdyke and his minders. The men greeted Eyl with deep bows and firm embraces as he walked amongst them. Shorb was renewing the pact-marks on his left hand with a rite knife. He made a firm incision in Eyl’s honour and held the hand up, palm out, to his damogaur.

Eyl kissed the bloody palm.

‘We should remake all the vows upon our souls as we step on this earth, damogaur,’ Shorb said. ‘The old rites must be performed.’

‘They must, they should,’ Eyl agreed, ‘but time is bleeding away. Duty comes first. The philia must hit the ground and move.’

‘Do we know the location of the pheguth?’ Imrie asked.

‘Soon,’ Eyl assured him.

Imrie nodded. He was binding his foot. Freezerbite had reduced most of the toes to blackened pegs.

Malstrom, Gnesh and Naeme were seeing to the weapons. Eyl had listed his exact requirements in the messages he had sent ahead, and Valdyke seemed to have supplied everything that had been asked for. The materiel was all Guard issue, packed in khaki munition boxes that Valdyke had brought in and unloaded long before dawn. There were assorted lasguns, autorifles, pistols, a few heavier pieces and a fair quantity of ammunition.

‘What’s the quality like?’ Eyl asked.

Malstrom shrugged, checking the action of a carbine he had picked from the crates.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Eyl Damogaur,’ he said. ‘It’s old. Surplus, most of it. Sourced through illegal markets and decommission plants.’ He tilted his head back and held the weapon up to examine it better by the light of the naphtha flares. His teeth were pink with blood.

‘Good enough, though?’

‘Mostly. I’ll need to clean and bless a few pieces.’

‘Do it quickly.’

Malstrom nodded.

‘Upon my soul, magir,’ he replied.

Naeme was pulling laspistols from another crate, checking them deftly, and snapping power cells into their receivers. As ever, he was muttering his list of names.

‘Utaleth, then it is Sharhoek, next it is Muulm…’

He looked up as Eyl approached, and offered him one of the loaded pistols. Eyl took it.

‘How goes the pedigree?’ he asked.

The old soldier smiled.

‘I wake today in this strange place and find, upon my soul, I’m nearer the end,’ he said. He paused, and looked away, as if hearing a distant voice. He began to mutter again. ‘Next it is Hjeve, then it is Umeth…’

It was Naeme’s chosen rite, one he had taken as a burden upon his soul as a young man first pacted. He would attempt to utter, in his lifetime, every single one of the uncounted names of Death, and having said them all, would become Death. The Pedigree of Death was a popular rite amongst the philias of the Blood Pact, though Eyl had never met a soldier who had progressed so far through the holy catalogue.

Malstrom uttered a quiet curse, and Eyl looked back at him.

‘There’s no explosive, damogaur,’ Malstrom said.

‘Have you checked?’

‘All the boxes. There are a few grenades, but no charges.’

Eyl thought for a moment. Valdyke hadn’t been so reliable after all. It was a setback.

‘We’ll have to use a blood wolf,’ said Gnesh.

Eyl nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we will.’

In the chamber beside the loading dock, Barc and Samus were stripping down the corpses that had been used to pack and ritually seal the containers. The mission profile had relied on there being weapons available at the target area, because a munition payload of any decent size would have been too visible to Imperial sensors. Nevertheless, it had been vital to bring certain items, and these had been packed inside the spare carcasses to minimise their traces.

The company’s rite knives – saw-toothed, single-edged blades about the length of a man’s hand, with grips turned from human bone – had been sutured in under the meat and muscle, against the long bones of the arms and legs. Barc and his companion had gouged the first two out, and then used them for the remainder of the fleshwork. Body cavities had been used to stow the company’s iron grotesks.

When Eyl entered the chamber, Barc was using the tip of his rite knife to strip sheets of yellow fat and translucent tissue away from a ribcage so that he could open it. Eyl offered him the larger, cleaver-like packing knife, and Barc took it eagerly. He began to strike the ribs away like a butcher preparing a crown rack. He reached into the cavity he had opened, and lifted out one of the grotesks.

Eyl took the heavy iron mask and turned it over in his hands. From the particular design of the scowling eyes and howling mouth, he recognised that it belonged to Johnas, but Johnas Katogaur was one of the men who hadn’t survived the hibernaculums. The mask would go unused. It would need to be ritually disposed of to appease Johnas and his patron spirits.

‘Find mine,’ Eyl said.

Samus had already found it. With blood-speckled hands, he offered up the damogaur’s silver mask. Samus’s eyes were filmed blank, and he wore an idiot expression. For many years, Eyl had known Samus by his flesh name, Bezov. Samus was the name of his patron spirit, a particularly noisy thing that had gradually taken up residence in Bezov’s soul. Since then, Bezov had insisted on being known by his spirit name, and the person that Eyl had known had faded behind milk-dull eyes, palsied tics and animal sounds.

Eyl rejoiced that his comrade had been singled out for such a blessing by the High Powers.

He took his silver mask. He had missed its cold weight.

The witch had been taken to a dank chamber in the attic levels of the building. Kaylb Sirdar, Eyl’s other headman, had been set to watch her.

‘How many?’ he asked Eyl when the damogaur reached the upper floor.

‘Six didn’t make it,’ replied Eyl quietly.

‘God’s corpse!’

‘Johnas was one.’

Kaylb shook his head and cursed again.

‘That leaves thirty-four. We can do the job with thirty-four.’

‘Of course. But six. Six!’

‘They were the tithe,’ Eyl told his old friend. ‘They were the blood-price to get us into the enemy’s heart unseen.’

‘There’s truth in that. When do we move?’

‘As soon as we can. As soon as she tells us. Is she ready?’

Kaylb looked through the doorway behind him. In the darkened room beyond, they could see Lady Ulrike Serepa fon Eyl pacing up and down beneath the tattered and faded inspirational posters of the Henotic League. She was still wearing her veil and her mourning dress. She was talking to herself.

‘I’ll deal with her,’ Eyl told his sirdar. ‘Go down, arm yourself, help Karhunan with the rites.’

Kaylb nodded, embraced his commander, and then disappeared down the rotting, treacherous staircase.

Eyl entered the attic.

‘Sister?’

Ulrike stopped pacing and looked at him. Eyl could feel her eyes behind her veil.

‘I do not like this place,’ she said.

‘We knew we would not like it, sister,’ he replied.

‘We will all die here,’ she declared.

Eyl nodded. She was never wrong, and as for dying on Balhaut, he had never expected anything else. That really wasn’t what mattered.

‘Will the Anarch die?’ he asked.

‘You know that’s the one thing I can’t see,’ she replied. She fidgeted with her hands under the long lace cuffs of her weeds.

‘Then tell me what you can see,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘I am tired. I do not want to. I am hungry. It’s going to snow again. I don’t like this place.’

‘The snow can be damned, and there’ll be time to eat and rest later,’ he replied. ‘You know what I want to see.’

‘I am tired!’ she repeated, petulantly. ‘The truth is making my head hurt. Prognostication is tiresome. Don’t make me do it.’

Eyl was suddenly in front of her, his hands, like spring traps, pinning her wrists. She uttered a noise of surprise and pain.

‘Do not make me hurt you,’ he said quietly, looking directly into the veil. ‘Do not make me hurt my own blood. This is your purpose. This is why the gore mages of our Consanguinity made you. This is why they bred you and witched you.’

‘Upon my soul,’ she replied, ‘I wish they had not.’

‘I know.’

‘I really wish they had not.’

‘Hush,’ he said, letting go of her wrists.

‘You want to know where the pheguth is?’ she asked.

‘You know I do.’

‘Have you brought any props for me?’

Eyl nodded. He reached into the pocket of his coat, and brought out a neatly-folded paper chart of Inner Balopolis and the Oligarchy. It was another of Valdyke’s procurements. It had been sitting in an envelope on the top of the munition crates.

Eyl slit the seal on the chart, opened it, and spread it like a cloth on a soot-blackened old side table under the gloomy roof beams. He smoothed it out.

She came over, looked down at it, and ran her fingertips across the paper, tracing the lines of streets and thoroughfares with jerky, rapid gestures.

A cold wind gusted in through the attic’s paneless window, and flapped the overhanging edges of the map.

She shuddered, and made a low moaning sound in her throat, the sound of a feline, mauled and cornered. Eyl held her shoulders, gently but firmly. He could feel the chill of her through his gloves. Her panting breath was showing through her veil as vapour. His own breath was starting to smoke too.

Without warning, she tore free of him, and ran towards the attic window, a black shape against the dull white sky.

Eyl cried out, thinking that she was going to jump, and moved to block her as fast as his enhanced metabolism could carry him.

He caught her in the window, grabbing her by the black silk of her long skirts, but she hadn’t intended to jump at all.

He let go. She stood up on the sill in the window space, and looked out over the Imperial city. It was bone-pale in the winter light, and the sky was the colour of a frozen lake.

He heard her sigh. She reached up and lifted the veil away from her face so that she could look upon the world without any barriers. Eyl didn’t look up. He didn’t wish to see her face. He just wanted to know what she was seeing. He stared out across the towers and stacks, the rooftops. The city was vast, perhaps the biggest he’d ever seen. Its complexity filled the world up from horizon to horizon. In this place, less than a lifetime before, a great strand of fate had been decided. It had seemed like a loss to the Consanguinity at the time, but it had simply been a necessary cost, the birthing pains of a new age. It had allowed the Gaur to rise and take the crown of Archon. It had set a new course for destiny.

Now a second great strand of fate was going to be decided on Balhaut, a strand of fate he clutched in his hands, though it slithered and slipped still. It made the first look insignificant by comparison.

Ulrike laughed. Silent, heavy flakes of snow were floating down out of the gleaming sky.

‘I told you it would snow,’ she said.

‘And I believed you,’ he replied, though he was not sure that she hadn’t made it snow.

‘Can you see him?’ he asked.

‘I can,’ she said. ‘Lift me down.’

He put his arms around her thighs and lifted her down off the sill. She had lowered her veil and there were snowflakes melting in the mesh.

‘Kaylb’s going to die first. You need to know that.’

‘All right,’ he said, nodding. He swallowed.

‘I mean, Kaylb’s going to die soon. Today, probably.’

‘All right,’ he said, again.

‘Won’t you miss him?’

‘Forever.’

She shrugged and went back to the chart. She traced the streets with her fingertips again.

‘So?’ Eyl asked. ‘Where will I find the pheguth?’

‘Here,’ said the witch, tapping a point on the map with her finger. ‘He is in this building on Viceroy Square. The building is known as… Section.’

TEN

SNOW ON SNOW

The sky above the city had turned a sick yellow, and snow had begun to fall again. The flakes made soft, ticking noises as they struck the glass of the tall windows that overlooked the courtyard, and the ticking became a counterpoint to the heavy, funereal beat of the ornate timepiece on the corner stand.

Gaunt sat for a while, and then began to pace in the anteroom. He stared down into the courtyard where the snowflakes were softly beginning to accumulate. He watched the imperceptible crawl of the hands across the brass dial of the timepiece. He went to the door of the anteroom, and looked out into the cold hallway. People were busy elsewhere. He heard the echo of raised voices in the distance. He went back, sat down in the armchair, and sipped at the cup of now-cold caffeine the duty officer had brought. He took out Eszrah’s copybook, and tried to read another of the Nihtgane folk tales, but his mind wasn’t on it.

Commissar Edur reappeared, and shut the anteroom door behind him.

‘What’s going on, Edur?’ Gaunt asked, rising to his feet. ‘When can I resume the interview?’

‘In a short while, I trust,’ Edur replied.

‘You heard what he said to me, Edur,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘It’s vital I keep talking to him. Why in the name of the God-Emperor did you pull me out of there?’

‘There are complications,’ said Edur, evasively.

‘What kind of complications?’

Edur looked particularly awkward.

‘I want to talk to him,’ Gaunt said.

‘We want you to talk to him,’ Edur assured him.

‘Then why aren’t I doing that right now?’ asked Gaunt.

‘You’re going to have to wait a little longer,’ said Edur. He flexed his chin, as if there was much more he wanted to say that he simply couldn’t.

Gaunt stared at him, and then slowly sat down again.

‘In the meantime, is there anything I can arrange to have brought to you?’ asked Edur. ‘Some refreshment? Or perhaps you’d like to see your men?’

‘My men?’

Edur hesitated, and took a copybook out of his jacket pocket. He flicked through the pages and consulted a memo.

‘Uhm, a Major Rawne, is it? Him and six others were brought in last night. They’re downstairs in detention. I thought, as you had time to kill, you might–’

‘Major Rawne has been a pain in my arse for twelve years,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t know what sort of trouble he’s got himself into now. I hardly care. He can stay downstairs in detention, and rot until I feel like being bothered. It might teach him not to get into trouble in the first place, though I doubt it.’

Edur cleared his throat and put the notebook away. ‘It was merely a suggestion,’ he said.

He turned to leave, but the door opened. A duty officer stepped in and whispered something to Edur, who nodded and turned back to Gaunt.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

Gaunt followed Edur out into the hallway. He had to stride purposefully to keep up with Edur’s brisk pace.

‘Listen carefully,’ Edur said to Gaunt, quietly and urgently, as they strode along. ‘Late last night, the ordos got wind of what was happening here. They’re insisting we hand Prisoner B over to them. Section is protesting our jurisdictional claim to hold and interrogate the prisoner, but the Inquisition is getting rather heavy-handed about it.’

‘I can imagine,’ replied Gaunt.

‘They’re talking about a legal challenge to the Commissariat’s authority, and a ground-up investigation by the Ordo Hereticus. Mercure is trying to head them off. He’s arguing that this is entirely within our remit.’

‘Mercure? You mean Isiah Mercure, head of the Intelligence Division?’

‘Yes.’

Gaunt whistled. They turned a corner together, and, maintaining their pace, started down another hallway. Several armed guards flanked a pair of imposing doors at the far end.

‘He’s called you in,’ said Edur. ‘Answer all the questions put to you simply and clearly. Don’t play games with these people. This is not a moment for showboating.’

‘Understood,’ replied Gaunt.

‘I hope so,’ said Edur. The guards snapped to attention as the two commissars strode up.

‘How did they find out?’ asked Gaunt.

‘What?’

‘How did the ordos find out about Prisoner B?’

Edur stopped in his tracks, and glanced at Gaunt.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It didn’t come up.’

‘You ought to find out,’ said Gaunt. ‘If the ordos can find out, the information is not secure.’

Edur stepped past the guards, knocked emphatically on the doors, and then opened one of them. He held it open to usher Gaunt inside.

‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ he announced.

Gaunt stepped into the room and made the sign of the aquila. There were about twenty Commissariat officers and clerks in front of him, along with several representatives of the Imperial Inquisition. They were arranged on either side of a large table, lit by the wan snow-light coming through the large windows. The way everyone turned to glare at him when he entered made Gaunt feel as if he had walked in at an especially delicate point in the conversation.

‘Right, Gaunt,’ said the senior Commissariat officer. ‘Don’t just stand there, man. Approach please.’

Gaunt did as he was told. No one had returned his salute. No one had stood back or vacated a seat for his benefit. A couple of Section officers shuffled their chairs aside so that Gaunt could stand next to the table beside the senior officer.

It was Isiah Mercure. Gaunt recognised him well enough from dozens of high-level briefings, though the two of them had never spoken. Gaunt was ordinarily far beneath Mercure’s notice. Mercure dealt with Crusade business at sector level, and kept the company of system governors, lord generals, and the Warmaster. There was very little room for advancement left to him within the Commissariat. Gaunt had heard it suggested that Mercure’s future might include a lord militancy, or even the mastery of some significant theatre.

Mercure was a robust man with greying dark hair, and his strong features managed to be both craggy and fleshy. He was not a handsome man at all. His skin was a bad colour and pock-marked, and the bulk of his torso spoke of excessive high living, but he had exceptional presence. His voice was deep and his manner somehow reassuringly coarse and unaffected.

‘You’ve interviewed Prisoner B, right?’ Mercure asked Gaunt without really looking at him.

‘Briefly, sir.’

‘First impressions?’

‘We shouldn’t execute him, not until we’ve got everything we can from him.’

Mercure nodded. He still wasn’t bothering to look at Gaunt. Half of his attention seemed to be caught up in leafing through the paperwork spread on the table in front of him. The other half seemed to be considering the being seated opposite him.

This individual was, without doubt, a servant of the ordos. He wore dark body armour, and a mantle with a trim of white fur. His physique was long-limbed and lithe. He occupied the chair like a dancer at rest, or a mannequin that had been artfully posed as an artist’s model. He had a striking, leonine mane of hair swept back from his forehead, and his features were almost perfect in their refined construction: his eyes, for instance. It occurred to Gaunt that he’d seen eyes like that before. He’d seen them in his own face. The inquisitor’s eyes were extravagantly machined replicas, and it wasn’t just the eyes. The aesthetics of his face, the lines of the jaw and cheek and nose, were all too noble, too magnificently handsome to be true. At some point, the inquisitor had had his entire face rebuilt by the Imperium’s finest augmeticists.

‘What exactly do you think we can get from him?’ the inquisitor asked, staring at Gaunt.

‘Information vital to the prosecution of this crusade,’ Gaunt replied.

‘What qualifies you as an expert on the analysis of such information?’

Gaunt hesitated. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Who am I addressing?’

There were half a dozen men in black bodygloves standing behind the inquisitor’s chair. His agents, Gaunt presumed, his team, his henchmen. Like their master, they were lean and lithe, and stood like a troupe of dancers, limbered up and ready to perform. Even unarmed, none of them looked like the sort of man you’d choose to tangle with. There was something curious about them that Gaunt couldn’t quite identify. They bristled at Gaunt’s question.

‘Watch your tone,’ one of them began.

The inquisitor raised his hand.

‘That’ll do, Sirkle,’ he said.

The henchman, Sirkle, backed down slightly, but his hard gaze didn’t leave Gaunt’s face. Studying Sirkle and his cronies, Gaunt realised what was so disconcerting about them.

They all wore their master’s face.

Hair colour, eye colour and even details of complexion were different from face to face, but the basic elements of the physiognomy were identical and unmistakable. The faces of the inquisitor’s agents had all been augmetically remodelled to echo the heroic perfection of his own.

An odd piece of vanity in the first place, Gaunt thought, but doubly odd when the face you’re immortalising is an artifice to begin with.

‘I am Handro Rime,’ the inquisitor said. ‘I am here today in the service of the Ordo Hereticus. My question was, what qualifies you as an expert?’

‘Gaunt’s expertise isn’t up for debate, Rime,’ Mercure cut in. ‘He’s got extensive experience of the Gereon Campaign, and that’s where we dredged up Prisoner B. If Gaunt says there’s something in this, I trust him. He’s my man on this. Aren’t you, Gaunt?’

Gaunt found that Mercure was looking at him directly for the first time. It was a look that said: Don’t make me look stupid now, you little shit.

‘Absolutely, sir,’ said Gaunt.

Rime leaned forwards. He smiled, but the smile was not warm. It was a perfect facsimile of a smile, executed by hundreds of synthi-muscle tensors and subcutaneous micro-motors. He fixed Mercure with his augmetic stare.

‘I think the real issue, sir,’ he said, ‘is that the Commissariat Intelligence Division, without reference to, or permission from, any other department or agency, including the holy ordos, has detained a toxic Archenemy prisoner in the heart of one of Balhaut’s cities. It’s an extraordinary risk to take, not to mention fundamentally contrary to the express determination of operational procedure, as set down by the Inquisition and the High Lords of Terra. The Imperium doesn’t do this, Mercure. You don’t do this. The only body qualified and authorised to handle prisoners of this type is the Inquisition.’

‘This is too important to waste time on a jurisdictional squabble, Rime,’ said Mercure.

‘Oh, if only that’s all this was,’ the inquisitor replied. ‘You will hand Prisoner B over to us, and we will evaluate him and dispose of him.’

‘But he doesn’t want to talk to you,’ said Gaunt.

‘What did you just say?’ demanded another one of the henchmen.

‘Enough, Sirkle!’ Rime declared.

Are they all called Sirkle, Gaunt wondered?

‘I said he doesn’t want to talk to you,’ said Gaunt, gesturing generally at the ordo team. ‘And he doesn’t want to talk to them either,’ he added, with a nod at Mercure and the Section officers. ‘He wants to talk to me.’

‘Is this true?’ asked Rime.

‘Prisoner B made it known that he would only speak to Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ said Edur, who was waiting patiently by the door.

‘Why?’ asked Rime.

‘That’s one of the things I intend to find out,’ said Gaunt, ‘if I’m given the chance.’

Mercure dismissed Gaunt, and Edur took him back to the anteroom. The timepiece was still ticking out its deep, regular beat, and snowflakes were still prickling the glass.

‘You did well,’ said Edur.

‘Did I?’

‘I think you impressed Mercure.’

‘I couldn’t tell,’ said Gaunt.

Edur smiled and said, ‘You never can with him. But I think your bluntness piqued the inquisitor’s interest enough for us to broker some cooperation. Perhaps we can persuade them to let you interview the prisoner with them as observers. At least that way we share anything you find out.’

‘The ordos should damn well respect our need for concrete intelligence,’ Gaunt growled.

Edur was still smiling.

‘You’ve been at the front line a long time, haven’t you Gaunt?’ he said. ‘You’ve forgotten just how total their authority is. We’re lucky they’re even asking us politely. They could have just burst in here and taken him by force. You wouldn’t believe the number of promising subjects the Inquisition has snatched away from us before we’ve been able to get to work.’

‘So I’ve just got to wait?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Edur.

The snow was falling more heavily than before, in the yard beside Viceroy House. Wes Maggs started the engine of the staff car again, in the hope of squeezing some warm air out of the heaters. He knew that if he ran the engine for too long, some pen-pusher would garnish the fuel costs from his pay.

Huddled in his jacket, his hands stuffed deep inside the armpits of his vest, Maggs sat in the front passenger seat of the car, and reflected on the suckiness of the duty he’d pulled.

He was cold to the bone, and the waiting was killing him. How many hours had Gaunt been inside? The sky had gone the colour of a bad bruise, and it felt too cold for snow. He wondered about getting out and sweeping away the snow that was accumulating on the car, but he couldn’t face it. He wondered about approaching one of the guards for a chat and a lho-stick to warm his hands, but they were up at the gate or in the guard towers, and looked pretty unapproachable.

Even the mechanics, who had been working on some of the other transports parked in the yard’s garage area nearby, had given up their efforts and had gone to huddle around a pathetic brazier. Maggs wondered if they’d make room for him, but he doubted it. They didn’t look very friendly. In fact, the whole place seemed like the coldest and least-friendly location he’d ever had to spend any time in, and that included some warzones.

He gazed across the yard through the windscreen and the fluttering snow, and finally worked out the purpose of the odd architecture he’d been staring at for half a day. The side of the main building had a sort of loading dock built into it, overhanging the main yard area. There were no windows.

Maggs realised that he’d parked facing the execution block. The trapdoor in the underside of the dock overlooking the yard was the drop where men’s bodies thumped down when they were hanged. This yard, otherwise used for parking and light maintenance, was where the official witnesses and observers stood.

He shuddered. The place was getting unfriendlier by the moment.

Gaunt had stood up out of the armchair and put Eszrah’s copybook away before it occurred to him to wonder why he’d done either of those things.

Something had prompted his decisive movements, something very clear, but he couldn’t identify what. He stood there, with the timepiece ticking solemnly behind him, and heard the feathery brush of snowflakes against the anteroom’s windowpanes.

He’d seen something. He’d seen something he couldn’t have seen, shouldn’t have seen.

Just for a second, with his attention focused on the pages of Eszrah’s next story, there had been a flash, a little flash behind his eyes, like an electrical flare, like the tremor of aurora lights.

Stupid. It was stupid, really. Just another twinge of his old, traumatised optic nerves. Just another function-glitch of his new, gleaming eyes.

But there was a taste in his mouth. The metallic taste of blood.

He went to the door.

‘Do you think they’re deliberately turning the heating down to piss us off?’ asked Varl of no one in particular. No one in particular answered him.

The Tanith offenders occupied seven adjacent cages on the fifth bay of Detention Four. The only other prisoners on the bay were a pair of Oudinot drunks, who were still sleeping off the night before, and an ugly fether from one of the Varshide regiments, who occupied the cage next to Rawne’s. The Varshide had volunteered a long and graphic commentary on exactly how pleased he was to see Jessi Banda, and precisely how much more pleased he’d be if they weren’t separated by ceramite bars, until Rawne had leaned close and gently whispered something to him, as a direct result of which the Varshide had shut up and gone to hide in the corner of his cage.

Since the seven Tanith had been brought in the night before, the bay temperature had been fairly constant, but in the last hour it had begun to drop, noticeably. Varl could see his breath in the air in front of him.

No one had talked for a long time. In the first couple of hours of detention there’d been a fair amount of chat and a lot of recriminations, especially from Ban Daur, who was sitting forlornly in his cell with a look on his face that announced that his world had ended. Young Cant, dragged into the scam by peer pressure and the notion that maybe if he grew some, Varl might stop ragging on him, looked dispirited and scared. Meryn, true to form, had started to whine and blame, which had oiled the wheels of an argument between him and Banda that had gone on until the guards told them all to shut up.

Then Hark had shown up from Aarlem in the small hours with a face like murder. He’d reviewed the situation, told them they were all fething idiots, and added that he had no idea how he was going to sort ‘Rawne’s latest shit’ out this time. He told them he’d be back later in the day.

None of them had spoken much after that.

‘Yeah, what’s with this?’ Leyr asked, sitting up on his cot and sniffing the air. ‘Varl’s right. It’s getting really cold.’

‘Do you want me to ask the concierge if he can tweak the heating?’ Meryn asked.

Banda snorted and showed Meryn a very specific number of raised fingers through the cage bars.

‘It is getting colder,’ said Cant. ‘That can’t be right.’

The young trooper shut up the moment he realised what he’d said, but it was too late.

‘No, it can’t, can it, Cant?’ sneered Varl.

‘Everybody give it a rest,’ said Rawne, and they fell silent. Rawne got up and stood very still, as if he were listening.

‘What’s up?’ Varl asked him.

‘You hear that?’ Rawne asked.

Gaunt stepped out of the armoured elevator into the white-tiled cell-block. The combination of artificial lighting and tiles made the air in the block seem sickly and fulminous, like the snow-light outside.

‘You shouldn’t be here, sir,’ said a detention officer, hurrying up to him. ‘It’s not permitted.’

‘I just need to look at the prisoner for a moment,’ Gaunt said.

‘Why, sir?’

‘I just need to look at him,’ Gaunt insisted.

‘On whose authority?’

Gaunt turned to glare at the officer. The man recoiled from the flash of electric green in the colonel-commissar’s eyes.

‘Talk to Edur. Clear it for me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The man hurried away. Gaunt walked to the door of the observation chamber. He just wanted to look. He didn’t want to talk. He just wanted his eyes to see.

He let himself into the observation room, and looked into a tank cell through a murky one-way mirror.

The sanctioned torturers had left Prisoner B sitting in the cage chair, his face and head uncovered. The prisoner was staring straight ahead, apparently oblivious to his discomfort and prolonged confinement. He seemed to be staring directly at Gaunt, as if the mirror wasn’t one-way at all. In their wire cages, the phosphor lights filled the tank with a bilious green glow.

‘What the hell are you?’ Gaunt murmured, staring into the mirror. He jumped back with a start. The prisoner’s mouth had moved, as if in reply.

Gaunt reached over and threw the switch on the tank intercom.

‘What did you say?’ he demanded. ‘What did you just say?’

In the tank, the prisoner turned his head in several directions, surprised by the voice suddenly coming through the speakers. Then he looked back at the mirror.

‘I said it’s too late,’ he replied. ‘They’re here.’

‘Who’s here?’ asked Gaunt.

The prisoner didn’t reply. Gaunt looked up.

From somewhere in the huge mansion above them came the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

ELEVEN

THE ASSAULT

Section’s main gatehouse faced Viceroy Square. The watch had just changed, and the guards taking up their stations in and around the gate had been on duty for less than five minutes. Those men who were obliged to work outside, in the lea of the arch, performing stop-and-searches and vehicle checks, were still doing up their stormcoats and foul weather capes, and looking sourly at the snowfall.

One trooper, out by the barrier and stamping his feet to warm up, saw it coming, but he was dead before he could raise a cry. In the final few seconds of his life, he saw dark figures, indistinct and ominous, coming towards him through the silence of the square’s gardens, like phantoms conjured by the snow-light. The falling snow that veiled their menacing, steady approach seemed, to the young soldier, to be falling ever more slowly, like a pict-feed set on increasing increments of slow-motion until the feed, and the descending flakes, came to an unnatural, vibrating halt.

He was opening his mouth to remark upon both of these oddities when the blood wolf killed him.

It killed him in passing, with a gesture of its hand. It killed him on its way in through the gatehouse, throwing him aside with such force that the impact of his hurled body against the wall of the gatehouse pulverised most of his bones and left declarative pressure sprays of blood stippled across the snow.

The blood wolf was moving too fast for any human eye to properly follow it. The warp-wash that surrounded it distorted reality, making time run out of step, and the snow hesitate in mid-air. It flew in through the gatehouse, exploding both barrier beams like tinder. It made a keening noise like the bogies of a runaway train drawing sparks from steel rails. The keening caused the windows, even those specially strengthened to resist weapons fire, to shatter explosively. These blizzards of toughened glass, which moved far faster than the blizzards of snow in the gardens outside, shredded all the troopers caught in their blast zones. Two more guards were decapitated beside the inner barrier, and another by the door. Another, who was unfortunate enough to be standing directly in the blood wolf’s path, disintegrated on impact in a spray of gore like a jar of fruit conserve hit by a shotgun round.

A blood wolf is like a missile. You aim it and you fire. In the absence of the explosives that Valdyke had promised to procure, Eyl had been obliged to get his witch to conjure a blood wolf as the focus of the raid.

A sacrifice had therefore been required. Every single man in the philia had volunteered for the combat-honour. Eyl had eventually chosen Shorb, a choice his sirdars had approved. One by one, the men had gathered to say farewell to Shorb’s soul, and then they’d let the witch have him, to cut.

Eyl didn’t understand the process. He generally left such matters to the gore mages, but he understood enough to know that the conjurations that produced a blood wolf were not all that different from the conjurations that wove wirewolves, which were commonly used to police and protect the worlds of the Consanguinity. Those rites put a daemon-spirit into a conductor-body of metal, allowing it to walk abroad. The blood wolf rites put a daemon-spirit into a man’s body.

It was a less precise art. Teams of philia metallurgists and wiresmiths might take months or even years to properly machine the metal chassis of a wirewolf to perfection, inscribing it with the most precise runes and sigils, forging it just-so, so that it could best house the spirit it was designed to capture and harness.

Even with a sharp rite knife, a human body could not be modified so cleanly, especially not at short notice. As a vessel for the burning light of the High Powers, flesh was far too perishable compared to metal, even when the flesh was as devoted as Shorb’s. A wirewolf might last forty or perhaps even fifty minutes before burning out. Eyl had never seen a blood wolf last longer than sixteen.

The blood wolf was a one-use weapon, a flash-bang. It would burn Eyl’s beloved Shorb out and leave him nothing more than charred meat. The trick with a weapon like a blood wolf was to use it fast, and to use it well.

The trick was to use it for maximum effect.

Shorb had become a keening ghost. He was an energised, trembling shape, a shape that had once been a man, leaping and bounding, laughing and surging, like voltage freed from a shorting cable.

As Eyl hefted up his weapon and followed Shorb and the philia in through the gate, he knew that the blood wolf had little more than a few minutes left in it.

They would have to count.

An Imperial Guardsman ran towards Eyl through the hesitating snow, bewildered, his rifle half-raised.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.

Eyl lifted his autorifle, and evacuated the Guardsman’s braincase in a brief, but considerable, pink shower.

‘We’ve come for the traitor,’ Eyl told the corpse steaming on the snow as he stepped over it.

The men of the philia spread out into the courtyards as they came through the gate. They moved firmly, with a purpose, passing over the bodies and bloodstains of the Imperials. They were wearing their grotesks, so their iron faces were frozen in silent howls and malign sneers. Their shooting was sporadic: a crackle of gunfire here or there whenever a target presented itself. Munitions were not unlimited. Imperial soldiers were mown from the wall tops and smashed off access staircases. Imrie, brandishing a heavy autorifle that was older than all the men of the philia put together, shot one of their few rifle grenades up through the slot of the guard tower behind the gate. The blast jolted the tower and squirted smoke out through its seams and gaps.

A siren started to wail. A few of the Imperials gathered their wits enough to begin returning fire. Las-bolts cracked and whined across the snowy yards. Three Imperials armed with carbines had grouped inside the entrance of the administration wing, and were shooting towards the gatehouse. Gnesh moved past Eyl, striding with insouciant ease like a man on a recreational stroll. He was the biggest man in the philia, tall and broad-backed, with a lumberhand’s shoulders, and a neck as wide as the skull that sat on it. He had taken the bipod off a heavy lasgun, and cinched the weapon over his right shoulder on a long strap so that he could shoot it from the hip. The chest-pumping pop of each discharge threw a javelin of light out through the smoke and the snow. Gnesh casually aimed at the administration wing. His shots punched a series of deep holes along the facing wall until they found the entrance and wrought catastrophic damage on the three Imperials. Then he aimed a couple more shots into the architrave, and collapsed the entrance onto their smouldering bodies.

Led by Kaylb Sirdar, the first element of the philia had reached the lobby of the main building. The blood wolf had already come through, and the wide marble floor was covered with a crust of glass from the doors, the chandeliers and the hoods of the glow-globes. Kaylb swung his element to the left, and headed towards where the witch had said the secure stairwells were located. An Imperial trooper and a man in a commissar’s long coat tried to fend them off, firing from the cover of some broken furniture. Kaylb killed them both. There was no time to waste, but Kaylb paused for long enough to read the marks their blood had made on the floor and walls. The prognostications were good.

Karhunan brought the second element into the main building through a large, side entrance that Imperial staff called the catering door. It had once given vittallers and suppliers access to the kitchens, in the days when Section had been a private residence. The old kitchens and larders had become a despatch office, a vox station, and a workroom for intelligencers, with access to the principal briefing chambers and the map room. Karhunan’s force met fierce resistance from a group of company officers and commissars who had been meeting in the workroom. Shouting for support, the Imperial men held the main hallway, armed only with the pistols and dress weapons they had been carrying that day. Behind them, groups of unarmed or non-combatant staff fled deeper into the building, away from the assault.

Malstrom took a light wound, the first injury suffered by the philia, but righted himself quickly. He ducked into the hastily abandoned despatch room to evade the determined small arms fire. Las-shots and hard rounds from the Imperial officers pinged and cracked off the inside of the catering door archway.

Karhunan heard Malstrom laugh.

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What’s so amusing?’

Malstrom reappeared in the doorway of the despatch room. As one of the building’s watch points, the room had been supplied with an emergency weapons locker. Malstrom had smashed the lock with the butt of his carbine.

‘It’s as if the enemy is on our side,’ he told his sirdar. ‘They leave toys for us to play with.’

Malstrom had swung his carbine over his shoulder so that he could slap a shell into the clean, polished grenade launcher that he’d taken from the box.

‘Brace!’ Karhunan bellowed to the other men.

Malstrom leaned out of the doorway and fired the launcher. The fat grenade spat up the hallway, arcing high, smashed off a ceiling light, and began to tumble on its downwards path before detonating. The blast sent a scratchy, concussive clap of smoke and hard air up the hall.

‘Again?’ Malstrom growled. He had a satchel full of shells.

‘Do it again,’ Karhunan agreed.

Malstrom broke the fuming launcher on its hinge, and slapped a second grenade home. He clacked the stocky weapon shut with a snap of his wrist, and fired again.

Again, hard, hot air rasped back down the space. There was grit in it, pieces of glass and chips of stone, and it rattled down like hail.

The Imperials were broken. As the element advanced through the smoke, they found most of them dead, blackened and raw from the blasts. A few, deaf and blind, were convulsing or struggling feebly on their hands and knees. Karhunan and his men put a shot through the head of anyone still moving.

One of the commissars had got clear, dragging an injured colleague with him. When he saw Karhunan emerging through the smoke, he started to spit curses at him. He was yelling like an animal, fuelled by fear and hate. He let the colleague he was dragging flop to the floor, and brought up his pistol.

The gun barked twice. Karhunen felt the double impact, one hit right after the other, striking his right shoulder and the right-hand side of his mask. The collision turned him, twisting his body. Pain seared through his shoulder. His head was wrenched violently to the right. One round had gone through the meat of his shoulder, the other had glanced off the brow-ridge of his iron grotesk. The mask had smashed back into his face, breaking his cheek bone and tearing his lip across his upper teeth. Hot blood filled his mouth.

Karhunan smiled. He lifted his carbine and fired a burst on auto. The commissar jerked backwards, as if he’d been snatched off his feet by a sharp yank on a rope. He bounced off the wall behind him, and landed on his face.

The sirdar moved forward to finish the man’s injured colleague, but the limp body was already dead. Karhunan raised his hand and made some quick pact signs to direct his men.

The element rushed on. Several of the men were wielding clean, new Imperial Guard weapons they had taken from the dead.

Alarms were ringing furiously, and the air was filling with sounds of gunfire and shouting, and the increasingly acrid smell of smoke.

‘What in the name of the Throne is this about?’ Mercure roared as he burst out of the conference room with his agitated aides in tow. There was panic outside. Staff members were fleeing down the corridor without any discipline or composure. Troopers were clattering in the opposite direction, trying to marshal the fleeing personnel, and trying to fathom, like Isiah Mercure, what the hell was happening in the middle of an afternoon at the heart of an Imperial stronghold.

It wasn’t a drill. Mercure knew that immediately. You could ring the alarm bells and raise a hue and cry, and even stand out in the yard and fire a gun into the air to generate an atmosphere of urgency for a shake-down drill, but no one would ever go to the bother of putting that subtle flavour of burning into the wind, and the best drill coordinator couldn’t manufacture the tight look of real fear and bewilderment that Mercure could see on the faces around him.

Besides, a shake-down this big couldn’t be staged without his approval and knowledge, and nobody on the staff was gun-eatingly mad enough to have set something up on an afternoon when Mercure was head-to-head in the main meeting room with grox-loving sons of bitches from the ordos.

Everyone was shouting and gabbling. A squad of soldiers almost knocked Mercure down in their urgency to reach the front of the building.

‘Shut up. Shut up!’ Mercure yelled. ‘I asked a question. Shut up, listen to me, and answer it! What’s going on?’

‘Section is under attack, sir!’ a junior commissar replied in a voice squeaky with anxiety. Mercure punched him in the mouth hard enough to knock him off his feet.

‘I didn’t ask for the bloody obvious!’ Mercure shouted. ‘Give me plain facts. Give me something I can use!’

‘Protocol 258,’ said Commissar Edur, suddenly appearing at Mercure’s side. Edur had a squad of S Company storm-troopers with him, and a look of true and solemn concern in his dark, handsome eyes.

Mercure looked at Edur in disbelief. ‘No. That bad? Edur, tell me!’

‘Protocol 258 is in effect, sir,’ replied Edur. ‘Sergeant Daimer and his men will escort you to the safe area, and evac you if necessary.’

The storm-troopers closed in, shoving the aides aside to get at Mercure. They were big men, armoured in black and green, their shoulder guards bearing the silver flash insignia of S Company, the Commissariat’s close protection detail assigned to guard the most senior personnel. When Protocol 258 was put into effect, you didn’t argue with S Company, not even if you were Isiah Mercure.

‘How bad?’ Mercure demanded as Daimer and his men moved in around him.

‘A significant assault,’ Edur called back. ‘Many casualties. As far as we know, a squad of some size, perhaps as many as twenty or thirty men, hit the main gate four minutes ago. Some are already in the building.’

‘Who the hell are they?’ one of the senior aides demanded. ‘I mean, who the hell attacks Section HQ on Balhaut?’

Hemmed in by the S Company men, Mercure looked at Edur. Their eyes met. Neither of them knew the precise answer to the aide’s frantic question, but they knew enough to realise that the answer wasn’t going to be pleasant.

‘Oh God-Emperor,’ Mercure murmured. ‘Someone’s come for him.’

‘I think so, sir,’ Edur replied.

‘We’ve got to move you now, sir, I’m sorry,’ Sergeant Daimer insisted, and the protection detail started to manhandle Mercure away.

‘They can’t have him, Edur!’ Mercure yelled. ‘You hear me? They can’t have him. You know what to do. No mistakes.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Edur shouted back over the general pandemonium. He was about to add something else when he heard the weird, keening noise. It was coming from somewhere behind him. It sounded like a night wind shrieking down the stack of an old chimney.

The blood wolf burst into the long hallway. Edur turned, and saw it, yet did not see it. He knew something was coming, something that wailed like an old flue, something that bubbled reality around itself, like a cloak of un-being. Edur gagged. He felt bile rise in his throat. He pulled out his bolt pistol. His hand was shaking.

The blood wolf entered the hallway at the far end, and though it was essentially invisible, its passage down the hall towards them was vividly narrated by the carnage it wrought. The wooden doors splintered in an explosive blizzard of pulp and fragments. The carpet scorched and shrivelled. Section personnel, ranged along the hallway, began to die, as if some murderous wave was sweeping through them. Bodies were suddenly severed and collapsed in fountains of blood, as if snipped in two or three or even four by giant, invisible shears. Others burst like blood blisters, or were smashed aside into the walls and ceiling by unseen, demented hands.

The tide of destruction bore down on them. Edur raised his weapon. The S Company storm-troopers opened fire with their hellguns. Droplets of blood from the wolf’s killing spree had filled the air like raindrops, and now hesitated in their descent like the snowflakes outside.

There was a loud bang that jarred Edur’s teeth and hurt his eyes. A beam of force had hit the bubble of tortured light that hid the blood wolf from the side.

The blood wolf was blasted sideways into the hallway wall, leaving a ghastly skidmark of blood smeared across the wallpaper. It fell, scrabbling, wounded, winded, and Edur realised that he could see something properly, for the first time. A human shape was making frenzied animal motions inside the blue of warp-wash, something flayed and bloody that screamed and thrashed its limbs with inhuman violence. Edur saw the white enamel of bared teeth against the bloody mass of the whole. He saw reality blotching and distorting around its clotted, skinned form, and it made him vomit.

A second beam of force hit it, and made it writhe backwards. The keening increased in pitch.

Handro Rime, the inquisitor, had emerged from the meeting room. His mane of hair was lifting in a wind that seemed to be affecting only him. He was brandishing a sceptre, an ornate metal rod the length of a walking cane that looked as though it had been fashioned from chromium steel. It fizzled with power, as if a charge was running through it. The top end was shaped like a winged human skull.

There was a third, painful bang. Another beam of force, like a needle of light, spat from the skull-top of the sceptre that Rime was holding and struck the baying blood wolf. This time, the beam was continuous, pinning the thing to the ground. Rime’s henchmen spread out around him and drew their weapons. Edur could see the strain on Rime’s face. Several ripples of warp-vapour crackled out of the gibbering thing, and then all the blood droplets hanging in the air fell at once, in real time, and covered the floor with a million tiny splashes like the first few seconds of a monsoon.

‘I believe I have it contained,’ Rime yelled through gritted teeth. ‘Get Senior Commissar Mercure to a place of safety!’

Edur shook himself and turned to obey. He fell in with the storm-troopers, and they began to hurry Mercure away. Mercure was staring in ashen disgust at the thing the inquisitor was attempting to ensnare, and at the bloody horror that it had left in its wake.

‘Get downstairs!’ Mercure stammered at Edur. ‘Get downstairs and see to it!’

Edur shoved Mercure and his escort onwards with one hand, and turned to make for the nearest staircase. He saw a drop of blood, a single drop of blood, hovering and wobbling in the air, its gleaming surface tension undulating. He realised it was hanging there, in virtual freeze frame, and that his own limbs and movements had run slow, and that time was disjointed again.

The blood wolf ripped free from the spear of energy with which Inquisitor Rime had staked it to the floor. The sceptre was wrenched from his grip and whirled away across the blood-soaked floor. Rime was slammed back into the wall and pinned there, his legs kicking. His mantle of white fur caught fire, and then his hair did too. In a second, his entire head was engulfed in raging flames. He was screaming. The blood wolf let him go. He slid down the wall, found his feet somehow, and then staggered forwards, ablaze from the shoulders up.

His henchmen tried to close with the beast. Edur saw one disembowelled and another flung away like a broken doll. Rime fell to his knees, and then collapsed on his face, his head and shoulders still engulfed. The keening grew loud again.

Edur ran.

Gaunt stared at the ceiling, listening. He could hear gunfire. It was distant, but there was a lot of it. He’d heard at least two significant explosions, and a great deal of commotion. A lot of voices were echoing down to him, muffled through the floors.

He glanced at the prisoner, who was as still and silent as before, and then headed to the door. There was no one in the corridor outside. He could still hear the shouting and the shooting from above.

A detention officer suddenly ran into view, red-faced and out of breath.

‘What’s going on?’ Gaunt asked.

The man didn’t stop.

‘Get this area secure!’ he yelled as he ran past.

‘Don’t give me orders!’ Gaunt shouted after him. ‘What’s going on? Hey!’

The officer ran out of sight.

‘Hey!’

Gaunt wondered why he was asking the question. He knew what was happening. He knew in his bones and in his heart. He’d seen it. He’d seen what was coming.

He knew how fast and how bad things were going to get, and it scared him to think how he might know that.

He knew what he had to do.

He drew his bolt pistol and walked to the door of the holding cell.

The carbine in Kaylb Sirdar’s hands retched twice and spat ugly blades of red light. They punched into the Imperial trooper coming up the staircase towards him, hurling him backwards with a strangled cry. The trooper crunched and cartwheeled down the stairs, and ended up face down on the landing below.

Kaylb barked commands to his element, and they clattered on down the stairwell. Emergency lights had come on, and the smell of smoke was getting stronger. Behind the plaintive wail of the sirens, they could all hear the keening.

There were two exits on the landing.

‘Which way?’ asked Barc. Weapons ready, the men waited for instructions, covering the staircase access, up and down.

There were signs. Kaylb traced his finger across the letters and tried to make the unfamiliar words in his mouth. It was hard to know. He dragged up his left sleeve and consulted the blood map that the witch had put in his forearm. She’d given one to both sirdars and to Eyl too, a little schematic plan of the target building mapped from her divination, and formed by raised veins and swollen capillaries under the skin. As the element advanced through the area, the blood map on the patch of skin moved with them. Kaylb ran his filthy fingertips over the bumps and ridges.

‘That way,’ he pointed. ‘The left-hand hatch.’

‘Holy Throne,’ Meryn whispered. ‘Holy fething Throne!’

He was right up against the bars of his cell in Detention Four, his hands clamped around them.

‘Rawne?’ he hissed.

‘What?’

Rawne cast a look at Meryn with hooded eyes. The fear they were all feeling was most obviously etched on Captain Meryn’s face. It wasn’t a fear of fighting, because they’d all done more than their share of that in their lives, nor was it a fear of death.

It was a fear of being trapped. It was a fear of helplessness.

‘This is definitely not good,’ said Leyr.

‘The building’s under attack,’ stammered Meryn. ‘I mean, it’s under assault. You can hear it. You can smell it.’

‘You can shut up,’ said Rawne.

Meryn was right. For several minutes, they’d been able to hear the muffled scream of alarms from somewhere above them. The alarms had begun just after it had got really cold. Then, straining, they’d begun to hear the other sounds, coming very faintly through the reinforced walls and floors of the detention level: cries, shots, detonations.

‘We’ve got to get out of these cages,’ said Meryn.

Rawne looked at him, looked at the ceramite bars, and then looked back again.

‘I mean it,’ Meryn barked.

‘He means it,’ said Varl.

‘Yeah, well unless you’ve got a key made out of solid wishes,’ said Rawne.

Meryn got on his knees and started to examine the lock mechanism of his cage door again.

Ban Daur was still sitting back on his cot, his arms folded, a sour look on his face.

‘That’s a good idea, Meryn,’ he said. ‘Brilliant. The locks in the detention blocks of Commissariat sections are famously easy to pick, especially if you’re only using fingernails and nostril hair.’

‘Shut the feth up, you superior son of a bitch!’ Meryn yelled, turning on Daur. ‘You do something. You think of something! We’re stuck in here, and something bad’s coming. We’re stuck in here and, when it comes, we will be helpless, and we’ll die like fething rats!’

Daur swung to his feet and faced Meryn through the bars. He was taller than Meryn. He looked down on him in almost every way.

‘We’re stuck in here because we were stupid,’ Daur said. A twitch of his head showed that he meant that to include everyone. ‘We were stupid, and this is what happens to stupid people.’

‘Oh, you feth-head,’ said Meryn. ‘This is your philosophy, is it, Mr Goody-fething-two-shoes? Be a man and face your punishment?’

‘Pretty much,’ replied Daur.

‘You’re fething unbelievable!’ retorted Meryn.

‘And you’re an idiot,’ said Daur. ‘You’re crapping yourself over nothing. This is a drill.’

‘A drill?’ asked Meryn in disbelief.

‘Yes, of course it is!’ said Daur. ‘Come on, they’re blasting the sirens and shooting off some dummy ammo. It’s a shake-down. It’ll be over in another five minutes.’

He looked around at the other Ghosts. Everyone was looking at him.

‘What? Come on, it’s got to be, right?’

Daur looked at Leyr, and the big scout looked uncomfortable. Daur looked at Varl, but Varl sniffed and looked at the floor. He looked at Cant. The young trooper just looked scared.

‘This is Balhaut!’ Daur declared. ‘This is gakking Balhaut, for Throne’s sake. We’re so far from the front line it’s not even worth joking about. Who the gak’s going to attack Commissariat Section in the middle of Balopolis…’

His voice trailed off. He looked at Banda. She looked back at him, smiled a little sad smile, and shook her head.

He looked at Rawne.

‘Major? Come on, help me out here,’ said Daur.

Rawne looked at him.

‘It’s not a drill,’ Rawne said.

Daur opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

‘Feth,’ he said, eventually.

The cell bay door clanged opened. A detention officer burst in and stared at them all for a moment, his eyes flicking from one cage to the next: the seven Ghosts, the slumbering Oudinot, and the lone Varshide in the cell next to Rawne’s.

The detention officer looked scared and bewildered. His hair was messed up and his jacket was buttoned up wrong. He looked like someone who had just woken from a bad dream.

Through the open bay door behind him, they could all hear the sirens much more clearly.

The detention officer took a last look at them, as if he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing.

‘Stay here,’ he told them, and ran back out, pulling the hatch shut behind him.

Varl looked through the bars at Rawne.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes people say the stupidest things.’

The shots outside made them start and tense: two shots, just on the other side of the hatch. Instinctively, all of the Ghosts backed away from the fronts of their cages.

‘What the hell’s happening?’ the Varshide trooper mumbled.

The cell bay hatch opened again. From outside, they could hear shouting, clattering footsteps and repeated gunfire.

Kaylb Sirdar swung in through the detention block hatchway, his carbine raised.

Prisoners. The sirdar saw prisoners, just prisoners in cages, all staring at him in pathetic terror. Check them. Find the pheguth. Kill the pheguth. Kill anyone who wasn’t the pheguth. The men of his element were spreading out through the bays of the cellblock doing just that. He could hear the shots.

The sirdar stepped forward. He saw the eyes staring back at him, wild, animal eyes; caged men who recognised death when it approached.

Rawne watched the man approach. He took in the ragged, dirty combat gear, second- or third-hand at least, the purposeful pose, the confident, well-trained advance. Only one detail mattered. The scowling iron mask that the man was wearing over his face identified him very clearly. It was the fighting grotesk of a Blood Pacted warrior.

He heard Cant whisper, ‘Holy Throne.’

The sirdar reached the first cage. He had the carbine’s stock tucked up against his shoulder, aimed down and wary. He stared at the blinking Varshide trooper through the bars.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’ the Varshide slurred.

Kaylb fired between the bars of the cage. The two shots hit the Varshide in the chest, and threw him against the back wall of the cage. His corpse overturned the cot and the covered chamber pot beside it as it crumpled onto the cell floor. The sour smell of stale urine filled the cell bay, and mingled with the acrid reek of scorched flesh and cooked blood.

The next cage in line was Rawne’s. Rawne didn’t move as the killer advanced towards him. He kept his eyes locked on the grotesk.

Kaylb looked the next prisoner up and down quickly, and then raised the carbine to execute him.

‘Voi shet, magir!’ Rawne said.

Kaylb froze.

‘Ched qua?’ he replied.

‘Voi shet, magir,’ Rawne repeated, stepping closer to the bars, his hands open and visible. ‘Eswer shet edereta kyh shet.’

Kaylb came closer, the gun still aimed at Rawne’s chest.

‘Shet atraga gorae haspa?’ he demanded. ‘Voi gorae haspa?’

Rawne smiled, and said, ‘Fuad gahesh drowk, magir.’

‘Ched?’ the sirdar queried.

‘Abso-fething-lutely,’ said Rawne and shot his arms out through the cage. His left hand grabbed the carbine’s barrel and yanked it in between the bars. The weapon fired, but the shot struck the back wall of the cell, harmlessly. Rawne’s right hand had seized the sirdar by the collar. Taken by surprise, the sirdar found himself being dragged headfirst into the cage door. Rawne slammed him into the cage so they were face to face with only the bars between them. Though the sirdar still had his right hand clamped to the carbine, most of the weapon was pulled through the bars and wedged against them by Rawne’s vicing left-hand grip. The weapon fired again. Two more futile las-bolts left scorch marks on the back wall.

It was all happening too fast for the sirdar. Kaylb started to cry out, to fight back. He clawed at Rawne through the bars with his left hand.

Teeth bared, Rawne began to slam the sirdar’s face against the bars with his right hand. His grip on the collar was so tight that he was already choking off the man’s air. In a furious, steady, almost mesmeric motion, Rawne began to pump his right arm in and out, smashing the iron-masked face of the pinned man off the bars over and over again. It was like the action of an industrial stamping press. Rawne didn’t have the time, space, opportunity or means for a single clean killing blow, so he compensated with frenetic quantity.

By the eighth blow, the sirdar had begun to struggle with real fury, and the carbine fired again. By the tenth, his teeth were broken, and there was blood spattering out of his shuttling head. By the twelfth, there was blood and nicks on the bars. By the fifteenth, the grotesk had cracked, and the sirdar’s head had become a limp, lolling punch bag, snapping to and fro.

Kaylb Sirdar finally tore free, somewhere around the seventeenth blow. He staggered backwards, drunken and swaying, howled a curse to the Kings of the Warp, and shot Rawne.

Except he was no longer holding his carbine. Rawne still had it in his hand.

Rawne swept the weapon in between the bars, rotated it end-over like a piece of show-off parade ground drill, aimed, and fired out of the cage without hesitation.

The las-bolt hit Kaylb Sirdar in the forehead, and hammered him back into the bay wall. The grotesk split in half, and the two pieces flew off his face and bounced away across the deck in opposite directions.

The sirdar slid down the wall, and finished up, dead, in a sitting position, his head tilted to one side. He had left a long streak of blood down the wall above him. If he had been alive to see it, Kaylb Sirdar would have recognised that the prognostications of the blood mark were not good.

Rawne lowered the carbine.

‘Holy shit,’ breathed Meryn.

‘Wh-where did you learn to talk that language?’ Cant whispered.

‘Yeah, Cant, this is really the time for that conversation,’ said Banda.

Rawne poked the snout of the carbine into the cage lock and pulled the trigger twice, enough to blow the mechanism. He swung his cage door open and headed for the exit.

‘Hey. Hey!’ Meryn yelled. ‘Where the feth are you going? What about us?’

‘He’s going to check we’re secure, and then he’s going to get the keys,’ said Varl calmly. ‘Feth, Meryn, what are you, a child?’

Rawne reached the bay hatch and peered out, the carbine ready. There was a lot of shooting going on outside, quite close by. The smell of burning was intense. He could see smoke in the air now. He could hear screams. In the neighbouring cell bays, prisoners were being slaughtered.

He pushed the hatch to, and opened the wall box where the detention officers kept the cage keys. They jingled as he shook them out in his hand and hurried back to the cage row.

‘Unlock and get out, fast,’ he said passing the keys to Varl, the first in line. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

‘But what about–’ Daur began.

‘If we stay here, we die,’ Rawne said, cutting Daur off. ‘We get out, and find out what the feth’s going on. Then we worry about the consequences.’

Prisoner B turned his head to look at Gaunt as he entered the sick green light of the tank cell. He looked at the bolt pistol in Gaunt’s hand without a blink or the sign of an expression.

Then he turned his head again and sat looking straight ahead.

‘There’s no time for a conversation,’ Gaunt said.

‘I know,’ said the etogaur.

‘We have an understanding?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Just do it,’ the prisoner replied.

With his free hand, Gaunt began to unbuckle the shackle cuff pinning Prisoner B’s left arm to the chair. Prisoner B looked around at him, startled.

‘What?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I thought–’

‘What?’

‘I thought you were going to execute me.’

‘I will. Give me the slightest excuse, and I will,’ Gaunt said, working at the next set of buckles. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the door.

‘I will give you no reason to–’

‘You wanted us to trust you,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘You wanted me to trust you. I don’t and I probably won’t. But you wanted my help to stay alive because you swore you could help us. One chance. Do not test me.’

‘I will not, Gaunt.’

‘Don’t use my name either.’

‘Of course,’ said Prisoner B.

Gaunt unclasped the body straps and shook them off the etogaur’s shoulders.

‘Are your hands numb? Your fingers?’

‘No,’ said Prisoner B.

‘Then get the buckles on the leg straps undone,’ said Gaunt.

Prisoner B leaned over in the restraint chair and diligently began to undo the heavy iron buckles on the leather straps binding his legs. Gaunt crossed back to the heavy tank door and peered around it. The hallway outside was empty, but he heard a loud burst of full auto-fire, close by. Somewhere else, someone was screaming.

He could smell smoke, and he could hear some kind of… keening sound.

He ducked back into the tank cell, and looked over at Prisoner B. The prisoner had managed to free one leg.

‘Hurry up!’ Gaunt yelled.

There was a noise outside. He went back to the door. Looking around its rim, he was in time to see a detention officer and a sanctioned torturer fly in through the door at the far end of the interrogation unit. The detention officer was backing up, frantically blasting a lasrifle from the hip at unseen targets beyond the door. The torturer was simply running for his life, hurtling along the white-tiled hallway towards the heavy door half-concealing Gaunt.

Answering fire hammered in through the doorway, and cut down the detention officer, who simply crumpled and collapsed. Two or three more stray shots whined in, and then an armed man burst through the door, bounding over the dead detention officer. He was armed with an old lasrifle and dressed in shabby combat gear. A man dressed just like him appeared on his heels.

Both were wearing black-iron grotesks.

The first of them raised his rifle and pinked off a shot that hit the fleeing torturer in the spine, bringing him down hard. Belly down in a pool of blood that looked glossy, like spilled enamel paint against the polished white of the corridor’s tiling, the torturer tried to drag himself forward. His legs were useless.

He saw Gaunt behind the heavy, open cell door ahead of him.

‘Help me!’ he gurgled.

A las-round took the top of his head off.

Gaunt swung out from behind the door and fired his bolt pistol. The shot hit the first of the Pacted raiders square in the sternum, and exploded his torso. Blood and meat suddenly decorated a considerable section of the corridor’s white-tiled surfaces.

The other Pacter yelled something and began firing.

Gaunt ducked back behind the tank cell door as the auto fire ripped past. He felt it spank hard against the other side of the hefty door, driving it back against his body. He tried to keep it wedged open. If it slammed shut, the lock might engage, and if the lock engaged, he and Prisoner B would be trapped, and that would be the endgame.

More wild shots whacked against the door shielding him. The impacts were beginning to drive the door into him with enough force to bruise his shoulder and arm. Gaunt could hear shouting from the far end of the hall. Someone was shouting words in a hard, ugly language that he, thankfully, hadn’t heard much since Gereon.

With a curse, Gaunt kicked the door wide open and opened fire again, his bolt pistol braced in a two-handed grip. Three wailing bolt-rounds seared down the hallway, and detonated against the tiled walls, blowing clouds of tile fragments and plaster in all directions. The masked raiders, and there were three of them in sight, ducked frantically, and pulled back into the cover of the end door.

Gaunt fired another two shots with his great cannon of a pistol to keep them ducking, and turned back into the tank cell.

Prisoner B was standing right behind him.

Gaunt leapt back and brought his gun up, but Prisoner B just stood there.

‘Don’t sneak up on me!’ he ordered.

‘I didn’t mean–’ the etogaur said.

A flock of las-rounds cracked past. Gaunt winced and turned back, firing two more bolts that scattered the raiders sniping at them from the far hatchway.

‘Move!’ Gaunt yelled. He took off down the corridor with Prisoner B behind him. He could hear the raiders behind them shouting. What was that word?

Pheguth.

‘Come on!’ Gaunt yelled. Two las-bolts clipped the wall beside him, chipping the tiles.

Four metres more. A hatch on the left.

Gaunt skidded up in front of it, grabbed Prisoner B by the shoulder, and physically shoved him through the doorway out of the line of fire. He turned to fire one more hefty round at the raiders advancing along the corridor towards them, and then dived through the hatchway before he’d had time to see if he’d hit anything.

On the other side of the hatch, in the small access way adjacent to the main corridor of the interrogation unit, Prisoner B had come to a halt.

The Blood Pact soldier facing him had hesitated in surprise for a second. Now, his rifle was coming up to fire.

Gaunt fired past the etogaur’s shoulder and blew the raider’s head apart. Gore spattered across Prisoner B’s face. He didn’t flinch. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Gaunt slammed the hatch behind them shut, and wound the locking ring.

‘Move,’ he said to Prisoner B.

‘Which way?’

‘This way,’ said Gaunt.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll find a way out,’ said Gaunt.

The raiders started beating on the other side of the locked hatch. Gaunt ejected his smoking bolt pistol’s clip. It was spent. Ten rounds. He was only carrying three spares in the pouches of his uniform belt.

‘They won’t let you go,’ said Prisoner B.

‘Pheguth,’ Gaunt replied.

‘What?’

‘They called you pheguth.’

‘What other word would they have for me?’ asked Prisoner B.

‘It’s what you people called Sturm,’ said Gaunt slamming a fresh load home and racking the mechanism.

‘What other word would they have for either of us?’ Prisoner B asked.

Gaunt shrugged.

‘This way,’ he said. Above the sound of the sirens, and the clamour of hammering and shouting from the other side of the hatch, he could still make out the curious keening noise. He looked back at Prisoner B.

The etogaur was looking down at the blood-soaked corpse of the raider at his feet. Specifically, he was staring at the fallen rifle.

Without any attempt at misdirection, he bent down to pick it up.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Gaunt.

‘What?’ asked the etogaur, his pink, scarless hand about to close on the rifle’s grip.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting a weapon. Two weapons are better than one.’

‘Forget it,’ said Gaunt.

‘We have to fight our way out.’

‘I said forget it.’

‘But–’ Prisoner B began.

‘I’m not arming you. You can forget it. I am not arming you,’ said Gaunt.

The etogaur straightened up. He nodded.

‘I understand,’ he said.

They set off down the access way. There were sounds of fighting all around them, from the floors above them and below, and from areas nearby. They crossed over a cell bay where all the cages had gunshot-riddled corpses sprawling in them. Pistol raised, braced, Gaunt led the way.

Another hatchway took them into another long, white-tiled corridor, the trademark style of the detention levels, it seemed. There were no doors and no windows, just a long, gleaming white tunnel.

‘Which way?’ asked Prisoner B.

Raiders appeared down the tunnel to their right, and made the decision for them.

They started to run. As shots began to streak their way, Gaunt turned and fired, bundling Prisoner B ahead of him. He hit someone, and made the others duck back.

‘Move!’ Gaunt yelled.

Baltasar Eyl stepped over the bloody mess that had once been one of his men.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘This way, upon my soul!’ Naeme declared, pointing down the hallway.

‘You sure it’s him?’

‘I saw him,’ said Imrie.

Eyl pushed past them and started to run. He had trodden in the blood of his dead comrade, and he left bloody footprints on the white tiles.

They were coming after them. Gaunt could see them every time he looked back. They were giving chase. One of them, a big man in a beige leather coat, was leading the way, a carbine in his hands. His grotesk was silver.

The officer, Gaunt thought, the mission leader.

Shoving Prisoner B on, Gaunt turned again and fired. The screaming bolt-round barely missed the Blood Pact officer on their heels, but the man in the silver mask didn’t even flinch.

He’s sworn to this deed, Gaunt thought. He doesn’t care about his own life. He is resolute.

Gaunt fired. He missed the leader in the silver mask again, but the round explosively eviscerated the Pacted warrior running at his side. Still running, the silver-masked leader raised his carbine, and fired from the shoulder like a huntsman. A las-bolt hit the floor. Another went through Gaunt’s coat tail. A third stabbed into Prisoner B’s left shoulder blade.

Prisoner B didn’t fall, but he grunted and stumbled. Gaunt grabbed him to keep him upright, and tried to hustle him on. Shots smacked into the walls around them.

The white-tiled corridor was getting narrower. They struggled past a point where it was actually stepped in on both sides, losing about a quarter of its width. Five metres further, and the corridor stepped in again. The tall, white-tiled corridor had been designed progressively narrower in width.

It had been specifically designed to place increasing restrictions on anyone moving along it: to stop a man from turning or breaking free from the guards flanking him in escort.

Gaunt suddenly realised there wasn’t going to be an exit ahead of them. They had unwittingly run into a dead end, a literal dead end. The narrowing corridor was the long, deliberately confined approach to the execution chamber, the last walk that all capital prisoners of the Commissariat took, the last walk from which there was no turning back.

Baltasar Eyl extended his long stride. His beige coat flew out behind him. The corridor’s overhead lights strobe-flashed off his silver grotesk.

He raised his carbine.

TWELVE

A PLACE OF EXECUTION

Like the narrowing throat of the hallway that had brought them to it, the execution chamber was entirely lined with glossy white tiles. They were easier to wash, easier to hose down. There were small brass drain covers in the floor under the stout gibbet beam set in the ceiling.

Gaunt bundled Prisoner B through the doorway into the hopeless little box of a room. Despite his wound, Prisoner B made no show of pain. Two las-bolts shrieked past their ears and struck the far wall of the chamber. Gaunt turned. The Archenemy leader in the silver grotesk was right on them.

Gaunt fired.

The blast threw their pursuer’s body backwards along the distressingly tight gullet of the execution walk. It crashed into two of the men behind it and brought them all down. The narrow space filled with the stink of charred skin and fyceline.

Gaunt moved to the door, a heavy hatch, and began to swing it shut, hoping to bar or lock it in place. It didn’t seem to want to move.

‘Help me!’ he snarled, struggling.

Prisoner B was leaning against the wall nearby, breathing hard. The left-hand side of his coat was soaked in blood.

Gaunt ignored him and heaved at the door again. He holstered his bolt pistol to get a good grip on its frame with both hands. It began to budge, very slightly. Gaunt exclaimed in frustration. The wretched thing felt like it was made of stone. Several more las-bolts zipped in through the open doorway and creased off the far wall.

The door moved another couple of reluctant centimetres.

Something crashed into Gaunt and carried him across the execution chamber into the facing wall. The impact squashed the air out of him.

He was grappling with the man in the silver grotesk. The enemy leader’s face and chest were scorched and burned, and his gloved hands were torn and bloody, but he was far from dead. Gaunt’s bolt-round, intended as a hasty body-shot, had struck the carbine in Eyl’s hands and blown it up in his face. The force of the detonation had tossed him backwards into his men, but the round had not killed him.

Eyl forced Gaunt into the wall, and hooked a hand around his throat. Wide-eyed in surprise, his arms too pinned for a proper blow, Gaunt jabbed with an elbow, following it up with a clumsy kick that rocked his attacker back a step.

Gaunt broke the constricting grip around his arms, and smashed Eyl’s hands away. Eyl threw a clawing punch that was supposed to seize Gaunt’s face and twist his head around, but Gaunt deflected it, caught the extended firearm under his armpit, and violently levered Eyl into the chamber wall by way of his straightened arm.

Eyl grunted at the impact. Gaunt tried to slam him into the wall a second time, but Eyl’s left fist came around, catching Gaunt across the jaw. He reeled backwards, losing his grip on Eyl’s right arm.

Eyl immediately went on the offensive again. There was no hesitation. The intense, blow-upon-blow speed of the fight was manic and frantic. Eyl aimed a kick at Gaunt’s ribs, which didn’t properly connect, but, as Gaunt tried to shield himself, Eyl aimed another kick with the other foot.

Gaunt deflected it with his forearm, but wasn’t fast enough to catch the heel or ankle. Changing step, Eyl tried a third kick, from the original angle that had grazed Gaunt’s ribs. Warding off the successive kicks was driving Gaunt across the small chamber towards the doorway.

This time, Gaunt caught the raider’s heel. It smacked into his palm with a satisfying slap. He yanked and dragged the foot upwards, kicking Eyl’s other leg out from under him.

Eyl slammed over onto his back on the white tiles, but broke free and executed an alarmingly agile flick of his body that whipped him back onto his feet. He was upright in time to meet Gaunt’s fist coming the other way.

Gaunt was aiming for the throat, but he misjudged, and caught his knuckles across the edge of the silver grotesk. Eyl’s misdirected response drove a fist into Gaunt’s left collar bone. As Gaunt recoiled, Eyl went for his throat. Eyl was tall, with a long reach, and he was astonishingly strong, but it wasn’t his strength so much as his solidity that was a problem for Gaunt. He was an unyielding force, like a weight or a gravitic wave. It was as if he was made of some substance far denser than human matter. Gaunt had never tackled a man so implacable or so hard to unseat.

Eyl’s iron-hard hands brushed Gaunt’s fists aside and closed around his neck. As he felt his windpipe shut, and the tendons of his throat throttle and grind, Gaunt responded with instinct rather than any coherent plan. His gut verified that the only remaining thing he could use against his attacker was his attacker.

Gaunt let himself be carried over by the surging impetus of Eyl’s attack. He let himself fall onto his back, onto the hard white tiles. He let momentum carry the feverishly determined man in the silver grotesk clean over his head.

Eyl hit the floor with one shoulder just inside the chamber doorway, half-cartwheeled, and landed on the other side of the doorframe.

Gaunt swung up onto one knee and drew his bolt pistol to finish the contest.

The execution chamber hatch slammed shut in his face, putting ten centimetres of steel between him and the man in the silver grotesk. Their entire battle had lasted less than thirty seconds.

Gaunt looked up.

‘You needed to pull this,’ said Prisoner B. There was a heavy brass lever beside the door. Gaunt had missed it entirely. Engage the lever, and the hatch trundled shut on a geared mechanism. Small wonder the hatch had been impossible to budge with his shoulder. Prisoner B was leaning against the lever, and he was still breathing hard.

Fists, and possibly shots, began to bang against the other side of the hatch.

Gaunt rose to his feet.

‘I had him,’ he said. ‘You spoiled my shot.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ replied the etogaur. ‘You had him.’

‘Is that sarcasm?’

‘Another ten seconds, and the damogaur would have been wearing your windpipe as a necklace.’

Gaunt sniffed, and spat pink saliva onto the white tiles. ‘He would have tried.’

‘He would have succeeded,’ Prisoner B replied.

‘You called him damogaur. You know him?’ asked Gaunt.

Prisoner B shook his head. ‘His mask told me his rank. I don’t know the man personally. They would have sent one of their best.’

‘To silence you?’ asked Gaunt.

‘To silence me.’

Gaunt looked around the execution chamber. Shutting the hatch had simply prolonged the inevitable. Once the Pacted warriors blew it, or broke it off its seal, death would be inescapable.

Gaunt cursed. At the same moment, a blow struck the hatch with such inhuman ferocity that the metal sill began to buckle.

Gaunt looked up. He eyed the ominous black gibbet beam that traversed the ceiling. Generations of ropes had been expertly looped around it by the Section house executioners. He could see the wear marks.

‘You should be glad this has happened,’ he said to Prisoner B.

‘What? This attack?’

‘Yes,’ said Gaunt.

‘Why?’ asked the etogaur.

Gaunt looked at him.

‘Because all of a sudden I’m taking you very seriously,’ he said.

Another blow buckled the hatch frame more significantly.

‘I think it’s time we left,’ said Gaunt.

‘How? There’s only one door.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Yes, there is,’ he said, ‘but there are two levers.’

Gaunt walked to the other side of the grim chamber, to a second brass lever that matched the door control. The gallows drop, a trapdoor built seamlessly into the white-tiled floor, slammed open. Cold air blew up out of the black void.

They dropped. They dropped where, on a normal day, only the dead dropped, the dead or the split-second-from-dead.

The chute below the execution chamber was too gloomy for them to see or judge the bottom from the trapdoor, and too deep for them to land securely. Both of them fell and rolled, and jarred their bones. Gaunt prayed that neither of them had turned an ankle or broken something significant.

It was cold and dank, and smelled of hard stone. The trapdoor was a dull square of light and white tiles in the shadows above them. They were outside, in the pale snow-light of the yard. They heard the inner hatch of the execution chamber break at last and crash onto the tiles above them. They heard the snarling voices and the clattering feet of the would-be killers.

A tiny part of Gaunt wished they could have closed the trap, and left nothing but a vacant, white-tiled mystery behind them to delay and frustrate the Blood Pact.

There were no convenient brass handles on the dead side of the trapdoor, just a chilly chute in the open air where the bodies of the condemned were cut down and disposed of.

Gaunt hauled Prisoner B to his feet, and dragged him away from the chute’s bottom. Scant seconds later, gunfire blasted down through the trapdoor and sparked off the snow-blown cobbles.

They staggered out into the yard, into the open. The light was sickly yellow, and snow was swirling thickly. Gaunt tasted it on his lips and tongue, and felt it prickle on his face. Their boots crunched on the gathering snow. Somewhere in the building behind them there was a considerable explosion, which blew grit and debris down across the yard. Thick black smoke was pluming the winter sky, and Gaunt could hear flames. The end of Section’s administration wing was on fire. Shrill sirens continued to scratch the glass-cold air like diamonds. Gunfire chattered back and forth, like conversations between machines.

‘Head for the gate!’ Gaunt yelled.

The etogaur nodded, but he was slowing down. He was leaving a little trail of pattered blood across the crusted snow. It felt like a dream out in the yard, a delirious dream where everything was too slow and too bright, and too cold.

Behind them, Eyl and his men began to drop down through the execution trapdoor. They saw the fleeing figures through the billowing snow. Eyl roared a command and ran forwards. A couple of his men took aim.

The black staff car came out of the garage to their left without warning. Its engine was wildly over-revving, and its fat tyres squirmed on the snowy cobbles. Two or three of the Blood Pact’s shots punched into its bodywork. It fishtailed across the yard in an undignified skid, and wrenched to a halt, blocking Gaunt and the etogaur from the direct wrath of their attackers.

‘Get in,’ Wes Maggs yelled. ‘Get in the fething car, sir!’

Gaunt turned, baffled for a second. He saw the staff car, and Maggs leaning out from behind the wheel, shouting, his face red.

Gaunt bundled Prisoner B towards the car, and manhandled him into the back seat. Shots whined close. One destroyed a wing mirror, and another took out a door window in a shower of glass. Gaunt fired his bolt pistol in reply, blasting over the bonnet, and then threw himself in after the etogaur.

‘Go!’ he bellowed.

Maggs let out the clutch, and the big limousine lurched forwards, wheels slipping frantically.

It stalled.

‘For feth’s sake, Maggs!’ Gaunt howled. Las-rounds thumped into the body panels. Two passed clean through the passenger section, leaving neat little dots of daylight in the doors. The rear window shattered.

Maggs turned the engine over once, twice, and then it caught. He found the gear with an ugly grind of metal, and they sped forwards as more shots, both las and hard, smacked into them, punching holes. The car’s engine tone protested, and rose and fell unsteadily. The limousine juddered, and slewed across the inner yard, its wipers beating away the whirling snowflakes. It clipped one of the mechanics’ braziers, and spilled hot coals across the snow. Sparks flew up into the falling snow like luminous flakes.

‘The gate. Head for the gate,’ Gaunt yelled.

Shots were hitting the back of the car with such force that it felt like someone was repeatedly kicking the bodywork. Three hard rounds tore through the back of the canopy, and travelled through the car’s interior before burying themselves in the dashboard. One of them creased Maggs’s skull and sliced the top off his right ear. He howled in pain, and his ear bled with alarming vigour. The other side mirror exploded. The car lurched and wallowed. There was no grip.

The man in the silver grotesk landed on the rear of the car with a thump. With his feet braced on the fender and the rear mudguard, and one hand clinging to the roof edge beading, he struggled to get the back door open.

‘Sacred feth!’ Maggs wailed, wrenching on the wheel. The limousine slewed wildly, but Eyl stayed on. Maggs aimed the car’s nose at the narrow gateway linking the side yard to the main gate yard in the front of the house. Eyl succeeded in pulling the rear door open and leaned in, stabbing at them with his ugly rite knife.

The car ran the narrow gate. The open door mashed against the gate post and slammed on Eyl’s arm. Once they were clear of the gateway, the dented door flapped open again, but Eyl withdrew his arm. He was trying to manoeuvre to get his body in through the door, and attack them face to face.

Maggs raced the car across the gatehouse yard. Men from Eyl’s murderous philia ran after it, rifles and carbines raised, but not risking a shot for fear of hitting their damogaur. The yard was littered with Imperial dead, the men cut down and butchered during the first minutes of the assault. They lay tangled and twisted under thin shrouds of snow. Greasy smoke as dark as gunpowder boiled out of the administration wing, and foamed across the yard in thick, oily ropes. The folds of it, fat and black, swirled up snowflakes like stars in the deep range void. Part of Section’s roof was ablaze. Tongues of vivid yellow flames leapt triumphantly at the snow-blurred sky.

As the car roared towards the main gatehouse, Eyl made one final attempt to get inside. Lurching on the backseat, Gaunt had drawn his pistol. He aimed it up through the canopy at Eyl’s head.

The man in the silver grotesk saw Gaunt’s weapon at the last second and threw himself off the car. The bolt-round punched through the canopy and split the light metal fabric open in great tattered petals like a cycad. Eyl hit the cobbles behind the speeding car in a roll that took several tumbles to arrest. He was getting to his feet as his men ran up to him. Imrie steadied his arm.

The staff car hurtled under the arch of the main gate and out of sight.

Eyl turned to his philia, congregating from all sides through the heavy snow. He noted that there were several missing, and knew that he’d never see them again.

He signalled. They were leaving. They were finished with the place. Their target was moving, and they had to pursue.

The staff car belted along the snow-quiet road, outside the stricken headquarters.

‘Which way?’ Maggs yelled, a note of panic in his voice. He was steering with one hand and pinching his wounded ear with the other. His hand and sleeve were wet with blood.

‘Just keep going,’ Gaunt instructed.

‘But–’

‘Just keep going,’ Gaunt repeated firmly. ‘Any way you like, so long as you keep them squarely behind us.’

‘They looked like Blood Pact!’ Maggs blurted.

‘They were Blood Pact,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Weren’t they?’

He looked at Prisoner B. The etogaur was sagging in the corner of the back seat. His eyes were glazing. When Gaunt moved to him, he found that where his hands touched the dark chestnut leather upholstery, they came away sticky with blood.

‘Throne!’ Gaunt snarled.

‘What is it?’ Maggs shouted over his shoulder.

‘He’s hit,’ Gaunt replied. ‘He’s losing blood.’

‘Who is he?’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s complicated. All you need to know is that we need him alive. Keep driving.’

Gaunt propped the etogaur up. His eyes fluttered open.

‘You have to stay awake.’

The etogaur nodded.

‘I mean it. You have to stay awake. Do you understand?’ asked Gaunt.

Prisoner B began to close his eyes slowly.

Gaunt slapped him across the face. ‘Stay awake, Throne damn you. You need to stay awake. You need to live!’

The etogaur opened his eyes. There was a little more spark in them.

‘I will,’ he coughed.

The streets were mostly empty, as the snow had driven most people inside. Even so, Maggs’s reckless driving took them straight across a couple of junctions at speed, and traffic had to brake sharply to avoid him. One delivery van veered, mounted the pavement, and clipped a pollarded tree.

Gaunt peered out of the window, watching the old streets whip by. His mind was racing. Where were the security forces? The city-wide alarms? Where were the emergency cordons and the fast deploy reaction teams of the PDF? By now, the whole central area of the Oligarchy ought to have been locked down, the bridges closed, gunships overhead, troop carriers on the streets…

Unless warpcraft had sealed Section in a cone of deceit, and masked the brutal attack, so that the true infamy of the strike was only just seeping out into the world.

Warpcraft, witchcraft: he could smell it and taste it, and he’d had the scent of it ever since he’d been waiting in that anteroom. It explained a lot. It explained how an elite Archenemy strike team had been able to get so close to such a sensitive target so far behind Imperial lines. The man in the silver grotesk and his heathen killers weren’t alone on Balhaut. They had the most infernal support mechanisms guiding them, cloaking them and protecting them. From now on, nothing, not a single stone or snowflake in the world around them, could be properly trusted. The Blood Pact’s unholy shamans were warping a trap shut around them.

‘Get off the road.’

Gaunt snapped around. The etogaur was sitting up, much more alert and bright eyed than he had been.

‘Get off the road. It isn’t spent. It isn’t spent.’

‘What in the God-Emperor’s name are you talking about?’ Gaunt demanded.

Prisoner B didn’t reply. Gaunt realised that the etogaur had fallen into some kind of trance, perhaps brought on by wound-shock. He was trembling, his joints stiff and rigid.

Then Gaunt heard the keening sound, the sound he’d last heard in the depths of Section. Something was coming after them.

‘Get off the road!’ he shouted at Maggs.

‘What? Where?’

‘Anywhere. A side street!’

Maggs hauled on the steering wheel and swung the heavy car around into a narrow side street between old, age-blackened tenement offices. In the light of the streetlamps, permanently lit in this shadowy thoroughfare, the snow was falling in huge, downy clouds.

Turning had done no good. The keening grew louder.

The blood wolf had their scent.

The thing that had been Shorb wasn’t done. A great deal of energy had burned out of it, and a great deal of its strength had ebbed away, but a hot ingot of determination still glowed in the small part of its mind that remained sentient. It wanted to serve its damogaur. It wanted to serve its philia. It wanted to serve the Consanguinity. It was not going to give up. It was not going to fail them.

The pheguth had fled. He had escaped from under their noses, and was beyond the range of the philia moving on foot, but the blood wolf had the power and speed to catch up. A blood wolf could easily catch a car. It howled around the street corners of the snow-blasted city. It moved like an arctic wind or a leaping electrical arc. It made windows shake in their frames, and streetlamps pop and explode. Reality buckled and twisted in its warp-wash.

Gaunt could hear it coming closer.

He opened the dented back door of the idling staff car and stepped out into the snow. He looked up into the dim sky beyond the buildings that overhung him like silhouetted cliffs, and saw nothing but the billowing flakes.

He could hear it.

‘Hide,’ said Prisoner B in a small, hoarse voice from the back of the car. ‘Hide, run. Save yourself.’

With a shriek of tortured air, the blood wolf flew around the corner into the side street. It was two or three storeys up, above the line of the streetlamps, sailing like a bird through the static pattern of the snow. It wasn’t so much there as un-there: a moving blotch of corrupted air, like a stain in water or an imaging flaw in a pict-feed. Reality ulcerated and wept around it, as if the world was trying to reject it, and throw it back into the un-world of the warp from whence it had come.

It swept down at them, keening.

Gaunt raised his bolt pistol and fired. He couldn’t see a target, but he could see its absence. He could see the moving shadow of the warp besmirching the air.

As the blood wolf raced down at them, every streetlamp it passed shattered and darkened. The snow stopped falling and hung, suspended, in the yellow gloom. Gaunt’s shots seemed to hit nothing. He threw himself flat.

The blood wolf swept over them, shaking the staff car violently on its shocks. Several more side windows cracked or blew out. The headlamps exploded. The blood wolf was turning, banking in the air, coming around again.

It came right at Gaunt. He tried to shoot it, and then threw himself desperately out of its path, colliding with the car on his way down. The running board smacked into his wrist, and his bolt pistol spun out of sight. He felt the rush of the blood wolf pass over him, shaking the car again.

The keening was right in his ears.

He rose, looking for a weapon. The blood wolf was circling for a final pass.

The back door of the staff car hung open. On the back seat, pale with blood loss, Prisoner B sat in an almost catatonic state. Maggs was shouting. Gaunt saw something, just a flash.

Damogaur Eyl’s rite knife was embedded in the rear footwell carpet where he had dropped it.

Gaunt leaned in and grabbed the ugly blade. He turned, raising its dirty, jagged length to meet the blood wolf’s warp.

His eyes really saw it. He could see past the warp-wash and the buckled, blistered distortion of reality. He could see the thing inside, the screaming, flaying-raw thing, its energies almost gone, its once-arms outstretched into wing-claws, its once-mouth wide open in a scream. He could see the blood pumping furiously in its exposed veins and arteries. He could see the gristle and tendons of its joints, and the remaining shreds of its skin, shrivelling and blackening like paper as they burned away.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide to bite through Gaunt’s skull. Teeth the size of fingers sprouted like tusks from its receded gums for the purpose.

Gaunt rammed the rite knife into its heart.

The blood wolf screamed, and perished in a clap of un-thunder. There was a fierce pressure drop and a burst of freezing air, as if a cryo-bay hatch had opened and then slammed again. The blast threw Gaunt back into the car with enough force to dent the side panels. Charred gristle, sticky brown meat and bone fragments rained down, littering an area with a five-metre radius.

Gaunt sat up and blinked. The rite knife was cooked black with soot, as if it had been left in a grate.

Its pause suspended, the snow calmly and silently began to fall again.

THIRTEEN

AWRY

There was a word for the CO of the Bremenen 52nd, but it wasn’t one Viktor Hark would ever use around ladies.

As he stomped back towards the Tanith barracks in the blowing snow, there were no ladies present, so he used it freely and often.

During the lull triggered by the day’s heavy snowfall, he had trudged across the exercise quad for a quiet word with the commander of the neighbouring regiment, in the hope of patching up some of the bad feeling that had begun to eclipse inter-regimental relations, thanks to months of boredom and escalating practical jokes. Unfortunately, the Bremenen CO had chosen that morning to breakfast on iron filings, have his sense of humour amputated at the neck, and sit down very suddenly on a broom handle, as a consequence of which he was as rigid and unyielding as a sheet of flakboard. His response to Hark’s off-the-record nice-making had been dismissive, and he’d essentially blamed the catalogue of infractions and write-ups entirely on the Tanith ‘tricksters’. Then he’d given Hark a curt, ‘Good day to you’ to take home with him.

The Bremenen had done their share in the months they’d been stationed side by side. Of course they had. It had been tit for tat every step of the way, and some of the earliest run-ins had been playful and forgivable. Hark knew that, and he knew that the Bremenen CO knew it too, but it had stopped being funny some time before, and Hark understood that the Bremenen CO had simply had a gut-full. He wasn’t going to tolerate it any more, and part of his not tolerating it was to dump the whole thing on the Tanith.

The wind was bringing the snow in across the quad in huge, smoking clouds like flour caught in a mill’s through-draught. There was a good hand’s depth on just about every surface, and the ice-flakes were stinging his nose and lips, and catching in his eyelashes. Hark had his collar turned up and his hands stuffed into his stormcoat pockets. The snow cover was so heavy that the sodium lights around the Aarlem compound had come on in response to the gloom. Snowflakes batted dizzily around the hooded glow of the lights like moths.

It was all turning to crap, and Hark had had a gut-full too. In the years that Hark had been with the Tanith, he’d seen them on the verge of defeat and almost destroyed, but he’d never seen them so close to disintegration. They’d been inert too long. They had become bored and fractious, and spiteful. They’d been without an enemy for so long, they’d invented one, and it was themselves. Their idleness and frustration had turned them into wasters and idlers, and worse.

Every day, there was a list of fresh fethery. Hark was running out of options. Some men had crossed the line so often he was hard-pressed to know how to punish them, and just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, some new monster raised its head, and took his breath away. This thing with Rawne and the others, with Daur for feth’s sake! That was a whole new league of crap.

Daur was a yardstick. There wasn’t a straighter man in the regiment. That was how far they’d slipped. Every night when he went to his bed, and every morning when he woke, Viktor Hark offered up a little prayer to the God-Emperor of Mankind. It went:

For feth’s sake, post us. Post us today or tomorrow. We need a war.

Peacetime had been remarkably revealing about the Tanith character. Kilo for kilo, they were the best infantry troops Hark had ever seen or had the pleasure of serving with. In the field, they had an abundance of skills and an abundance of courage, and they were, in the strangest way, extraordinarily principled. They took pride in a sort of moral code that entirely forgave any lapses in discipline of conduct. They flourished in adversity.

They were not a garrison force. They were not a regiment you could put into reserve or turnaround, and expect them to sit tight and behave themselves in a safe little barracks compound. They would not spend their time polishing their buttons and practising their parade drill and reading their primers. Well, they would, but it wouldn’t be enough. They would get crazy.

The Tanith (and this quality had spread to the non-Tanith in the First) were a wild force. In the field, you didn’t notice their rough edges. Retire them to Balhaut for a year or two, and they were like caged animals. They wanted to get out, and if they couldn’t get out, they wanted to bite the hand off the next idiot who tried to feed them.

The Bremenen were a garrison force. There was nothing wrong with them; they were a decent, unexceptional, well-drilled infantry outfit. To them, two years turnaround on Balhaut was a sweet deal, the posting they’d been hoping for their entire service. For the Tanith, it was a prison sentence.

Hark stopped in the middle of the quad, tipped his head back, and cursed. He cursed the Bremenen CO, though it wasn’t personal. The Bremenen CO had simply become a hobbyhorse for Hark to take out his frustration on. When he’d finished cursing, he checked to see if he felt any better, and found that he didn’t very much, actually.

He looked at his watch. If he called up a car from the pool, he could be at Section by nightfall. Despite the snow, the roads were still clear enough for a decent run into the city. He could go to Section, and quietly call in a few favours. He could find out how the land lay, and get the inside track on the likelihood of an imminent posting, maybe even seed the idea and get some gears moving. The Munitorum moved at its own pace, but sometimes it didn’t hurt to give it a little shove. He should have done it months ago. Yes, he’d go on up to Section, stick a finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing, and maybe bend the ear of a couple of senior commissars he knew.

He turned and looked towards the fence in the direction of the city. Even in the snow-light gloom, he could see the immense spread of lights through the chainlink, like a fallen constellation, with the crown of the Oligarchy rising behind it. He was resolved. Doing something, anything, was better than this backbreaking damage control.

Hark sniffed. He realised he might have to revise his travel plans. It looked like worse weather was on the way. From where he was standing, the storm clouds over the Oligarchy looked especially black and menacing, like smoke.

He heard a voice calling his name, and turned to see Ludd thumping across the quad towards him. Now what?

‘Excuse the interruption, sir,’ Ludd declared as he reached Hark. ‘Something’s going on.’

‘Ludd,’ said Hark, brushing snow off his nose, ‘you realise your sole use to me is to supply meaningful and intelligible nouns and adverbs in place of the word something in sentences like that?’

‘Yes,’ Ludd shrugged, ‘but sometimes they don’t issue me with enough nouns from stores.’

‘Was that a joke, Ludd?’

‘Like a joke, but smaller, sir,’ Ludd replied, and handed Hark a message slip. ‘The vox office sent this through ten minutes ago. Your eyes only.’

A discipline matter. Hark groaned. It had to be a discipline matter, or it would have gone straight to Kolea, or whoever was officer of the watch. What now? What now?

Hark tore the slip open, and sniffed as he unfolded and read it. Snowflakes made little tick noises as they struck the sheet of paper in his gloved hands.

‘Summon the senior staff,’ he said to Ludd.

‘Sir?’

‘Summon the senior staff. Five minutes.’

‘Well, Rawne’s in jail, and the colonel’s off-site. Do we have any senior staff left?’ Ludd asked.

‘This isn’t even slightly the time for jokes, Ludd,’ said Hark.

Ludd saw the look on Hark’s face, and his grin quickly vanished.

‘Right, sir. At once,’ he said, and ran off through the snow towards the Tanith blockhouses.

‘And take us to Active Pending, please!’ Hark yelled after him.

Ludd stopped and looked back.

‘Active Pending?’ he asked.

‘You heard me, Ludd.’

‘Yes, sir!’

Ludd turned back and started running again.

Hark looked back down at the paper. Where the snowflakes had hit it, they had turned into drops of water and run, smudging the crude black ink of the printout. They looked like tears from a woman’s eyes, causing her make-up to streak. They looked like blood leaking from bullet holes.

‘Feth!’ he cried. ‘Feth! Feth!’

Just when he thought morale and behaviour were at their lowest, a whole new universe of bad had opened up.

Active Pending. The regiment woke up fast. It shook and galvanised itself to stand to, the pre-transit or pre-combat prepped status. Activity boiled through the Tanith barracks. Everything was suddenly bustling. Beltayn hurried along the main link corridor carrying the day-book and the other logs. Ghosts ran past him in both directions, scrambling for their assigned stations.

‘Is this a drill?’ Dalin Criid asked Beltayn as he went past.

‘What?’ Beltayn replied, looking up from the logs that he was reading as he walked.

‘It’s a drill, right?’ asked Dalin. He was with several young troopers from his company.

‘Just get on with it, trooper,’ Beltayn said.

Dalin shrugged and hurried away with his comrades.

Beltayn tutted and resumed his reading. A thought struck him.

‘Wait! Criid!’ he shouted after the departing soldiers.

Dalin turned and ran back to him.

‘Yes?’

‘You need to attend senior staff.’

‘Why? Did I get a promotion?’

‘Don’t be a feth-head, Criid,’ said Beltayn wearily. ‘You’re E Company adjutant.’

‘For my sins,’ Dalin agreed.

‘Well, Captain Meryn is off-site.’

‘Captain Meryn’s banged up in jail, that’s what I heard,’ Dalin said. The look on his face suggested that he didn’t think it could have happened to a more deserving soul.

‘Captain Meryn’s status is not your business, trooper,’ Beltayn said, ‘so let’s ditch the lip. His absence is your business. As his adjutant, you have to attend and gather all the relevants for him, or for whoever ends up in charge of your fething shower.’

‘Really?’

‘Two minutes, please, in the temple house.’

Dalin let out an oath and ran off.

Beltayn turned and resumed his course. As he swept past medicae, he stopped, rapped on the door, and stuck his head in.

‘Senior staff, two minutes, doctor,’ he called.

Dorden looked up from his desk.

‘Thank you, adjutant,’ he said.

Beltayn nodded and went out, closing the door behind him.

‘It seems I’m called away,’ said Dorden.

‘Well, that’s a gigantic shame,’ replied Father Zweil. The ayatani was sitting across the desk from the chief medic.

‘It really is,’ Dorden agreed. ‘I finally get you to show up here for your examination, and I’m called out.’

‘We can finish at a later date,’ said Zweil.

‘We’re almost done as it is,’ said Dorden. He was busily writing up the notes that would accompany the little phials of blood and tissue samples he’d collected. ‘Can you be patient for a moment longer?’

‘Patient or patient?’ asked Zweil.

Dorden smiled, and got up. He walked through to the adjoining room, where Ana Curth was loading stainless steel instruments into the autoclave.

‘Can you finish up for me?’ he asked.

‘With Zweil?’

‘Yes. Just finish writing up the notes, ask him the green slip questions, and bag the samples and documents with his signature.’

She nodded, and said, ‘I can take them over to the pharmacon if you like.’

‘Thanks. Some kind of staff meeting’s been called.’

‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘I think it’s a drill. We’ve gone to Active Pending.’

‘Have we indeed?’ asked Dorden. He turned to leave.

‘How did you get him to show up?’ Curth asked.

‘The ayatani? I sicced Gaunt on him,’ Dorden replied.

‘And how did you get him to sit still for the samples? Zweil hates needles.’

Dorden showed her his left arm. His sleeve was rolled up and there was a small swab dressing taped in the crook of the elbow. ‘I did everything I was going to do to him to myself first to show it wasn’t going to hurt.’

‘Very clever.’

‘I learned that dealing with children years ago. It’s a technique that works on the old and cranky too.’

Curth laughed. ‘And Zweil’s ancient. He’s got all of… what, five years on you?’

‘Age is a state of mind, Ana,’ Dorden replied with pretend hauteur. ‘Anyway, thank you. I have to go.’

She followed him back into the examination room.

‘Doctor Curth is going to finish up for me,’ Dorden told the old priest.

‘Is she?’ asked Zweil suspiciously. ‘She’s not a real medicae, you know. She hasn’t got any qualifications. Gaunt just lets her hang around because she’s pretty.’

‘I’m sure that’s exactly right, father,’ said Curth, sitting down at the desk.

‘Your hands better not be cold,’ Zweil warned her.

‘Why?’ asked Curth. ‘All I’m doing is making notes.’

‘Damn!’ said Zweil.

Sniggering and shaking his head, Dorden let himself out of the room and joined the human traffic in the hallway. His amusement was superficial. An ugly mood had settled on him that was as cold and sudden as the snowstorm outside.

As he approached the entrance to the temple house, he saw Gol Kolea in the crowd. The big Verghastite major was smiling.

‘Afternoon, doctor.’

‘Gol.’

‘Active Pending, eh?’

‘You look delighted.’

Kolea nodded.

‘Could be the posting we’ve been waiting for,’ he said.

‘You think so?’

‘Orders had to come through sooner or later.’

Dorden nodded.

‘To be frank, major, if it is our orders coming through, and we’re being posted back to the front, that hardly fills me with delight.’

‘We’re going gak-happy here, Doc. The Ghosts need a tour. It’s overdue,’ said Kolea.

‘You seem to forget, major, that when we go to war, people die. That’s hardly something to look forward to.’

They went into the temple house. The snow beat against the tall, narrow windows. The senior staff were finding places to sit. All the company commanders had assembled, or were represented by adjutants or juniors. Dorden saw Kolosim, Obel, Raglon, Sloman, Arcuda, Domor, Theiss and Baskevyl, as well as Elam and Seley, who had been promoted to the commands of H and L companies respectively to replace men lost at Hinzerhaus. He could also see Mkoll, the master of scouts. Bonin was the representative for B Company in Rawne’s absence, Daur’s adjutant Mohr for G Company, and a very nervous-looking Dalin Criid for Meryn’s Company E.

‘Take your seats. Let’s have you!’ Commissar Ludd called out, climbing onto the stage. ‘That’s enough, come on!’

‘A little order and attention, please, gentlemen!’ Baskevyl called, backing the young commissar up. The noise level dropped appreciably.

‘Thank you,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Door, please, Shoggy.’

Shoggy Domor got out of his seat to close the temple door, but Hark walked in and shut the door behind him. Hark marched to the front, all eyes following him. Dorden noticed that at some point during the assembly, Eszrah ap Niht had slipped into the temple and was standing at the back in the shadows.

‘What’s going on, Hark?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Have we got marching orders?’ Kolosim added. ‘We’ve got marching orders, haven’t we?’

There was a general murmur.

Hark cleared his throat. Dorden realised that he didn’t like the look on Hark’s face, and it wasn’t for the reasons he had expected.

‘As of twenty-seven minutes ago,’ Hark began, ‘Aarlem Fortress is on security lockdown.’

Everybody started talking.

‘Shut up and listen!’ Hark shouted. ‘Security condition two has been imposed on this station, and on Balopolis and the Oligarchy. The PDF is locking all orbital links, and transit is forbidden. An advisory has been issued.’

‘What the feth?’ Kolea grumbled.

‘There was a serious incident this afternoon in the Oligarchy. All I know is that Section was attacked by forces unknown.’

‘An attack?’ echoed Obel. ‘Are you kidding? Who attacks Balhaut?’

‘Somebody,’ said Hark. ‘This is serious. We are to remain on base until further notice. Nobody goes off-site.’

‘On whose orders?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Section’s, and it’s been ratified by Guard Command. Beltayn?’

‘Yes, commissar?’

‘Consult the day-book and check with the other adjutants. I want a list of all personnel off-site as of right now.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Beltayn nodded.

Hark gestured to Kolea, who had quietly raised a hand.

‘Yes, major?’

Kolea breathed a sort of sigh, and then said, ‘What’s the scale of this? Has the Archenemy mounted a counter-offensive? Have they punched right through?’

‘We’d know about it,’ said Mkoll.

Kolea looked over at the chief scout.

‘However optimistically you want to place the Crusade front line on the star-maps,’ Mkoll said, ‘Balhaut is over a sector’s distance from the fight zone. If an enemy counter-offensive had pushed through, we’d have heard about it months ago.’

‘But a long, deep-warp jump? A bounding strike into our heartland?’

‘Doesn’t feel like that, Gol,’ said Mkoll.

‘I agree with the chief,’ said Hark, ‘but that’s not important. It isn’t our business to figure this out. Orders are simple. We confine ourselves to base and lock down. No one leaves. No one is unaccounted for. All Guard strengths on the surface are to secure their base facilities and stand ready for deployment.’

Bonin looked up at the ceiling.

‘I hear incoming,’ he said. ‘Engines.’

The steadily increasing throb of turbofan motors drew them out into the snow. Six flying machines, running nose to tail in a line, were hacking in from the city, through the snowstorm, their running lights blinking. They came in low, and circled Aarlem Fortress. The lead bird banked and began to settle towards the open expanse of the lamp-lit quad.

The six machines were Valkyrie gunships. They blew up mini blizzards with their jetwash as they settled side by side across the quad.

‘Oh feth,’ murmured Hark. ‘Would somebody like to tell me what they’re doing here?’

Baskevyl looked at Hark, and the commissar pointed.

On the side of each Valkyrie, plainly visible despite the snow, was the rosette crest of the Inquisition.

FOURTEEN

THE HOUSE OF DOCTOR DEATH

In the early evening, when his day’s work was done, and he was in the scrub room washing the instruments of his trade, Doctor Kolding thought he heard a vehicle pass by on the street outside.

This seemed unlikely, for many reasons. It was snowing heavily, and that kept the traffic light, particularly in the hilly streets of Old Side. More specifically, no one ever drove up or down Kepeler Place unless they were lost, which was infrequent to say the least, or they were the ambulance men from the Civic Office, who brought him his work, and they made their deliveries before ten each morning.

Nevertheless, he’d heard the sound of a motor vehicle passing by. It had been a bronchial chuckle, rounded out by the acoustic muffle of the snow lining the otherwise empty street: the ugly engine-cough of a badly maintained truck or van ailing in the freezing conditions.

Doctor Kolding put the last of the stainless steel tools back on the cart’s red cloth, covered them, and dried his hands. He let the tap run to rinse away the last of the brown stains in the enamel sink, and his mind returned to the sound. Perhaps it was the ambulance men. Sometimes, rarely, the Civic Office sent rush-jobs up at unsocial hours, outside the timetable of his usual casework deliveries. That would be it, he decided. It was the ambulance men, bringing him an urgent piece of work.

He was poised for the doorbell, but the doorbell did not ring. There was no sound of rear doors thumping open, or of the gurney’s legs unfolding with a clatter as it slid off the carrier. He went to the window, and pulled the blind aside. Outside, the street was empty and snow-silent. Fat snowflakes drifted like ancient, amber stars through the light-cones of the streetlamps.

He had been mistaken.

He returned to the theatre, turned the wall tap on, and began to play the hose across the tiled floor. The room smelled of damp stone and disinfectant. He’d been mistaken. It hadn’t been an urgent job coming his way after all. As the hose in his hand spattered out onto the floor, he looked up at the steel drawers and smiled. None of his work was ever truly urgent, not, at any rate, to the people it most intimately concerned.

He was just turning the hose off when the doorbell rang. He froze for a moment, listening to the last of the water gurgling away down the floor drains. Had he imagined the bell?

He had not. After a long period of silence, it rang again. This time it did not sound as though someone had pressed the white stud on the brass plate beside his street door; it sounded as though someone had leant on it. The drawn-out blare of the electric bell rattled through his chilly, empty house.

Doctor Kolding took his hand off the wall tap and let the empty coils of the hose slap onto the floor. He wiped his hands on his apron. This was unseemly. This was a strange turn of events, and it disturbed him. It disturbed the very ordered pattern of his life. He attempted to manufacture scenarios in his head to explain things. The Civic Office had sent him some urgent work, but the crew driver was a relief fill-in, unfamiliar with Doctor Kolding’s location. He’d overshot. He’d driven past, perhaps as far as to the junction where Kepeler Place met Flamestead Street. In this weather, that was not surprising. He’d been obliged to turn around, to turn around in the snow and make his way back. This accounted for the interval between the sound of his vehicle, passing by, and the ringing of the bell.

It rang again, a third time. The finger stayed on the bell-press for a full, indignant, insistent ten seconds.

Doctor Kolding stiffened, and hurried from the theatre. He went up the stone steps into the long hall. The floor was polished dark wood, and it fuzzily reflected the white light of the glass shades overhead in circular splashes like pools of sunlight. He searched for his glasses, which were, of course, in his apron pocket, and put them on. Blue twilight took the edge off the hard, white lamplight.

He reached the door. There was someone on the other side. He could hear them shuffling.

‘Wh-who is it?’ he called through the heavy door.

‘Are you a doctor?’ a voice called back. It was a male voice, heavy, impatient or distracted.

‘Wh-who is there?’ Doctor Kolding called. ‘Please t-tell me who you are.’

‘Are you a doctor?’ the voice repeated. ‘I need a doctor.’

‘Y-you’ve come to the wrong place,’ Doctor Kolding called out.

‘You have the medicae sign on a pole outside. I can see it.’

The voice sounded irritated. Doctor Kolding hesitated. He did have the medicae sign above the door of his old townhouse, because that was his profession. It had been his father’s profession, and his father’s uncle before that. Nine generations of Koldings had worked as surgeons at this address on Kepeler Place, and that was why the serpent-staff of Asklepios hung proudly from the brass rail above his door. That couldn’t be denied. It was as plain as day, even with a crust of snow on it.

But, of course, it was more complicated than that, and it had been more complicated ever since the Famous Victory. Doctor Kolding felt very tense and unwell. This was a strange turn of events, and it disturbed him.

‘Hello?’ the voice outside called.

‘Hello?’ Doctor Kolding answered.

‘Are you going to open this door?’ the voice demanded.

‘A-are you from the Civic Office?’ Doctor Kolding asked, his cheek almost touching the cold black paint of the front door so that he could hear clearly.

‘The what?’

‘The Civic Office.’

‘No.’

‘Then I feel sure you have, as I said, come to the wrong place.’

‘But you’ve got the sign up.’

‘Please,’ Doctor Kolding began.

‘This is an emergency!’ the voice said, angrier than before. ‘It’s cold out here.’

Please go away, please go away, this is a strange turn of events and–

Knuckles banged against the door so sharply that Doctor Kolding jumped back.

Sometimes this happened. He’d heard of it happening to others who plied the same trade. The serpent-staff could attract visitors of other types to your door, undesirable types. They had problems of their own. They had needs. They had habits to feed. To them, the sign suggested a source of pharms, a medicae to be pleaded with or threatened, a medicine bag to be shaken out for stimms, a drug cabinet to be raided.

Doctor Kolding felt quite flustered. He opened the door of the long-case clock that stood at the foot of the stairs. The clock hadn’t worked for fifteen years, but Doctor Kolding had been unwilling to get rid of it because it had belonged to his father’s uncle and it had always stood there. It didn’t serve as anything more than a cupboard now. He opened the case door and reached inside. The pistol was there, on a dusty little shelf behind the impotent pendulum. It was the pistol that had been left behind. He snapped the safety off and held the gun against his palm in his apron pocket.

The knuckles banged on the door again.

‘Hello?’

Doctor Kolding reached up and tugged open the brass latch with his free hand. As he did so, he saw that his hand was shaking.

His hand was shaking, and there was a tiny spot of someone else’s blood on the back of it just under the knuckle of the middle finger.

Doctor Kolding opened the door.

‘What do you want, please?’ he asked.

A man was standing on his doorstep. He was a rough-looking man, a military man. He was wearing a black combat uniform. He seemed quite threatening. The people who came after pharms were often military or ex-military types with habits that were the legacy of combat tours. The man was standing on the doorstep with the snow coming down around him, lit by the single lamp above him in the roof of the stone porch. To Doctor Kolding, the dark street behind him was a blue void.

‘Are you the doctor?’ the visitor asked.

‘I… Yes.’

‘What’s the matter with you, keeping us standing out here? It’s freezing, and this is an emergency. Why did it take you so long to open the door?’

‘I was surprised to have a visitor this late,’ said Doctor Kolding. ‘It is a strange turn of events, and it disturbed me.’

‘Yeah, well, sorry to knock for you after hours, but emergencies choose their own moments to happen, you know what I mean?’

‘Not really,’ replied Doctor Kolding.

The visitor peered at him, puzzled.

‘What’s with the dark glasses?’ he asked.

‘Please tell me what you want,’ said Doctor Kolding.

‘I want to come inside.’

‘Explain your business first, please.’

‘It’s an emergency,’ said the visitor.

‘And the nature of the emergency?’

‘Well, up to a few minutes ago, it was something else, but now it’s that bits of my anatomy are about to freeze off!’

Doctor Kolding gazed at him. This was a strange turn of events, and it disturbed him.

It disturbed him even more when the visitor simply pushed past him into the hall.

‘You can’t just walk in!’ Doctor Kolding cried.

‘Actually, I can. This is an emergency, and I’m tired of trying to do this nicely.’

‘You can’t just walk in!’

The visitor looked back at him.

‘Are you the doctor?’ he asked.

‘I said I was. I told you that.’

‘You’re not an assistant or something? I wondered if you were the manservant or something.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘So you’re in charge?’ the visitor asked.

‘I’m the only one here.’

The visitor nodded and looked around again. He went a few steps down the hall, and peered up the stairs to the first floor. Then he bent over the rail and looked down the stone steps into the basement theatre. As the visitor turned his head, Doctor Kolding saw that there was dried blood on the right-hand side of his face and his right ear.

‘You’ve been hurt,’ said Doctor Kolding.

‘What?’

Doctor Kolding pointed to the visitor’s head with his free hand. ‘You’ve been hurt. Is this the emergency?’

The visitor touched his ear as if he’d forgotten all about it. His right hand was also, now Doctor Kolding came to notice it, covered in dried blood.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not.’

At that moment, Doctor Kolding realised that the visitor had said something that had disturbed him more than anything else. In the confusion and tension, it had been passed over. Only now, with his mind painstakingly running back over the conversation again, did Doctor Kolding see it.

It was a single word, and the word was ‘us’.

What’s the matter with you, keeping us standing out here?

‘I’d like you to go, please,’ said Doctor Kolding.

‘What?’ the visitor asked.

‘I’d like you to go. Leave. Please leave.’

‘Haven’t you been listening to me? I need a doctor. It’s an emergency.’

‘I’d like you to leave these premises, now,’ said Doctor Kolding.

‘What’s that in your pocket?’ the visitor asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘What have you got in your pocket? There, in your apron pocket. You’re holding something.’

Doctor Kolding pulled the pistol out. His visitor blinked and said something like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ Doctor Kolding wasn’t precisely sure what his visitor said because he was too busy falling over to listen. His visitor had somehow bumped into him and the impact, though gentle, had deposited Doctor Kolding on his back in the open doorway. He no longer held the pistol. This was a strange turn of events, and it disturbed him.

Doctor Kolding lay on his back and looked up. Two more men were standing on the doorstep above him, framed in the porch light and the falling snow. They were upside down to Doctor Kolding. One of them seemed to be holding the other one up.

‘Is this the doctor?’ asked the man doing the supporting. He was tall, with a slender face and disturbing eyes. Doctor Kolding couldn’t tell much about the man he was holding up.

‘I think it’s the doctor, sir,’ the original visitor replied. ‘He’s not being very cooperative.’

‘Is that why he’s lying on his back?’ asked the man with the slender face.

‘He had this pistol, sir–’ said the original visitor.

‘Help him to his feet, please,’ said the man with the slender face.

‘I’ll cooperate!’ exclaimed Doctor Kolding as he was helped up. He was feeling trapped. He wanted to scream. ‘I’ll cooperate, but I don’t understand what’s going on. The men usually only come in the mornings. The mornings, you see? Not at this time of night. Never at this time.’

‘Calm yourself,’ said the man with the slender face and the disturbing eyes. The other man had called him ‘sir’. He certainly exuded a sort of authority. ‘Please, calm yourself. We’re very sorry to have disturbed you, and we don’t mean to put you to any trouble, but this is a rather critical situation. What’s your name?’

‘Auden Kolding.’

‘Are you a doctor, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I need your help urgently,’ said the man with the slender face. ‘This man’s been shot and he’s dying.’

He led them downstairs to the theatre, once he’d made sure the street door was closed. They left snow-melt footprints on the hall floor and the steps, and that bothered him immensely, of course, but he reassured himself that he could take the mop to it just as soon as the wounded man was comfortable. A man’s life took precedence, of course it did. A man’s life was more important than dirty wet marks on a dark hardwood floor.

They got the man into the theatre. He wasn’t really conscious, and Doctor Kolding could smell blood. Doctor Kolding told them to get the man onto the examination table, to lay him back on the clean, red sheet he’d hung across the table at the end of his day’s work. The blood would stain, of course, despite the colour of the sheet. He would have to boil it later. He washed his hands in the counterseptic bath, and dried them diligently before pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. His hands were shaking.

When Doctor Kolding came over to the table, they had laid the patient back, and Doctor Kolding saw his face for the first time, starkly illuminated by the exam lamp.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Doctor Kolding asked in a small voice.

The man with the slender face looked at him. ‘What do you mean, doctor?’ he asked.

Doctor Kolding indicated the knotted scar-tissue that covered the patient’s head.

‘You come in here,’ he said, ‘you come in here and ask my help, and you’re bringing me some kind of animal. This isn’t a man, it’s an animal.’

‘I don’t have a whole lot of time to debate this with you, doctor,’ the man with the slender face said. ‘I need you to get to work on him. I need you to do everything in your power to save his life.’

‘He’s an animal! An inhuman thing!’

The man with the slender face leaned close to Doctor Kolding, and he shrank back because he didn’t like to smell another person’s breath, or feel it on his face.

‘We don’t have time to debate this,’ said the man with the slender face, ‘but if we did, it would run like this. I would tell you that I was an officer of the Commissariat, and that I had the authority, on pain of death, to compel you to carry out my wishes. I would tell you that it was vital to Imperial security that this man remained alive, and would instruct you to carry out your function without further issue or demurral. I might even produce a weapon, just for show, to emphasise my seriousness.’

Doctor Kolding stared back at him.

‘But I’m not going to do any of that,’ said the man with the slender face, ‘because we really don’t have the time.’

‘I see,’ said Doctor Kolding.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Doctor Kolding, and reached for his tray of instruments.

Something was going on, and Tona Criid didn’t need to be told that it was bad. Capital B A D.

She’d looped around to take a look at Section, but there had been nothing to see, so she’d gone to find the slice of lime soforso she’d promised herself. Then she’d wasted an hour or more sitting in the comforting silence of Saint Theodor’s sacristy, until her legs got jittery and told her it was time to run again.

She’d had a simple circuit of Engineer’s Mall in mind, just up as far as the memorial, and then the long, steady run home to Aarlem, but some force, like a magnetic impule, had pulled her back towards Section. This time, she thought, she might ask at the guardhouse, and see if there was a procedure that would allow her to visit a prisoner. Whatever this feth-storm was all about, if she could get Rawne’s side of things, or Varl’s, maybe, she could put in a good word and ease things along. Left to itself, the system would most likely chew them up. She’d seen that happen. She didn’t care who shouted her down, the First could not go around losing officers like Rawne, Daur or Varl. Meryn, obviously. No one cared about that rat-stool.

So, she’d let the impulse bring her back towards Section. It had begun to snow by then. The snow was heavy, the sky was a sick colour, and there was a funny feeling to the afternoon. It wasn’t even that cold. Snow was settling in her hair and on her nose, but she was sweating like a grox in her exercise kit.

She was coming up Viceroy Square when she first realised that things weren’t right. What she’d taken to be heavy snow clouds turned out to be smoke. She could smell it. The building was on fire. There were sirens. There was gunfire, full-on gunfire from inside the walls. She came up into the tree-line of the gardens in the square, and saw bodies in the road beside the gatehouse.

She got down into the cover of the trees, her eyes wide in disbelief, her pulse banging in her ear for the first time in months. It was the old adrenaline high, the combat rush, conquering her with such fury that she couldn’t resist it. Every bit of conditioning she’d kept suppressed or contained since the Tanith had retired sprang back into place. She red-lined. All the old habits, all the old crazy tics, reasserted themselves, larger than life, as if they’d never gone. She could taste the sour saliva in her mouth. The lime tang of the soforso was long gone. She could smell the smoke, and it smelled like Hinzerhaus. She wanted, more than anything else, for there to be a weapon to hand, a rifle that she could arm and sight. Her hands felt ridiculously useless and empty, like numb paddles, miming the act of holding a rifle.

She tried to control her breathing. She tried to back away a little, without disturbing the snow on the bushes and shrubs around her. She tried to decide on the best course of action.

Raise the alarm: that was all she could think. Something this big, the whole city had to be aware of it, but there was no sign of people rushing in, of reinforcements, of support or relief.

It was as if the whole city had become snow-blind and was ignoring the drama unfolding at Section.

Criid began to crawl her way back through the gardens. The far side of the square would put her back on a main thoroughfare. She could run then. At full stretch, it was about ten minutes to the guardhouse at Zannen Street, and she was sure there was a PDF defence shelter closer than that. Failing either of those things, she’d find a Magistratum station or somewhere with a working vox.

She’d just risen in a crouch, about to risk a run across the snow-covered lawns to the gate of the gardens, when she realised there was someone under the trees nearby.

She turned to look. It was another bystander, she thought, someone who, like her, had come upon this scene of bloodshed by accident.

It was a woman. She was wearing a long mourning dress of black silk and crepe. Her face was covered by a veil of black gauze. She was standing under the trees, the boughs above her head weighed down by the increasing freight of snow upon them. She seemed to be staring at the main building of Section. Criid wondered if she ought to go to her, and offer to escort her to a safe distance away from the gunfire.

Something made her hesitate. It might have been her increasing awareness of a soft, high-pitched sound, like a drawn-out wail, that seemed to be emanating from the woman. It may have been a preternatural sense of self-preservation triggered by the abrupt return of her old adrenaline high.

Something simply made her hesitate. Something told her that taking another step towards the woman in the black silk dress was a Very Bad Idea.

The woman turned to look at Tona Criid. Her veil obscured her face, and Tona was instantly glad of that, because she instinctively knew that she didn’t want to see the woman’s face, ever.

The shrill sound was coming from the woman. It was just rushing out of her with no allowance for breath.

The snow had stopped falling. Tona realised it had stopped falling in mid-air. Snowflakes hung around her in a constellation, suspended in the act of descent.

She began to back away. The woman in the black dress stared at her. Tona took a step forwards.

The shrill sound continued to come out of the woman. She raised her right hand to lift the corner of the veil.

Criid let out an anguished cry, and turned. She started to run. The world was slow, like glue, like treacle. The shrill sound was in her ears. Suspended snowflakes puffed into powder as her flailing arms collided with them. Her feet churned the snowy grass underfoot, and she went down, falling hard.

The shrill sound was in her ears. It was louder. Criid knew it was louder because the woman was getting closer. She also knew it was louder because the woman had lifted the veil. She thrashed, trying to rise. Her legs kicked at the snow. She felt something close around her pumping frantic heart, and grip it, like a ghostly fist. It began to squeeze, constricting the muscles. She knew that unless she got up and started running, that unless she ran and ran until she was out of its reach, it would keep squeezing until her heart burst like a blister.

Her limbs thrashed, sending snow flying. She got up. Her chest was so tight, and the shrill sound in her ears was so loud. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to look back.

She didn’t dare look back.

She started to run. She started to run more seriously than she had ever run in her life.

Maggs took a battered old tin out of one of the cupboards, took off the lid, sniffed inside, and then tilted the tin towards Gaunt.

‘Caffeine,’ he said.

‘Make some,’ said Gaunt. ‘Enough for three cups.’

Maggs nodded, and began to look around the small kitchen for a suitable pan. Gaunt sat down at the kitchen table. The table top was lined and worn. It had been, Gaunt felt, the location of many solitary suppers.

The kitchen stood off the landing over the steps down to the theatre. There had been no sound from below for a long time.

‘So, this is pretty fething insane, then, isn’t it?’ said Maggs, by way of striking up a conversation. They hadn’t said much to one another since their panicked flight from Section.

Gaunt nodded.

‘That was Blood Pact?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really? Here?’

‘Yes, Maggs.’

Maggs whistled. He ignited one of the sooty old stove’s burners and set a pan of water on it.

‘Pardon me for asking, sir,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was delicately skirting a thorny issue, ‘shouldn’t we contact someone? I mean, summon help, alert the authorities?’

Gaunt looked at him.

‘Who do we contact, Maggs? Who should we trust, do you suppose?’ he asked.

Maggs opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again.

‘The Blood Pact have infiltrated an ostensibly secure crown world,’ said Gaunt. ‘They’ve done so with enough confidence and ability to stage a frontal assault on the Commissariat’s headquarters. They’ve got warpcraft on their side. We have absolutely no idea how far their reach and influence extends. Let’s say we were to head back to Aarlem, or to company command, or say we take him to the Imperial hospital for treatment. We could be walking into a trap. Until I know what’s going on, I’m not going to trust anyone.’

Maggs shrugged. He was spooning out the ground caffeine powder into a cup.

‘You’re trusting this doctor chap.’

‘Necessity. That’s all. We had no choice. Better a backstreet clinic like this than a big, central facility.’

‘He’s a freak.’

‘He’s got eccentric qualities, certainly,’ Gaunt agreed.

Maggs snorted.

‘He’s obsessive compulsive,’ he said, ‘and what’s with the shades?’

‘The doctor is an albino, Maggs,’ said Gaunt. ‘Didn’t you see? The dark glasses are to protect his eyes.’

‘He’s still a freak.’

The caffeine was brewing. Maggs took out the gun he’d taken from the doctor and examined it.

‘I wonder where he got this? It’s ex-Guard issue.’

‘Is it loaded?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Yeah. Ten rounds.’

‘So we’ve got that, your laspistol, and my bolt pistol with one clip left.’

It didn’t seem to be much to work with. Both of them had put on a sidearm that morning, Gaunt because it was a uniform requirement, and Maggs because service regulations stated that an appointed driver should bear a pistol, or similar, fit for defensive purposes. Neither of them had even buckled on their Tanith warknives.

‘We’re deep in the stinky, aren’t we, sir?’ asked Maggs.

Gaunt nodded.

‘I’m afraid so, Maggs.’

‘The Blood Pact,’ said Maggs, searching the kitchen cupboards in the vain hope of locating some sugar, ‘they‘re after this man? The one with the fethed-up face.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s key to this whole thing, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask who he is?’ Maggs said, looking sidelong at Gaunt from the open cupboards.

‘It’s probably better if you don’t know,’ Gaunt replied.

Maggs shrugged.

‘Well, you know,’ he said, ‘I don’t see it like that. Right now – and I say this with the enormous deference that a specialist like me owes to his commanding officer – right now it seems to me that I’m the only person you can count on, and vice versa, may the Emperor help us both. So, I think maybe you need to tell me more than you’d usually tell me.’

Gaunt thought about it.

‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Maggs with a laugh, ‘we’re not going to become friends or anything.’

‘That’s a relief.’

Gaunt rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Then he said, ‘His name is Mabbon. He holds the rank of etogaur, and he was an officer in the Blood Pact before switching allegiance to the Sons of Sek. He was on Gereon when I was on Gereon.’

‘Old scores?’

‘I never met him. The thing is, he’s carrying vital intelligence. Serious high-grade stuff. That’s why the Blood Pact wants him dead. That’s why we’ve got to keep him alive.’

‘Shit,’ said Maggs.

‘Exactly.’

Maggs wiped three chipped enamel cups with a damp cloth from the sink, and set them in a row to receive the caffeine. They heard footsteps on the stairs. Maggs looked at Gaunt.

Doctor Kolding appeared in the kitchen doorway. His scrubs were badged with blood. He was still wearing his blue-tinted glasses.

‘I’ve done all I can,’ he said.

‘Will he survive, doctor?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kolding replied.

‘Well, feth load of good you are!’ Maggs exploded. ‘What kind of fething doctor are you, anyway?’

‘I only work on the dead,’ said Kolding softly.

‘What?’ Maggs exploded.

‘I perform autopsies for the Health Department. I don’t usually work on the living.’

‘Now you tell us! You’ve got the fething sign outside!’ Maggs yelled.

‘Maggs,’ Gaunt said sharply.

‘The sign’s always been there,’ Kolding said, ‘for generations. This was my father’s practice. Right up to the war.’

‘And now you’re a meat carver? A corpse butcher? Feth!’

‘That’s enough, Maggs,’ said Gaunt, scraping back his chair and rising to his feet.

‘Oh, tell that to Doctor Death here!’

‘Maggs!’

‘Have you any idea how fething important that patient is?’ Maggs shouted into Kolding’s face.

Kolding flinched.

‘That’s really enough, Maggs,’ said Gaunt in a voice that had a rod of steel running through it. ‘Why don’t you go out and check on the car?’

‘The car’s fine,’ said Maggs.

‘The car’s shot to pieces and they’ll be looking for it,’ Gaunt corrected. ‘Go and check it. Make sure it’s secure. Make sure we’re secure. All right?’

Maggs, simmering, sighed and nodded. He handed the doctor’s old pistol to Gaunt, took a swig of caffeine from one of the enamel cups and left without another word.

‘I apologise,’ said Gaunt. He gestured for Kolding to sit at the table, and set a cup of caffeine in front of him.

‘There’s no need.’

‘Will the patient survive?’

‘I have worked on the living,’ said Kolding. ‘For many years, as a junior in my father’s practice. I am qualified for human work. But these days, the city is empty. The streets are dark and quiet. The population has never really returned. I need to supplement my workload with autopsy work for the Health Department, or this place would have to close.’

‘The war ended your father’s business?’

‘The war ended my father,’ said Kolding. ‘He died. So did his assistants and nurses. I was the only one who lived.’

‘Will the patient survive?’

‘I have stabilised him, and repaired the blood vessel damage. We need to wait for another half an hour to see how the coagulant healing meshes take. His blood pressure concerns me. If he is still alive in a hour, I think he’ll be alive in fifty years.’

Gaunt sipped his caffeine. It seemed awful. The truth was, it was simply battlefield quality. Maggs had thrown it together according to trench conditions. Gaunt realised that he’d been spoiled by too many months of fancy quality caffeine. This, this dark murk that Maggs had concocted, was caffeine like the Guard drank it, the bitter taste of the zone and the dug-out.

It was dire, and it was the best drink he’d had in a year.

‘Where did you get the pistol?’ Gaunt asked.

Kolding looked down at the old weapon. It was lying on the worn top of the kitchen table.

‘It’s the pistol that was left behind.’

‘Left behind?’

Kolding hesitated. It wasn’t so much as if he was trying to find the right words, it was more as if he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say them.

‘It was left behind. Afterwards. The night my father died. My father and his assistants.’

‘Doctor, did they die here?’

Kolding took off his tinted glasses and carefully cleaned one lens.

‘My father had set up a triage station. Injured men were pouring in from everywhere. There was fighting in the streets all round here.’

‘I know. I was here.’

‘Then you’ll know what it was like. Mayhem. The streets filled with smoke. Noise. Some soldiers came. They were enemy soldiers. They broke in while we were treating the injured.’

‘How old were you, doctor?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I was sixteen,’ Kolding replied.

In the street outside, the snow was silently obliterating all lines and angles. The whiteness of the flakes caught the streetlamp light like blobs of molten metal spurting from ruptured armour. Wes Maggs pulled his jacket close and rubbed his arms. His breath wreathed out of his mouth like gun smoke.

He trudged up the street through the thickening snow cover, wet flakes pelting his face. The night was as black as Rawne’s soul, but there was a phantom radiance coming up off all the surfaces on which the snow had settled. It had rounded kerbs, softened walls and blunted iron railings. It had deformed windowsills and gutter lines, and it had upholstered all the vehicles parked up the hill.

They’d left the staff car near the top of the street, tucked in beside some railings. Maggs hoped it would start all right. There hadn’t been time or light enough to check if anything vital had been punctured. In the time it had been sitting there, tanks could have drained or hydraulic fluids leaked away.

The hill was steep, and he slithered a little in the snow. He cursed the weather. The car was in sight.

Three men stood beside it.

Maggs stopped walking and gently allowed himself to melt into the shadows of the street wall. He stayed very still. He could see the men clearly. They were shadows, shapes caught in the downlight of a streetlamp, wraiths as silent as the night snow. They were studying the car, moving around it slowly and silently. Maggs couldn’t tell if they were armed, and he couldn’t make out any details of their clothing or uniforms.

But as one of them turned, Maggs caught the glint of lamplight catching the edge of a metal mask.

Maggs turned and began to make his way back down the hill to the doctor’s house as quickly, but invisibly, as he could.

FIFTEEN

THE HUNTERS

‘Is this all of it?’ asked Edur. He gave a nod of his head that indicated the barrack’s clerical pool in general, and the files and volumes gathered on the central desk in particular.

‘Yes, commissar,’ said Kolea.

Several Commissariat officials had already begun working through the regimental files, especially the day-book and the company logs. Two agents of the ordos had also begun what looked to Viktor Hark like a forensic examination of the Tanith First’s central records.

‘Are you going to tell us anything?’ asked Hark.

‘No,’ said one of the ordo agents.

Edur looked at the officer of the Inquisition with some distaste. The Inquisition was already taking over, and that wasn’t the only reason Edur had an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He tilted his head to suggest that Hark and the Tanith’s acting commander, Kolea, might like to step aside with him.

It had all been, by necessity, hasty, but Edur had been briefed by Mercure before riding the Valkyries out to Aarlem with the Inquisition. Mercure had been emphatic: while Mercure took the matter to Command-level authority in the hope that Command might apply some pressure to the ordos, Edur was to do all he could to make sure the Inquisition didn’t trample everything flat on the ground.

‘I want us to hold on to some control in this, Edur,’ Mercure had said, ‘for as long as we can, or until we know there’s nothing worth holding on to.’

‘Both the Inquisition and the Commissariat are keen to discover the whereabouts of Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ Edur told Hark and Kolea.

‘Wasn’t he at Section when this happened?’ asked Hark.

‘Yes,’ said Edur.

‘Isn’t he still there?’ asked Kolea.

‘We don’t know,’ said Edur.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Hark.

‘It means that part of the building has burned out, another part is still ablaze, and there are a fair number of corpses still to be recovered and identified.’

‘Gak!’ Kolea whispered.

‘The thing is, if Gaunt’s alive, we can’t find him,’ said Edur.

‘And that’s why you’ve locked us down, and come in to take us apart bit by bit?’ asked Hark.

‘That’s the key reason.’

‘Because?’ asked Hark. ‘I’m sorry, Edur, but you’ve missed something out. Some key component.’

‘A second individual is missing,’ said Edur. ‘A high-value prisoner. The prisoner may even have been the target of the raid. Gaunt was last seen in the vicinity of the prisoner’s cell, and he was aware of the prisoner’s significance.’

‘And if they’re both missing, they could have got out together,’ said Kolea.

‘Gaunt may have got this prisoner to safety and gone to ground?’ asked Hark.

‘That’s one possibility,’ said Edur.

‘And the other?’ asked Hark.

‘Gaunt may have been working with the raiders to extract the prisoner. I hasten to add this is not my theory. However, the Inquisition is understood to be entertaining it.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Hark, shaking his head. ‘This is all about fething Gereon again.’

‘In so many ways,’ agreed Edur.

‘They’re never going to let it go,’ said Hark.

‘Is there any evidence to back up this slur?’ Kolea asked.

‘There are some unfortunate details,’ said Edur. ‘Your Major Rawne and the others were on the premises.’

‘On charges, in lock-up,’ said Hark.

‘Noted. However, they are also now missing or dead. If one was of a suspicious inclination, one might see evidence of a plan. People on the inside, ready to move.’

‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ asked Hark.

‘I think you should all tell me what the hell you think you’re doing, discussing these sensitive details,’ said Rime.

They hadn’t seen the inquisitor approach. He was flanked by two of his henchmen.

‘I could have you all executed,’ said Rime. ‘This is confidential information pertinent to an ongoing situation.’

‘I felt, inquisitor,’ said Edur, ‘that the senior Tanith officers might be very much more helpful to us if they were granted a better overview.’ Edur decided not to mention what else he felt, as it concerned the inquisitor rather more directly.

‘I don’t think it’s your place to make that decision,’ said Rime.

‘Then I will consider myself chastised, sir,’ said Edur.

‘Gaunt has no part in this,’ Hark told Rime.

‘Why?’ asked one of the henchmen.

‘Because I know him,’ said Hark.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ said Rime.

‘Our commanding officer is not a traitor,’ said Kolea. ‘There is no conspiracy. If he’s involved, it will be an improvised involvement. He is utterly loyal.’

‘We’ll know that when we find him,’ said Rime.

‘We want to help you do that,’ said Kolea, ‘in any way we can. We want to clear his name, and the reputation of this regiment. You can inspect us for any information.’

‘We are,’ said Rime with a smile.

‘You can intercept all on- and off-base communications to see if he attempts to contact us.’

‘We are,’ said Rime.

Kolea stopped. He breathed hard and asked, ‘With respect, sir, what else can we tell you? What else can we do to help?’

‘You can remain here, and answer any questions we pose,’ said Rime. ‘Other than that, you shouldn’t be involved in any way.’

‘The Tanith have an excellent reputation for scouting and tracking,’ said Edur.

‘That’s simply fabulous for them,’ said Rime. He turned away.

‘Can I have a word, sir?’ Edur asked. ‘Alone?’

Rime turned, thought about it, and then stepped towards the corridor. His henchmen followed.

‘I meant properly alone,’ said Edur.

Rime sent a curt signal to his agents, and they stepped back.

Edur followed Rime into the empty hallway and closed the door behind him.

‘Speak,’ said Rime with a shrug of impatience.

‘I think you should use the Tanith, sir,’ said Edur. ‘They are first-class trackers and scouts. If Gaunt and the prisoner are on the run in the Oligarchy, they will find him. They are motivated. It’s a rescue, a matter of honour. And if it turns out that Gaunt’s involvement is anything less than proper, it will also present them with an opportunity to restore their reputation.’

‘Edur, I’m not going to entertain that for a moment,’ said Rime. ‘The ordo has first-class agents of its own at its disposal. I don’t need a bunch of thick-necked grunts running around–’

‘I suggest you read the regiment profile,’ said Edur. ‘I suggest you properly appreciate the skill and achievements of these thick-necked grunts. Forget Gaunt. If the prisoner’s alive to be found, the Tanith will find him.’

Rime shook his head and stepped past Edur to return to his men.

‘Then consider this, sir,’ said Edur. ‘Bring the Tanith in on this hunt, and I won’t have to mention to anybody what I saw today.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Rime.

‘That thing… in the hallway… it burned your face off. It cremated your skull. You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be alive. You shouldn’t be talking to me.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Rime.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Edur, ‘but I’ve got a nasty feeling it’s got something to do with the fact that you and your lackeys all look alike.’

‘If that’s the case, it was evidently one of them you saw burn,’ said Rime.

‘I know what I saw,’ said Edur, ‘and it speaks of darkness and warpcraft, and heresy. It speaks of things the Inquisition doesn’t want exposed during a situation this sensitive.’

Rime glared at him for a second. Then he turned and strode back into the company office.

‘You, soldier,’ he said, pointing at Kolea.

‘Major Kolea,’ Kolea replied.

‘Whoever you are,’ said Rime. ‘I want you to assemble, quickly and efficiently, your finest huntsmen.’

SIXTEEN

THE OTHER HUNTERS

Karhunan Sirdar stole down the silent street, following the trail of little black discs where drops of blood had marked the snow. The street was steep, and the buildings on either side were dark and shuttered against the night and the snowstorm, as if they were hiding with their eyes tight shut. He watched the gusting snow billowing like sparks in the light cones of the streetlamps. Not every lamp in the old quarter street worked.

The beloved magir had put a duty upon his soul, but Karhunan was content. The duty was almost done. They had followed, and they had closed. The vehicle they’d found abandoned up the street behind him was definitely the same one that had outrun them at Section. The blood drops on the snow completed the death warrant.

Some of the philia had moved up with him to reconnoitre the street. Samus was standing outside one of the buildings just ahead, staring up the steps at the front door. The building was dark, and betrayed no sign of life. A sign, some kind of pole device that Karhunan half-recognised from the depths of his scarred memory, hung above the door on a brass rail. Samus was shivering and gnawing at his tongue. As the sirdar approached, he made a soft mewling noise and inclined his head towards the door.

Karhunan patted the misshapen man gently on the shoulder. There were little spots of blood leading up the entrance steps, not yet covered by the softly falling snow.

Imrie appeared to Karhunan’s left, and Naeme to his right. They looked eager.

‘Melthorael,’ Naeme muttered, ‘then it is Aroklur, then it is Ultheum.’

‘Quiet,’ Karhunan whispered.

At the sirdar’s nod, Imrie took out the door with a kick, and they swept into the dark wood hallway. The snow came in with them. Flakes settled on a long-case clock standing in the hallway.

Imrie led the way, his weapon level, shoulder-height, hunting. He was the sharpest of them. A long time ago, in what was almost literally another life, Imrie had been, like Karhunan, a Throne soldier. He was a convert, an incomer. The sept word was elterdwelt, which meant ‘other life’ or, more loosely, ‘traded item’. He had sloughed off most of his other life, shed it gladly like a snake sheds an old, tight skin, but some parts of it had remained stubborn. Damogaur Eyl, no elterdwelt, but rather Consanguinity-born, cherished such old traits in the men of his philia. Imrie had been a scout, a hunter. He saw details almost anyone else would miss.

Imrie swept down the hall. He noticed that one of the six bulbs in the hall lamps had blown, and blown a long time before, because its dull glass was coated in dust. He noticed that the long-case clock was not working. He noticed the dried residue of snow-melt footprints on the dark wood floor, all but invisible.

A small kitchen. Three mugs, all half-full, all cold. A stove-top burner where the wrought iron ring still held some heat.

Imrie nodded Samus on. Samus checked a side room, caving the door in with a crash. Naeme was on the stairs, his weapon aimed upwards, peering.

Imrie went down the stone steps into the basement. Karhunan followed him. The basement areas were quite extensive, stone vaults built beneath pavement level. There was a surgical theatre, a storeroom and a cold room for cadavers.

‘There’s nobody here,’ said Karhunan.

‘But there was,’ Imrie replied.

‘You sure?’

‘Sure as blood speckles in the snow,’ Imrie replied. ‘Sure as a stove still warm. Sure as this.’

They were in the theatre. It was clean and tidy, and empty, but Imrie had lifted the lid of the medical waste bin. Karhunan Sirdar peered in. He saw dirty swabs and blood dressings, along with some disposable medicae materials.

Imrie walked over to the tool counter. He unscrewed the lid of one of the glass sterilising baths, and withdrew a scalpel. He sniffed it.

‘Blood,’ he said.

Even after a time in the chemical soak, the smell lingered enough for a man like Imrie.

‘So, where?’ asked Karhunan.

Imrie tilted his head and thought. He could smell something else, something dirty and metallic. He strode out of the theatre into the lower landing. The wood panelled back wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a screen. He found the recessed brass handle and drew it aside.

A service elevator. Cold, damp mustiness drifted up from below.

Imrie rode the rattling carriage down with his sirdar and Naeme. On arrival, after just a short drop, they swung out, weapons raised.

Snowflakes blew into their faces. The front of the house faced one steep street, but the rear let out three floors down onto another street-level of the escarpment. In Old Side, the buildings and streets were stacked in tiers.

The doors of the small basement garage were open onto the back lane. There were oil marks on the rockcrete floor, and a scent of exhaust in the air.

Imrie hurried to the garage doors and looked out.

Nothing had been left behind, except the ghost of squirming tyre tracks.

‘It’s just an idea, but could you try going faster?’ asked Maggs.

‘Quiet,’ Gaunt warned him. Maggs sighed, and sat back in the rear of the little private ambulance. It was a rickety thing that patently hadn’t been used in years. Gaunt was in the cab with Kolding. Maggs was in the back with the unconscious prisoner. The ambulance was creeping through the night at what felt like a mollusc’s crawl, except that it was also managing to slide and wheel-spin too.

‘Gently,’ Gaunt said to Kolding, who was hunched low, glaring over the top of the wheel.

‘I’m trying my best,’ Kolding replied.

‘When was the last time you took this vehicle out?’ Gaunt asked.

‘A while.’

‘At night?’

‘A while.’

‘Who drove then, doctor?’

Kolding shrugged and found another gear. ‘My father.’

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘have we forced you to leave your home for the first time in fifteen years?’

Kolding shrugged again, and said, ’It’s all right. I keep myself to myself. It’s just a strange turn of events, that’s all.’

‘You’ve been in that house for fifteen years?’ Maggs asked incredulously.

‘Enough, Maggs,’ said Gaunt.

‘No wonder he’s such a fethwaste,’ Maggs muttered.

‘Doctor Kolding,’ Gaunt began, ‘I think that I should drive.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re evidently having problems with the snowy conditions. It’s taxing you. I have recent training in cold weather driving.’

‘Do you?’ asked Kolding.

The doctor brought the ambulance to a long, lingering halt, and he and Gaunt got out and crossed sides.

Behind the wheel, Gaunt tested the controls, let out the clutch, and raced them forward.

‘That was a lie, wasn’t it?’ asked Kolding.

‘What?’

‘Your recent training in cold weather driving?’

Gaunt nodded.

‘The lamps hurt your eyes, don’t they?’ he asked. ‘That’s why you are driving at night in dark glasses.’

Kolding didn’t reply.

‘I have a slight advantage,’ said Gaunt. He double-blinked and switched his focal field to high-gain, low light. Streetlamps or no streetlamps, the way ahead lit up for him.

Karhunan retraced his steps up the street, though his steps were almost gone. His boots chuffed in the ever-thickening snow cover.

The damogaur was examining the car their quarry had used. Six members of the philia, under Malstrom’s leadership, stood watch in the street around him.

Eyl looked at Karhunan.

‘They were in the building nearby, magir,’ said the sirdar, ‘but they have gone. Another vehicle. Imrie and Naeme are already following its tracks. If we deploy fast, we will catch up and–’

‘We’ll catch up anyway,’ Eyl replied. ‘No need to go chasing through this weather.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Karhunan.

‘Look what we’ve got,’ Eyl answered. He stroked his fingertips along the back of the car’s driving seat. They came away tacky and dark.

‘Bring my sister here,’ he said. ‘We’ve got their blood.’

When she couldn’t run any more, Tona Criid hid instead. Her muscles were burning as if someone was spiking hot wires into them, and she was close to throwing up.

The shrill sound had gone away at some point, and the constriction had faded. A few streets away from Section, a few streets from Viceroy Square where that veiled thing had been standing under the snow-dusted trees, she forced her way into an empty building.

Though the Oligarchy and Balopolis had been the epicentre of the most brutal fighting during the war for Balhaut, much of the so-called Old Side seemed to have been miraculously spared. Closer inspection put the lie to that. Many of the buildings were shells: gutted structures that had stood empty for a decade and a half with litter collecting in their wind-blown floors. A few had begun to be included in Balhaut’s trudging programme of renewal. In places, old buildings were being demolished and lots cleared to make room for new construction. In others, labour gangs had moved in to renovate and restore the buildings still sound enough to be worth saving.

Criid holed herself up in one of the latter. The windows had been recently covered with whitewashed boards, and there was a strong smell of creosote and young, sawn timber. Dust sheets and protective curtains had been strung between rooms, or erected to close sections where dividing walls had been taken down. The work curtains, heavy and dirty from re-use, stiff with old paint and varnish, swung in the night air, moved by the breath of the snowstorm outside. The day crew had left paint drums, long-handled mop-brushes, sawhorses and stacks of cheap fibreboard behind. An upper floor had been taken away, leaving a space like the interior of an artisan’s church, the vault bridged by a half-skeleton of new joists and crossbeams in clean, yellow wood.

Her heart rate was all over the place, and her breathing was ragged. Her hands were quaking so much that she struggled to use them. She snapped the head off one of the long mop-brushes, and used baler twine to lash her warknife to the end as an improvised spear. No gun, but a little more range than a knife, at least. Then she sat down in a corner behind some stacked fibreboard and rested the spear across her lap.

Her body was in turmoil. She knew that. The chronic tension of life in a warzone bent a person’s biology out of shape, and left it fit for nothing else. It built shortcut response pathways, and bred bad habits. It altered hormone values and metabolic functions to tolerate prolonged and elevated stress. It modified you to get you through, whatever it took, and then left the modifications in you when you returned to what was laughingly referred to as normal life. It left them with corrosive physiological and psychological damage that took a thousand times longer to erase than it had taken to inflict.

The worst part, as she was now discovering, wasn’t coping with the post-combat fall out; it was getting your old, bad self, your combat self, switched back on without warning. She’d gone from nothing to superluminal in a second. The toxic flood of hormones and responses had left her almost stupefied. There was a sheen of sweat on her skin, and she knew that she stank of fear. Her mind was numb except for a little tiny nugget at the heart of it, like the dense metal heart of a neutron star that was screaming with radioactive rage.

She tried to control her breathing. She tried to employ some of the focus techniques that Mkoll had taught her for stealth work. It was futile. It was like trying to grasp water. In the end, she gave up and, with a brittle laugh, decided that she might be better off just surrendering to the tide.

After an hour or more, during which she sank into a fugue state, she roused herself, and felt a little more clarity. The old mindset, the one that allowed you to function in the zone, was back so concretely it was as if it had never gone away. She started to be able to think instead of just react.

In her opinion, the biggest problem was the world outside. She simply couldn’t understand how the debacle at Section could have happened without all hell resulting. Where were the suppression teams? The counter-forces? The security squads with their armoured cars and fear-gas canisters? Where was the PDF and the fething Guard? The city should have been screeching with raid sirens by now. The skies should have been dense with gunships.

It was quiet out there. It was as if the city had gone into traumatic shock, struck dumb and paralysed. It was as if the snowfall had some kind of anaesthetic property. She couldn’t shake the notion that the silent streets were crawling with unchallenged Archenemy soldiers.

She decided she had no choice but to make her way back to Aarlem Fortress. She hadn’t got anything like enough left in her to run the route, but she was confident that if she took it steadily, she could make it back before dawn.

She hadn’t gone far when she heard a vehicle approaching, its engine tone labouring as it coped with the snow. It stood out a mile. There was nothing else around. Criid stopped and listened. Perhaps it was PDF moving in at long last. Perhaps it was the transport component of a relief column advancing into the city’s heart.

Instinct told her it wasn’t. It was just one engine, one machine, and a small one at that. It was someone mysteriously active in the mysteriously empty streets.

She decided to take a look, and closed in on the approaching sound source. When it came in sight, she fell back, clutching her spear. The vehicle, just a dark blob on the snowy thoroughfare, was driving without lights: without lights, at night, in a snowstorm.

That was deliberate, and it was sinister. Swallowing hard, she took one last look, then retreated to hide in an alley long before the occupants could see her.

She waited. The vehicle didn’t go by. It stopped.

She cursed and hefted up the spear. There was no way she’d been spotted, but why had it stopped?

A figure suddenly appeared at the end of the alleyway, framed by the snow-light. It was a soldier, one of the raiders, one of the invaders. She weighed her choices. Stay back, and wait for it to come to her, so she could kill it quietly in the private darkness of the alley, or go to it and take it down fast before it got her cornered.

The figure took a step towards her, as if it knew she was there, as if it could see right into the shadows with its warpcraft. She couldn’t just sit there.

She charged.

It recoiled in surprise as she flew out of hiding. She had the spear lowered to impale it through the gut. She let out an incoherent scream.

With a cry of its own, the figure jerked to one side, evading the thrust of the long Tanith blade. It grabbed the spear’s haft with one hand, and tried to use Criid’s momentum to bring her over. She wrenched back, refusing to lose control of the weapon. Her attacker was strong. He crashed her backwards into the alley wall, trying to pin her. She screamed and kicked out.

‘For feth’s sake, Tona,’ Gaunt yelled. ‘It’s me!’

SEVENTEEN

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

‘Who is he?’ Criid asked.

‘He’s the reason all this is happening,’ Gaunt replied.

‘He was on Gereon with us?’

‘We never met him,’ Gaunt said to her, ‘but he was the one hunting us.’

Criid stared down at the sleeping face of the man on the stretcher. He wore his scars where anyone could see them. Gereon, probably more than anywhere else, had left the deepest scars inside her, invisible. Gereon was the chief reason she had a stress migraine behind her eyes and such an adrenaline spike that her sweat tasted of sour metal.

They had taken shelter in the refurb block where she had hidden earlier. The night air was still moving the heavy, soiled work curtains that partitioned the structure. The smell of cold, wet sawdust was intense. Maggs and Criid had pried open one of the boarded doorways, and Gaunt had driven the ambulance inside. Maggs was busy putting the panelling back in place so it looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed.

‘You saw me, in the dark,’ Criid said to Gaunt.

He nodded.

‘Those eyes of yours,’ she remarked.

‘You’d be amazed the things I’m seeing these days,’ he replied.

‘How far does this go?’ Criid asked. ‘Have they taken the city? Is it that big? Is he that important?’

‘You know as much as we do,’ said Gaunt.

Kolding was hovering beside the prisoner, checking the state of his dressings. They’d had to leave in a hurry. Kolding had protested, and his protests had all been on medical grounds. He didn’t want the patient moved or disturbed. The patient needed post-operative rest and a chance to stabilise his vital signs. Gaunt had looked him in the face and told him how close the Blood Pact were and, rather more graphically, what would happen when they stormed the house.

‘How is he?’ Gaunt asked.

Kolding looked up at Gaunt. His eyes were unreadable behind his blue-tinted lenses.

‘It’s better now he’s not being shaken and jolted. I don’t want the wound reopening. His core temperature is low, however, and his pulse is thready. Can we risk a fire in here?’

‘No,’ said Criid.

Gaunt shook his head too.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘With them hunting us, that’s not an option.’

Kolding stood up. ‘Then I’ll get some more blankets out of the ambulance. I believe there are some old thermal packs in there too, which might still work.’

He walked away towards the battered old van.

‘Where did you find him?’ whispered Criid.

‘Make sure you show him some respect,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Without him, the Blood Pact would have won already.’

Maggs returned. He looked exhausted, and the dried blood on his ear and neck made it look as if he’d been in a brawl.

‘We’re secure, as it goes,’ he said.

‘Unless things change, let’s rest here for an hour or so. Anyone know where here is, by the way?’

‘Moat Street,’ replied Kolding as he came back from the ambulance with an armful of blankets. Criid moved to help him wrap the patient.

‘Someone needs to stand watch,’ said Maggs.

‘I’ll do it, Wes,’ Criid called back. ‘I’m way too jaggy to sleep.’

Maggs tossed her his laspistol. She caught it neatly, tucked it into her waistband, and crouched down beside Kolding.

‘What’s up?’ Maggs asked Gaunt.

Gaunt shook his head, and said, ‘Moat Street. It rings a bell. I think I may have been here before.’

‘When?’

‘Fifteen years ago.’

Maggs whistled.

‘Really?’ he asked.

‘I can’t be sure. We advanced down a lot of streets in Old Side to get at the Oligarchy. Most of them were rubble or burning or both. The name’s familiar, that’s all.’

‘I thought you’d remember every last detail of a show like that,’ said Maggs.

‘I thought I had,’ Gaunt replied. ‘I’ve never thought much about it, actually. Never felt much need to reflect on it. But I’ve always assumed that my memories of that time were pretty complete, that they were there if I needed them. Now…’

He paused and shrugged. ‘Now I come to look back, to search for the memories, I’m finding they’re actually a bit of a blur. They’ve all run together.’

Maggs nodded.

‘I get that,’ he said. ‘I get the same thing with Hinzerhaus, you know? I remember what happened, I remember what shade of hell it was. I just don’t seem to have any of the details left.’

A strong gust of wind lifted the edges of the work curtains, and blew up a pile of wood shavings so that they scurried and drifted like thick snow.

‘You know what’s to blame, don’t you?’ Maggs said.

‘Tell me,’ said Gaunt.

‘War,’ said Maggs. ‘It feths up your head. It feths it up in terrible ways. And the longer you’re exposed to it, the worse it’ll get.’

‘I hear that,’ said Criid as she walked off to take watch.

‘Get some sleep,’ Gaunt said to Maggs.

Maggs nodded, and went in search of some tarpaulin to curl up on.

Gaunt prowled around the site, pulling aside work curtains, and stepping into new spaces, blue darknesses that smelled of young wood and paint. Moat Street, Moat Street… Had he been here? Probably not in this very building, but outside on the street, moving from cover to cover with the Hyrkans as tracer-fire licked down out of the smoke-wash. Was that a genuine memory, or just a simulation his mind had amalgamated from driftwood pieces in his subconscious?

He heard a light tapping: the fleck of snowflakes being driven against the window-boarding by the wind. He parted another curtain and stepped through into the next area. Plastek sheeting crackled as the draught inhaled and exhaled it against the fibreboard panelling. He adjusted his eyes. Both the front and back walls of the chamber were being rebuilt. Cut stone was waiting to be laid, and the street walls were temporarily formed by wooden boards. Fifteen years ago, something had punched clean through this part of the building. On the interior walls that remained, he found ragged scratch marks running along the stone at about shoulder height. He traced them with his hand until he identified them. A tank, or similar armoured machine, had come through here, flattening the front and back walls under its treads, and raking both side walls with the skirts of its hull.

The strange thing was, it wasn’t the first time he’d seen this. He’d been on Balhaut a year. He’d moved through its streets and gone about his business. How many times had he seen a street corner notched and ragged at shoulder height? Or a stretch of wall scratched with a long, ugly gouge? He’d seen it hundreds of times, and only now did he recognise it for what it was: the traces left by the iron shoulders of the predatory giants that had stalked Balhaut in its darkest days.

Even the things that survived a war, even the things left standing, came out of it with scars.

He went back to the chamber where the others were holed up. Maggs was asleep, and Kolding was sitting quietly beside the swaddled prisoner on the stretcher. Criid was watching the street from an unboarded side window.

‘Anything?’ he asked her.

‘It’s very quiet,’ she replied. ‘I think they’ve got the whole town bewitched.’

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Don’t think of it that way,’ he said. ‘Don’t make them bigger monsters than they are. They’re tough, and they’ve got unholy warpcraft, but there can’t be that many of them. I’m pretty sure this is an insertion, not a full-scale invasion. The snowstorm is just bad timing, a coincidence.’

‘Really?’

‘We’re not going to beat them unless we can beat them in our heads first. Don’t hand them that advantage.’

Criid nodded, and flashed a grin, but she didn’t look altogether convinced.

Gaunt went back to the ambulance and sat with his back against one of the wheel arches to rest. He was sore and bruised from the day’s endeavours, especially from the feral brawl with the maniacal damogaur. Criid and Maggs were both jumpy, but only now did he realise how far back down he had had to come himself. The day had plunged him back into a life or death world that he hadn’t visited in two years. It had been unpleasant: a shock, yet horribly familiar. His jaw muscles were clenched, his spine and the small of his back were damp, and there was a stale taste in his mouth. Just the day before, in the Mithredates with Blenner, he’d been complaining about how impatient he was to go out and re-acquaint himself with war.

He’d never expected it to come and find him.

He fished inside his coat for Eszrah’s copybook, intending to steady his nerves by reading another of the Nihtgane’s painstakingly transcripted myths. They were fascinating. They contained old wisdoms about hunting and warcraft. He would, he resolved, when circumstances allowed, examine them carefully, and perhaps even learn from them. He had not, so far, been able to give them the attention they deserved.

When he pulled out the copybook, a folded sheet of paper fell out of its pages onto the ground between his legs. It was a letter, with a finely printed letterhead at the top of the sheet. It was a polite introduction from a Mr Jaume, a photographic portraitist.

Gaunt realised that he’d pulled out his own copybook. Eszrah’s, virtually identical, was in the opposite side of his jacket. The letter, the one poor Beltayn had insisted Gaunt had seen and which he’d denied all knowledge of, had been tucked into the cover of his book, probably since the morning it had arrived at Aarlem.

He folded it up to put it away, and noticed the letterhead. The address of Jaume’s studio was listed as ‘137 Carnation Street, off Moat Street’. Moat Street. That’s where he’d seen it. It wasn’t a memory of the Balhaut War at all, just a little speck of driftwood that had got jumbled up in his head.

Eyl stood quietly in the kitchen of Doctor Kolding’s house on Kepeler Place. Though the middle of the night was not long past, a blue twilight was beginning to seep in through the windows. First light, and though the snowstorm had not eased off, the first hint of daylight was being magnified and reflected by the enfolding whiteness.

Apart from Kreeg, who was standing watch inside the front door, and Gnesh, who was minding the lower street access from the ambulance garage, the men of the philia were resting in the upper rooms of the house. Twenty-nine men; his force had been reduced to twenty-nine men. Kaylb Sirdar was gone, the first to die. Eyl had not witnessed the death to place it into any kind of definitive chronology, but he knew his sister couldn’t lie.

Eyl had taken off his grotesk. He relished the pain in his hands, chest and face where the carbine had been exploded in his grasp and left him gashed and burned. The injuries reminded him he was alive, just as they reminded him who had to die.

Time was slipping away. With every passing minute, their mission became harder, the odds greater, the opposition more resolved. The philia had spent its weapon of surprise, and Eyl estimated they had only a few more hours left in which to exploit the enemy’s shock. By morning, he thought, the Imperials will have gathered their wits and rallied. They will have closed the city down and begun the hunt for us.

Until then, Eyl meant to make the best use of his time. The city environs were still caught in an un-state, the sick half-light of the warpcraft that his sister had cast over the metropolis to numb, baffle and confuse. The storm continued unabated, and lent to them its gifts of concealment and mystery. The philia still had enough time to do its work. Once again, his sister was the key.

Eyl picked up one of the half-empty enamel mugs that was standing on the worn kitchen table. Out of curiosity, he sipped the cold, black liquid inside.

It tasted of blood. Everything tasted of blood.

He went downstairs to find his sister.

She was in the small surgical theatre that lay behind the swing doors at the bottom of the stone steps. Eyl pushed the doors open gently. He had no wish to make her jump or disturb her work.

And she was most certainly at work.

Eyl knew that the men of the philia had withdrawn into the house’s upper rooms so that they did not have to linger too close to her witchery. Proximity to Ulrike’s craft caused the skin to prickle and the heart to go frantic.

Eyl swallowed back the bile that had rushed up his throat.

‘Sister?’

She had taken winding sheets of white cloth from a storage cupboard, and pinned them to the theatre’s wood panelled walls using surgical blades, turning the sheets into stretched canvases. Then she’d made blood marks upon them.

She’d located the theatre’s source of blood stock, a refrigerated unit beside the scrub sink, and raided its contents. Empty transfusion packets, torn open and discarded, were scattered across the tiled floor. She’d squirted, shaken and splashed the contents of the packets across the sheets.

As Eyl approached, she was gazing at the marks, her wet, red hands by her sides, dripping on her mourning skirts.

‘What do you see?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. It’s all broken. Disjointed. Incomplete.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘The future doesn’t want me to see it.’

Eyl bent down and picked up one of the emptied blood packets. He read the label.

Synthetic blood supplement.

‘This isn’t real blood,’ he said. ‘It’s artificial. Made in a vat.’

She nodded.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can read. I thought it would work.’

She squinted again at the blood marks on the sheets, the blackberry darkness of the blood, the yellow-pink halo stains of the plasma.

‘I’ll have to use real blood. Bleed myself. Give me your rite knife, brother.’

‘I lost it,’ he admitted.

She turned to him. He could feel the heat of her gaze from behind the veil.

‘Upon my soul,’ she said, ‘that is unfortunate.’

‘It is what it is,’ he replied, though he knew she was right. ‘Tell me about the real blood.’

Striding like a headstrong child, she went over to the counter immediately. She’d emptied and washed a couple of the glass sterilising baths, and filled them with blood product. Suspended in the red liquid, Eyl could see the strips of bloodstained leather that Malstrom and Barc had cut from the upholstery of the limousine.

‘Where did the blood come from?’ he asked.

‘From the synthetic store,’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a medium. It’s not as reactive as blood, but it’s better than water, and that’s what I thought I’d be forced to use.’

‘And?’

‘I can sense him already,’ she said.

Using a surgical tool, she’d scratched a grid and accompanying symbols into the worktop, and placed the glass baths at the centre. Arcane mechanisms were at work.

‘You can?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll have his location soon. His heartbeat. There was a lot of blood on the leather. He bled all over the seats.’

She looked up at him.

‘He might be dead already, Baltasar.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘The pheguth might be dead already,’ she continued. She laced her arms around him, and rested the side of her veiled head against his chest. ‘Our work might be done. We could slip away and–’

He pulled her arms off him.

‘I must have a confirmed kill,’ he said. ‘Besides, you know we can’t. We can’t slip away from this. This world will end us. This mission will undo us. A day more, perhaps two, that’s the measure of our lifetimes. We knew this when we accepted the burden upon our souls.’

‘You did. Not me,’ she replied.

‘We were made for this, sister, we–’

‘I was made. I was made for this. The gore mages wove me for this very purpose. You volunteered, Baltasar. Proud warrior, great damogaur, you volunteered for the glory of this mission. I was never offered a choice, and I wish I had been. That is one of my truths.’

He nodded sadly.

‘If you’d had the choice, would you have chosen this?’ he asked.

‘I cannot lie,’ she replied. ‘Sometimes I wonder what life is like. I mean, what it is like to lead a life: to be born and grow up, and make choices and follow paths. I wish I could have done that. I wonder what choices I’d have made. But I know what I am, brother. A witched instrument. No childhood, no life, no choices. Bred for just one purpose. Even so–’

‘Even so?’

‘I would have chosen this. The pheguth must die.’

‘And the Anarch?’ Eyl asked. ‘Will the Anarch die?’

‘Brother, you know that’s the one thing I can’t see,’ she said.

‘What’s the matter?’ Maggs asked.

He’d woken up suddenly, cold and stiff on the hard bed of the tarpaulin, with no idea of time or location. It had taken a panicky moment or two for him to remember.

His clipped ear hurt like a fether. The wound had begun to ache and throb, like any flesh wound after the initial sting and shock has worn off. Worse, the fear and stress that he’d accumulated the previous day was still flooding his system, the last thing he needed.

Gaunt was asleep. The bastard could sleep anywhere. Criid was undoubtedly prowling the perimeter. Doctor Death was kneeling beside the patient. Maggs could tell that something was up.

‘What’s the matter?’ he repeated. It was bone cold in the blue darkness of the refurb, and Maggs saw his breath smoking out in front of his face. The patient, under the blankets on the stretcher, was trembling and murmuring.

‘He’s taken a fever,’ Kolding replied.

‘A fever?’ asked Maggs.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘What kind of fever?’ Maggs asked.

Kolding looked up at him in the gloom.

‘There is only one kind,’ he replied.

‘The bad kind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Uh huh. What do we do?’

Kolding laughed a little, odd laugh, and said, ‘Why, sir, we take him at once to the Oligarchy Municipal Medicae Hospice on the Avenue Regnum Khulan, so they can begin intensive isolyte therapy… Except, oh, we can’t do that, can we?’

Maggs shook his head.

‘The fever came on suddenly,’ said Kolding. ‘I found rainwater caught in that sheeting over there. I’m trying to keep his face cool.’

‘Is he going to die?’ asked Maggs.

‘We’re all going to die, sir,’ Kolding replied.

‘I meant now,’ Maggs snapped.

‘Possibly. I think his wound has become infected. Hardly surprising, given the circumstances.’

‘Look, Doc, I don’t like this any more than you do,’ Maggs said. He paused and then started suddenly.

Kolding stared at him.

‘Are you all right, soldier?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Maggs replied, shaking his head. ‘Why?’

‘You look pale, sweaty,’ said Kolding.

Maggs didn’t feel good at all, but he knew there wasn’t time for any self-indulgence. Feeling like crap was his problem.

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

‘I think you might be running a temperature too.’

‘Just look after freak-face, all right, Doc?’ Maggs said.

He realised that his hands were shaking. His knees felt soft. He watched the doctor in the half-light as Kolding mopped the prisoner’s brow.

‘Where’s Criid?’ Maggs asked.

‘Who?’

‘The girl, the woman,’ Maggs said, frustrated.

‘I think she went out to check the street,’ Kolding replied.

Maggs reached for his weapon. Criid had his las. Doctor Death’s automatic pistol was wedged in his pocket. He drew it.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kolding asked, suddenly apprehensive as he saw the weapon come out.

‘Nothing,’ Maggs replied, but that wasn’t the truth. The truth was he’d just remembered the dream that had woken him in the first place.

The siege of Hinzerhaus, on the fortress world of Jago, had been an awful ordeal. It had also been the Ghosts’ last major action before their retirement. Good men had died at Hinzerhaus, and one way or another Wes Maggs hadn’t been one of them.

The place had haunted them during the siege. Ghosts had walked amongst the Ghosts. Everyone had fireside stories, stories about returning old friends or lost comrades, or pieces of childhood, or driftwood memories made flesh. According to the old Tanith, men like Mad Larkin and Shoggy Domor, the ghosts that had come to them on Jago had taken the form of actual lost souls like Bragg and Corbec, men who’d been dead and dust long before Maggs and the Belladon had joined the First. Maggs had little idea who Bragg and Corbec were, but the reappearance of their shades seemed to matter a feth of a lot to the Tanith-born troopers.

Maggs’s personal ghost had been called the old dam. That was the name he’d given her. Some ancient, forgotten matron from Hinzerhaus’s dust-erased past, she’d stepped down out of one of the old, time-ravaged oil paintings and followed Maggs around the gloomy, satin-brown halls. She had worn a long, black lace gown, which rustled as she moved. Her face… Feth, her face had been a meat wound, the kind of thing that even a professional soldier didn’t care to look at for long.

When Hinzerhaus’s spell had finally broken (and the rumour was, it had been psyker magic all along), the old dam had left Maggs alone, once and for all. A last hiss of her black dress against the satin brown floor, and she’d gone.

For the two years since then, every morning, Maggs had given quiet thanks that she wasn’t stalking him any more.

Two years. Two years. For the first time since Hinzerhaus, Maggs realised he’d dreamed about the old dam. He’d dreamed about her long, black rustling dress and the face he did not want to behold.

Why had she come back? It wasn’t fair! Why now?

Why had she come back?

Maggs’s hands shook. The old gun felt slick in his grip. If the old dam had come back, he wasn’t going to let her get him. He’d kill her. Ghost or no ghost, he’d fething kill her.

Droplets of sweat were beading his forehead. Maggs didn’t feel good at all.

But he had a gun, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

EIGHTEEN

ZOLUNDER’S

Someone was knocking on the street door. The knocking was disturbing the cantor-finches, and they were banging and twittering around their delicate cages in dismay. Midnight had long passed. Elodie wasn’t sure if that made it ridiculously late or ridiculously early.

She checked the security monitor covering the red door, but whoever was knocking was standing just out of pict-view. And why were they knocking when there was a perfectly good bell?

Elodie yawned. The night after the raid, Urbano had decided not to open. This had surprised Elodie, because Cyrus Urbano was normally such a get back on the frigging steed kind of man. There had been something funny in the air that day, though, and it wasn’t just the sting of being taken for such a huge score, or the miserable snowstorm that had come in, out of season and unwelcome.

Urbano had told her to send everyone home for a day or two, and had then gone out to attend to some business.

Now someone was knocking on the street door.

Elodie had fallen asleep on the couch in her dress. Xomat, the member of parlour security who’d pulled premises watch that night, had long since drunk himself to sleep, and was snoring in the greeter lounge.

Elodie got up. The knocking came again. Then whoever it was found the bell-push at last, and started pressing it hard.

She took the las-snub out of the under-bar drawer, and tucked it into the back of her sash. She went to the street door and peered through the spyhole.

Outside, dawn was fighting a losing battle with the snowstorm. The court was a dim, lightless void, especially as the garmentfab had shut and no light was coming down from its windows. There was somebody out there. Elodie just couldn’t see who.

She opened the door. The new lock they’d been obliged to fit following the raid was stiff.

‘Oh, thank the Throne,’ said the girl on the doorstep. ‘I was starting to think no one was here.’

‘Banda?’

Banda looked pinched and tearful. She was still dressed in the red silk gown she’d been wearing when the Commissariat had carted her away, and not much else. She was shivering, and leaning on the gryphon’s beak of the black iron handrail for support.

‘What are you doing here?’ Elodie asked.

‘They let me go,’ Banda said. ‘Hey, can I come in?’

‘They let you go?’

‘Yeah, yeah. No charges. They questioned me. Fething Commissariat. Then they slammed me in a cell overnight. But they had nothing on me, so they let me go.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Elodie repeated.

Banda gazed at her, a hurt expression on her face.

‘Where else was I supposed to go?’

‘Not here,’ said Elodie. ‘Go away.’

‘What? Fething what? I took one for the team and you’re brushing me off?’

‘Not me,’ said Elodie. ‘I’m sorry, Tanith. Urbano doesn’t want you around. He told me to let you go. He doesn’t like hostesses who–’

‘Who what?’

‘Who get picked up. I know it wasn’t you, although you should have known better. You should have pulled your head in. It doesn’t matter. Urbano wants you gone. He’s superstitious. He doesn’t like the connection. Come back in a week or two, and maybe I’ll be able to find you an opening at one of the other parlours.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ Banda replied. Her voice sounded as if it had been crushed flat. She sat on the snow-crusted step and began to tear up.

‘Oh, come on. Go home,’ said Elodie.

‘I’ve got no home,’ Banda snivelled. ‘Tanith burned, remember?’

‘I didn’t mean. Oh, Throne, this really isn’t my problem. You must have friends in the city, family?’

Banda shrugged, and said, ‘I don’t know anybody.’ She looked at Elodie. ‘Maybe I can talk to Urbano? Make him see sense?’ she asked.

‘He’s out,’ Elodie replied. ‘I’m sorry, Tanith. I’ve got nothing for you. Go and find a hostel or something.’

Banda sighed and shrugged. She breathed hard to control her sobs. She rose to her feet.

‘Right. Fine. Thanks for feth all. I’ll be seeing you.’

She turned and started to walk up the steps to street level.

‘Tanith?’

‘Yeah?’

Elodie held the door open.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I can give you a drink and maybe some food, and some better clothes. But you’ve got to be gone before Urbano gets back. Understand?’

‘Throne, yes! You won’t regret this.’

Xomat was still snoring. Elodie went around behind the bar and fixed two stiff sacras.

‘Were you expecting trouble?’ Banda asked, gesturing at the las-snub tucked into Elodie’s sash. It was visible now that Elodie had turned and bent to fetch shot glasses.

‘This? No. I just like to be careful.’

Elodie pushed one of the brimming shots across the nalwood bar towards Banda.

‘You should get out of those wet clothes,’ she told the Tanith girl.

Banda knocked the sacra back and held the glass out for a refill.

‘It was a rough night, wasn’t it?’ Elodie said, smiling and pouring again.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ Banda replied.

Elodie plonked a digital key on the bar-top. It was tied to a block of wood with a hank of twine.

‘There’s a box of cast-offs in the hallway behind the private rooms,’ she said. ‘It’s just stuff girls have left behind over the years. You might find something more weather-appropriate in there. Take what you want. And use the staff toilet to get changed.’

‘Thanks,’ said Banda.

‘I’ll see what food I can knock up,’ said Elodie, refilling their glasses.

Holding the digital key in one hand and her glass in the other, Banda wandered back into the hallway. The lights were off, but she found the box, a ratty-looking hamper stuffed with stale clothing. She helped herself to the best of what was on offer: a pair of baggies, a singlet, and a combat jacket. No shoes, apart from some strappy things that were no better than the ones she was wearing.

She used the digital key to let herself into the staff toilet. With the door locked behind her, she pulled the red silk dress up and off over her head. Naked, she crossed to the toilet’s small window and forced it open. Ancient overpainting had fused the seal shut, and she had to smack the frame with the heel of her hand.

Snow-cold air breathed into the dingy bathroom.

Elodie had found some eggs and some rashers of green-grox, and she’d slung them all in a pan while she sawed some thick slices off a loaf of spelt bread for frying.

‘Cooking me breakfast?’ asked Urbano.

Elodie turned, trapped. ‘No, I was, I mean, I was just hungry.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing, I swear.’

‘There’s enough in that pan for an army,’ Urbano said, peering down into the sizzling skillet.

‘Look, Banda came back, all right?’

‘Banda?’

‘The Tanith girl.’

‘Ah,’ Urbano said, nodding. ‘And you felt sorry for her?’

‘Yes, yes I did. She’ll be gone in an hour. Just some food and a drink and some fresh clothes.’

‘You’re such a soft touch, Elodie,’ Urbano chuckled.

‘Yeah, well, I had it all covered,’ she replied. ‘I even had the snub in case–’

She paused.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Urbano.

Elodie ran her hands back and forth across the top of her sash and the small of her back.

There was no las-snub.

‘Looking for this?’ asked Banda. She was standing in the doorway of the parlour’s small kitchen, wearing hand-me-down combats and baggies. Her feet were bare. She was aiming the las-snub at them.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ asked Urbano.

‘No,’ replied Banda.

‘Put that toy away,’ Urbano laughed. ‘Put that toy away or I’ll kill you.’

‘Oh, Banda, please–’ Elodie began.

Urbano reached into his coat and calmly produced a massive double-celled laspistol. He raised it and aimed it at Banda.

‘Is this some kind of frigging joke?’ he repeated, over-carefully.

‘Permission to take the shot,’ Banda said.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Urbano asked.

‘She’s talking to me,’ said Rawne. He appeared in the kitchen doorway beside Banda. Behind him, Varl was aiming a lasrifle at Urbano.

‘Shit!‘ exclaimed Urbano, and lowered his pistol.

‘Good boy,’ said Rawne.

‘You’re Hark, right?’ asked Urbano, looking at the commissar uniform Rawne was wearing. ‘Listen to me, Hark, it doesn’t have to go like this. We can do business. Didn’t you get enough last time you were here? Why the frig are you on me like this?’

‘Because we’re pissed off,’ said Rawne. ‘Because we’ve been through hell. Because we need some serious kill-power, and you were the nearest outlet we could think of.’

Rawne paused and looked at Banda, who was still aiming the snub at Urbano’s face.

‘Thanks for leaving the toilet window open,’ he said.

‘No problem. You want me to take this shot?’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ said Urbano. ‘Kill-power. I can get you kill-power. What do you need, Commissar Hark?’

‘You still think I’m a commissar?’ Rawne asked him.

‘What are you, then?’ Urbano asked.

‘Serious bad news for Cyrus Urbano,’ Rawne replied.

‘Come on!’ Urbano exclaimed. ‘You want kill-power? I’ve got it. What do you want? Las? Hard-slug? Hell? I’ve got it all!’

‘Good,’ Rawne said.

‘We just need to discuss price,’ Urbano said.

‘Price?’ Rawne echoed. ‘You’re serious? In this situation?’

‘Of course,’ Urbano replied. ‘I’m a businessman.’

‘And I’m a bastard,’ Rawne replied. He looked at Banda. ‘Take the shot.’

‘What?’ Urbano managed.

Banda shot him through the forehead. The las-round made a scorched hole in Urbano’s brow. He smashed backwards into the cooker, and brought the pan of frying eggs and rashers down on top of him as he folded onto the floor and lay still in a lake of his own spreading blood.

‘Holy Throne!’ Elodie cried.

‘I guess we’ll be negotiating with you now,’ Rawne said to Elodie.

They opened up what Elodie referred to as the ‘gun room’. It was little more than a reinforced closet in one of the private rooms. Inside it, arranged on wooden racks, was the stock of side-arms kept to defend the premises. There were two combat shotguns, two lasrifles, and a lot of solid slug pieces, including a massive bolt-action rifle, and a crate of brand new, forge-fresh small pattern laspistols with their Munitorum tags still on them, a trophy of the lucrative crossover between underworld rackets and Guard quartermasters on the take.

‘Nice,’ said Leyr, lifting one of the pistols and arming it.

‘Pull what you want,’ Rawne told them. It seemed as if he was going to be staking personal claim to the Blood Pact lasrifle he’d taken in the cells at Section. The two lasrifles in the gun room went to Daur and Meryn, and Varl and Banda took combat shotguns. Cant, lower on the pecking order, armed himself with an old autogun and a bag of reloads. Leyr took the big bolt-action.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Varl.

‘Used to hunt with a baby like this back home,’ Leyr replied.

The gun room, due to its hefty locks, also held the club’s stash of obscura and other narcotics, stored in tins and paper folds.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Daur said.

Varl and Meryn looked at him.

‘Go feth yourself, Daur,’ said Meryn.

Daur took a step forwards.

‘Whoa, whoa!’ interjected Varl, getting between them. ‘We’re all friends here!’

‘We’re really not,’ said Daur, glaring at Meryn. ‘We are deep in it, and I don’t want the fether who’s supposed to have my back to be anything less than wide awake.’

‘Listen to yourself, Daur,’ Meryn mocked, popping the lid off a tin of obscura leaf and sniffing it, ‘it’s like you’re still in the fething Guard. You are so straighter-than-straight. Like I’m going to listen to you or even care what you say.’

Daur lunged at Meryn, but Varl held him back.

‘Meryn?’ said Rawne from behind them.

‘Yes?’

‘Throw it away.’

Meryn turned to stare at Rawne.

‘What?’

‘Throw it away.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Rawne, ‘we are deep in it, and I don’t want the fether who’s supposed to have my back to be anything less than wide awake.’

Meryn glared.

‘We’re still fething Guard, Meryn,’ said Rawne, ‘we’re just in a temporary bad place. So throw that shit away and start observing the chain of command, or I’ll have Leyr shoot you with his ridiculously big rifle. No, no, worse than that. I’ll have Cant mow you down with his stubber. Then there’d be shame involved.’

‘You can mow Meryn down with that, can’t you, Cant?’ Varl asked.

Cant smiled.

‘Yes,’ he promised.

Meryn lowered his hands.

‘Feth you all,’ he said and tossed the tin away.

‘I didn’t hear you, soldier,’ said Rawne.

‘I said: feth you all, sir,’ said Meryn.

‘Better. Now perhaps you’d like to take yourself off and investigate what this place has to offer in the way of comms. Varl, assist him.’

Daur watched Varl and the glowering Meryn leave the room.

‘Thanks for the support,’ he said to Rawne.

‘Please don’t think I did it for your benefit,’ Rawne replied.

‘Perish the thought,’ said Daur. He walked back into the main bar. Leyr, the big bolt-action resting across the crook of his arm, was watching Elodie, who had been left sitting on a sofa. The strong-arm, Xomat, was sitting in a chair by the back wall, tied up and gagged with adhesive tape. His eyes were wide.

Daur walked over to the bar and rested his lasrifle on the nalwood top. He sat on one of the stools, the same stool he’d sat on the night of the sting. He’d taken a pack of the club’s hand-coloured cards from one of the gaming tables, and began to flip through them absently, placing them face-up on the counter.

‘What size are your boots?’ Banda asked. She had strode into the bar, barefoot, the shotgun lodged over her shoulder, and gone right up to Xomat.

Mmgggh! he replied.

Banda stripped the tape gag away from his mouth.

‘What?’

‘Nine!’ Xomat stammered.

‘Oh, you’re no use!’ Banda declared, and wedged the tape back into place.

‘You’re what, a six?’ asked Elodie.

‘Yes.’

‘Upstairs, in my room. The blue door at the end. There’s a pair of work boots under the bed. Size six.’

‘Thanks,’ said Banda. She turned to go, but paused. ‘I never meant to feth your life up,’ she said.

Elodie shrugged.

When Banda had gone, Elodie rose and walked over to Daur at the bar. Leyr watched her, but made no comment.

‘I’d like you to do me a favour,’ Elodie said to Daur as she sat on the stool beside him.

‘And that would be what?’

‘Kill me.’

Daur looked at her.

‘What?’

‘Kill me,’ said Elodie. ‘It would be a kindness.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘Urbano has friends. Colleagues. Partners. They run all the serious clubs and bars in this part of town. If they come here and discover what’s happened, and find me alive, they’ll just assume I had some part in it all. So, please, kill me. Make it quick.’

‘I’m not going to kill you,’ he protested. He turned another card over.

‘Please, Daur. Your name is Daur, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. My name is Daur.’

‘So what is this? That Hark guy, he’s no commissar. And Banda–’

‘Banda is Banda. Hark, his name is actually Rawne, and no, he’s no commissar. This was a scam. We’re all Guard, and, Throne help us, we were bored. We decided to see just how much we could take the famous Zolunder’s for. I think it was Varl’s idea, originally. No, maybe Meryn’s. I was the icing on the cake. What Varl calls the “beauty part”.’

‘Because you’re straight and honest, and you don’t do this sort of thing?’

‘Precisely. You know what? Here and now, in this fix, I can’t even begin to remember why I said yes.’

‘The thrill of it,’ said Elodie.

‘What?’

‘You’re a soldier, a warrior.’

‘So?’

‘When did you last see action?’ Elodie asked.

‘Two years ago,’ said Daur.

‘You miss the risk,’ she said.

Daur started to reply, and then nodded. He turned over a few more cards. He had a dynasty in front of him, capped by Blue Sejanus and the Queen of Mab.

‘I like the cards too,’ he confessed.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ve never played,’ he said, ‘not much at all. I just like the cards themselves. Their permutations.’

‘You’re an undiagnosed gambler,’ said Elodie.

Daur shook his head.

‘No, no. I just like them,’ he said.

‘Can you see the future in them?’ she asked.

‘It’s not like that.’

‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ she asked.

Daur sighed, and said, ‘We ripped you off. The night before last, we ripped you off. Then we got caught and bad things happened to us. We were looking at serious charges, detention–’

‘And?’

‘Then the stakes changed again. Suddenly. The Archenemy is here, mamzel. Here on Balhaut. He’s got his hands in the guts of this world, and he’s going to keep twisting until it hurts.’

‘Are you serious?’ Elodie asked.

‘Absolutely.’

‘So if Urbano’s partners don’t get me, the Archenemy will?’ Elodie asked.

‘Not if I can help it,’ Daur replied.

‘Pretty standard vox,’ said Meryn, sitting back with a shrug in the club’s monitor room.

‘Plus, we can watch all the approaches on these viewers,’ Varl said. ‘We’re pretty secure.’

Rawne nodded, and asked, ‘The vox is high gain?’

‘It’s a Guard-issue unit,’ said Meryn. ‘These idiots got it off the black market.’

‘You know how to twin a signal, Meryn?’ Rawne asked.

‘Yeah, of course.’

‘So twin one for me.’

Meryn adjusted the caster’s dials.

‘Who am I sending to?’ he asked.

Rawne told him.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Meryn cried.

‘Uh, Meryn?’

‘For feth’s sake… are you out of your mind, sir?’

‘Send exactly what I say, Meryn,’ said Rawne. ‘Right now, I need to trust someone, and he’s the only bastard I can think of.’

NINETEEN

TRACES AND RESULTS

The Inquisition’s birds had set down in Viceroy Square and the courtyards of Section. Their fans were cycling on neutral and the snow fell softly around them. The snowflakes perished fast when they landed on the hot hoods of the turbo fan assemblies. Black smoke was still pluming from the HQ’s damaged wings.

Kolea waited at the gate with a group of Tanith personnel that included Baskevyl and Larkin. Edur prowled around nearby with some storm-troopers from S Company, keeping his eye on Rime and the forces of the ordos, who were searching the stands of trees in the square’s gardens.

‘Will we be expected to take shots?’ Larkin asked Kolea.

‘Of course not,’ Kolea replied.

‘But we’ll be up and scoping?’

‘Will you relax, Larks?’ Kolea said.

‘It feels wrong, Gol,’ Larkin said. ‘I shouldn’t be going looking for Gaunt through my scope.’

‘So noted, Larkin,’ said Baskevyl. He touched Kolea’s arm. ‘Here comes Mkoll.’

Mkoll, Bonin and the other Tanith scouts came into view, walking out through the gatehouse towards them. Behind them, Section smouldered against the colourless sky.

‘Talk to me,’ said Kolea.

‘Gaunt’s alive,’ said Mkoll, coming to a halt in front of the acting commander and pulling a small but respectful salute. ‘The high-value prisoner too. We’ve seen monitor footage and track-back from the gate cameras, and pict-feed from guard-tower mounts.’

‘Gaunt and Maggs busted out of here at the height of the attack,’ said Caober. ‘Hell of a thing. They were definitely the Blood Pact’s main targets.’

‘So they’re alive,’ said Kolea. ‘Close by?’

‘Give us ten minutes and we’ll tell you,’ said Bonin.

‘Who’s going aloft?’ asked Baskevyl.

Bonin looked at Mkoll.

Mkoll said, ‘You go up. Take Larks with you. Hwlan, get upstairs with Nessa.’

‘On it!’ Hwlan called back.

They ran to their waiting Valkyries. Turbo-fans began to wind up to speed. Mkoll gestured to Jajjo, Preed and the other scouts and they began to move forward. Eszrah ap Niht had been standing near Baskevyl. When the scouts moved off, so did he.

The trees in the square trembled and swished as the two Valkyries took off, and snow gusted out like dust.

‘I didn’t authorise any transport lifts!’ Inquisitor Rime declared, striding over to them. ‘Where are those Valkyries going?’

‘We’ve got the scent,’ Kolea told him.

‘Really? And this scent? Who has it?’

‘He does, sir,’ said Kolea. He pointed across the snowy gardens.

‘And he’s your chief of scouts? Does he know what he’s doing?’

‘The Tanith know what they’re doing, inquisitor,’ said Edur.

Out in front, Mkoll was slowly following the tracks left in the snow. As if realising they were talking about him, he rose and looked back.

He beckoned them after him.

‘Game on,’ muttered Gol Kolea.

‘It would have been nice to get out there with them,’ remarked Nahum Ludd. He was gazing out of the command post’s grubby windows at the snow falling onto Aarlem’s parade ground.

‘Too many chiefs,’ replied Hark.

‘How so, sir?’

Hark looked up at his junior from the stack of reports he was working through.

‘The Inquisition’s all over this. Did you not get the impression that the Edur fellow was doing everything he could to retain some control of the operation?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Thanks to him, we’ve got Tanith officers and scouts on the ground. I think if he’d tried to bring Commissariat personnel into the mix too, that creep Rime would have burst something aortic.’

‘Do you know Edur?’ Ludd asked.

‘No,’ replied Hark. ‘I’ve met him a couple of times at Section. He seems a decent sort. I’m glad we’ve got him on our side.’

Hark fell silent and stared at the clock on the wall.

‘What?’ asked Ludd.

‘Nothing, Ludd.’

‘You were going to say something.’

‘I was just thinking that I hope Edur’s on the level. Whatever’s going on here, it’s messy and complicated, and everybody seems to want a piece of it. I hope Edur’s the friend Gaunt needs. I hope Edur doesn’t have an agenda of his own.’

‘You think he might?’ asked Ludd. ‘He seemed a decent sort, like you said.’

Hark sighed. ‘You develop a nose for these things, Ludd. Every commissar does, sooner or later. You get so you can detect what’s behind the mask. Edur’s keeping something back, though it may just be the nature of this high-value prisoner.’

‘I’ll develop this knack too, will I?’ asked Ludd.

‘Of course. And it will aid your work immeasurably. It will tell you, for instance, that Trooper Criid is not here simply to deliver his company day sheet.’

Ludd turned. Dalin Criid was standing in the office doorway, a fresh day sheet in his hands. He looked awkward.

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir,’ he began. ‘I was told to bring this to you in Major Kolea’s absence.’

‘On the desk please,’ said Hark. ‘Then you can tell us what’s really on your mind.’

Dalin wavered slightly.

‘Come on, boy,’ said Hark. ‘It doesn’t take two of you to deliver a day sheet, and if Merrt thinks I can’t see him lurking out there in the corridor, his prosthetic face is not his biggest problem after all.’

Merrt loomed in the doorway. ‘I didn’t mean to cause any gn… gn… gn… trouble, sir,’ he said, chewing the words out through his ugly augmetic jaw. ‘I was just giving Dalin some moral support. He thinks he’s found something.’

‘Why do you need moral support, Criid?’ asked Hark.

‘Permission to speak openly, commissar?’

‘Granted.’

‘I knew I’d have to bring it to you, sir, and you scare the hell out of me.’

‘Good answer,’ said Ludd.

‘I ought to scare the hell out of you too, Ludd,’ growled Hark. ‘All right, Criid, what have you got? Waiting around here for news from the city is driving me batty, so distract me with something interesting.’

‘I’m E Company adjutant, and with Meryn, I mean Captain Meryn, off-base, that means I have to run all the dailies and keep on top of–’

‘Funnily enough, I’m surprisingly conversant with day to day military business,’ said Hark.

‘Yes, commissar. Of course you are, commissar.’

‘Let’s have it, then.’

Dalin paused.

‘I was running the daily tests on the company vox-sets, and I think I got a signal, sir,’ he said.

Hark gestured towards the hall doorway behind Dalin. ‘There are three nice men from the Inquisition in the vox office across the hall, Criid,’ he said. ‘I doubt you’ve picked up anything they haven’t. They’re monitoring all traffic.’

‘Of course,’ Dalin agreed. ‘Except this is a twin, sir.’

Ludd looked at Hark.

Hark sat forward and gestured to Merrt.

‘Would you mind closing the door please, Trooper Merrt?’ he asked.

Merrt closed the door, and leaned against it for good measure.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Ludd.

‘Are you sure it’s a twin?’ Hark asked Dalin.

‘Sure as I can be, sir,’ Dalin replied. ‘The sequence is buried, but it’s clear enough. It’s E Company signature, so that suggests to me it’s Captain Meryn.’

‘Because Meryn would use his company code to contact his own company’s casters,’ Hark ruminated.

‘Exactly.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Ludd. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘And there’s a locator tag tacked on to the signature?’ Hark asked.

Dalin nodded and said, ‘I checked it back. It’s your call sign code, sir. Captain Meryn… or whoever sent the signal, wants to talk to you.’

‘Uhm…’ said Ludd, and raised his hand.

Hark glanced at him in aggravation.

‘What is it, Ludd?’ he asked.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Ludd.

‘It’s a sleight of hand thing,’ Hark said. ‘An old Guard trick. If you need to get a message through, and you can’t guarantee that the receiving caster is secure, you send what’s known in vox-officer vernacular as a twin.’

‘How does it work?’ asked Ludd.

‘The sender broadcasts a signal on one of the standard operational Guard frequencies,’ said Dalin. ‘It sounds… I’m sorry, sir. I’m speaking out of turn.’

‘Go on, Criid,’ nodded Hark.

‘Well,’ said Dalin, ‘the signal sounds like junk noise to anyone listening in. The Inquisition, for example. But it’s not, in several ways. For starters, it’s ’caster specific, coded for specific reception, in this case E Company vox units. And though it sounds like a random noise burst or static drizzle, it’s got the company-signature vox-code buried in it. It took me a moment to recognise that.’

‘So it’s a message that sounds like vox-clutter?’ asked Ludd.

Dalin nodded.

‘And here’s the clever bit,’ he said. ‘The junk signal contains the signature, plus another code called the locator. In this instance, someone has used Commissar Hark’s call sign code. The locator tells you where you should really be looking.’

‘For what?’ asked Ludd.

‘The actual message,’ said Merrt from behind them.

‘The locator is a code representing another frequency,’ said Dalin. ‘A non-standard channel, something out in the trash bandwidth. That’s where the twin is hidden. It’s called a twin, because it’s a twin of the first message. It’s usually passive-looped or non receptive, meaning that the receiver has to reach out, in vox terms, and capture the message. It’s just floating out there in the aether, waiting, completely undetectable unless you know where to look for it.’

‘And that’s what the locator tells you?’ asked Ludd.

Dalin nodded.

‘How long ago was this, Criid?’ Hark asked.

‘About twenty minutes, sir. I asked Merrt to check my findings on the quiet before I came to you.’

‘I think it’s authentic, sir,’ Merrt said, ‘but maybe you’d better gn… gn… gn… get Beltayn to look at it.’

‘Did you look at the message itself?’ Hark asked Dalin.

‘No, sir.’

‘All right then, that’s what we’ll do first. Ludd, go and find Beltayn. And Rerval. Let’s get some vox expertise on this. Criid, grab one of the E Company casters and bring it to the temple house. We’ll work in there, out of the way. Merrt can get a weapon and watch the doors. This is strictly between us until I say otherwise, gentlemen. Right, let’s move.’

They went out into the hallway. Ludd and Merrt sped off in one direction, and Hark and Dalin strode the other way. There was the usual mid-morning activity, and a braised bean-and-cabbage smell wafting in from the canteen.

Hark and Dalin passed Curth, coming the other way with her arms full of medical reports.

‘Everything all right, Viktor?’ she asked as they passed.

‘Everything’s fine, Ana.’

‘Are you sure? You look–’

‘I look what, doctor?’

Curth turned and considered him.

‘You look like something’s up,’ she said. ‘Like something’s happened. Has something happened, Viktor?’

Hark shook his head, and said, ‘Nothing at all, Ana. Just a few discipline issues I have to take care of. You know how these things are. Perhaps I look flushed because I’m relishing the prospect of shooting someone who deserves to be shot.’

‘As long as that’s all it is,’ Curth replied, and went on her way towards the medicae.

‘Something’s afoot,’ she said to Dorden as she came into the medicae office.

‘Anatomically?’ he asked, glancing up from his work.

Curth smiled.

‘Hark’s covering,’ she said. ‘I saw him just now in the hall. Something’s going on.’

She dumped the stack of reports on Dorden’s desk and began to work through them.

‘What’s this?’ asked Dorden.

‘Everything we sent to the pharmacon yesterday has come back.’

‘You’re joking! It usually takes a week.’

Curth shook her head.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Everything. Every single test, every single sample, every single blood. Praise be the Emperor for lock-down.’

‘What?’

‘The pharmacon staff couldn’t leave base last night, so, for want of anything more interesting to do, they worked through the entire case-load. I think we should remind them how fast they can work next time we have a rush on and they tell us they’re pushed.’

‘Agreed,’ said Dorden. He began to help her sort the file packets, breaking the seals on confidential examination reports.

‘Costin’s hep is confirmed,’ she read. ‘I’ll get him in to discuss remedial care.’

‘Have you got Twenzet’s bloods there?’

‘Yes, and they look all right. Which is more than can be said for Neskon’s augmetics. It looks like he’s rejecting again.’

‘If Neskon can’t keep that leg, it could see him out of the Guard on a 4-F.’

‘I know,’ said Curth. ‘I’m exploring other options.’

‘What were you saying about Hark?’

‘He’s hiding something,’ Curth said. ‘Something’s going on.’

‘How could you tell, Ana?’ Dorden asked.

‘You develop a nose for these things,’ she replied. ‘Something is afoot.’

She opened another packet.

‘Oh, this one’s yours,’ she said, handing it to him.

Dorden read the tag strip.

‘Aha, Zweil,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He pulled the envelope open and slid out the contents.

‘Viktor just had this look on his face, you know?’ Curth said, sorting through the remainder of the reports for priority. ‘You know that look he gets? Dorden?’

She turned and looked across the desk at the Ghosts’ elderly doctor.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Dorden whispered, turning the pages of the pharmacon report and reading quickly.

‘Dorden? What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, feth,’ said Dorden. He closed his eyes, shut the report, and handed it to her. Curth took it from him and started to read.

‘Shit,’ she murmured.

‘The old dog must’ve known,’ Dorden said, taking off his spectacles and massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s why he was dodging the medicals.’

‘Oh, this is just awful,’ said Curth. She sniffed hard and rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s unfair, that’s what it is.’

Dorden nodded.

‘So who gets to tell him?’ Curth asked.

TWENTY

OLD GHOSTS

Gaunt found Criid watching the refurb’s road access entrance.

‘You need to rest,’ he told her.

She shook her head.

‘You’re no good to me tired,’ he said.

‘I’ve been resting for months,’ she told him quietly. ‘Standing still. This is what I need.’

‘The prospect of a bloody death at the hands of the Archenemy?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She snorted.

‘A purpose,’ she said.

Gaunt looked out onto the snow-heavy street. His wrist chron appeared to have stopped at some point during the night, and he could not shake or wind life back into it. His best guess was that it was approaching mid-morning. They’d been holed up in the refurb for about six hours.

It didn’t look like mid-morning. The Old Side street was silent and empty. Snow was still fleecing down out of the cloud cover, and icing every surface. It had drifted deeply across the pavements and around parked vehicles. There was no sign of life: no traffic, no civilians, no pedestrians, no municipal street workmen or ploughs, no gritting trucks. The sky was as grey as slate, and visibility was severely restricted. The Old Side skyline was a faint black phantom in the flurrying snow. The more he looked at the snow against the sky, the more it looked like static flooding a jammed pict-feed.

The city’s haunted emptiness could be explained by the bad weather, and it could also be put down to a security lock-down following the attack. Either of those explanations suited Gaunt fine.

The third one, at the back of his mind, the idea that it was entirely unnatural, did not. He set it aside, even though there was a yellowish quality to the snow-light, and an odd sensation of brooding in the air, and his wrist chron had stopped dead and refused to work.

‘A purpose is good,’ he said, belatedly.

‘A plan would be better,’ said Criid.

He nodded.

‘Doctor Kolding says the etogaur’s too sick to be moved. He’s running a serious fever. Kolding didn’t want us to move him from his practice in the first place, although our hand was forced. As this place seems a little more secure, I’m loathe to ignore his professional advice.’

Criid shrugged and pouted.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘This man is really that important? Do we really care if he dies?’

‘You’ve seen what the Archenemy has put into motion to silence him,’ Gaunt replied. ‘There’s your answer.’

‘I suppose,’ she replied. ‘It just feels wrong. I mean, we’ve spent most of our careers trying to kill men like him.’

Gaunt sat down on a pile of fibreboard.

‘If we can’t move him, we need to bring help here,’ he said. ‘One of us… you, me, Maggs… could go out and try to raise some help. But just one of us, in case trouble comes calling.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve been running a lot recently. I can cover some ground. Question is, who do I go to? Who do you trust?’

‘I trust the regiment. But we don’t know how deep the infiltration runs, so I don’t trust any of the standard lines of communication. We need an unimpeachable point of contact. If I could speak directly to Hark or Gol.’

‘We could find a vox.’

Gaunt shrugged.

‘We also need food if we’re going to stay here any length of time,’ she said. ‘Let me scout the area, and see what I can scrounge up. I’ll see if there’s anything moving around out there, while I’m at it.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Let’s start with that. But be careful.’

Criid slipped out through one of the refurb’s side windows, and ran down to the eerily empty main street. Snowflakes caught in her hair.

She was already spiking again, but it felt good this time, it felt right.

She turned left, and ran along the centre of the road, ignoring the pavements where the snow had drifted into deep banks. She followed the half-buried glitter of the tram rails, and splashed across stretches of meltwater where the snow cover had been heated by pipe-work or power sources under the street’s surface.

She went two junctions east, and then turned south around the church of Saint Sark, where the green iron railings looked as if they’d been dipped in icing sugar. There was a baker’s shop she knew on Londolph Square where she’d be able to get some bread and perhaps some cold meat or cheese. Gaunt had given her all the money he had on him.

That was presuming the baker’s shop was open. If it wasn’t, she’d impose Martial Provisioning Rules and help herself.

Something made her stop running. Afterwards, Tona couldn’t account for it. Something had just clicked in her head. It was intuitive. It was as if Caff had been at her side, and had just reached out and touched her arm.

She stopped running, and found cover behind the snow-caked tombs that filled Saint Sark’s little graveyard. She kept low. Her pulse was beating like a drum.

Three figures appeared a hundred metres away. That was a shock in itself, because the streets were so devoid of life.

They were soldiers. They were carrying weapons. They were hunting.

Fighting to control her breathing, Criid kept down, her hand on the grip of her laspistol. The three soldiers spread out, moving down the broad thoroughfare towards the church in a classic covering pattern. She could see the steam of their breath. She could see the glint as the snow-light caught their iron battle-masks.

The Blood Pact was this close. They were just streets away from Gaunt’s bolthole, and they were closing in, as if they had some scent! How could they know? How could they have the city at their mercy like this?

How many of them could she take, she wondered? Two, probably, then the third would drop her. If she was lucky and accurate, all three, but a hand-braced laspistol, rapid fire, at that range? And what if there was another team, beyond the street corner?

She heard a noise, over in the east. It was the rattling drone of turbofan engines. She adjusted her position, and looked up in time to see two Valkyrie gunships track past, heading west in a paired formation. They went behind the double spires of Saint Sabbat the Martyr, so that put them at least a kilometre away. They vanished into the blowing snow.

The Blood Pact soldiers heard the Valkyries too. They looked up, then scattered off the street, running fast. Criid wasn’t sure where they went, but they broke quickly.

Hunters, and hunters hunting hunters.

Rival forces were closing on Balopolis, and when they finally met, the result wasn’t going to be pretty at all.

Worse still, it reduced her and Gaunt to one thing: prey.

Bread and cold meat and cheese be damned. Criid knew she had to get back to the refurb fast.

‘Maggs?’

A voice had called his name, but Maggs wasn’t sure where from. He’d wandered into part of the refurb that he hadn’t been in before, and discovered, to his bafflement, that it somehow linked to Hinzerhaus. He stepped through an archway, pushing a work curtain aside, and went from the cold grey shadows of the refurb on Balhaut to the warm brown shadows of the house at the end of the world on Jago. On the Jago side, the wind blew the eternal dust like drifting snow.

Or was it snow drifting like dust in a dry valley with–

‘Maggs?’

Dust or snow, it hardly mattered. Either would make a deep, insulating blanket that he could lie beneath, lie beneath and be buried by. Snow or dust, it would protect his bones against the heat. It would prevent his blood from boiling.

There was a heat in his blood that would not go away. It made a hissing, rustling sound as it squirted around his body, like lace dragging on–

‘Maggs?’

Who the feth kept calling his name?

‘Maggs? Your name is Maggs, isn’t it?’

Maggs opened his eyes and looked up. The albino freak in the blue-tinted glasses was crouching over him.

‘I think you’re sick, Maggs,’ the albino said. ‘I think you’re running a fever. I need to help you–’

‘What time is it?’ Maggs mumbled, trying to sit up.

‘I don’t know,’ Kolding replied. ‘My wrist chron has stopped. It’s day. It’s morning. Mid-morning. It’s light out, but it’s still snowing.’

‘Your chron has stopped?’ asked Maggs.

‘Yes. Why does that matter?’

‘Mine’s stopped too. It’s really hot in here, isn’t it?’

Kolding shook his head.

‘It’s cold as hell,’ he said. ‘It’s like midwinter, and there’s a draught coming through the window holes.’

Maggs shook his head and sat up.

‘It’s really hot. I’m running with sweat.’

‘This is what I’m trying to tell you. I think you’re sick. I think you have a fever too.’

‘Why? Who else has a fever?’

Kolding blinked.

‘Well, your precious prisoner, obviously.’

Maggs got to his feet off the tarpaulin. He was unsteady. Droplets of perspiration splashed off his forehead as he rose. He had a sick feeling in his gut, but it was nothing compared to the burning turmoil in his head. He couldn’t even remember going to sleep.

‘I think you should sit down,’ said Kolding.

Maggs waved a hand at him.

‘I think you should sit down now and let me give you a shot.’ Kolding reached out a hand to steady Maggs.

Maggs shook it off.

‘I don’t want anything,’ he snapped.

The breeze picked up. The refurb’s work curtains swayed in the cold exhalation of the snowstorm. Was that the archway that led through to Jago?

Dry skulls in a dusty valley with all the–

The words made a rustling sound in his head.

Maggs snatched the old gun out of his pocket.

‘Oh, Throne!’ he hissed. ‘How long has she been here?’

‘Who?’ Kolding asked.

‘The old dam! The old bitch!’ Maggs whispered, circling, and aiming the weapon at random shadows. ‘Can’t you hear her? Can’t you smell the stink of her?’

‘There’s no one here,’ Kolding said, rising to his feet. ‘Please. Please. Put the gun down.’

‘She’s right here!’ Maggs insisted. ‘It’s like she’s so close she’s inside my head. That fething black lace gown. The hiss of it!’

‘There’s no one here,’ Kolding insisted.

Except there was.

The snowstorm gusted again, and the work curtains billowed. The woman stepped quietly through one of the swaying curtains to face them.

Maggs couldn’t see her face. She was wearing a veil. He was glad about the veil. He really, really didn’t want to see her face. Just the idea of it made him shudder. His hands were slick-wet and shaking. Her dress was very long, black lace, and it made a rustling noise as it dragged across the ground.

‘How long has it taken you to find me?’ Maggs asked her. ‘How long has it taken you to follow me here?’

‘Who are you talking to?’ Kolding asked.

‘Her. Her!’

‘Please, Maggs, there’s no one there.’

Kolding pointed at the empty work curtain swaying in the breeze. The train of it rustled against the rough flooring.

Maggs aimed the old gun at the veiled woman in the black dress.

The pistol that had been left behind banged hard on auto, slamming out its spent cases. Kolding cried out and flinched, covering his ears. The rounds ripped through the work curtain, punching holes in the fabric.

The bullets struck her in the face and the chest. They went through her veil and her torso as if she wasn’t really there.

Baltasar Eyl stepped back as his sister suddenly gasped.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

The witch’s hands and arms were drenched in blood to the elbows. She had plunged them into the glass sterilising baths to retrieve the strips of leather cut from the limousine’s seats. She was clutching the lank, dripping strips in her scarlet fists like fronds of wet seaweed.

‘The blood,’ she said. Her words seemed to etch into the unnaturally chilly air of the theatre as if they’d been drawn in acid.

‘What about it?’

‘It wasn’t all his.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some of it was the pheguth’s, but some of it came from one of the men with him. One of them must also have been injured.’

Eyl remembered clinging to the side of the car as it sped towards the gate. He remembered, like a snap-shot, his half view of the driver’s head and neck, running with blood.

‘The driver,’ he said.

‘Yes. He’s the one I’ve got,’ said Ulrike. ‘I am upon his soul. And he’s fighting back.’

‘Can you dispose of him?’

The witch smiled at her brother. Her veil was down, but he could feel the smile, like the hot leak of lethal radiation.

‘I can do better than dispose of him,’ she replied. ‘I can use him.’

‘What are you doing?’ Kolding cried.

Maggs turned and struck the doctor across the temple with the old gun. Kolding barked out a cry and fell hard. He tried to get up. Maggs kicked him, and then clubbed him across the back of the head with the butt of the gun.

Kolding dropped and lay still.

Still shaking, and sweating hard, his body stricken with the furnace of his fever, Maggs staggered over to the prisoner.

The etogaur was trembling beneath his heaped blankets. Sweat pasted his face. His eyes had rolled back, showing just whites.

Maggs poked the muzzle of the old gun against the etogaur’s head and pulled the trigger.

TWENTY-ONE

BLEED

Mkoll paused. He turned in a slow circle, reading the snow-covered ground.

He shook his head.

On the empty, winter street behind him, Preed and Jajjo were checking side turnings for traces. The chief scout was pretty sure they wouldn’t find anything either.

The signs had been there. From the gatehouse at Section, out into the streets, they’d been easy to track, as clear as day. It was snowing, for Throne’s sake! An absolute gift to any tracker. Gaunt might as well have left a trail of taper flares, or blood.

Something had begun to outfox the acute senses of the Tanith scouts. Something was deceiving Mkoll’s eyes and wits, and it was deceiving his best men too.

This snow was different. It wasn’t like any snow he’d ever read. It teased and it flirted, and promised to reveal all manner of secrets, but it was uncooperative. It blurred and it blended. It covered and it erased. It forgot more than it remembered.

It didn’t behave like snow.

Mkoll was certain, stone-cold certain, that there was something in the storm, some ugly influence in the bad weather that was deliberately blinding them and confounding them.

Silent as any ghost, Eszrah came up beside him.

Mkoll looked at the Nihtgane and shrugged.

Eszrah narrowed his eyes.

‘Close, he ys,’ he said.

Mkoll nodded. ‘Except it’s just so… you must have noticed it too, Ez. The trail’s wrong. The snow’s lying to me.’

Mkoll looked up. The distant, thudding shapes of the Valkyries were swinging around for another pass.

‘Jago,’ Eszrah replied.

Mkoll shrugged. ‘You’re right. You and me, we followed him across the dust of Jago and found him. We can find him again.’

Commissar Edur watched the progress of the search teams.

‘I hate to sound remotely impatient,’ he said to the Tanith officers, Kolea and Baskevyl, ‘but I expected a little more from the vaunted Ghost scouts.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ replied Kolea bluntly. ‘It’s not like Mkoll to be this much off his game.’

‘Explanation?’

Baskevyl shrugged. ‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt has gone to ground. He’s an intelligent man, and he may have covered his tracks well. He knows how Mkoll and the scouts operate. He knows how to hide the signs they would look for.’

Edur pursed his lips. ‘Which begs the question: is he hiding to stay alive, or hiding because he’s guilty of something?’

He noted the expressions on the faces of Kolea and Baskevyl.

‘Just thinking aloud,’ he assured them. ‘The problem being that the inquisitor’s capacity for patience is going to be far less than mine.’

The three of them turned to look together. Further down the street, Rime and his circle of henchmen were grouped in quiet discussion. The displeasure on Rime’s face was readable even at a distance.

‘If he orders us out,’ said Edur, ‘we lose all control. Then, I’m afraid, Gaunt’s going to wind up dead, whether he’s guilty or not.’

Maggs fired. He fired and fired again. Nothing was coming out of the albino’s old gun. He’d used up everything in the gun’s clip shooting at the old dam.

Maggs tossed the empty pistol aside and bent down. He clamped his hands around the etogaur’s throat and twisted.

Gaunt slammed into him from the side, and tore him off the etogaur. Locked together in a tangle of limbs, Gaunt and Maggs rolled heavily across the partly boarded floor of the refurb, and collided painfully with a stack of fibreboard.

‘What are you trying to do?’ Gaunt yelled at the Belladon as he attempted to pin him and subdue him. The gunshots had brought Gaunt running.

Maggs didn’t reply in any properly articulate way. He shrugged his shoulders backwards violently, breaking Gaunt’s grip. The back of his skull butted into Gaunt’s cheek.

‘Maggs! Stop it,’ Gaunt warned, rolling clear.

Maggs made a gurgling, inhuman noise. He was back on his feet, hunched low, like an ape or an ursid. He drove at Gaunt. His teeth were bared in a snarling grimace: an animal’s threat display.

Gaunt couldn’t do much other than try to absorb the feral charge. Maggs ran into him, bear-hugging him, and they struck the pile of fibreboard together, again, this time on their feet. Gaunt had seen Maggs’s eyes. He knew the man had lost his mind. He could feel the grease of sweat on Maggs’s skin, the fever-heat throbbing out of him.

Maggs wrestled Gaunt into the fibreboards a third time, and tried to crush him into them. Gaunt jabbed his elbow down onto the back of Maggs’s neck. He had to repeat the ruthless blow several times before Maggs flinched away from the source of pain and released his grip.

As Maggs sprang away, Gaunt threw a punch that caught the Belladon’s jaw, and lurched him sideways into a pile of paint pails, buckets and loose timbers. Metal containers clattered as they fell. Trying to keep his feet, Maggs ploughed through the wood and the buckets with his arms milling and clawing, scattering the obstacles out of his way.

Gaunt moved forward to restrain him. He called out the Belladon’s name again, in the hope that it might snap some sense or recognition into the man.

Maggs came up, out of his stumbling collision with the paint pails, clutching a fat plank of timber. He hefted it like a bat or a club, and swung it. Gaunt had to jerk back to avoid being hit.

‘For Throne’s sake, Maggs.’

Maggs advanced on him, swinging the timber hard. Maggs was making a whining, sobbing noise.

‘Maggs!’

Gaunt tried to dodge around Maggs, but Maggs caught him across the shoulder with the makeshift club, and Gaunt fell sideways into one of the work curtains. He clutched at it for support, and the top edge tore away from its iron fixings with a sharp, rending sound. Maggs came at him again, the plank raised over his head in both hands, ready to slam across Gaunt’s skull.

Gaunt tried to shield himself. He twisted hard, wrapping the heavy curtain tarp around him and over his head. He felt the blow, but the lethal force of it was soaked up by the taut curtaining.

Gaunt scrambled free of the curtain, and stumbled into the adjoining chamber of the refurb. The curtain’s thick, waxy seams caught on the buttons of his uniform, tangling him, and he was forced to pull free of his coat to get clear. The contents of his pockets, upended, scattered onto the floor.

Maggs wrenched his way through the work curtain after Gaunt. He was still clutching the plank, and he was still whining and sobbing, the thick, wet sounds mixing with rapid panting noises. His eyes were pink and bloodshot. He blinked, trying to focus, trying to see where Gaunt had gone.

Gaunt had ducked to the right, just inside the doorway. Maggs only saw him at the very last moment. Gaunt had found a workman’s mop, and swung it like a bat of his own. It caught Maggs across the shoulder blades, and the old handle snapped in half, but the force of the blow was sufficient to knock Maggs sprawling onto his hands and knees. The fat plank of wood clattered out of his grip. Maggs tried to grab for it, but Gaunt struck it out of reach with the splintered end of his mop handle. Gaunt brought the mop handle around as a baton, aiming it at Maggs’s head, but Maggs, still on his knees, intercepted it with his right hand, and stopped it dead.

The fever had bred an astonishing power inside Wes Maggs. He only had one hand on the broken handle compared to Gaunt’s two, and he was kneeling where Gaunt was better braced on both feet. With a grunt of exertion, he tore the handle out of Gaunt’s hands.

He rose. Gaunt backed away.

Gaunt expected Maggs to attack him with the mop handle, but Maggs threw the broken shaft aside.

Gaunt saw why. On his hands and knees, Maggs had found a better weapon. He had found the damogaur’s soot-caked rite knife. It had fallen out of Gaunt’s coat pocket.

Maggs took a step forwards, holding the jagged knife low and ready. His breathing had become really laboured. He lunged, and Gaunt jumped back. Maggs lunged again, sweeping the knife around. Gaunt barely avoided the second blow.

The third blow – a vicious, front-on stab – came closest of all. Gaunt had almost run out of space to back up. There was a wall close behind him. Maggs was boxing him in. The ground was uneven. There was no space in which to turn. Gaunt wondered if he could feint left or right. He was fairly certain that the panting, sweating, blood-shot Belladon would be too quick.

He had run out of choices. The only option remaining was the one he wanted to avoid most of all.

He drew his bolt pistol and aimed it at Maggs.

‘Stop it,’ he warned. ‘Stop it, Maggs. Drop the blade and stop this.’

Maggs growled.

‘Don’t make me finish it this way, Wes,’ Gaunt whispered. His finger tensed on the hard curve of the trigger. He wasn’t getting through. He could feel another lunge about to come his way.

There was a loud and dull metallic impact. Maggs swayed, and then collapsed sideways. He hit the ground bonelessly and lay still.

There was an ugly bruise on Doctor Kolding’s temple. He lowered the dented metal bucket he’d swung into the back of Maggs’s head.

‘Are you all right?’ Gaunt asked him.

Kolding didn’t answer.

Gaunt ducked forward and plucked the rite knife out of Maggs’s limp fingers. Maggs was deeply unconscious.

‘We need to tie him up,’ said Gaunt. ‘Throw me that bolt of twine. Over there, doctor.’

As if slightly dazed, Kolding put the dented bucket down, and fetched the twine. Gaunt quickly began to bind Maggs’s wrists together.

‘I thought he’d killed you,’ Gaunt said.

‘He hit me,’ said Kolding. ‘He hit me hard. I’m not a soldier. I don’t know how to fight. Once I went down I decided to stay down for my own good.’

‘That was probably very wise,’ said Gaunt.

‘It doesn’t feel very courageous,’ said Kolding. ‘Not now, and not when I was sixteen.’

‘You saved my life,’ said Gaunt, ‘and for that, and more besides, you have my thanks.’

Kolding pointed at Maggs. ‘He is running an awful fever. I think that may have driven him to this. He was seeing things. They were things that he was evidently scared of.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

The prisoner looked like an upright corpse. The fever was still upon him, and his breathing was as laboured as Maggs’s. He was leaning in the doorway behind them, holding onto both the torn work curtain and the doorpost for support.

‘You should not be on your feet,’ said Kolding, striding towards him. ‘Help me get him settled again,’ he added, over his shoulder, to Gaunt.

They supported the prisoner and walked him back to the bed that Kolding had set up for him in the adjoining room. The prisoner was leaden and unsteady. There was a sort of diseased smell coming off him that Gaunt did not like at all.

‘He woke me,’ said Mabbon. ‘He woke me from my fever dream, tearing at my throat. He was trying to break my neck.’

‘Don’t waste your strength,’ said Gaunt.

They settled him back. ‘I tried to move. To call out.’

He looked at Kolding, who was preparing another shot from his case.

‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked.

‘You were wounded. We found a doctor to help us,’ said Gaunt.

‘I would have died,’ Mabbon said to Kolding.

‘You may still die,’ Kolding replied tersely. ‘I’ve treated your wound, but you have developed a secondary infection, probably due to the less than ideal circumstances of your post-operative recovery. The fever–’

‘My wound isn’t causing the fever,’ said Mabbon quietly. ‘It’s them.’

Gaunt looked at him.

‘It’s the work of the ones who have been sent to silence me,’ said Mabbon. The spaces between his words were getting longer. ‘They’ve got warpcraft into my blood. Into your man’s blood too, I think.’

‘How?’ Gaunt asked.

‘They have a witch with them,’ Mabbon wheezed, ‘a strong one. She is upon my soul, and she’s calling out to me in my dreams, commanding me to die. I can hear her. She’ll have been in your friend’s dreams too, urging him to kill.’

‘How do we fight this witch?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Do you know?’

‘You must let him rest,’ Kolding insisted.

‘Do you know how to fight the witch?’ Gaunt demanded.

Mabbon Etogaur’s eyes closed, and then flicked back open.

‘She’s wickedly strong,’ he breathed, ‘but I know a trick or two. I was an etogaur in the Pact. Give me that rite knife.’

‘Now wait a minute!’ Kolding exclaimed.

‘Listen to me,’ Mabbon hissed. ‘She’s in my blood. She’s upon my soul. That means this game is close to being over. They know where we are. All the while she’s in my blood, they’ll be able to find us. I need to break that tie, and then we must move to another place.’

‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I cannot believe you’re even listening to this,’ Kolding exclaimed. ‘The man’s feverish. He’s delusional. What’s more, he–’

‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt snapped.

Mabbon held out his hand. ‘I have to bleed her out of me, and then I have to bleed her out of your friend.’

‘I’m not going to be part of any barbaric ritual,’ Kolding said, but he handed Gaunt a small medicine basin.

Gaunt took the stainless steel bowl from the doctor and walked back to the prisoner. He’d carried Maggs’s bound body through from the other side of the curtain and laid him down beside the etogaur. Maggs was still unconscious, and twitching deliriously in the embrace of a dream that Gaunt had no desire to share.

Gaunt put the basin down and, after a final, thoughtful pause, handed Mabbon the rite knife, handle first.

‘Keep the basin ready,’ said Mabbon, his breath rasping in and out. ‘We mustn’t spill a drop, or leave any they can use.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’

Gaunt held the basin close. Mabbon opened one of Maggs’s bound hands, held it firmly, and sliced the rite knife’s blade across the palm. Maggs shook.

‘It won’t take much,’ said Mabbon. ‘The witch, she’s monstrously powerful, but to bind into our blood, she has to make a link, you see? For us to be tied to her, she has to be tied to us.’

He squeezed Maggs’s hand, and the blood welled and ran.

A fit came upon her. It came without warning. Eyl was so shocked by it that he recoiled.

His sister screamed. She had her hands in the sterilising baths, elbow-deep in red liquid, and as she screamed, the right-hand jar shattered. Over six litres of blood product vomited out of the exploded cylinder and gushed across the theatre bench.

Ulrike staggered backwards, pulling her hand out of the intact bath. Blood splashed out across the tiled floor in long, drizzled sprays from her hands. She cried out again, a squeal of rage and pain.

She turned to Eyl.

‘Sister? What is it, sister?’

She was breathing so hard that the front of her veil was sucking in and out. Droplets of blood had caught in the lace net and glittered like cabochon rubies. She raised her right hand and opened the palm towards him. The whole hand and arm was dripping with blood, but he could see the wound across her palm. He supposed she had been cut by broken glass from the exploding bath.

‘Your knife!’ she wailed.

‘What?’

‘He’s got your knife, and he’s bleeding me out of them!’

‘The pheguth? You mean the pheguth?’ Eyl demanded.

She screamed at him again, but this time it was a petulant scream of frustration and anger. She sank to the floor.

‘It hurts!’ she complained. ‘He’s hurt me. He’s cutting the tie!’

Eyl knelt down beside her, and held her tight, rocking her. She sobbed. Her clutching hands made bloody imprints on the tan leather of his coat sleeves.

He heard his men at the theatre door. Her screams had drawn them downstairs in concern.

‘Magir?’ Karhunan called out, unwilling to cross the threshold.

‘It’s all right!’ Eyl shouted back. ‘It’s all right. Leave us. Go back upstairs, and get the men ready to move.’

Eyl felt her wince again in his arms. She opened her left palm and held it out for him to see.

He watched as an invisible edge sliced the palm open.

Mabbon grunted out a breath and clenched his left hand over the basin. His blood spattered out of his fist and collected with the measure they’d already taken from Maggs.

‘Are we done?’ Gaunt asked.

Mabbon nodded.

‘Doctor?’ Gaunt called.

Kolding was just finishing the compression dressing on Maggs’s palm. He got up and came over.

Gaunt handed him the basin. ‘Get a lid sealed on that, then bind the prisoner’s hand.’

Kolding took the basin. He looked scornful and disapproving.

‘Quickly, please,’ Gaunt said. He wasn’t in the mood for the man’s disdain. Gaunt had crossed a few lines in his life, always out of necessity. Some heathen blood-magic ritual felt like one of the worst.

It had better damn-well work.

There was a noise from the refurb’s outer entrance.

Gaunt signalled to Kolding to keep quiet, drew his pistol and hurried towards the entrance.

It was Criid, squeezing back in through the boarded window from the street. Her hair was wet with snow, and she’d obviously been running hard.

‘You’re back sooner than I expected,’ said Gaunt, holstering his pistol.

She shook her head.

‘They’re close,’ she said. ‘We have to move.’

‘No argument,’ Gaunt replied. He bent to pick up his cap. It had been on his lap when he’d been sitting watch, and heard the gunshots.

‘Get any food?’ he asked.

‘There wasn’t time.’

She followed him into the chamber where Kolding was tending Maggs and the prisoner.

‘What the feth happened here?’ she asked.

‘They got to Maggs somehow,’ Gaunt said.

‘What?’

Gaunt stepped through the work curtain he’d half-torn down, and began to retrieve his coat and the items that had scattered from his pocket. Criid followed him.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Gaunt. ‘The simple truth is, they know exactly where we are, so we need to switch locations. Gather your things and help the doctor.’

‘We need to run,’ said Criid.

‘Maggs is sick, and the prisoner is sick and wounded,’ said Gaunt. ‘The purpose of this entire exercise is keeping him alive, and moving him any distance is going to be contrary to that aim. We’ve moved him too much already. I have to trust the doctor on this.’

‘So where do we go?’ she asked.

Gaunt stopped to pick up his pen and his copybook.

‘I have an idea,’ he replied.

TWENTY-TWO

CONTACT

‘Will it work?’ asked Ludd, dubiously.

Trooper Brostin looked insulted.

‘Of course it’ll work,’ he insisted. ‘I cooked it up, didn’t I? Just like you asked. I know this stuff.’

‘He does know this stuff,’ said Beltayn.

‘See?’ said Brostin.

Ludd took the small paper twist from Brostin’s permanently grimy paw. It was about four centimetres long, and no thicker than a pencil. The end had been folded down and sealed with what looked like treacle.

‘This isn’t going to be in any way…’ he began.

‘What?’ asked Brostin.

‘Excessive?’ Ludd replied.

The wounded look returned to Brostin’s face.

‘I did it just like you asked,’ he said.

‘All right, all right,’ said Ludd. ‘It’s just that I know your stuff too, Brostin, and for you there’s no such thing as too big.’

Brostin grinned and shook his shaggy head.

‘This is small. It’s cute. It’ll be pretty.’

‘All right,’ said Hark. The small huddle of troopers turned to look at him. ‘You all know what to do. Let’s get on with it.’

Ludd took a deep, calming breath, and walked into the company vox office. It was late afternoon, and it was already twilight outside. Driving snow tapped against the grubby windows.

The room was gloomy and over-warm. The electric filament heater units on the wall were kicking out a dull blast of dry heat, regulated by Aarlem’s automated thermostats. It was stuffy.

There were six large vox-caster units set up in the office; three were active and in use. Signal strength indicators flickered and glowed, and Ludd could hear the background murmur of a thousand voices, as dry and parched as the heat.

The Ghosts’ regular vox-operators had been turfed out when the Inquisition arrived. Three Inquisitorial vox specialists were on station, each manning one of the active casters. They were attentive and diligent men in sober black suits, their ears cushioned in large headphones. They were carefully monitoring all traffic in and out of Aarlem Fortress. Portable memory recorders had been plugged into the three casters to assist with any later transcription work, and the operators were making regular, abbreviated notes on the data tablets that rested beside their right hands.

Their supervisor was a haughty-looking ordo agent called Sirkle. He too was dressed in black, though part of his attire was body armour. He was pacing behind the operators, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally pausing to lean over and read one of the noted comments.

When Ludd walked in, Sirkle glanced at him dubiously. Ludd had only seen Inquisitor Rime at a distance during his visit, but he was struck by the marked facial similarity between Rime and his henchman.

‘Can I help you?’ Sirkle asked.

‘Sorry to intrude,’ said Ludd with what he hoped was a relaxed grin. ‘I was just wondering if there was any news.’

‘News?’

‘Of the colonel-commissar,’ said Ludd.

‘Why do you want to know?’

Ludd laughed. ‘You’re kidding? The men want to know, friend. The Ghosts are a very loyal bunch. Feelings are running quite high in the barracks. They want to know what’s going on.’

‘This facility is the subject of an investigation by the holy ordos. There are strict–’

‘I understand that, friend,’ said Ludd. ‘I was just hoping, you know, off the record, just between us…’

Sirkle stared at him.

‘You must know what it’s like to feel loyalty to a senior commander.’

Sirkle paused thoughtfully.

‘There’s nothing yet,’ he said. ‘No trace of Gaunt’s whereabouts at this time, although the signs are that he did exit Section alive.’

Ludd nodded. ‘All right. Thanks. Thanks for that, I appreciate it.’

There was a tap at the outer door, and Beltayn entered, carrying a tray.

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir,’ he said to Sirkle. ‘Commissar Hark suggested I brought some caffeine in.’

‘I’m sure that would be very welcome,’ said Ludd. He stepped back as Beltayn moved in so that Sirkle and his operators could help themselves to the mugs on the tray.

The tiny window of opportunity opened. Ludd had his back to the half-open door into the inner office. He took Brostin’s paper slip out of the palm of his glove, keeping his hands behind his back. Then he leant backwards quickly, reached around the office door, and dropped the slip into the grille of the nearest wall heater.

‘Well, we’ll leave you to your work,’ Ludd said, heading towards the outer door. ‘Thanks again,’ he added, looking at Sirkle.

The ordo agent nodded back, sipping his caffeine.

‘Sir?’ said Beltayn, looking at Ludd.

‘What?’

‘Something’s awry,’ said Beltayn, and pointed towards the inner office door.

‘Oh feth!’ Ludd cried.

Through the half open door, they could all see fierce bright flames licking up out of the wall heater. Sparks were boiling out across the inner office carpet, igniting smaller fires, and a thick, acrid smoke was already pouring into the main vox office area.

Beltayn hit the fire alarm and bells began to jangle.

‘What the hell is this?’ Sirkle demanded.

They all began coughing as the smoke hit their throats.

‘Feth!’ Ludd cried. ‘Bel, grab an extinguisher from the hall! Feth it all. This is the third time this week!’

He looked at Sirkle. ‘Dust gets caught in these old heaters and catches fire. You’d better move out while we get this under control.’

‘It’s a bad one this time, sir,’ Beltayn coughed as he ran back in with a cylinder extinguisher.

The foul smoke was stinging their eyes and scorching their throats, and the height of the flames in the adjoining room was alarming.

Sirkle got his operators up and out of the room quickly, all of them covering their mouths, and hacking out coughs as they went.

Beltayn looked at Ludd, and Ludd looked back. Beltayn tossed the extinguisher to the young commissar, then sat down at the nearest active caster station. Both of them pulled folded, moistened squares of vizzy cloth out of their pockets, and bit down on them, breathing through their mouths to take the burn out of the smoke.

Shielding his face from the heat of the flames, Ludd pushed the inner office door open and began to blast the ferocious heater fire with the extinguisher.

At the caster station, Beltayn worked as fast as he was able. He quickly scanned and noted the frequency batches that the operator had been listening to; then he used a small screwdriver to remove the caster’s front inspection panel. Ludd gave the fire another couple of blasts and glanced back.

Come on! his eyes pleaded.

Beltayn ignored him. He paused the portable memory recorder then he reached into the inspection panel, selected one of the fat main cable trunks, and unscrewed it at the connector. He took the bypass – a small, metal unit – out of his pocket, screwed one end to the connector, and the other to the loose cable. A small green ‘active’ light lit up on the side of the bypass.

Beltayn began to screw the inspection panel back into place.

Ludd finally vanquished the fire with the extinguisher. He closed the inner office door, took the wadding out of his mouth, and started to open the vox office windows to vent the smoke. Snowflakes whirled in on the cold air.

He looked over at the caster stations. Beltayn had two of the panel’s screws back in place and was starting on the third. Someone killed the fire alarm.

‘Did you get it under control?’ Sirkle demanded, appearing in the doorway.

‘Yes,’ Ludd replied. ‘I’ll get a work crew in to clean it up.’

Sirkle stared at Ludd and Beltayn. They were opening the last of the windows to clear the smoke.

‘This happens a lot?’ he asked.

‘Too often,’ replied Ludd. ‘I don’t know where the maintenance budget goes.’

‘Back to your stations,’ Sirkle told his operators, and they filed back in. Beltayn and Ludd glanced at one another. In Beltayn’s pocket was the small screwdriver and the fourth and final panel screw. There had been no time to fit it. He prayed no one would notice the fact that it was missing.

The operators resumed their seats.

Beltayn suddenly froze. He’d forgotten to turn the portable memory recorder back on.

He moved forward quickly, scooping his tray off the side desk where he’d left it.

‘Let me get you some fresh drinks,’ he said, busily, ‘these will taste foul now.’

He picked up Sirkle’s, then leant in over each station in turn to collect the mugs. At the third station, he shielded his hand from the operator using the tray, and turned the recorder back on as he reached for the mug.

Ludd and Beltayn headed for the door. In the hallway, Beltayn flashed three fingers to Merrt as he hurried towards the mess with the tray. Merrt was one of several Ghosts who’d gathered in the hallway to see what the commotion was about.

Merrt walked to the hall’s swing doors, pushed through them and showed three fingers to Dalin, who was waiting at the far end.

Dalin nodded, and turned to run towards the temple house. Arms folded, Brostin was watching the door.

‘Everything all right, lad?’ Brostin asked.

Dalin nodded.

‘Mister Yellow all fine and dandy?’

‘He sends his regards,’ said Dalin, and went into the temple.

Hark was waiting inside, standing beside Gol Kolea’s adjutant, Rerval, and a battered E Company caster unit.

‘Three,’ said Dalin. ‘It’s three. Go ahead.’

Rerval adjusted the channel setting, raised the vox-mic and began.

‘Nalwood, Nalwood, this is Stronghold, this is Stronghold, please respond.’

Snoozing, his feet up on the edge of the monitor room desk, Meryn started awake as the vox lit up, and nearly fell out of his seat. He scrambled for the mic, scattering an ashtray, some pens and an empty beer glass.

‘It’s live!’ he shouted.

His hand was moments from the mic when Varl reached in and picked it up.

‘Stronghold, Stronghold, this is Nalwood, this is Nalwood acknowledging,’ Varl said calmly into the mic.

‘Give me that,’ Meryn hissed, trying to snatch the mic out of Varl’s hand. Varl slapped Meryn’s hands away repeatedly.

‘Uh uh uh,’ Varl warned, listening hard.

‘Give me that!’ Meryn repeated, his voice a corrosive whisper that would have eaten through lead.

‘Hello, Nalwood, hello, Nalwood,’ the vox crackled. ‘Good to hear your voice.’

‘You too, Rerval,’ Varl responded with a grin.

Meryn reached for the mic again, and Varl knuckle-slapped him so hard he leapt back with a bark of pain.

‘I’ve got Commissar Hark standing by,’ the vox said. ‘Is this a good time?’

‘It’s fabulous, Stronghold,’ Varl replied.

Daur, Banda and Rawne had entered the club’s monitor room. Varl held the mic out to Rawne.

Rawne took it. Meryn glared at Varl.

‘Stronghold, this is Rawne.’

‘Stand by, major.’

The vox crackled.

‘Rawne, this is Hark.’

‘Reading you, sir. I take it we’re secure?’

‘As far as we can be sure. We’ve slipped a bypass into the Inquisition’s listening watch that we’re hoping they won’t notice. What’s your situation?’

‘We’re holed up in an establishment in the vicinity of Selwire Street.’

‘That’s the Oligarchy?’

‘It’s pretty central,’ said Rawne.

‘All right, I’ll find it on a chart. So you all got out of Section alive?’

‘That’s right,’ Rawne replied. ‘I can confirm seven alive, no injuries.’

‘Rawne, are you armed?’

Rawne glanced at the others. Even Varl was looking serious.

‘I can confirm seven armed,’ Rawne replied. ‘Why the question, Hark?’

‘It won’t come as a staggering surprise to you, but we’re looking at a bad situation, major.’

‘Is this planet-wide?’

‘I can’t confirm or deny, Rawne, but from the intelligence I’ve got, it looks like it’s confined to the Balopolis-Oligarchy region, which means you’re smack in the middle of it. Confirmed Archenemy hazard.’

‘Strength?’

‘Unknown, but we’re thinking no bigger than an incursive or expeditionary force. Watch yourselves.’

‘Understood,’ said Rawne.

‘It’s more complicated than that, Rawne,’ said Hark over the link. ‘Gaunt’s in trouble, and you might be the only real help the Ghosts are able to offer him.’

‘I read you, Hark,’ said Rawne. ‘Tell me everything you know.’

By the time the call transmit was finished, Ludd, Beltayn, Dalin and Merrt had joined Hark and Rerval in the temple house. Hark signed off and handed the mic back to Rerval.

‘Rawne’s gang is alive, and we know their position,’ Hark said.

‘Gang?’ Ludd echoed.

‘Got a better term for them?’ Hark asked. ‘Bunch of criminal idiots, perhaps? Recidivist morons?’

‘Gang’s fine,’ said Ludd.

‘We can stay in touch with them as long as the bypass goes unnoticed,’ said Beltayn.

‘And how long will that be?’ asked Dalin.

‘If we’ve got any luck on our side, young man,’ said Hark, ‘long enough for us to learn Gaunt’s whereabouts, and pass that intelligence on to Rawne.’

‘Let’s hope, in the meantime,’ said Ludd, ‘that Major Rawne doesn’t take it upon himself to do anything else.’

‘Such as?’ asked Hark.

‘Well, you told him to stay put. You told him to stay with that vox-set, where we could contact him,’ said Ludd. ‘What if he decides to… go somewhere?’

Hark let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Even Rawne wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?’

‘Of course not, sir,’ said Beltayn.

‘So long as it’s up to him,’ said Dalin.

Daur walked back into the parlour’s main area. Elodie was sitting at the bar, nursing a small amasec. The muscle, Xomat, was still taped to the chair by the back wall. He looked entirely unhappy about his predicament. Leyr was catnapping on one of the parlour couches.

‘Drink?’ Elodie asked Daur.

He shook his head.

‘What’s the story?’

Daur began to flip through the pack of cards he’d left on the bar top.

‘We’ve managed to contact our regiment, on the sly. There’s stuff happening, but the full picture’s not clear. Orders are to sit tight, and wait for further instructions.’

‘And are you going to do that?’ Elodie asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Daur.

‘All of you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I only ask, because following orders doesn’t appear to be your lot’s strongest suit.’

Varl walked into the parlour.

‘Is there any danger of food in this place?’ he asked.

‘You know where the kitchen is,’ Daur told him.

Varl sighed, and left the room again. From the bar, they heard him shout, ‘Cant? Can you cook or can’t you?’

Elodie smiled and got down off her bar stool. She went around the bar to find the amasec for a refill.

Daur suddenly looked up. Urgent voices had begun to issue from the monitor room. Daur looked at Elodie and they hurried out of the bar together.

‘What’s going on?’ Daur asked as he strode into the monitor room. Banda, Meryn and Rawne were studying the pict-feeds coming from the club’s various security viewers.

‘Company,’ said Rawne. He pointed at one of the screens. ‘Which door is that?’

‘Service,’ said Banda. ‘Freight access, at the back.’

‘Do we know these handsome gentlemen?’ Rawne asked.

Elodie slipped into the room alongside Daur and peered at the viewer. The exterior lighting was bad. There were perhaps six or seven men approaching the club’s service door from the loading dock on Conaut Row.

‘I don’t recognise them,’ she said. ‘Wait. Run it back and freeze on their faces as they pass under the light.’

Rawne played with the viewer’s control toggle, and the feed ran backwards jerkily.

‘There?’

‘Yes,’ Elodie said, and studied the fuzzy image more closely.

‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘I think that’s Csoni.’

‘Who?’ asked Meryn.

‘One of Urbano’s infamous partners?’ asked Rawne.

‘I wish,’ Elodie replied. ‘Lev Csoni is part of a business cartel in direct competition with Urbano’s crowd. We’ve had trouble with them before. They’ve been looking for an excuse or opportunity to knock this club out.’

‘And with the city shut down by a freak snowstorm–’ Daur began.

‘Safeties off, everyone,’ said Rawne.

He went up the snow-laced steps and knocked on the front door of the mouldering old tenement.

Half a minute passed. He was about to knock again when the door opened. A young, slightly scruffy man in a black, buttoned suit and a cravat peered out at him. He looked rather confused.

‘Can I help you?’ the young man began to ask, and then stopped, and instead said, ‘Wait, wait, aren’t you Colonel-Commissar Gaunt?

‘Hello, Mr Jaume,’ said Gaunt.

TWENTY-THREE

HEADSHOTS

‘I don’t understand,’ Jaume said. ‘Was our appointment rearranged, or…?’

‘No, Mr Jaume,’ said Gaunt, ‘this is a rather more improvised visit.’ He stepped into the hall, past the mystified young man, and looked around. Like the building’s front door and entrance, the hall had an air of impressive, sober dignity. The floors were varnished and blacked, the walls were painted in dark, subdued colours, and the hall chairs and drapery were silky blacks, purples and maroons. It felt like the foyer of an upmarket bordello.

But there was an underlying scruffiness. Gaunt noticed immediately the odd chip in the paintwork, the hasty way the drapery had been gathered and pinned, the faint smell of musty dampness that scents of lilac and lavender could not quite disguise.

‘I wonder if you could enlighten me,’ said Jaume. He was staring at Gaunt. It seemed likely that, just as Gaunt had seen through the initial impression of Jaume’s premises, so Jaume was seeing past the initial impression of Gaunt. He was seeing the dirty, scuffed clothes, the two-day stubble, the various bruises.

‘I find myself in an unfortunate situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘I need help, and there are very few people I can turn to. Just now, Mr Jaume, you are the closest. Are you a loyal servant of the Imperial Throne?’

‘Am I what?’ Jaume began. ‘Of course!’

‘You would, therefore, have no objections to assisting an officer of the Throne in the pursuit of his duties?’

‘What is this?’ asked Jaume.

Gaunt looked at the doorway behind Jaume, and gave a brief nod. Suddenly, other people were coming in out of the snow and the gathering darkness.

‘What is this?’ Jaume repeated as they pushed past him.

Criid was escorting Maggs, who was dazed and bleary, his hands still bound. Kolding, weighed down by his medical kit, was supporting the prisoner.

‘Through there,’ Gaunt said, gesturing, and then closed and bolted the front door behind them.

Criid had led the way into the reception room off the hall. It was similarly appointed in dark romantic shades of maroon, red and black. There were couches and armchairs, side tables decorated with arrangements of dried flowers, and a great deal of gathered drapery dressing the walls.

Criid left Maggs slumped on one of the couches, and Kolding settled the prisoner on the other.

‘Check the place, please,’ Gaunt said to Criid. ‘Entrances and exits. Is there anyone else here, Mr Jaume?’

‘No,’ Jaume replied. ‘I’m here alone. There were appointments booked for today, but they were all cancelled due to the snow.’

Gaunt nodded to Criid. She drew the laspistol and slipped out of the room.

‘Why is she armed?’ Jaume asked.

Gaunt ignored the question.

‘You work here?’ he asked, looking around.

‘Yes,’ said Jaume.

‘This is your studio?’

‘Yes,’ said Jaume.

‘And you’re a portraitist? You make picts?’

‘Photographic exposures,’ said Jaume, ‘and also some hololithic work.’

The reception room was as discreetly shabby as the hall. Gaunt could see that boot-black had been used to cover scuff marks on the floorboards and the legs of the furniture. The drapery had been gathered so as to hide old watermarks, and the flower vases had been painted over to disguise chips.

Several large, black albums with embossed felt covers were arranged on one of the side tables for casual inspection. Gaunt opened one, and began to turn the oversized card pages. The picts inside were large, and mounted in elegantly muted paper frames. They were portraits of men in uniforms: Guard, Navy, PDF, militia. The men’s uniforms were all dress formal, and their faces were uniformly solemn. They stood stiffly, facing the camera, looking into the lens with vacant or preoccupied eyes, and expressions that would never alter. There were chin straps and moustaches, dress swords and bugles, standards and drums. There were shakos perched on heads, and gilded chase helmets cupped under arms. There were bearskin capes, breastplates, and frogged button loops. To his surprise, Gaunt found he couldn’t identify many of the uniforms.

‘I make commemorative portraits,’ said Jaume, watching Gaunt go through the album, eager for approval. ‘There is a great demand for it here on Balhaut, because of the Famous Victory, of course. A great demand.’

Most of the portraits showed the skyline of Balopolis or the Oligarchy in the background. The same views, over and over. In most, Gaunt could read a skyline that had not existed for fifteen years. Some portraits included proud families in their formal best, gathered around the son or husband, brother or father in uniform.

‘Families come here, or send commission orders,’ Jaume went on, ‘from all across the sector, actually. There is dignity in a commemorative portrait. And consolation.’

Gaunt realised that it wasn’t a bordello that Jaume’s premises reminded him of. Rather, it was a funeral parlour. Jaume’s business was part of the mourning industry. The men he was looking at were dead, surely. He was reviewing images of men who no longer existed, which had been skilfully combined with images of a city that no longer existed either.

Gaunt closed the album.

‘What’s through here?’ he asked, and walked through the draped arch before Jaume could answer.

The main studio lay beyond the arch. Powerful lights and pict-imagers on tripods were arranged in front of a scenic area. To one side were racks of clothes, and boxes of props, like a messy backstage dressing room. Gaunt turned on one of the lamps, and its powerful filament lit with a ftoom!

Balopolis lay before him, noble and magnificent. Above, the Oligarchy; below, the bending river. There, the Tower of the Plutocrat, the Monastery, the High Palace, the Sirene Palace, the Emancipatory, the Oligarchy Gate.

The Oligarchy Gate. The afternoon of the ninth day, at Slaydo’s left hand. Ahead, the famous Gate, defended by the woe machines of Heritor Asphodel. Mud lakes. Freak weather. The chemical deluge triggered by the orbital bombardment and the Heritor’s toxins. Molten pitch in the air like torrential rain–

Gaunt walked towards the bright vista. It was untouched. War-clean. It was Balopolis as it had been.

Wire barbs skinning the air. The thuk of impacts, so many impacts. Clouds of pink mist to his left and right as men were hit. Ahead, below the Gate, the machines whirring again–

‘Stop it,’ Gaunt said.

‘Sir?’ Jaume asked.

‘I was talking to myself,’ said Gaunt.

Balopolis was one of a number of theatrical backdrop flats arranged behind the posing area.

‘There is a selection,’ said Jaume, moving Balopolis aside on its running wheels. ‘The Oligarchy is especially popular. But also Ascension Valley, Zaebes City… I can do Khulan too. Terra itself, at a pinch.’

‘But your subjects are dead men,’ said Gaunt.

‘Not all of them,’ said Jaume.

‘But most of them. You take their images from old stock, and superimpose them. Why do you need a set?’

‘It depends upon the commission,’ said Jaume. ‘If the family wants to be included, I have them sit here, arranged in front of their chosen scene. Then I dress an assistant appropriately to stand with them.’

Jaume moved to the heaped racks of clothes, and picked up, at random, a hussar’s jacket and a sabre.

‘You see? Something appropriate. I have a great deal to choose from. War surplus. Stuff that was left behind.’

‘The gun that was left behind,’ Gaunt murmured.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing.’

Jaume brandished his props. ‘The assistant stands in a pose that matches the pose of the family’s loved one in an old pict, and then I match the face in later. It’s most satisfactory. The families are always delighted to be reunited in that way, one last time.’

‘How do you get the uniform details right?’ Gaunt asked.

‘To be honest,’ said Jaume, ‘many of the old picts I’m given to work from are not in formal dress, or sometimes the uniforms just aren’t very… compelling. Heroic, if you like. The families are always keen to make their loved one look as dashing and martial as possible.’

‘So you make it up?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I manufacture commemoration, sir,’ said Jaume. ‘I give my clients a memento of the way things should have been.’

Criid entered. She looked around and whistled.

‘Clear?’ Gaunt asked.

She nodded, and recounted the basic layout of the premises. As she spoke, she picked along the clothes rail, and tried on a plumed dragoon’s cap.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

‘Astonishingly authentic,’ Gaunt replied sourly. ‘Did you find a kitchen?’

He glanced at Jaume. ‘Do you have any food?’

‘Yes, of course. Not much, but–’

‘When this is over,’ said Gaunt, ‘the Munitorum will reimburse you for all costs.’

‘Sir, may I ask,’ said Jaume, ‘exactly what “this” is?’

Gaunt went to the kitchen with Criid. He was in a foul mood. He wasn’t sure if it was a response to Jaume’s tawdry fantasies, or to the memories of the ninth day that had been summoned so unexpectedly by the shabby set.

Away from the public areas, Jaume’s premises were sordid and neglected. The kitchen was a festering horror. The milk and eggs they found were off, though Gaunt had a suspicion that all the milk and all the eggs in the city were off, in the same way that all the clocks had stopped.

There was, at least, some bread, some cured sausage, some pickled cabbage, and the makings of decent soup and caffeine.

‘He lives in these back rooms like a slob,’ said Criid as they prepared the food together.

‘I think the death industry of Balhaut is itself dying,’ Gaunt replied, chopping onions for the broth. ‘Mr Jaume insists otherwise, but I don’t think there’s much money in it anymore. Grief only lasts so long. When it’s done, there’s only emptiness, and emptiness doesn’t want or need a gravestone or a commemorative portrait.’

‘Grief lasts a long time,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes.

‘Tona?’

She laughed.

‘It’s the onions,’ she said.

‘I know it’s not,’ said Gaunt, and scraped the onions off his board and into the pot with his kitchen knife.

Maggs was awake. The fever in him had subsided somewhat.

‘Why are my hands tied?’ he asked. ‘Why does my head hurt like a bastard? Hey, who cut up my hand? It’s sore!’

Criid held out a bowl of hot soup. ‘Eat this. Don’t ask questions.’

‘But my hands are tied, Tona. Come on.’

‘So are mine, in a much more metaphorical sense. You want to eat? Be inventive.’

‘How is he?’ Gaunt asked Kolding.

Kolding was so busy devouring his soup and bread that he’d steamed up his glasses.

‘The prisoner?’ he asked, between mouthfuls.

‘Yes, doctor.’

Kolding lowered his bowl, swallowing. He looked over at the prisoner, asleep on the nearby couch. Mabbon had managed a little soup and bread before sleeping.

‘He’s surprisingly… well. The fever’s broken. It’s a turnaround, I confess.’

‘And nothing to do with any mumbo jumbo ritual, obviously.’

‘Well, obviously,’ said Kolding, picking up his spoon.

Gaunt and Criid ate their soup and bread sitting under the lights in front of Balopolis.

‘You were here, weren’t you?’ she asked, mouth full, nodding at the backdrop.

‘In another life.’

‘Was it as bad as they say?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gaunt replied. ‘What do they say?’

‘That it was bad,’ replied Criid, spooning more soup into her mouth as if there was a race to finish first.

‘Then that’s what it must have been,’ he said.

He sat back on the couch, and stared at the backdrop for a long time.

‘It was something,’ he said at length.

‘Worse than we’ve seen?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. With the Ghosts, I’ve walked through bad, and worse, and worse still. Balhaut was just an action. They’re all just actions. Balhaut was a major action. A major action. Of course it sticks in my memory. But it doesn’t define me.’

Criid stared at him. ‘Oh, I think it does.’

‘What?’

‘I think Balhaut was hell on a stick, and I think it matters to you because Slaydo mattered to you more than you’d like to admit. I think Balhaut is an old wound for you.’

Gaunt laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ she went on. ‘You won a massive victory for the Warmaster here on Balhaut. You and the Hyrkans? The Oligarchy Gate and then the Tower of the Plutocrat? Hello? And what did he do for you? Eh? He died, that’s what he did.’

‘That’s not how it happened,’ said Gaunt.

‘But that’s effectively what happened,’ Criid replied, putting down her empty bowl. ‘You and the Hyrkans fought like furies for Slaydo, but when the dust settled, he was dead, and there was another Warmaster on the ascendant. You got overlooked. A pat on the back and a sideline to some backwater forest world where–’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked.

‘The Hyrkans were honoured and rewarded. I was rewarded. My own command.’

Criid smiled sadly. ‘You were Slaydo’s best. His favourite. You should have been his heir. His anointed one.’

Gaunt laughed again. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about, Tona.’

‘I may not have much in the way of book learning or formal schooling,’ she replied, ‘but when you became my commanding officer, I made a point of reading up on you. I studied. You excelled at the Gate and excelled at the Tower. How much older than you is Macaroth?’

‘The Warmaster?’ Gaunt asked. ‘He has seven years on me, I think.’

‘Not much to split. Two young men. Two young protégés. Little to choose between them. Like brothers, inheriting. Slaydo died. And in death, only in death, Macaroth succeeded him.’

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he scoffed. ‘Macaroth was a high order commander. I was just a commissar.’

‘Slaydo loved you,’ she replied. ‘Think how he favoured you. He gave you the left flank, into the Gate. Yes, I’ve read the accounts. Memorised them. He favoured you into the Gate from the left, not because that was the easy path but because he trusted your ability. You took two impossible obstacles. Bang, bang! Macaroth had taken command of the Balopolis assault simply because everyone above him in rank was dead.’

‘He still won it,’ said Gaunt.

‘And you would have won it too, in his place. Have you ever met him?’

Gaunt looked at her.

‘Macaroth?’

‘Yes, Macaroth, our beloved Warmaster.’

‘No.’

‘No, never?’

‘Never.’

‘So he didn’t get you sidelined to some backwater forest world where–’

‘No!’ Gaunt snapped.

‘Just asking,’ Tona smiled.

‘Don’t,’ said Gaunt.

‘For an hour or two there,’ she said, turning to point at the cityscape backcloth, ‘for an hour or two right there, you were on the verge of becoming Warmaster.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, you were.’

‘No.’

‘You really were.’

‘Criid. Enough!’

‘Listen,’ she said, rising from the couch, ‘who were Slaydo’s obvious successors? Cybon? Dravere? Blackwood? They were all old, senior men. He gave it to Macaroth. Slaydo was absolutely ready to give the Warmastery to someone younger and less qualified than the usual chain of command suggested. Macaroth proves the precedent. You could have been Warmaster! You should have been!’

Gaunt looked away.

‘You weren’t there,’ he said.

She watched him. He stared at the floor for a moment, and then looked up into her eyes.

‘You weren’t there,’ he repeated. ‘I applaud your imagination, but it wasn’t like that. Believe what you like, the only thing you really need to know is this: I would never have missed the chance of becoming the Ghosts’ commander. Tanith, Verghast, Belladon, it’s been an honour to serve alongside them all.’

They both looked around as Maggs screamed out from the other room.

‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs was yelling.

Gaunt and Criid ran through to the reception room. The etogaur was on his feet, holding the rite knife. Both Kolding and Jaume had leapt up, and were backing away. Maggs was sitting bolt upright on his sofa, his bound hands in front of him as though he were praying.

‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs yelled as soon as he saw Gaunt. ‘Where did he get a knife from?’

Gaunt stared at Mabbon. He wasn’t sure how the prisoner had ended up with the rite knife. Gaunt had probably simply forgotten to take it back from him in the refurb. It was an oversight, a simple oversight.

All that mattered was what the prisoner intended to do with it.

‘Give it to me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Give it to me or drop it.’

The prisoner did neither of those things. Criid swept the laspistol out of her waistband, and aimed it at the prisoner in a two-handed grip.

‘Do what he told you to do,’ she said.

Gaunt raised his hand to ease Criid back.

‘Give me the knife,’ he said again.

‘I’m not going to hurt anybody,’ Mabbon replied. ‘Did you think I was intending to hurt anybody? We simply have to make ourselves safe here.’

‘With a knife?’

‘The witch will be looking for us,’ said the etogaur, looking directly at Gaunt. All signs of fever seemed to have left him. There was a healthy flush in the scarred pink tissue of his face. ‘This isn’t far, is it?’

‘What?’

‘This isn’t far from the place we were hiding in before, is it? I don’t really remember. I was still delirious when we moved. I don’t remember how long it took.’

‘No, it’s not far. A couple of streets away, if that,’ said Gaunt.

‘The witch will be looking for us. We shook her off, made her lose the scent, but she will renew her efforts. I was intending to cloak us. Where is the blood?’

‘The blood?’ Gaunt asked.

‘The blood you took out of me and your man there.’

Gaunt looked over at Kolding. ‘You’ve still got it, haven’t you, doctor?’

‘Yes,’ said Kolding.

The doctor produced the basin. Mabbon took it, and walked to the front door of the studio. Criid shot a questioning look at Gaunt, but Gaunt shook his head.

At the door, Mabbon used the rite knife to scrape an intricate symbol in the wood of the doorstep, a symbol that Gaunt didn’t care to look at too closely. Then Mabbon filled the scratches with blood from the basin.

Methodically, he repeated the process on the sills of the building’s main windows, and the steps of the back and side doors.

‘That’ll keep her blind to us, for a few hours at least,’ he said. He handed the basin back to Kolding, who had followed to watch the work warily, and then offered the knife back to Gaunt.

Gaunt took it, and returned it to his coat pocket.

‘Heretic magic,’ muttered Kolding, and went to put the basin away in his bag.

‘Exactly,’ said Mabbon.

Gaunt gazed out into the last hours of the night. The sky above Old Side had gone an odd, pale colour, and the snow had eased off for the first time in two days. Gaunt had, against his better nature, begun to associate the snowstorm with the force of the witch set in opposition to them. The easing of the snow suggested, perhaps quite wrongly, a waning of her power and her influence.

‘What do you think?’ he asked Criid.

They were sitting by the window in the reception room, sipping caffeine. Mabbon had gone back to sleep, and both Kolding and Jaume had withdrawn into some semblance of slumber. Maggs lay on the sofa, his eyes wide open.

Gaunt had spent the last few minutes outlining an idea to Criid.

‘It’s not a great plan,’ he admitted.

‘It’s not,’ she agreed.

‘It’s the best I’ve got.’

‘You trust him?’

‘With my life. I’m just sorry you’ll have to go instead of me. I need to stay with the prisoner, and we can’t trust Maggs.’

She nodded. ‘Makes sense. I can get there fast.’

‘We’ll need to get you some clothes from Mr Jaume’s racks.’

‘Really?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘You won’t get in without them. And you know what to say?’

‘I know what to say. What happens if I don’t come back for… for whatever reason?’

‘I’ll still be there.’

Criid looked at him. ‘That’s way too much of a risk.’

‘It’s too much of a risk not to be. We need this to be over and done. There could be all sorts of factors preventing you from coming back. I will be there.’

‘And if it’s a total fething mess?’

‘I’ll fight my way out of it,’ said Gaunt.

With a small bag of Mr Jaume’s dressing up clothes over her shoulder, Criid left the studio on Carnation Street just before dawn. Gaunt watched her run off into silent, empty streets where the snow had stopped falling.

He hoped that the cessation of snowfall was a good omen.

He hope that he’d see her again.

He wasn’t confident about either of those things.

TWENTY-FOUR

REPULSE

First, it went dark, then there was a crackle of hot, white noise as Csoni’s men compromised the club’s security countermeasures and crippled the comms.

‘The work of an EM charge, and a couple of seconds with a pair of needle-nosed pliers,’ Leyr said with grudging admiration. ‘Nothing too fancy, but they know what they’re doing.’

A red gloom flooded the club premises and, with the power out, the air-circulation systems died. It got stale and warm very rapidly. They could smell the beer-soaked carpets and the cantor-finch shit. In the monitor room, the screens, running on a battery circuit, boiled with static like a snowstorm.

As it had, by then, stopped snowing outside, Rawne considered this to be ironic.

In the red gloom, they waited for sounds of the doors being forced. The loading dock was a given, because they’d seen the men approaching on the monitors. If they were approaching the loading dock, they also had access to the east side of the building.

‘Roof,’ said Leyr.

Meryn looked at the scout. ‘You reckon?’

Leyr glanced at Elodie.

‘Where’s the main junction box of your comms and cameras, miss?’ he asked.

‘Behind the main chimney stack on the main roof slope,’ she replied.

‘Well, that’s where they went to work with the needle-nosed pliers, so someone’s on the roof too,’ said Leyr.

‘Skylights? Roof access?’ Varl asked.

‘I can show you,’ Elodie said.

‘Just tell him,’ Daur said firmly.

Elodie explained the upper floor layout, and Varl moved out with Cant.

‘What now?’ asked Elodie.

‘Just stay real fething quiet,’ Meryn told her.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s listening,’ replied Meryn, pointing through the gloom at Rawne.

A silhouette in the red darkness, Rawne had his head cocked.

‘Metal saw,’ he said at last, ‘portable. That’s the back door. You want to cover that for me, Meryn? I’m sure Leyr will assist.’

Meryn nodded, and got up. Leyr followed him out, the big bolt-action rifle over his shoulder.

‘Captain?’ asked Rawne.

‘Yes, sir?’ Daur answered.

‘Perhaps you and Banda could cover the front?’

‘On it,’ Daur said.

‘Are you just going to sit here and let us do all the work?’ Banda asked.

‘No,’ Rawne replied.

In preparation for his initially effective, but ultimately disastrous, move on Zolunder’s, Rawne had studied every schematic of the site that he could get his hands on. He’d had Meryn, Varl and Cant visit the Munitorum archive on the Avenue Regnum Khan, and the Oligarchic Library of Architects on Salpeder Square, to procure and request public records and make cheap grease-paper copies. Cant had shown a peculiar propensity for trace copying schematics with forensic precision. Rawne had even pulled a couple of things off the city’s datasheaf.

He’d mixed and matched. He’d overlaid. He superimposed, working to develop the most recent and current plan of the club premises.

He had planned it, and his little circle had executed it, with the same eye for detail that he planned any known target operation. He’d used precisely the same skill set that made him a decorated major in the Imperial Guard, the same skill set that had got him in and out of particular places like the Hagian Doctrinopolis, and Gereon, and trouble in general. He’d assessed the best way in and the best way out, and how to procure transport and dud uniforms.

He hadn’t done any of it because he was that fussed about getting rich. Rawne had done it because he was getting terminally bored.

The most useful schematics had come from the Balopolis Archive of Reconstruction, which itemised all post-war refurb, rebuild and reclaim. The knot of sub-street buildings, now known as Zolunder’s, had once been a vaguely successful dining hall. It had taken two anti-tank rounds through its eastern wall during the war, and the bulk of it had burned out or been looted.

Rawne knew how the refurb had gone. He knew that Zolunder’s had kept the dining hall’s old freight access and front access, and added a service gate in the east during the rebuild.

Urbano, or one of his low-life business chums, had sealed off and locked out the service gate when they’d taken the place over, and turned it into a club that they could rinse for a couple of years before selling on. They’d wanted to minimise the number of entry points, which made good sense from a security point of view. It was what Rawne would have done if he’d been running the place.

It was, however, a dormant vulnerability. It wasn’t as if Urbano and his ilk had actually bricked the service gate up. It was still there.

Studying the schematics before running his boredom-banishing operation, Rawne had noticed the service gate, and seriously considered it as an option. In the end, he’d gone another route, the ‘Ban Daur is so innocent that doves nest in his hat’ route.

Rawne knew it never paid to underestimate an opponent. He was quite sure that Lev Csoni, a man he’d never met, let alone heard of, was a bastard piece of work, and smart with it. If Rawne knew about the service gate, then Lev Csoni knew about the service gate, supposing he had the common dog sense he was born with.

For safety’s sake, Rawne simply presumed Lev Csoni was approaching the problem of Zolunder’s the way he had done.

That is why he took up his weapon and went to cover the service gate.

Up on the top floor, Varl hushed Cant. He could hear men moving around on the roof, making furtive rat-sounds, scuffles and scrapes. It reminded Varl unpleasantly of the high galleries of Hinzerhaus, where the Blood Pact had climbed up out of the dust of the mountains, onto the ramparts, to prise open the metal casemates. He held his shotgun ready, staring upwards. It was stifling in the dark. He’d have given a great deal for a pair of no-light goggles or a scope like Mad Larkin’s.

Light appeared before him. A pale blue band of light had begun to slant down from the ceiling, as broad and thin as a sheet of paper. It was like a holy vision, a shaft of ghostly, ethereal light spearing down from on high into the infernal gloom of the airless building.

Someone was opening a skylight, and soft, cold snow-light was penetrating the darkness.

Cant had seen it too. He took cover across the walkway from Varl, crouching behind a jardinière that supported a dead fern in a glazed pot.

The ladder of blue light broadened. Varl caught the first, wet-raw whiff of snow on the air, just a hint in the breathless warmth. There was a muffled thump, and the light increased dramatically.

They just lifted the skylight too far, thought Varl, and all the snow-weight on the top of it slumped off onto the roof. The panes of the skylight had been blocked, and now they aren’t.

Varl heard the first man about to drop in. He caught Cant’s attention with a gesture, and signalled to him to hold his fire until they had at least two targets.

Framed in the pale, chill shaft of snow-light, a dark figure began to lower himself through the skylight frame. The intruder was trying to be stealthy, but it was a terribly clumsy effort. Somebody was evidently on the roof above, playing out a line or lowering him in a hand lock. It was the most feth-awful manoeuvre Varl had seen in a long time. He realised that, though they might well be dealing with violent, vicious men, the Ghosts weren’t dealing with competent, professional soldiers. Any decent Guardsman or ex-Guardsman would have known that the quickest and quietest mode of entry through the skylight would have been to simply jump down to a hand-arrest, and then drop the rest of the way. The skylight wasn’t especially high. Jump down, brace, drop: quick and simple. Forget this dangling and grunting with your legs waving around, trying to brace a foot hold.

‘Oh, for feth’s sake,’ said Varl, ‘this is just too painful to watch.’

He raised his shotgun, and blasted the intruder with a single shell. The noise was deafening, and the acrid fyceline fumes stung his nostrils. The intruder was thrown backwards through the air with such force that it snatched down the man playing out his line too. The second man smashed in through the skylight, yanked by the rope, and struck his face against the skylight rim with such a tremendous impact that Varl winced.

Both men landed on the walkway floor under the skylight in a tangled, unmoving heap.

Varl racked the pump of his weapon to chamber a fresh shell.

Then somebody, a third man that neither he nor Cant had yet identified, began to shoot down through the roof with a heavy stubber.

Meryn and Leyr, at the freight access, heard the shooting begin upstairs. They knew that neither Varl nor Cant was packing a stubber heavy enough to make that distinctive chugging snort, but there wasn’t much they could do about it.

The small metal saw had just finished with the lock on the loading dock hatch.

The heavy door swung in, slack on its hinges, and somebody sprayed las-fire through the opening as an aperitif. Meryn and Leyr had already planted themselves behind heavy supporting walls, and the las-shots spanked off masonry.

A second spray came in, to wash down the first, and then the first intruder charged.

Leyr had no angle on the hatchway so he shot the hatch instead. At short range, the huge round from the bolt-action rifle dented the metal hatch, and slammed it with considerable force into the men coming through the entrance. Meryn heard yelps of pain and cursing. One of the intruders kicked the door back open on its hinges, but before he could get off a shot, Meryn had dropped him with two sure body hits from his las.

Somebody outside raked another, much longer spray of las-fire in through the door, forcing Meryn back into hiding. The bolts scorched the air beside his flinching face, grazing close.

Leyr tried to repeat his trick of slamming the hatch with a rifle round, but the body of the man Meryn had dropped was blocking the frame and wedging it ajar.

Another long spray of las-fire hosed in. Leyr made the play dead gesture to Meryn. They were swaddled by a ruddy, close darkness and the flowing fumes of gunfire and brick dust sucking out into the cold night. The hatchway had the soft, natural light of the outside world behind it, a seeping grey radiance that seemed to Meryn and Leyr to be as bright as a full moon’s light. Instinctively, they’d clamped their eyes shut every time the las started to hose, in order to minimise flash-shock, and retain their night vision.

The hatch, probably steered by the muzzle of a las weapon, began to swing open provocatively. It moved slowly, suggesting a tantalising target about to be revealed. It was an old trick, and both Ghosts knew it, a tease to coax them into taking a shot and revealing themselves. A young or inexperienced gunman would be tempted to take a pop, even though there was no real target to hit. He’d take the pop, and give himself away.

The men outside weren’t sure if their liberal bursts of las had killed off any defenders inside the hatchway, and they wanted to be reasonably certain they had, before committing.

In the circumstances, it was simply a case of resisting the temptation of that early pop. You had to stay down and quiet about ten or twenty times longer than felt right. You had to wait what felt like an eternity, the blood banging through your temples like water through a sluice. You had to have the patience of a statue, the patience of a steel-and-velvet card player, who could hold his nerve long past the point where anyone else would fold or call.

Meryn and Leyr were part of Rawne’s inner circle for two principal reasons. One was that neither of them had the most crashing respect for rules and regulations. The other was that they were both excellent card players.

After what seemed like an eternity, an eternity in which suns could have been born and gone out again, and dynasties of saurians and mammals could have arisen and receded, a silhouette slowly edged in through the open hatch, black against the grey. Meryn and Leyr didn’t move.

They didn’t move when the second silhouette appeared either. It stepped over the body in the doorway.

A third silhouette appeared.

An excellent card player knows you can only raise so far.

Leyr’s bolt-action rifle boomed like a howitzer in the quiet darkness, and ejected the third figure from the hatchway and out onto the dock. The man simply disappeared, as if violent decompression had sucked him out of the doorway.

Meryn didn’t waste shots. The first and second men were in line with him, and closely spaced. Meryn knew that at this kind of range, a lasround from a rifle could go through two torsos as easily as it could go through one. There was no need for a burst of full auto. He fired, and dropped the men together, as one, tumbling them down in a tangle of limbs as they clawed in vain at each other for support.

There was silence. Nothing stirred beyond the hatch. Leyr drew his rifle open slowly and quietly, and chambered another massive round.

He and Meryn would wait once again, just to be sure.

The red street door at the front of Zolunder’s got its locks kicked out for the second time in three days. Banda and Daur let the three men who entered come all the way inside, and then filled the lower hall with a house-clearing crossfire of shotgun rounds and las. The whole thing was done in less than ten seconds.

Letting Daur cover her with the las, Banda slid down the corridor to the front door with her back to the cold wall, her shotgun low at her side. She edged around the three dead men on the corridor floor, one of whom was still twitching out the last of his nerve memories in a horizontal chorea.

She felt the cold night air against her face, and checked the street. There was no one left outside at the front, just some scuff marks in the snow on the steps.

The stubber fire from the top floor was chattering furiously, the way the stitching machines in the garment-fab over the yard had been, the night she’d arrived for her job interview.

It sounded bad.

Behind her, in the chilly corridor, Daur heard something else that sounded worse.

Elodie had screamed.

Varl threw himself back to avoid the cannon fire tearing down through the roof. Clouds of tile dust and splintered lathe were exploding out of the ceiling; the stub rounds were punching huge, frayed holes in the carpet. He fired his shotgun at the roof, and made a large hole of his own, with all the spalling, debris and force trauma poking out through the roof rather than in through the ceiling. Varl tried to judge the angles and work out where the man had to be if he was firing the weapon that was making the holes.

Cant opened up with his old autogun, and simply raked the stuffing out of the ceiling with the contents of an entire clip.

There was silence when he was done: silence, except for a lot of dust, and the rattle of particle debris spattering down out of the lathework. Cant anxiously changed his clip, not realising that he’d already made the kill.

The man with the stubber, along with a considerable quantity of snow, and a lot of broken roof tiles, came through the ceiling as the rotting and frail old joists that Cant had sawn through with his gunfire gave out. The landing shook with the weight of the fall, and the slam of cold air rushed dust into their faces.

Varl coughed and spat, and put two shots through the body twisted up in the roof debris. The fether was probably dead, but he had inconvenienced Varl, and Varl liked to take these things personally.

Varl looked at Cant, and spat out some more dust-thick phlegm.

‘You see?’ he asked. ‘Sometimes you can, can’t you?’

Cant grinned. ‘Yeah, I really can,’ he said.

Rawne reached the service gate, but it was shut. There was no sign of anyone trying to force it from outside.

He paused, puzzled. Gunfire was bursting off through the club around him, especially on the top floor. He was confused. He had been sure the main thrust would have come from the gate. It’s what he would have done.

Maybe Lev Csoni just didn’t have the smarts that Rawne had credited him with.

The service gate was a big, reinforced hatch in the club’s east wall, secured by heavy bolts that padlocked in place. As it wasn’t in use, the area in front of it was used for storage, and crates of drink had been stacked there.

Rawne narrowed his eyes and looked again. The stacks of crates had been partially pushed back, pulled aside so that the hatch had clearance to open.

They’d been pulled aside ready. The keys to the padlocks had been left on the top of one of the crates.

Now he understood. He got it, as clear as day.

Csoni had been expecting someone to let him in.

Rawne picked up the keys. He decided it may as well be him.

Xomat, the muscle, had the las-snub pressed to Elodie’s throat. The cantor-finches were going wild in their cages, fluttering apoplectically like overwound clockwork toys. Some had flown into the bars so hard that they’d stunned themselves, and dropped onto the floors of their cages.

‘What are you doing?’ Elodie yelled, feeling the gun against her throat. ‘What are you doing?’

She’d freed Xomat so that he could help them. If Lev Csoni was coming down on their heads, they were going to need all the guns they could muster. She’d ripped off the tape wrapping him to the chair. He’d spat out the gag.

She’d actually said, ‘We’re all in this together.’

Xomat evidently saw it quite differently.

He’d grabbed her, and held her in an armlock while he fished a las-snub out of a magnetic holster under the bar till. Elodie hadn’t known that Urbano kept a back-up there.

‘Shut up,’ Xomat told her. He had his arm around her neck, and his weapon was poking into the side of her head. He began to manhandle her in the direction of the hallway that led to the service gate.

‘What are you doing?’ she yelled again, struggling. Despite the very real threat of the weapon, she was refusing to cooperate.

‘For Throne’s sake, Xomat! I know they tied you up, but Csoni’s sent a strike team against us!’

‘I know,’ said Xomat.

Elodie went limp, and stopped fighting. Now she understood.

‘Oh, you worthless son of a–’ she began.

Daur appeared in the parlour doorway opposite them. He threw his lasrifle onto the floor, and drew his laspistol. They faced each other in the dark red gloom of the unpowered parlour.

Xomat yanked Elodie close, so tight that she gasped for breath. He made a shield out of her, the gun planted against her head.

‘Back off!’ he offered.

Daur took a step forward, and aimed the pistol, straight-armed.

‘Let her go,’ he told the muscle.

Xomat graphically outlined something that Daur might like to do, provided he could find a number of specialist agricultural items, some livestock, and a means of contacting an elderly female relative at short notice.

‘He’s in on it!’ Elodie squealed.

‘Shut up,’ Xomat barked, vicing her neck with his forearm.

‘You’re in on it?’ Daur asked. ‘You’re what, the inside man? Feth, you must have been gakked off when we turned up and taped you to a fething chair.’

‘It was a setback,’ Xomat admitted. ‘But since I didn’t open the door, Lev’s coming in the old-fashioned way, and that means you’ll be leaving in a zip-up carry bag.’

‘If Lev’s coming in hard,’ Daur said, ‘he’s made the worst mistake of his life. So let her go. Now.’

Xomat shook his head, and pulled Elodie closer.

‘You’re going to let me past, or I swear I’ll put one through her head.’

Daur half-shrugged.

‘Actually, she doesn’t mean that much to me, so that’s not much of a threat. Do what you like.’

Elodie’s eyes widened.

‘I’m not joking!’ exclaimed Xomat.

‘Me neither,’ said Daur, focusing his aim. ‘In fact, she matters so little, I may just shoot you through her and have done with it. We’re trained to do that, did you know? Specialist marksman stuff. I know where the soft targets are, you know, the places where a body isn’t bone dense. I can hit an area like that, and the round punches clean through into you. You might as well be hiding behind a curtain.’

‘You let me pass!’ Xomat yelled.

‘Gut, for instance,’ Daur said, lining up his weapon.

‘Holy Throne!’ Elodie wailed.

Xomat roared, and aimed the las-snub at Daur instead.

Daur fired once.

The las-bolt blew out Xomat’s forehead, and toppled him onto his back. He still had his arm halfway around Elodie’s neck, and she went over with him.

Daur rushed to her, and pulled her up.

‘Are you all right?’

‘What the hell was that?’ she yelled. ‘Soft targets?’

‘Take it easy!’

‘I don’t mean anything to you?’ Her eyes were staring in angry disbelief. The shock was still a few seconds off. Elodie had spats of blood on the side of her face from Xomat’s explosive demise.

‘Listen!’ Daur urged, trying to wipe the spats away, ‘I had a good head shot. Right over your shoulder. I just had to get him to take the weapon away from your head in case he pulled the trigger with a muscle twitch when I took him down. I had to get him to change his aim.’

‘You were going to shoot me too!’

‘I wasn’t!’ Daur yelled back.

‘You said you were!’

Ban Daur realised that she was a little too flustered to grasp any of his explanations and calm down.

So he kissed her instead.

Rawne drew back the last of the bolts and opened the service gate. The three men waiting outside started to move towards him, but then stopped in surprise.

Rawne had them casually, but securely, covered with his battered Blood Pact lasrifle. The three of them were armed, but they instantly recognised that raising any of their weapons was going to constitute a terminal decision.

‘Which one of you is Lev Csoni?’ Rawne asked. He knew full well it was the slightly balding, ruddy-faced man in the middle, because he recognised him as the one the girl Elodie had picked out on the pict-feed. He was, however, feeling sportive.

‘Uh… I am,’ Csoni said.

‘You picked a really, really bad night to do this, Csoni,’ said Rawne, and shot the other two men.

Csoni turned white and began to quiver.

‘Toss your weapon outside,’ Rawne told him. Csoni obeyed.

‘Now drag those two inside the gate, and bolt it shut.’

Csoni did as he was told. When he had finished, he looked at Rawne.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Let’s go,’ Rawne replied, and ushered with his gun.

Rawne walked Csoni into the parlour. On the roof, Varl had just reconnected the power and the lights were flickering back on. Rawne heard the air-circulation cycling up too, and felt it starting to skim off the smells of fear and sweat, gunsmoke, blood and birdshit. The air began to cool.

Banda was watching the front door. Daur was comforting Elodie at the bar. Rawne raised an eyebrow. He knew precisely where comforting like that could lead a man.

Leyr came in from the back.

‘Rear’s secure,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the hatch blocked again.’

‘And no one’s lying around dead outside?’ Rawne asked.

‘Who the Throne are you people?’ Csoni muttered.

‘We dragged all the stiffs in before we shut the hatch,’ said Leyr.

Rawne nodded.

‘And no one got perforated?’

‘Varl and the lad report they’re intact so, no,’ said Leyr.

‘Which outfit are you working for?’ Csoni pleaded. ‘You’re not Urbano’s regulars. Look, I can pay you. Pay you good!’

‘You’re keeping him alive, why?’ Banda called from the front access, nodding at Rawne’s prisoner.

‘Collateral,’ replied Rawne.

‘Please, which outfit are you with?’ Csoni implored.

‘The Tanith First and Only,’ said Rawne.

Csoni blinked. ‘Who?’

‘What do you mean, “collateral”?’ asked Daur.

Rawne shrugged.

‘Csoni’s… what was the word again?’

‘Outfit?’ asked Leyr.

Rawne sat down at the bar and poured himself a sacra.

‘Csoni’s outfit decided that tonight was the night they’d take down Zolunder’s. Now, I’m only guessing, because I have no idea of their resources, but I figure if they don’t come back, then maybe the outfit will send another strike team, and another, and maybe even another and, frankly, by that stage, I will have become pissed off with the whole thing. So, we’re keeping Mister Csoni alive in case we need a negotiating chip. Leyr, tape his sorry arse to that chair. Mamzel?’

Rawne was looking at Elodie.

‘What?’

‘Don’t unwrap this one, all right?’

Elodie nodded.

Rawne sipped his sacra. A slight smile whispered across his lips.

‘What?’ asked Banda.

Rawne sighed.

‘In hindsight,’ he said quietly, holding his glass up to the light, ‘this entire fething thing was a bad idea. I know. I recognise the fact. I admit my mistake. The op, the scam, the getting arrested, the whole thing, was a wrong-headed feth-up from the very start. We are still, all of us, in a very bad, dark place, and the only glimmer of hope in the distance is the sunlight shining out of Viktor Hark’s backside. That, you’ll agree, is a dismal prospect.’

He took another sip.

‘But, you know what?’ he asked. ‘If you think about why we all did this, what drove us to it, I’ll tell you this… feth, I’m not bored any more.’

No one spoke.

‘In fact,’ said Rawne, ‘this is the most fun I’ve had in ages.’

He began to chuckle. Leyr began to chuckle too.

After a moment, the chuckling had become proper laughter, and Banda had joined in.

Even Daur couldn’t suppress the grin on his face.

Meryn entered the parlour.

‘And then Meryn walks in and spoils it all,’ said Rawne. The laughter died away.

‘What?’ asked Meryn.

‘Give us the bad news,’ said Rawne. ‘I can tell it’s going to be bad news from the look on your face.’

Meryn pointed at Csoni.

‘That chump’s EM bomb screwed everything,’ he said.

‘How?’ asked Rawne.

‘The vox is down and dead. We’ve lost contact with Aarlem, and I think it’s permanent.’

Hark was snoring. Ludd tugged his sleeve.

‘What?’ Hark asked. ‘I’m not asleep, Ludd.’

‘Of course not, sir,’ said Ludd.

‘What time is it?’ Hark asked, sitting up. It was gloomy in the temple house, with just the glow of the vox-caster dials and the snow-light coming in through the windows.

‘Early,’ said Ludd, ‘and late. Beltayn’s taken over from Rerval.’

‘And something’s awry?’ asked Hark.

‘Beltayn tried to make the scheduled check in,’ said Ludd. ‘He’s tried six times in the last half an hour. No joy. Major Rawne’s signal has gone dark.’

Ana Curth woke up in the middle of utter darkness with a gasp.

She steadied herself. She was in her cot in Aarlem.

She’d been dreaming about Zweil and how she’d break the news to him. In her dream, he wouldn’t listen to reason. She understood denial. It was one of the recognised stages.

She got out of bed in her single billet, a luxury reserved for only the most senior officers. Gaunt had secured her room for her. The deck was cold under her bare feet. Outside, it seemed to have stopped snowing at last. The night sky was oddly grey, flowing with departing clouds.

She’d talked to Dorden, and they’d decided that the news would be better coming from her. Zweil liked Curth, he treated her with affection and concern. Better from her.

But how to do it?

Ana Curth knew all about denial, because she’d denied herself everything, including the hope of salvation, in the time she’d spent on Gereon. She knew what a death sentence felt like, too, because Gereon had all but killed her.

How could she break it to the dear old ayatani and make him understand? She got dressed, and let herself out of her room.

She needed guidance. She decided she’d sit herself down in the temple house and reflect. The calm darkness would soothe her, and allow her mind to rally. No one would be in the temple house at this hour.

She pushed open the door into the temple, but was stopped in her tracks.

Hark, Beltayn and Ludd looked around at her with guilty faces from the glow of a vox-caster propped up on a pew.

‘What the–?’ she asked.

‘Ah,’ said Hark, rising to his feet. ‘Ana, this is going to be a little awkward.’

The snowstorm had died off, and left in its vacuum a deadness of thick darkness, a stagnant hollow of night that had swallowed the whole city.

The sky had cleared, and the stars came out like static snowflakes, but the air temperature had dropped so sharply that engine fluids began to freeze. Spotter Valkyries and search birds were called down to wait for dawn. The Tanith hunt elements were recalled, unwillingly, to Section, to wait for first light.

In the empty streets of Old Side, the philia kept hunting. Eyl’s men threaded corners and side turnings in the vicinity of the refurb, their breath wisping into the glassy air from the mouth slits of their masks. Like the night, the trail had gone cold.

Eyl and the witch sheltered nearby.

‘Find him,’ he told his sister.

She shrugged. She was sitting on the floor in a heap of her folded skirts.

‘I can’t!’ she hissed through her veil.

They’d broken into the house together. It was a nothing special place, just a residence on the by-road, a home to six members of the same family and two servants, shuttered in because of the snowstorm.

Ulrike had killed them all. Like a daemon, like a fury, she had cut them down. The image of her frenzy made Eyl shudder, and he had done his share of things in his time. What disturbed him was the mania of it, and the fact that Ulrike had been able to make cuts like sword wounds with the merest flicks of her fingers.

So much blood had been spilled, with sufficient frenzy, that the walls had become pressure-painted, and the air was still dewed with aspirated molecules of blood. There was a blood mist in the house.

Ulrike was trying to read the blood. She had eviscerated all the corpses, so as to read their prognostications.

She flung the clotted ropes of meat aside, and stamped her feet furiously in the growing lake of blood.

‘I can’t see him!’ she shrilled. ‘I can’t see him. He’s hiding from me!’

‘How can he do that?’ Eyl asked her, holding her hands to calm her down. ‘Is he a witch too?’

‘No,’ she breathed, ‘he’s just a man. No witchery, no witchery. He just seems to know a few tricks.’

‘You can get through tricks,’ Eyl said, stroking the back of her veil as he held her close. ‘You can get to him. You can do anything.’

‘I can,’ she nodded. ‘I know I can.’

TWENTY-FIVE

THE NET CLOSES

The night was nearly done. The first grey stains of day had begun to soak into the sky. The cold, glass-clear night that had followed the snowstorm had bred, by morning a translucent fog that hung upon the silent, snow-bound city like the breath of a winter daemon. From the windows of Jaume’s studio, the street was a smoky ghost.

Ghosts hiding in a ghost town.

After Criid’s departure, Gaunt had been unable to rest. He’d paced the studio, and the grim rooms adjoining it, while the others slept. He flicked through more of Jaume’s albums, and studied the eyes of faces that would never come home, as if they might offer him some advice or wisdom.

He thought about what Criid had said, and the foolishness of it made him smile again, but it also made him think about Slaydo, and Hyrkans, and the Gate, and so the smile quickly vanished.

Jaume had a large old desk in the room next to his studio. Like everything else beyond the public rooms of his premises, it was cluttered and untidy. Gaunt sat at it, and picked through the stacks of yellowing paper for the sake of distraction. There were bundles of letters tied with ribbon, sheaves of communications, and orders and requests, miserable, grief-strangled messages from widows and bereaved families. These were the fuel of Jaume’s business. Gaunt wasn’t sure how he felt about it any more. He wasn’t sure if he thought Jaume was some kind of ghoul making money out of other people’s loss, or if he was actually, in some counter-intuitive way, offering them some real comfort. The comfort wasn’t authentic, but perhaps the effect was.

On one side of Jaume’s desk was a battered old manual rubricator. Beside it was a deep pile of papers that Gaunt, at first, presumed to be invoices, or perhaps handbill brochures.

They were something else entirely. They were epitaphs. They were short, descriptive obituary notices, recording the heroic deeds of dead men. Each one was addressed, and Jaume had clearly composed each account individually. Gaunt began to read them.

‘Those are private papers,’ said Jaume. He wandered into the room, and found Gaunt at the desk.

Gaunt nodded, but kept reading.

‘How much do you get for each one?’ he asked.

‘The cost isn’t the issue,’ said Jaume.

‘It’s a price, not a cost,’ said Gaunt. ‘How much? A crown? Two crowns? Five crowns for a particularly lurid exploit or a mention in dispatches?’

‘I charge a standard rate of two crowns,’ Jaume admitted.

‘And how many can you churn out in a sitting?’ Gaunt asked, leafing through the stack. ‘A dozen? Twenty?’

‘I don’t churn them out,’ said Jaume.

‘Maybe, but it’s not what you’d call hard work, is it?’ asked Gaunt. ‘I mean, two crowns a letter, that’s good money, considering there’s no research to do.’

Jaume didn’t reply.

Gaunt held up one letter.

‘There was no Cantical Gate. Good name, though.’ He gestured with another. ‘In the zone you mention here, there was no “valiant fighting on the sixth day”, because the action was over in four. In this one? The commanding officer is an invention. In this one, you’ve actually awarded a medal that doesn’t exist.’

He looked over at Jaume.

‘You just make it all up, at two crowns a notice. It’s just like the portraits. You just make it all up.’

‘The content doesn’t matter,’ Jaume answered quietly. ‘Who’s going to care? Who’s going to know? Who’s ever going to spot the contrivance or point out an error?’

‘Well, me?’ Gaunt suggested.

‘With respect,’ Jaume replied, ‘in fifteen years, you’re the first person to set foot in here, who was actually on Balhaut at the time. No, sir, the details don’t matter. To the bereaved and the grieving, to the heartbroken and the inconsolable, the details aren’t remotely important. All that matters is a handsome portrait of the soul they’ve lost and, if it helps, a few lines that speak to good character, sound duty, and a minimum of suffering. Two crowns, sir, is a small price to pay for that kind of easement and solace.’

Gaunt shook his head, and dropped the sheaf of notices back onto the desk.

‘I must remember,’ he said, ‘to remind my men the next time we go into battle that the details don’t matter.’

Jaume snorted.

‘I think you’re being rather naive, sir,’ he said. ‘Why do you suppose I was so eager to secure the commission to make your portrait?’

‘I would imagine there was two crowns in it for you,’ Gaunt replied.

Jaume laughed humourlessly.

‘This is my living, colonel-commissar, this is my trade. I stalk a city that almost died on a world that almost died memorialising those who were lost. I never get to meet the living. I never get to meet the men who won the war and came through that fire alive.’

Gaunt didn’t reply.

‘You think I trivialise it,’ said Jaume. ‘Perhaps I do. I manufacture heroes. I’ve never met a real one before.’

‘I’m no hero, Jaume,’ said Gaunt.

Jaume laughed.

‘If you’re not, then God-Emperor help us all.’

‘I appreciate your understanding in this,’ said Hark to Curth quietly. They stood in the temple house, watching Beltayn and Rerval work the caster. Nothing had come through from Rawne in a very long time. Dawn was on them, and impatience was beginning to turn into irritation.

‘I’m surprised you would even question my response, Viktor,’ Curth replied. ‘I was on Gereon with Gaunt. I was on Gereon for longer than anyone. I appreciate the grey areas of this more than anyone, and my loyalty to Gaunt is absolute. You could have trusted me earlier.’

‘It wasn’t a question of trust,’ said Hark. ‘I didn’t want to put anybody in a difficult position unless it was necessary.’

‘How long are you going to give it?’ Curth asked, nodding to the vox-caster.

Hark shrugged.

‘And if you can’t raise Rawne, what else can we do to reach out to Gaunt and help him?’

‘Short of taking on the agents of the Inquisition, disobeying direct orders and bursting out of Aarlem Fortress by force if necessary you mean?’

‘Those would certainly be less favourable options,’ she replied.

‘Then I really have no idea,’ he replied.

The Imperial hunters set out again from Section, at daybreak, into a city hazed white with thick winter fog. The fog blurred but magnified the sun, creating a strange, luminous glare in the air.

Less than four kilometres from the Imperials, within the projected sweep radius, the philia circled and re-circled the small patch of city turf in the vicinity of the refurb, worrying like a pack of blood hounds at a scent trail that had been strong and was suddenly gone.

In his bolt hole, Eyl knew that time was draining away. They needed success fast before their luck ran out altogether. Every time Karhunan or one of the other men checked back to the house with a negative report, Eyl’s agony increased.

His sister was at work in the back room of the house. She’d been labouring all night, weaving ugly witchcraft in a corpse room rank with blood. He kept hearing her squeal and moan as frustration followed frustration.

Just after dawn, she called out to him. He went into the corpse room. She had laid out the chart of Inner Balopolis and the Oligarchy, the chart that Valdyke had provided, and which she’d used to pinpoint Section. She had spread it on the floor, and it was soaked with blood.

‘Have you found him?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she whispered, and shook her head under her veil. ‘I cannot see him at all.’

She pointed to one tiny part of the map that the spattered blood had curiously not blemished.

‘But I can see where I can’t see,’ she said.

Criid approached her destination well before dawn, on the cusp of the change from frost-glass cold to phantom fog. Gaunt had told her there wasn’t much point making a direct approach before mid-morning.

The snow-thick streets were quiet, though at this end of town, there was more activity than in the unnaturally still thoroughfares of Old Side, beneath the Blood Pact’s warp-crafted spell.

She circled the target twice, assessed it, and then looked for somewhere to rest. A small public chapel, dedicated to the beati herself, occupied a street corner close by, and Criid found that it was the sort of place left unlocked at all hours of the day or night.

She clunked open the heavy wooden door and let herself in out of the bitter cold of the empty night. The place was old and uneven, stone built with heavy wooden beams, and a fading painted ceiling. Glow-globes had been left lit up in the vault, casting a soft yellow light, and the last flames of votive candles lit the day before were sputtering out in the metal rack in front of the beati’s effigy.

Criid curled up in one of the choir stalls, and used the pack containing her change of clothes as a pillow. She got a couple of hours of uneasy sleep.

When she woke, the chapel was bathed in a soft, white luminescence. The sun had come up, and brought the fog up with it, and strange, diffuse white light was glowing in through the chapel’s windows.

She picked up her pack and went through into the small rooms at the rear of the chapel where the ayatani priests kept their sacraments and some of the holy codices. It was a drab, cobwebby place that was obviously seldom visited. She lit a glow-globe, and began to get changed into the clothes in the bag. The clothes had all come from Jaume’s dressing up racks, as had the small, battered case of make-up. Criid couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to apply any face paint that wasn’t camo or black-out. It wasn’t a talent she’d ever developed, growing up, and she was concerned that she might overdo it and end up looking like one of those frightful transvestite castrati at the Circe du Khulan. She set the make-up case to one side, unopened.

Jaume had helped her pick out the clothes. He had shown some interest in her choices. Apparently, a widow’s dress was called weeds, and the best were made of bombazine, crepe and fine lace. Criid had run her hands across the jet silk of one of the dresses that Jaume was showing her, and thought how ironic it was that she was selecting clothes to allow her to play the part of a widow, when, inside, she’d been a widow since the Gereon Liberation.

Jaume had suggested a particular dress in purple, which, he said, was slighted mourning. The colour change from black to purple denoted that the mourning period had lasted more than three years. The widow was no longer obliged to wear her veil all the time, and she could make sparing use of marginally more decorative keepsake jewellery. A further slighting, to mauve, followed after another year, and signalled the eventual return to the world.

Criid put on the slighted mourning, and the shoes and gloves that Jaume had selected, and then the veil. She decided that the widow she had become was so anguished that she had no time for fripperies like make-up, so she went without.

Commissar Blenner had only just been seated at his regular table when the visitor was announced.

It was a dreadful morning, with the snow still thick, and a hellish fog like artillery smoke, and that on top of a couple of days when the city had been quite turned upside down. He’d heard the most appalling stories about some business up at Section that had sealed the centre of the city off.

At least the snowstorm had stopped. Blenner had a zero tolerance approach to barracks food, so he slipped his driver the usual bonus to convey him through the elemental murk to the Mithredates for a late breakfast of tanzato pastry and thick, sludgy caffeine.

There was hardly anyone there. The staff, in their liveries of crimson, black and gold, seemed glad of something to do, and his breakfast arrived in record time.

‘There is a visitor to see you,’ the majordomo said as he was tucking in.

‘Really?’

‘A lady, sir.’

‘Good show.’

‘She’s asking for you by name.’

‘Twas ever thus.’ Blenner dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘Did she say who she was, by any chance?’

The majordomo nodded.

‘She says you knew her husband, sir. His name was Vergule.’

Blenner frowned. ‘Vergule? I never even knew the man was married. Well I never. All right, you’d better bring her over.’

‘I’m sorry to have to remind you, sir, that ladies are not permitted in the main rooms of the Mithredates,’ said the majordomo, ‘but if sir so desires, I can arrange for her to be conducted to the day room so you can greet her there?’

Blenner glanced down at the breakfast he had barely touched.

‘Oh, all right,’ he said, scraping his chair back, ‘but can you have some caffeine brought through to the day room? And, maybe, the dessert trolley?’

‘Mamzel,’ said Blenner. ‘I’m Vaynom Blenner. I am honoured by your visit.’

The widow was veiled. She stood waiting for Blenner by the windows of the day room, beyond which the phantom white morning was uncurling. Waiters brought in a tray of caffeine and a large trolley of cakes and desserts.

‘Commissar Blenner, it’s good of you to see me.’

‘Not at all. I knew your husband well, and was damned sorry to hear of his passing. I take it that his memorial is what brings you to Balhaut?’

‘Yes, but it’s not what brings me here today,’ she replied.

Blenner offered her a seat.

‘Drink, perhaps?’

‘No, thank you.’ She waited until the club staff had left the room.

‘Something to eat, then?’ Blenner gestured towards the trolley. ‘The crustuko is especially good.’

Forget the crustuko, Criid thought. Look at the almond sepis. What a glorious thing.

‘Thank you, no,’ she said, with great reluctance.

‘How can I help you, then?’ he asked.

‘I don’t need your help, but a mutual friend does.’

‘Indeed. Who?’

‘Ibram Gaunt.’

Blenner stared at her. ‘Ibram?’

‘That’s who I said.’

‘I say, what’s going on?’

‘Gaunt’s in a difficult position,’ Criid said. ‘You’re the only person he can call on for help. I’m the only means of contacting you.’

‘You’re not Vergule’s widow at all, are you?’ asked Blenner.

‘My name’s Criid. I’m one of his Ghosts.’

‘Tanith?’

‘No, Verghast,’ she replied.

Blenner leaned back. ‘Look, this is all rather silly. Is Ibram playing some sort of practical joke? Because I tell you now it doesn’t suit him.’

‘No joke,’ said Criid. ‘There is some necessary subterfuge involved, and for that you have my apologies. I had to get in here to find you.’

‘How do I know this isn’t some trick?’ asked Blenner. He was looking decidedly uneasy.

‘Gaunt sent me,’ she replied. ‘He said to say that the day you first met, you lied to him about your father.’

Blenner snorted. It was true enough. A life time ago in the schola progenium on Ignacius Cardinal, two little boys in a draughty corridor.

‘Very well. What’s going on?’ Blenner asked.

‘I’ll explain it as simply as I can,’ said Criid. She paused. ‘I’ve just got to do this first.’

She got up, and helped herself to a large wedge of sepis from the trolley, yanked back her veil, and began to eat. Blenner watched her with wry amusement.

‘What’s Ibram got himself into now?’ he asked.

She told him, between bites, and detailed the events of the last two days as clearly and simply as she could. Blenner’s amusement turned to concern, and then to something that Criid was alarmed to see looked like fear.

‘On Balhaut?’ Blenner asked. ‘The Archenemy is active on Balhaut?’

She nodded. Blenner turned pale. He’d cut himself a slice of sepis while she’d been talking, but he now showed no interest in touching it.

‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘We have to take it to Section.’

‘No.’

‘For Throne’s sake!’

‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’ Criid asked. ‘Nothing’s safe. We don’t know how deeply the enemy has infiltrated. Gaunt can only trust people he knows personally. He needs you to meet him.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You, sir. You and perhaps a small group of Guard that you trust from your regiment. He needs a bodyguard, fire-team strength.’

‘Oh, this just isn’t on!’

‘And transport,’ said Criid.

Blenner rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s going to be the death of me. This is typical of his nonsense. I have a good mind to go straight to the commissar general–’

‘If that’s your decision, sir,’ she told him, ‘you won’t get out of this room.’

Blenner was silent for a moment.

‘When does he want this meeting?’

‘Four o’clock,’ she said.

‘And where?’

‘He said you’d know where,’ she replied. ‘He said you’d know the place that he’d made sure isn’t there.’

‘What? Riddles on top of everything else?’

‘That’s exactly what he told me to say.’

Blenner rose with a long sigh.

‘You’d better come with me to my barracks. I’ll get things in motion.’

Side by side, they hurried from the day room down the stairs and out towards the club’s main entrance. In the foyer, Blenner looked around for a staffer to order up his car.

A man approached them. He was not wearing club livery.

‘Commissar Blenner,’ he said, more of a statement than a question.

‘What about it?’

‘Your association with Ibram Gaunt is a matter of record. We’ve had you under surveillance since yesterday.’

Criid began to back away. She’d lowered her veil before leaving the day room. She reached down to where her straight silver was taped to her thigh under her bombazine skirts.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Blenner asked the man.

‘I think it’s time you came in for questioning,’ the man replied. He looked at Criid. ‘Your friend too.’

Two more men had closed in behind them from the direction of the cloakroom. To Criid’s horror, they had precisely the same face as the first man.

‘My name is Sirkle,’ the man said, showing them his rosette. ‘Do not try to resist.’

TWENTY-SIX

A PLACE THAT ISN’T THERE

The Inquisition’s Valkyries had been grounded by the bright fog, which capped the summit of Balopolis and the Oligarchy like an arctic ice-shelf half a kilometre thick.

With the Tanith scouts along its leading edge, the main Imperial sweep had switched its attentions from the central routes of the city, along the main east-west avenues, to the maze of streets and narrow lanes of Northern Old Side. In slow, meticulous fashion, they threaded the lines of the tenements and hab stacks, and searched the under-barns, the lower sinks, and the long, semi-derelict municipal allotments on their suspended irrigation platforms above the highways. The ground was dead-white with almost undisturbed snow, and the air was bright white with pearl fog. Visibility was down to twenty metres in places.

Kolea and Baskevyl moved with the main force behind the scout line, keeping close to the vox truck that was rolling with the search formation at walking pace, and snorting regular blurts of yellow exhaust from its upright stacks into the smoke-white air.

The cold made their eyes water and their cheeks flush. Kolea’s nose had turned red, a fact that Baskevyl had seen fit to mention several times. For his part, Kolea kept going on about a particularly good caffeine that was served in a dining hall that he had taken to frequenting on the Aarlem side of the river. They both knew they were talking about nothing, that this idle chat between two men, who had become good friends and comrades in the five years since their regiments had been amalgamated, was all that stood between them and screaming frustration.

The tension had become unbearable. The progress had become so slow. Every hour or so, they took it in turns to go up to the scouting line and walk with Mkoll or Bonin or Jajjo for a while, just to see how things were going. The frustration there was palpable too. Neither Kolea nor Baskevyl had ever known the famous Tanith scouts to be so adrift. They had both read what amounted to a helpless fury in Mkoll’s eyes.

‘The snow’s lying to us,’ he had told them both, separately, and the words had made both of them shiver. The Tanith scout master’s ability to track was legendary. It was almost regarded as preternatural. If something was outfoxing him, if something was deluding his wits and his honed senses, then it had to be seriously unnatural.

The toxic curse of warpcraft lay heavily across this ancient street.

Due to their proximity to the search areas, squads of troopers from the Kapaj First had been drafted in from Oligarchy Fortress to assist with canvassing. The men, all young lads with the typical stocky frames and olive skin-tone of the Kapaj, were dutifully and seriously moving from house to house along the search perimeter, knocking on doors and asking the residents if they recognised holo-picts of Gaunt’s face or had seen anything untoward.

Baskevyl and Kolea chatted about the way the area’s residents seemed to be behaving so oddly. It often took the Kapaj canvassers two or three knocks to get a reply, and the residents were wary and unforthcoming. Scared, pale faces could regularly be spotted looking down on the passing Imperial search party from upper windows. Families had holed up in cellars and vaults as they had done in wartime. Merchants and shop owners had pulled down their shutters, and hidden in their back rooms. Nobody, it seemed, had seen or heard anything since the snows began.

‘Snow’s not rare here, is it?’ Baskevyl asked.

Kolea shook his head. ‘It’s normal. Seasonal. I think it’s snowed at least once already since we shipped planetside.’

‘So why is everybody treating it like the end of the world?’ asked Baskevyl. ‘Why’s everybody hiding? Why are the streets empty?’

Kolea didn’t have an answer.

One thing that Baskevyl and Kolea didn’t chat about was the Kapaj regiment itself. The Kapaj First was a new founding, nothing exceptional, reasonably promising. Gaunt had been appointed to the regiment as visiting instructor as part of his retirement duties on Balhaut. He’d taken quite a shine to them, and took his mentoring responsibilities seriously, visiting them upwards of two or three times a week. Sometimes, he’d even taken his senior officers with him to brief the young men, none of whom had seen any combat, about the actual niceties of war. Baskevyl had been up to Oligarchy Fortress with Gaunt twice, Kolea three times.

There had been rumours that Gaunt was going to get the Kapaj command permanently. The Kapaj First, all told, was nearly fifteen thousand strong. Someone had started the gossip that the Kapaj was going to be Gaunt’s ticket to the rank of general or general marshal, a significant step on the ladder to a full high-staff position, such as an appointment militant or a marshallcy of guard. The Kapaj First would be his new First and Only. The gossip also suggested that if Gaunt were to be elevated in this way, the Tanith First would be broken up, and rendered into discrete specialist teams to supervise training or operate as special advisors. This, the gossip declared, was why the Ghosts had been retired to Balhaut in the first place: a slow and thorough dismantling, the assets of the regiment stripped.

Gaunt had heard the gossip. At a senior staff dinner, just a week earlier, he’d torpedoed the rumours with such phlegmatic humour and outrageous disrespect for the system that all the officers around the long tables, Baskevyl and Kolea included, had been quite crippled by mirth.

Baskevyl and Kolea didn’t chat about the Kapaj simply because the Kapaj reminded them of Gaunt. The Kapaj weren’t an idle-enough subject for chat. They were too heavily freighted with notions of their missing commander and future possibilities. In the friendless, foggy streets of Old Side, where they could taste the ice crystals in the air, and the cold bladed around them, there were no possible futures anymore, except for a grim resolution in some mouldering tenement.

Kolea tapped Baskevyl on the arm, and Baskevyl turned. A black, unmarked cargo-8 with armoured bodywork had driven up out of the surrounding fog to join the tail-end of the search formation. It had flashed its headlights as it rumbled in behind the vox truck.

‘Look,’ said Baskevyl.

Up ahead, one of the apparently numerous men called Sirkle had alerted his master to the vehicle’s approach. Inquisitor Handro Rime turned and began striding back towards the black truck.

Kolea and Baskevyl changed course to intercept him. Commissar Edur got there first.

‘News?’ he asked Rime, walking backwards to match Rime’s stride and remain face to face.

‘Maybe,’ Rime replied.

‘Who’s in the truck, inquisitor?’ asked Edur.

‘Persons of interest to this investigation,’ Rime replied curtly.

‘Going to reveal any identities?’ Edur asked.

‘We’ll see,’ said Rime.

‘Please get out of the inquisitor’s way,’ said one of the Sirkles.

‘Oh, now,’ said Edur, ‘the inquisitor and I have an understanding, don’t we, sir?’

Rime stopped in his tracks and glared at Edur.

‘When this is done, Edur–’ he began.

‘What?’ asked Edur, with a wink. ‘Are you talking dinner? I don’t know, I’m not that sort.’

Rime let out a quiet curse of rage. One of the Sirkles stepped towards Edur.

Edur put his hand quickly on the butt of his pistol.

‘Uh uh,’ he warned. ‘An understanding, remember?’

‘What’s in the big black truck, inquisitor?’ Kolea asked as he and Baskevyl arrived.

‘Yes, inquisitor,’ said Edur, ‘what’s in the big, black truck?’

‘I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve completed the questioning process,’ said Rime, and pushed past them.

‘He’s a friendly soul,’ said Kolea.

‘Lovely manners,’ said Baskevyl.

Edur watched Rime stride away. A Sirkle unlocked the rear of the cargo-8, and Rime hoisted himself into the back.

‘It’s quite possible this is all going to get very ugly indeed,’ Edur remarked.

‘That’s fine,’ said Kolea.

‘Just say when,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Ugly is what we do best,’ said Kolea.

‘My name is Rime,’ said Rime as he climbed into the back of the armoured truck and sat down on one of the grille seats.

‘A rhyme for what?’ asked Blenner.

‘What?’

‘A rhyme for what?’ Blenner repeated.

‘You mis-heard me, sir,’ said Rime. ‘My name is Rime. Handro Rime, of the Inquisition.’

He opened his heavy leather wallet and displayed his rosette.

‘Oh, my mistake,’ said Blenner.

It was airless in the back of the truck. The portly commissar, who thought himself so amusing, was sweating, and the veiled widow beside him was resolutely saying nothing.

The datasheaf link had already told Rime more about Vaynom Blenner than Blenner would ever care to divulge. A Sirkle in the Balopolis Administratum had pulled Blenner’s dossier and sent it to the Sirkle surveying the Mithredates.

‘You know why you’re here?’ Rime asked.

‘I don’t even know where here is, frankly, so “why” is a whole separate enigma,’ Blenner replied.

Rime tried to assess if Blenner was just an idiot, or if he was playing some kind of clever game. On the grille bench beside Blenner, Criid was wondering precisely the same thing.

‘You’re a person of interest to us,’ Rime said, ‘a long-time associate of Ibram Gaunt. You met at school, I believe?’

‘I try to forget that part of my life, to be honest,’ said Blenner. ‘I was hopeless at games, and the other boys used to bully me. Wait though… I think one of them might have been named Gaunt. Basher Gaunt we used to call him, and he–’

‘Shut up,’ said Rime. ‘We know you know Gaunt. Our records are fairly detailed. Schola progenium, Ignatius Cardinal, and then several periods of contact, the last and longest since school being here on Balhaut during the last eighteen months or so. You meet regularly. You are both members of the Mithredates Club. He paid off your club dues last month because you were financially embarrassed.’

‘Wait… Is he a short, fat man with a beard?’ Blenner asked.

‘You last ate together three days ago,’ Rime said. ‘Gaunt signed the tab. He’s fond of you, evidently. You’re a childhood friend. Very few people in the service or the Guard have childhood friends anymore. He looks after you when your gambling problems get out of hand.’

‘I don’t have any gambling problems,’ said Blenner.

‘Do you want me to send for an audit of your fiscal affairs?’ Rime asked. ‘There’s one available, fresh off the sheaf. I hear it’s a shameful mess.’

Blenner fell silent.

‘You know Gaunt,’ said Rime. ‘The fact is well-documented. That’s why we put a watch on you, as a person of interest. Less than twelve hours before Ibram Gaunt went missing with a high-value asset, and Section was attacked, you had lunch with him. What did you talk about, Vaynom?’

‘Oh, you know,’ said Blenner, ‘the usual chit-chat. How to recruit reliable Archenemy troopers this far into Imperial territory, the best way to storm the gatehouse, etcetera. All that blather–’

Rime’s fist caught him across the face, and smashed him off the grille seat into the side wall of the truck. Blenner’s head and shoulder met the metal wall, and he fell down hard.

Criid rose to her feet.

‘Leave him alone,’ she said.

‘You bastard,’ Blenner was moaning from the deck.

Rime rose to face Criid. ‘What did you say?’

‘Leave him alone,’ Criid repeated slowly.

‘Protective, are you?’ asked Rime. ‘Protective? Sergeant Criid? Oh, yes, we know who you are too. Palm-scans don’t lie. Conveying a message to Gaunt’s good friend, were you?’

Criid pulled off her veil, and glared at Rime.

‘Interesting,’ Rime said, not breaking eye contact. ‘You’re not what I imagined from the first female officer of the Tanith Ghosts.’

‘What did you imagine?’ she asked.

‘Something rather more masculine,’ he said.

Criid kicked him in the face. Despite the heavy trains of her slighted mourning, she rotated enough to smash her foot into his mouth. He crashed backwards into the truck’s wall. Criid raked up her hopelessly stupid skirts to get at her straight silver.

Rime came back at her. He was laughing. It was a nasty laugh, the sort of laugh a man would utter if he were playing games and liked a little rough stuff. He punched Criid in the shoulder, hard enough to make her cry out, then slammed a rising forearm into her mouth so hard that it tumbled her into the cab wall of the truck’s back space.

Rime was on her in a second, before she could rise, before she could stop her head spinning. Somehow, the bastard had got her knife.

He put it against her throat.

‘No more fighting from you,’ he said. He looked over at Blenner.

Blenner had crawled into a corner of the cabin space on his arse, dabbing the blood that was weeping from his nose.

‘Last chance, Vaynom,’ Rime called. He had Criid’s own straight silver pressed against her exposed throat. The blade was already welling blood.

‘Last chance. What did he tell you? What message did he have this bitch bring to you?’

‘I think the message ran, “Screw you, inquisitor”,’ said Blenner, ‘although I can’t be sure.’

Criid laughed out loud. Rime drew the knife deeper.

A long rivulet of blood streamed down Criid’s neck, and began to soak into the collar of her dress. She made no sound.

‘Really, Vaynom, the very last chance. What did he say?’

‘He wants to meet me,’ Blenner cried.

‘When?’

‘Today at four! Please stop cutting her!’

‘Where?’ asked Inquisitor Rime.

‘That’s the thing, I don’t know!’ cried Blenner. ‘He said I’d know the place, but I can’t make head nor tail of it. Please, stop it!’

‘What did he say?’ asked Rime, very slowly and precisely.

‘He said I’d know the place that… that he’d made sure isn’t there.’

Rime jumped down out of the truck, and the nearest Sirkle secured the door.

The other two Sirkles closed with their master.

‘Blenner’s an idiot,’ Rime told them quietly. ‘He really hasn’t the wit for subterfuge, so Gaunt must be desperate to try to use him. Gaunt’s tried to arrange a meet, but Blenner is confused by the coded nature of the location.’

‘Perhaps he’s acting dumb?’ a Sirkle suggested.

Rime shook his head.

‘If that’s the case, he deserves an award from the Theatrum Imperialis.’

‘What about the female?’ asked the other Sirkle.

‘I believe Gaunt didn’t tell her the meaning so she couldn’t betray it. But she’s smart. She may have figured it out.’

‘Should we submit her for deep purpose interrogation?’

‘We’ve only got until four o’clock,’ Rime replied. ‘The female is extremely resilient. You can tell that just by looking at her. She would most likely hold out until the time frame had passed. We have to cut through the marrow of this, and we can’t afford to be fussy.’

Rime took out a data-slate and quickly copied down the key phrase. He handed the slate to one of the Sirkles.

‘Run this against Gaunt’s file. See what comes up.’

The Sirkle nodded.

‘We were using the Tanith to find their commander,’ said Rime. ‘I suggest we continue with that policy. Contact our agents at the Tanith HQ and see if the phrase means anything to them. Have them quiz the Tanith especially. The Tanith core of the regiment has been with him longest, and knows him best.’

‘Oh, and get rid of this,’ Rime added, and passed Criid’s straight silver to his agent. The Sirkle hurried away.

The other agents waited for their master’s next decision. Rime looked over his shoulder, and spotted the Tanith officers standing with Edur, watching him from a distance.

‘What is your will?’ one of the Sirkles asked.

Rime began to walk towards them.

‘Let’s ask them the question too,’ he said.

‘Here he comes again,’ muttered Kolea to Baskevyl.

‘You saw what he had?’ Baskevyl whispered back.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘What?’ asked Edur quietly. ‘What did he have?’

‘He brought a Tanith warknife out of the truck,’ said Kolea, ‘and there was blood on it. I want to know who’s in there and what he’s done to them.’

Mabbon, the prisoner, the pheguth, was awake.

Gaunt found him standing in front of one of the studio’s windows. He’d opened the shutter a little to peer at the luminous white nothingness of the foggy daylight outside.

‘Your woman, she’s gone?’ Mabbon asked.

‘She’s not my woman,’ Gaunt replied, sipping a cup of caffeine he’d made for himself.

‘I wasn’t suggesting you were sexually involved,’ said Mabbon. ‘She’s your woman. She serves you. She’s one of your Ghosts, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was on Gereon, wasn’t she?’

Gaunt nodded.

‘It’s funny,’ Mabbon murmured.

‘What is?’

‘On Gereon, if I’d won, if I’d been successful in my mission, you’d be dead, and so would she. Yet here you are, risking your lives to protect me.’

Gaunt scowled.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘Is there any more of that?’ Mabbon asked, pointing at Gaunt’s cup.

Gaunt nodded, and Mabbon followed him into Jaume’s rancid cubicle of a kitchen. Gaunt poured another cup.

‘Can I trust Maggs?’ Gaunt asked. ‘I could really do with an extra pair of hands.’

‘You’re asking me?’

‘Yes.’

Mabbon shrugged, and sipped from his cup. ‘I’d trust him.’

‘I’m not you,’ Gaunt said.

‘Well, if I was you, I’d never trust him again,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’d probably kill him, to be sure.’

‘Throne,’ Gaunt breathed.

Mabbon suddenly put down his cup, and scratched at the back of his head.

‘They’re closing in,’ he said.

‘The Blood Pact?’

Mabbon nodded.

‘You can feel them?’

Mabbon looked at Gaunt.

‘You ever serve on a tropic world so wet-hot the dust flies tap at your eyeballs faster than you can blink?’

‘Yes, I’ve been there.’

Mabbon took up his cup and breathed deeply before sipping again.

‘That’s what it feels like. Micro-contact in my arms, at the base of my spine, deep down. Something touching my eyes.’

‘And this tells you they’re close?’

‘Close and closing,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

Gaunt blinked. Once again, he could see it, as clear as day: the Blood Pact, dripping in wet gore, stepping over the threshold into Jaume’s premises.

His new eyes had been showing him an awful lot in the last couple of days.

Every step of the way, he’d dismissed the images as system errors, as glitches, as imaging artifacts, as optical reconciliations, as patterns of accustomisation.

But he’d seen such things through his new eyes. He’d seen his driver’s bad attitude. He’d seen the attack on Section before it had come. If truth be told, he’d seen Maggs trying to kill the etogaur. It hadn’t been the wild shots of the gun that had been left behind that had alerted him.

He’d already been running before the gun had started firing.

‘How close are they?’ he asked.

‘Very close,’ Mabbon replied.

Gaunt looked at his pocket chron. It had stopped.

‘We have to move anyway,’ he said. ‘We’ve got an appointment.’

‘The phrase doesn’t mean anything in particular to me,’ Hark told Sirkle. ‘But I’ll give it some careful consideration. It may be more obvious than it sounds.’

Sirkle nodded.

‘Of course,’ Hark went on, ‘if the message was intended for Commissar Blenner as you suggest, it might be very specific to his relationship with Gaunt. They’ve known each other for a long time. It might reference something that none of us have any knowledge of.’

With a sour look that suggested he thought Hark was being less than entirely helpful, Sirkle walked away to continue his questioning. Ordo agents were already moving through the main barrack-rooms, quizzing the rank and file.

‘You know what it is, don’t you, sir?’ Ludd asked Hark quietly.

‘Remind me never to play cards with you, Ludd,’ Hark murmured. With Dalin and Merrt in tow, they turned and began to walk briskly in the direction of the temple house.

‘You do know what it is,’ said Ludd.

‘Of course I do, Ludd. It’s hardly vermillion-level cryptography. A place that Gaunt has made sure isn’t there? Anyone?’

‘The Tower of the Plutocrat,’ said Dalin.

Hark stopped in his tracks and looked at the young adjutant.

‘Give the boy a medal! Well done, Criid.’

Dalin coloured up. ‘My mother– I mean, Sergeant Criid, she has studied the colonel-commissar’s career in some detail. I grew up on the stories.’

Hark clapped Dalin on the shoulder, and then resumed his stride towards the temple.

They entered the temple. Rerval, his arms folded, was standing beside the vox-caster while Beltayn worked at it.

‘Anything?’ Hark asked.

Rerval shook his head.

‘It’s still dead. It’s like Major Rawne has just dropped out of existence.’

‘Shame,’ Hark replied, ‘because we’ve now got something to tell him. Keep trying. Where did Doctor Curth go?’

‘She took a break, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘I don’t think she could stand the tension. She said she’d be back. She said she had something important to do.’

‘You look funny,’ said Zweil.

‘Charming,’ Curth replied. She sat down opposite him. The closed folder lay on the desk in front of her.

‘I mean, there’s a funny look on your face,’ Zweil said. ‘Get on with it, will you? I don’t like doctors’ offices. They don’t agree with me. Besides, I’ve got things to do. Urgent things. I’ve got hymnals to re-cover. In hessian, which is the best I could come up with. And there’s half a bottle of altar wine that won’t just drink itself.’

‘The results of your medical examination have come back,’ she said.

‘Really?’ he mocked. ‘I didn’t think you’d called me in here to tell me I’d been promoted to general.’

She opened the folder.

‘This is very difficult, father. Difficult for me to say and difficult for you to hear.’

Zweil didn’t reply. He stared at her.

‘The pharmacon report has revealed a concern.’

‘I said it would,’ Zweil snapped. ‘No good ever came of tests. No good at all. Ignorance, you see? It’s better not to know. People generally underestimate the power of ignorance.’

‘I’m sure they do, father,’ she said gently. ‘However, in the circumstances, we need to discuss this.’

‘Has it got a long name?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘Don’t tell me what it is!’ Zweil cried, holding up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t want to make friends with it. We will refer to it only as The Concern.’

‘If that’s what you want.’

He nodded. ‘I’m assuming the length of The Concern’s real name is inversely proportional to the length of time it’s going to leave me with?’

‘Sort of,’ she replied. She swallowed. It was very hard to stay professional.

‘So where’s it lurking? In my head? My liver? My lungs?’

‘It’s in your blood, actually. It’s a haematological c–’

‘Bup-bup-bub!’ Zweil interrupted, making an urgent shushing gesture. ‘I don’t want long words. I don’t want to have a conversation with it!’ He dropped his voice to a hiss. ‘In fact, we should whisper. I don’t want it to hear us. I don’t want it to know I know about it.’

He looked her in the eyes.

‘I don’t want the fething thing to know I’m scared,’ he whispered.

Curth opened her desk drawer to find a tissue.

‘And crying is a complete giveaway,’ he scolded her.

Curth nodded and blew her nose.

‘So,’ Zweil whispered, ‘how long?’

‘We can administer palliative treatment to retard the progress of–’

‘I don’t want drugs. I don’t want nurses and tests and monitors. I’ll just keep going on the way I am, if you don’t mind, for as long as I can, for as long as it will let me. How long?’

‘Without treatment,’ she said, ‘no more than three months.’

Zweil blew a raspberry.

‘That’s absolutely shitty,’ he said. ‘I assume there’s no possibility that the test results are wrong?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The old priest sat back, deflated. Then a new expression crossed his face. Since the start of their conversation, he’d shown little more than anger. Now he wore an expression of shock.

‘Oh, crap,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ he said. ‘I’ve just thought of one tiny detail that makes this business a thousand times worse.’

The philia slipped through the mist. The city was still veiled in luminous swathes of white, like high-altitude cloud, but the sun was beginning to burn it off. A hard, bright, clear day threatened to become a reality.

Karhunan Sirdar was confident their holy business would be done and finished by the time the fog departed. They had faced a canny foe, who had thrown them off the trail more than once. But they were Blood Pact, and they were sworn and driven. They had the resolution of the Consanguinity behind them, and they had sworn to perform this duty upon their souls.

They were tired, and they were hungry, and the approaching prospect of their collective, violent doom, though a glorious destiny, touched many of them with fear. However, none of them, not a single one, harboured even the slightest thought of giving up. They all loved the damogaur and, as the warp was their witness, they would not fail him, not in this life.

The witch had done her work. The damogaur had told the men that the pheguth had concealed himself. The witch was unable to read him. However, after a lengthy process of arcane elimination and prayer, the damogaur’s infernal sister had identified the one part of the Imperial city that she could not see into. One small location had been made blank to her. The logic was simple. The target was hiding in the place she couldn’t see into.

The witch swore to this fact, and Karhunan Sirdar had no reason to doubt her. She could not lie. Only truth ever passed her lips.

Up ahead, Imrie came to a halt at a street corner. He pointed up at the black metal sign on the wet brick wall.

Carnation Street.

This was the place.

‘Take me with you,’ Maggs insisted.

Gaunt shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Look, I don’t know what happened,’ Maggs protested. ‘Untie me and let me help.’

‘I don’t really know what happened either, Maggs,’ said Gaunt, ‘and that’s why I can’t untie you or bring you along. You’re staying here with Mr Jaume. When this is all done, I’ll come back for you.’

Maggs stared at him. There was a great deal unspoken in the stare.

Gaunt looked at Jaume, who was standing nearby.

‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr Jaume. We’ll try not to inconvenience you much longer.’

Jaume shrugged.

‘Can I come with you? Help you in anyway?’

‘Thank you, no. I’d like to keep you out of danger.’

Over in the corner, Kolding was finishing re-packing his medical bag. He was ready to go. Gaunt was already risking the life of one civilian, and that was one too many.

‘Hey,’ Mabbon called out. He was at the front window, looking out at the street through a gap in the shutters. ‘I think our plans just altered.’

Gaunt went over to join him.

Outside, the fog was thick. Slowly and silently, dark figures were emerging from its brilliant depths. Gaunt counted three, four…

They approached slowly, spaced out a distance from each other. They were coming straight for the house.

Gaunt could see that they were armed. Their weapons were held low but ready.

They stopped on the snowy pavement and looked up at the house’s shuttered windows.

Now, he could see their masks too.

TWENTY-SEVEN

FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS OF THE BALHAUT WAR

‘Move!’ Gaunt ordered. ‘The back way, all of us. No one can stay here.’

Everybody began to move out into the hall and up the short, rickety flight of steps into the rear of the house. Gaunt saw fear on Jaume’s face. He was swept up in it now, the real thing.

‘Undo my hands,’ Maggs hissed.

‘Be quiet,’ Gaunt told him.

Outside in the luminous fog, Karhunan nodded. Gnesh stepped up, facing the front door of the old tenement. He flexed his broad shoulders to settle the strap of his heavy lasgun, and opened fire. He hosed the doorway from the hip, pumping fat bolts of las into the door, the frame and the brick surround. The door shredded, puncturing like a desiccated autumn leaf. The frame ripped and burst in spiking clumps of splinters and wood pulp. The brickwork fractured and cratered, vomiting clouds of brick dust. Some shots tore through into the reception hall behind the door, and detonated furniture or dug up floorboards.

His burst finished, Gnesh stepped back, and Kreeg ran in past him to lead the assault. Kreeg barely needed to kick to take down the ruins of the door. Lasrifle up and aiming, he came in over the threshold, hunting for a target.

He got less than a metre into the hallway when he began to tremble. The sensation was mystifying. Kreeg was almost more troubled by the sudden onset of the ailment than by the discomfort it brought him. He swayed, and his gunsight dropped.

It took ten seconds for the effects to amplify, boiling through his body like a chemical toxin, or like the burn of a class six hot virus, the sort of monster pathogen a man might contract on a deathworld, and which would kill him in three days.

This took ten seconds. Kreeg began to convulse. He dropped his rifle and staggered, his balance gone. He felt as if he had caught fire inside. Fluid was filling his lungs, choking him. He started to cough, and blood sprayed from his mouth. He hit the wall and collapsed, dragging down one of Mr Jaume’s artful mauve drapes, tearing off its stud pins to reveal a scabbed, unfinished wall surface. Kreeg was bleeding out. Unclotting blood was gushing from his nose, his eyes and his mouth, from his fingertips, from his pores, from every opening of his body. He shuddered one last time, slumped further, and died.

Outside the front door, Gnesh looked on in disbelief as his comrade died in the hall in front of him. He took a step forward to try and help him, but Karhunan Sirdar held him back.

Karhunan pointed down at the doorstep, and Gnesh saw the sigil that had been scratched in the wood and inked with blood: a blood ward, and a lethal booby-trap. Kreeg had stepped right over it.

‘The house is blocked,’ said Gnesh. ‘Can we go around? Is there a side way?’

‘No time,’ said the sirdar. He waved Malstrom up.

They backed away as Malstrom rolled a grenade onto the step, and ducked aside. The blast blew out the rest of the doorframe, dug up the step, and hurled Kreeg’s corpse several metres further down the hall.

It also erased the blood ward, and broke its craft.

‘In!’ Karhunan ordered. ‘Watch for more wards like that. In. In!’

Gaunt and his companions heard the crump of the grenade behind them as they came out through the back of Jaume’s house into the dingy rear yards and dark alleys behind the premises. Undisturbed snow lay thick on the wall-tops and in the yard spaces. Through the slow fog, Gaunt could see lank, frost-stiff laundry hanging from washing lines in neighbouring yards.

‘Do you have a vehicle?’ Gaunt asked Jaume as they ran through the snow to the end of the yard.

Jaume shook his head.

Gaunt had a single clip left in his bolt pistol. He drew the laspistol Criid had left with him, and toggled it to ‘armed’.

‘For Throne’s sake!’ Maggs cried. ‘Let me go and give me the other weapon.’

Gaunt ignored him, and drove them down the high-walled spinal alleyway that connected the back gates of the tenement row. Piles of garbage and junk half-filled the space, smoothed out and shrouded by the recent snow.

They ran as hard as they could, Gaunt bringing up the rear with the weapon in his hand. Twice, he stopped and aimed it at what appeared to be movement behind them.

Then they heard another dull, gritty blast as their pursuers mined out the ward that Mabbon had left on the back step. It was very quickly followed by bursts of las-fire that stripped through the fog, making it swirl and coil.

Gaunt raised his weapon again, but the shooting was just loose and haphazard. He wasn’t going to waste precious shots on a target he couldn’t see.

They had nearly reached a major street adjacent to the one on which Jaume’s house stood.

‘Doctor,’ said Gaunt as they ran, ‘would you please cut Maggs’s bonds? Quickly, please.’

Kolding fumbled a scalpel out of his kit, and ripped through the twine that was securing Maggs’s wrists.

Maggs looked at Gaunt.

‘A weapon?’

‘Wheels,’ Gaunt replied.

Maggs nodded, and ran on ahead of them into the broad avenue and the fog beyond.

Gaunt herded the others out towards the street, moving backwards with his gun braced for any movement in the fog-choked alley behind them.

Maggs came out into the open. In the broader space of the main thoroughfare, the fog was beginning to thin. He could see the roofs of the buildings on the far side of the street, as well as patches of milky blue sky. The sun was burning through the fog like a halogen lamp.

There was some light traffic, and a few pedestrians, wrapped up in coats and scarves against the cold. The shop juniors of nearby merchant houses were clearing snow from the pavements outside their display windows. A little way ahead, two cargo-6 trucks had pulled up to let a municipal work-gang unload sacks of salt for road gritting.

Maggs ran up to the rear truck, and began to climb into the cab.

‘Hey. Hey, you!’ the gang boss yelled out, throwing down his spade and hurrying towards the truck.

‘Imperial Guard!’ Maggs shouted back, fumbling with the ignition. ‘I’m commandeering this vehicle.’

‘Oh, right. Like there’s a war on,’ the boss retorted.

‘There’s always a war on,’ Maggs told him. He started the truck’s engine.

‘Get down from there, now!’ the boss yelled.

Maggs stared out of the driver’s door window.

‘Back off, friend. Don’t make me get out and hurt you.’

The boss saw something in Wes Maggs’s expression that he clearly didn’t like. He backed away sharply, and so did the members of his crew. They watched in bemused wonder as Maggs threw the truck’s transmission into reverse, and jerked the vehicle backwards. Its tyres slipped and scuffed in the snow, and its knifing tail-end knocked down several of the salt sacks unloaded on the curb.

‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ the boss yelled.

Maggs ignored him, and continued to reverse along the kerb, the cargo-6’s fat tyres spraying up slush as they whipped and churned. He backed up ten metres to meet Gaunt and the others, who were running along the pavement from the alley mouth.

Several loose shots sang out of the alley into the street. Most went wide. One clipped a lamp post, and another blew out the headlight of a passing car. The pedestrians in the street froze, and then scattered in terror. More blind shots sliced out of the alley. The display window of a merchant house opposite fractured, and exploded in a billion slivers of plate glass. The two juniors shovelling snow in front of it ducked and ran.

Gaunt bundled the prisoner up into the back of the truck, and then helped Kolding and Jaume to hoist themselves in. He ran for the passenger door of the cab.

Pedestrians nearby were shouting and screaming as they ran. The work crew had fled. Gaunt turned, and saw the first of their pursuers emerge into the foggy street from the alley, lasrifle raised.

Gaunt lifted his laspistol in a two-handed brace and pinched off two quick shots. Both of them hit the Blood Pact warrior, knocking him back into the shadows of the alley.

Gaunt threw himself into the cab.

‘Go!’ he yelled.

Maggs put his foot down.

The cargo-6 slalomed away across the snow into the main lanes of the street. A flurry of las-fire and hard rounds lit the air around it, and spattered against the bodywork.

‘Keep down!’ Gaunt shouted through the cab’s fanlight.

It was hard to control the heavy truck with any finesse in the snow. Maggs oversteered, and crunched the front end off a stationary car that its owner had abandoned at the first sign of gunfire. Then the truck sideswiped a small cargo van, shunting it into another vehicle. Bodywork buckled, and windows and headlamps smashed.

They were gaining speed. One last clip that bashed a car into the flank of a tram, and they were clear, and turning out at the junction into the next street.

‘Which way?’ Maggs demanded.

‘The Oligarchy.’ Gaunt shouted back. ‘Make for the Oligarchy!’

Eyl led his sister through the fog at a run. He was leading her by the hand, and she was holding up the hem of her long dress. Several members of the philia moved with them.

The witch began laughing.

‘What?’ Eyl asked.

‘We’ve made contact!’ she cried, pulling her hand out of his so she could clap delightedly. ‘Karhunan Sirdar’s element has made contact. The pheguth is running, but we have the trail again, strong and fresh!’

She turned her veiled face to look at her brother.

‘He’s out in the open again,’ she said. ‘We have his trail. Upon my soul, he is finished.’

Inquisitor Rime snapped the dossier shut and slapped it back into Sirkle’s hands.

‘It’s so obvious,’ he said, shaking his head and chuckling. ‘So damn obvious. I was over-thinking it.’

‘Sir?’

‘I was assuming that Gaunt’s message was an oblique reference to some private matter. It’s far less sophisticated than that.’

Rime began to pace up through the search group towards the front of the line, calling for the senior Tanith officers and the commanders of the S Company brigade. The Sirkles hurried after him.

‘Re-disposition!’ he shouted. ‘We’re moving towards the Oligarchy.’

‘The Oligarchy?’ asked Edur. ‘But there’s no evidence to suggest–’

‘That’s where he’s going,’ Rime snapped. ‘The Tower of the Plutocrat. Look it up on Gaunt’s record. I was an idiot not to make the connection before. How’s the fog looking?’

‘Clearing fast, sir,’ reported one of the Sirkles.

‘Put the birds back up. I want marksmen covering us overhead. Only the best.’

One of the Sirkles hurried off to do Rime’s bidding. Another two escorted Blenner and Criid over from the armoured truck.

‘Feth!’ Kolea whispered. ‘He’s got Tona. And isn’t that Gaunt’s commissar buddy?’

Baskevyl nodded. ‘When we get moving, we’d better stay near the front. We don’t want Rime getting there first.’

‘Agreed,’ said Kolea. He shouldered through the gathering press of men, and tried to get to Criid.

‘Tona. Tona!’ he called. She heard him, and saw him. She looked pale. She gave a little wave with cuffed hands.

‘That’s far enough,’ said one of the Sirkles, blocking Kolea’s path.

‘I want to talk to my sergeant,’ said Kolea.

‘She’s in Inquisition custody, so that’s not possible just now.’

‘But–’

‘Get back to your duty, major,’ Sirkle told him.

As the search group got ready to switch its focus, Edur caught a moment with Captain Tawil, one of the S Company officers.

‘Rime does not make a kill on Gaunt or the asset, all the while we can do anything to prevent it. Are we clear, captain?’

‘As glass, sir,’ said Tawil. He snapped his hellgun up across his shoulder, and ran towards his waiting men to give them instructions.

Edur watched him go. The commissar drew his bolt pistol, and checked the load. Then he holstered it and checked the charge of the short-frame laspistol that he kept in a shoulder rig under his coat as a back-up piece. Given the sledgehammer effect of the bolt pistol, Edur reasoned that he might soon have need of the laspistol’s finesse.

He looked up at the sky. The fog was lifting rapidly now, and the sky was a bowl of clear, glassy blue.

Out of the east, Edur heard the rising whine of gunship engines as the Valkyries swung in to join the hunt.

Pretending to be rearranging the latest crop of notices on the bulletin board, Nahum Ludd executed an expert bit of loitering around the doorway of the vox room.

The afternoon had cleared, and turned bright and sharp, and outside, he could hear men whooping and shouting as they played bat-and-ball out on the snowy quad.

Something caught Ludd’s attention. He peered through the half-open door, and watched the activity going on between Sirkle and the vox-operators. He tried to lip-read.

Sirkle suddenly strode out of the vox room, and Ludd quickly started to pin up the week’s duty roster. Ludd waited until Sirkle had disappeared. Then he hurried to Hark’s office.

‘What’s the matter, Ludd?’ Hark asked, looking up from his desk.

‘Something’s going on,’ Ludd said. ‘Sirkle just got very excited. I think I overheard him saying something about leaving Aarlem to rejoin his master. Sir, I think they’re onto something. I think they’ve figured out it’s the Tower, too.’

Hark swore and threw down his stylus.

‘We’re getting perilously close to the point where I end up doing something I know I’m going to regret,’ he said. He got to his feet. ‘Let’s check in on the temple.’

They went out into the hallway. Sirkle had reappeared, and was talking to one of the vox-operators near the door to the vox room. At the far end of the hallway, Dalin Criid suddenly ran into view. He skidded down to a walk in a hurry as soon as he spotted the ordo agent in the hallway.

He saw Hark and Ludd, made eye contact with them, and flicked a tiny gesture that they should follow him with a minute tilt of his head.

Hark walked up to Sirkle.

‘Developments?’ he asked.

‘You’ll be informed in due course, should they concern you,’ said Sirkle.

‘Well, you know where to find me,’ replied Hark and walked on down the hallway.

He and Ludd entered the temple house. Beltayn was manning the set with Dalin and Rerval, with Merrt left to watch the door.

‘Well?’ asked Hark.

Beltayn had the phones pressed to his ear.

‘It just woke up,’ he replied. ‘It’s coming from a different source, and the codes are wrong, but I think it’s genuine. I’m just waiting for the handshake.’

No one said anything for a minute. Then the vox-caster crackled into life.

‘Stronghold, Stronghold, this is Nalwood, this is Nalwood, please respond.’

Hark took the mic-horn from Beltayn.

‘Nalwood, Nalwood, this is Hark. Where the feth have you been?’

‘Nice to speak to you too, Hark,’ said Rawne, sitting back in the comfortable leather armchair. ‘We ran into a few difficulties at our previous location, so we’ve been forced to reposition, over.’

He glanced up at Meryn and Daur standing behind him in the small office. The vox-caster, a compact model, was set up on a sideboard in the corner of the room. They could smell obscura smoke drifting up from the parlour below.

‘Do I want to know what sort of difficulties, Rawne? Over,’ Hark asked over the line.

‘Probably not. Our comms went down. We’ve managed to locate an alternate resource, thanks to our bestest new friend, Mr Csoni.’

Lev Csoni was sitting in the outer office under the watchful eyes of Varl. Taking them over to his own gaming club, The Eight of Wands, on Brigantes Street, and allowing them free use of his vox had seemed like a small price to pay for his continued existence. Csoni had even let them use one of the big maroon limos that had brought his strike squad to Zolunder’s. The rest of the team was waiting with the car.

‘Tell me all about it later, Rawne,’ Hark said. ‘Things are moving fast. Gaunt’s surfaced.’

‘Where?’

‘As far as we can be sure, he’s due to show at the Tower of the Plutocrat, at four.’

Rawne looked at the long case clock in Csoni’s office. It was a quarter to, gone.

‘That’s cutting it fine,’ he replied. ‘The Tower’s long since fallen, hasn’t it?’

‘Correct.’

‘But it used to be by the Oligarchy Gate on the way into the High Palace?’

‘Correct again.’

‘The place we’re at is further north than Zolunder’s. It’s a twenty-five minute trip from here, especially with snow on the ground.’

‘Then shake your arses, major.’

‘I was about to,’ Rawne said, already rising to his feet. ‘Anything else I should know before I hang this up? Last chance.’

‘Be advised, there’s likely to be Inquisitorial interest in this, as well as forces from Section, and maybe even the PDF. If the balloon goes up, you could be looking at a five- or six-way free-for-all.’

‘Got it. Anything else?’

‘The Emperor protects, Eli.’

‘Thanks, Viktor. See you on the honour roll.’

‘Good fortune, major.’

‘Nalwood out.’

Rawne threw the switch that killed the vox, and tossed the mic-horn onto the desk.

‘Let’s move,’ he said, picking up his weapon.

‘If we’ve got to get there quickly, let me drive this time,’ said Meryn.

‘Oh feth off,’ said Daur. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my driving.’

‘You drive like an old woman,’ said Meryn.

‘And you will cry like a little girl if I have to shoot you somewhere semi-vital below the waist,’ said Rawne, ‘so do as Daur says and shut the feth up, Meryn.’

They entered the outer office. Varl and Csoni looked up.

‘Are you done?’ asked Csoni.

‘It pains me to say it, Mr Csoni,’ said Rawne, ‘but we must now bid you farewell, and cut you loose.’

Rawne looked down at the seated man, and sighed.

‘Mr Csoni, for you, I’m going to break the habit of a lifetime and keep my word. I’m not going to pop you to guarantee your silence. Throne, it would be so much neater and simpler if I could, but I made a promise. You get to live.’

‘Thank you, thank you!’ Csoni exclaimed, and then started to cry.

‘One thing, Csoni,’ said Rawne, bending down to look the man in the face, ‘you do not want to be the man who makes me regret a decision.’

‘I don’t?’ sobbed Csoni, looking up.

‘You don’t,’ nodded Rawne.

‘Oh, you really fething don’t,’ laughed Varl. ‘You screw him over, he will hunt you down like a rabid larisel, and feth you up so bad, you won’t be able to–’

‘Thanks, Varl,’ said Daur. ‘I think Csoni gets the picture.’

‘I do. I do!’ said Csoni.

The four of them thundered down the club’s back stairs to the rear yard, where they’d stowed the limo. Rawne brought Varl up to speed on what Hark had said.

‘Feth,’ said Varl. ‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He said, “The Emperor protects”,’ Daur said.

They came out into the snowy rear yard. The big maroon limo with its chrome furniture was parked beside the access gate. The figures standing around it jumped to attention as they saw the four men come into view.

‘You know the full version of that blessing is “The Emperor protects the virtuous”, don’t you?’ asked Varl as they ran for the car.

‘Yeah?’ said Meryn. ‘Well, we’re screwed then.’

The precincts of the High Palace, as its name suggested, sat at the summit of the gigantic, gently sloping peak, above the river on which Balopolis was built. The Oligarchy, a vast acreage of governmental structures and ancient colleges and chapels, formed the mantle, with the palace itself as the crown.

The fog had fled from the high places more quickly than it had from the deep, steep streets of Balopolis below. Up at the High Palace, the air was blue and as sharp as crystal. Snow iced the reconstructed battlements and rooflines of the noble palace, and frost skinned the lawns of the ornamental gardens inside the palisades. Windlarks, so high up they were invisible, sang clear, trilling notes in the cold air. Sentries of the PDF, in formal furs, stood watch, blowing on their hands.

The Oligarchy, and the High Palace that lay at its heart, were key destinations for any visit to Balhaut. The planet boasted some of the most infamous battle-sites in the sector, and had become a magnet for scholars, theorists, enthusiasts, tourists and, of course, those mourning the fallen and grieving old losses. The High Palace was the culmination of any mourning pilgrimage, an act that had become an industry of its own. The High Palace was where the war had been decided. It was where Slaydo had fallen. It was where they had raised the memorial chapels, especially the Honorarium, where Slaydo’s bones were interred.

They called it, perhaps harshly, the Widow Tour, for it was most often taken by wealthy widows from the scattered outworlds of the Khulan Group, travelling to Balhaut with long-suffering servant-staff and squabbling children, who had never known the deceased personally. Expert guides and escorts offered their services; the elaboration of the tour was usually decided by wealth and status. Various theatres and battlefields could be included, depending on the deceased’s career. One could attend the Raising of the Aquila ceremony at Zaebes City, or walk the elegant rows of simple white posts in the cemeteries overlooking Ascension Valley.

There were even authoritative books one could consult. Some were extensive, others could be obtained from any corner merchant for a few coins: encyclopaedias and tatty chapbooks, learned tomes and flimsy pamphlets. One of the most ubiquitous and affordable was a sixty-page booklet now in its forty-seventh impression, entitled Famous Battlefields of the Balhaut War. It was published by the Munitorum, and approved by the Society of Balhaut Veterans. It was a cheap and slightly worthy account of the war’s key phases and conflicts, complete with some astonishingly bad maps and pictprints.

Gaunt took a copy off the shelf outside the docent’s booth, and skimmed through it.

‘What’s that?’ asked Jaume.

‘A memento,’ Gaunt replied. He had a page open, and was reading.

‘What does it say?’ asked Jaume.

‘It says that on the ninth day of fighting, Slaydo drove his left flank against the Oligarchy Gate. The attack was nominally commanded by Captain Allentis of the Silver Guard, but his charge was devastated by the Heritor’s murderous machines. Thus, the first unit to reach the Gate was the Hyrkan Eighth, which famously managed to blow wide the Archenemy’s defences, and breach a position that had resisted nine days of assault.’

‘Is that correct?’ Jaume asked.

Gaunt looked over his shoulder. In the shadows of the colonnade, he could see Kolding and Maggs with the prisoner. The day was quiet. The fierce snowstorm had kept most tourist parties and widow tours out of the High Palace for a couple of days. The guards and the docents, the latter mostly history students from the Collegio Balopolis, were wandering about bored, or snoozing in their wooden booths.

‘Come with me,’ Gaunt said to Jaume.

He led the younger man out into the middle of the new stone quad. Some of the original stones from the Gate, mauled and smashed, had been placed on display in armour-glass boxes around the edge of the space, like trophies.

‘This is where the Gate stood,’ Gaunt said, extending his arms. ‘Right here. They’ve been good enough to mark its footprint on the new paving.’

Jaume looked down. The new quad had been laid with black stone, matt and flush-fitting. He saw that the outline of a vast structure had been marked out in thick silver wire, inlaid into the stone.

‘That’s where the Gate stood,’ said Gaunt.

‘And you brought it down,’ said Jaume. ‘Throne. It was huge.’

‘Allentis had done most of the work,’ said Gaunt. ‘He broke the back, not us. Throne, I was sorry when they told me he was gone.’

‘He was Silver Guard, this Allentis?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, an Astartes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was told that the Astartes are not like normal men. That they are other. More than human and still less too.’

‘I’ve known Astartes who were more like animals than men,’ Gaunt shrugged. ‘Allentis was a man. A human soul. One of the bravest and tenacious I’ve ever had the privilege to serve with.’

Jaume pursed his lips, and nodded.

‘So is this where Slaydo died?’ he asked.

‘No, not here. About a kilometre to the west.’

Jaume nodded.

‘Is it odd being back here?’ he asked.

‘Strangest thing I’ve ever done,’ Gaunt smiled. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Ten minutes to four,’ said Jaume. He had a good sight of the palace clock tower. None of their watches had worked since the night of the snowstorm.

‘We’d better move,’ said Gaunt.

‘My good sirs, can I help you?’ a docent asked, approaching and bowing. He was a tall young man, skinny with long hair that hung down around the neckline of his red docent robes. He smiled a friendly smile.

‘A tour, perhaps?’ he suggested. ‘A crown per person, and you see all the sights. It’s very thorough. I can walk you through the High Palace fighting zones, the Gate, the Tower and, of course, the death of Slaydo. I am fully versed. Did you lose a loved one here?’

‘Plenty,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes,’ said Jaume. ‘My father. He was PDF. He assisted in the assault of the Gate, or so I’m told.’

‘Well, that was a valiant endeavour indeed,’ the docent agreed. ‘I’d be delighted to show you the key sites.’

‘Yes. Do that,’ Gaunt said. He fished into his pocket for coins. ‘We want to see it all, but we especially want to see the Tower of the Plutocrat.’

‘One of the highlights, sir,’ said the docent.

‘Take us there first,’ said Gaunt.

The docent nodded. ‘How many in your party, sir?’

‘Five,’ said Gaunt. He had found three crowns. ‘Help me out here, Jaume.’

Jaume hurriedly produced another two crowns, and Gaunt paid the guide. He beckoned to Maggs, and Maggs and the doctor led Mabbon out of the shadows to join them.

‘Oh, the poor man!’ the docent exclaimed, indicating Mabbon. ‘Is he a veteran?’

‘Yes,’ said Gaunt.

The docent set off. Three or four other parties were threading the rebuilt ruins with them. Docents in their trademark red robes were leading family parties along the walkways, reciting the narratives of war, parrot-fashion. Gaunt saw parties of weeded widows in veils, parties of earnest young soldiers, and family groups that mixed both together. Small children attached to family groups toddled free across the quads and open spaces, their aunts and mothers cooing after them. Gaunt watched each party in turn, hearing the soft echoes of the docents‘ narrations.

Their own docent was in full-flow as he led the way across quads and along cloisters.

‘Here, on the ninth day! The death of Captain Ollark! At this very site! Two rounds, as he tried to crest the bank of bodies!’

‘Ollark shot himself on the fifth day,’ Gaunt whispered to Jaume. ‘He couldn’t take it any more. This man is as bad as you.’

‘It must be contagious,’ said Jaume.

‘Was your father really here?’ Gaunt whispered as the docent banged on.

‘Yes. I wouldn’t make a thing like that up,’ said Jaume.

‘I don’t recall a Jaume,’ Gaunt whispered. ‘There were PDF units right in it with us, but I don’t recall a Jaume.’

‘I hardly expect you to,’ Jaume replied as the docent babbled on. ‘He was a junior man in a minor unit, and it was fifteen years ago. You probably never even saw him. Besides, are you telling me you can remember the name of everyone on every battlefield you’ve ever been on?’

‘Of course not,’ Gaunt said, looking at him.

‘Well then,’ said Jaume. ‘You wouldn’t remember him. He wasn’t important.’

Gaunt frowned. ‘The PDF were right with us, every step of the way. Their contribution is often overlooked. Jaume, if your father was here, he was a brave man. You say he died here?’

‘We never knew where,’ said Jaume. ‘He died at the Gate, that’s what we were told.’

‘You said to me you’d never met a hero,’ said Gaunt as the docent went on and on, ‘but you have. Your father was a hero.’

Jaume looked at him, and smiled.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘For being kind enough to tell the same white lie to me that I tell to others.’

‘It’s not a lie,’ said Gaunt.

‘Perhaps,’ said Jaume. ‘I bless you for it, anyway. Perhaps now you better appreciate the merits of my occupation.’

‘You know Kolding’s father died in the war too?’

‘The doctor?’ Jaume asked.

‘His father died trying to defend the wounded. It seems I have the sons of heroes watching my back today.’

Jaume laughed.

‘I never expected such sentiment from you,’ he said. ‘I should put you on retainer. Shall we say half a crown per epitaph?’

The docent, still gabbling, had brought them to the entrance of the eastern palisade. He became operatic.

‘And here! Here it was that great Slaydo fell in his mortal combat with the foul Archon! See how his falling place is marked by an aquila of inlaid silver and rubies.’

They looked down at the holy site. It was lit up by spotlights and atmosphere globes.

‘I think we should all take a solemn moment here,’ said the docent.

‘This isn’t where Slaydo fell,’ Gaunt whispered.

‘No?’ Maggs whispered back.

‘He went down about sixty metres that way on the western palisades. Then they dragged his corpse another hundred metres, and ritually dismembered it. I bet that isn’t on the tour.’

‘It’s not,’ whispered Jaume.

‘I can’t believe they’ve got so much of this stuff wrong,’ murmured Gaunt.

‘Unlike you, they weren’t here,’ said Mabbon quietly.

The docent began walking again.

‘What’s the time?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Five minutes to four,’ said Kolding. ‘At least, it was the last time I saw the palace clock.’

Gaunt looked to the docent. ‘We’d like to see the Tower of the Plutocrat now,’ he said.

‘But of course,’ the docent exclaimed. ‘And I’m sure you’d like to view the death venues of the key fallen there!’

‘The… death venues?’ asked Kolding.

The docent nodded.

‘As with Slaydo, the places where the heroes fell. Captain Menhort of the Kolstec “Hammers”, Gaunt of the Hyrkans and, of course, Allentis.’

‘What?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Did you say Gaunt?’ asked Jaume.

‘Gaunt, the Commissar of the Hyrkans,’ said the docent. ‘He died taking down the Tower.’

Gaunt looked back at his companions.

‘Honestly, I didn’t,’ he whispered. Maggs and Jaume snorted. The hint of a smile even found its way onto Kolding’s lips.

‘Let’s look at the death venue of Gaunt,’ Maggs said to the docent.

‘Yes. Why don’t we?’ Gaunt laughed.

‘This way,’ the docent declared. ‘It was the ninth day. The Heritor was resisting. Gaunt, Throne rest him, led the Hyrkans through the obliterated Gate, and dug down in the yards under the Tower…’

It was just two minutes to four.

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE DEATH VENUE OF IBRAM GAUNT (VISITORS WELCOME)

The eager docent led them towards the great quad where the footprint of the Tower of the Plutocrat was outlined in silver and gold.

Gaunt felt the air chill.

He reached for the reassuring grip of his bolt pistol. It felt comfortable in his hand. He kept the group close to him, and picked up his visual checking. He noticed that both Mabbon and Maggs were scanning the area too. They’d felt it as well, and whatever they were, both of them were soldiers first. They had keen skills that could never erode.

Gaunt kept his hand on his bolter as he let the docent guide his party through the cloister shadows towards the Tower site. Maggs sidled close to Gaunt.

‘Give me a gun,’ he whispered.

Gaunt shook his head.

The sky above the High Palace had become an aching blue, unblemished by any clouds. The sun, beginning its afternoon track down the sky, was still bright. The shadows of the cloisters and the memorial chapels around the great quad were hard-edged and black.

Gaunt could hear a general murmur of voices: other docents, leading their parties; conversations between visitors; an ayatani priest performing a simple service of remembrance in front of a memorial plaque, a family grouped around him with their heads bent. The light wind ruffled long skirts of black silk.

Gaunt heard a clock tower down in the Oligarchy chiming four. He turned to the docent.

‘Can you keep my group here for a few minutes?’ he requested. ‘Tell them about the Tower. Tell them about the extraordinary noise it made when it fell, like the world splitting in half. Tell them about the dust-cloud that blotted out the sunlight. Tell them about the piles of bodies steeper than the piles of rubble.’

‘Sir?’ the docent asked, looking puzzled.

‘Tell them all about Commissar Gaunt and what an amazing soldier he was.’

Gaunt turned and walked out of the shadows into the sunlight of the great quad. He saw tour groups in the distance on the far side of the area, and several more closer to, grouped around the memorial statues in the centre of the quad.

It was nothing like he remembered it, though he had begun to seriously doubt the quality of his memories. The terrain was different, flatter. The topography of the buildings surrounding the area had changed, which was hardly surprising, given the collateral of the Tower’s demise. He remembered being holed up for hours under fire, staring at a small gatehouse with distinctive finials in the shape of aquilas. He wondered what had happened to the place. It had still been standing when he and the Hyrkans had finally been able to storm a path past it. Had it fallen later? Had it been demolished much later on to make way for these memorial vaults?

Even the sky was different.

He turned in a slow circle. He could see the High Palace, hazed by the blue distance. He could see a wheeling flock of birds. He could see the huge, dark drum-shaped monolith of the Honorarium rising behind the great quad like a battlement.

He walked towards the centre of the great quad. Though it was long gone, he could feel the presence of the Tower above him, clinging like a ghost. His orders had brought it down: his sweat, his effort. The Tower had added almost half a kilometre to the Oligarchy’s overall height. Falling, the roar it had made…

He saw a figure in the distance, standing at the edge of the cloisters. He recognised it instantly. The sight almost brought a spontaneous tear to his eyes: not a tear of sadness or weakness, but a sudden upwelling of emotion. To be here, so many years later, and to see his oldest friend coming to his aid, on this very spot…

Gaunt did not cry. It was one design feature his new eyes did not possess.

He began to walk towards Blenner. Blenner was smiling his shit-eating smile, his ‘Let’s blow the rest of the day off and go to this little bar I know’ smile. His cap was on at its trademark, almost jaunty, entirely nonconformist angle.

Everything was going to be all right.

As he got closer, Gaunt noticed Blenner’s hands. Blenner’s arms were down at his sides. The index and middle fingers of each hand were, quietly and subtly, making ‘walking’ motions.

It was one of the old codes, one of the scholam codes that they’d used so long ago on Ignatius Cardinal. Fellow pupil, friend, I can see trouble that you can’t see; I can see the master or the prefect waiting to pounce, waiting to catch us out for running or singing or chatting, so walk away while you still can. I’m done for already, but you can still save yourself. Walk, walk, walk, for Throne’s sake, walk…

Gaunt stopped in his tracks, and began to back away. A big grin crossed Blenner’s face. Yes, you’ve got it, Bram…

Two men suddenly shoved past Blenner, and burst out of the cloisters into the sunlight. They both had laspistols. They both had the same face: two of Rime’s agents.

They aimed their weapons at him.

‘Ibram Gaunt!’ one yelled. ‘By order of the holy Inquisition, we demand your immediate surrender! Do not resist. Get on the ground, face down, with your arms spread!’

‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Do as I say!’

‘I don’t recognise your authority.’

‘You are consorting with a known warp cultist. Guilt by association. Get on the damn ground!’

Eye-blink fast, Gaunt drew his bolt pistol, and aimed it at the Sirkles.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this.’

The Sirkles baulked slightly.

‘Take him,’ one said to the other.

There was a bone crack. Vaynom Blenner had wrapped his fists together and smacked them across the back of one of the Sirkle’s skulls.

‘Run, for Throne’s sake, Bram!’ Blenner yelled as the Sirkle he had struck went down onto his knees.

The other Sirkle looked at his twin, distracted.

Gaunt put a bolt-round into the quad paving at the Sirkle’s feet. The boom was gigantic, and echoed around the vast area. Flocks of startled birds exploded up into the blue from cloister roofs. Visitors looked around, wondering what the hollow thunderclap meant, not recognising the sound of gunfire.

Who on Balhaut recognised the sound of gunfire anymore?

Hit by paving debris, the other Sirkle staggered backwards. Gaunt started to sprint across the sunlit open ground, his stormcoat flying out behind him like ragged wings.

‘Run!’ he yelled at the group waiting for him in the cloister shadows. Maggs was already getting them moving.

‘I think you should stay here,’ Mabbon said gently to the bewildered docent. ‘This is probably the point at which you’ll want to disassociate yourself from this group.’

‘If you think that’s best, sir,’ the docent stammered. ‘Uhm, the Emperor protects.’

‘So I keep hearing,’ said Mabbon, as he turned to follow Maggs, Jaume and Kolding along the cloister.

‘It’s a trap! Move,’ Gaunt yelled, catching up with them.

Squads of troopers, some of them S Company, but many of them ordo fire-teams, rushed out onto the great quad from the eastern cloisters where Blenner had been waiting.

Rime was with them, yelling orders to his agents.

‘Spread out. Flush the cloisters! Is the area locked?’

‘Yes, sir! Strike teams at all the gates. They can’t leave the Oligarchy precincts.’

‘We can’t let him run!’ Rime declared. ‘Bring the birds in. Marksmen. Now, Throne damn it!’

‘Yes, sir,’ a Sirkle replied, waving up a vox-officer.

‘This Gaunt’s shown his true colours!’ snarled Rime. ‘If he’d surrendered when he’d had the chance, I would have had some measure of pity. But it’s clear where he’s cast his lot. Old habits die hard, and he learned all of his on Gereon. Tell the birds to take any shot they can get! They’re all viable targets, do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir!’ the Sirkle replied.

Edur emerged into the sunlight of the great quad with the first wave. He shouted his S Company men forward, hoping to secure Gaunt in the confusion that followed Rime’s fumbled play.

‘Go. Go!’ he yelled.

‘Targets have gone into the cloisters, west side, sir,’ Tawil voxed back via micro-bead.

‘Dammit!’ Edur cried.

‘We think the targets are heading east towards the Honorarium and the memorial enclave, sir.’

‘Follow them!’

‘Sir, there are an appreciable number of civilians in our path!’

Edur cursed again, and turned in a frustrated circle in the sunlight.

He saw Kolea and Baskevyl, and the Tanith scout squads, running towards him.

‘Back off. Back off, now!’ he yelled, raising his hands. ‘Stand down. You’re only going to make this worse!’

‘Well, great job you’re doing,’ Baskevyl yelled as he ran past.

‘Throne damn it,’ Edur screamed.

‘We look after our own!’ Kolea yelled back at him.

‘That’s exactly why this is a bad idea,’ Edur replied.

Mkoll was the first of the Tanith party to reach the western cloisters. Eszrah was close behind him.

Mkoll suddenly skidded to a halt, and looked up at the sky.

‘Something’s coming,’ he said.

‘You mean the air cover?’ Jajjo asked, running up behind them.

‘No,’ Mkoll growled. ‘Something bad, I think.’

He raised his rifle and rushed on into the cloisters.

‘Shouldn’t we just surrender to them?’ Jaume asked as they ran.

‘No,’ said Gaunt.

‘But they were Throne agents, weren’t they? Officers of the Inquisition?’

‘The answer’s still no,’ said Gaunt.

He skidded to a halt. He could hear the uproar of the fire-teams chasing them, the screams of the visitor parties scrambling out of their way.

It all seemed very distant, suddenly.

Gaunt looked up. A scatter of snowflakes, no more than three or four, was falling towards them out of the cloudless air. They fell until they were a few metres above their heads.

Then they froze in the air. They hung, impossibly, in nothingness, as if time had been suspended.

‘Now we’re really in trouble,’ murmured Gaunt.

‘She’s here,’ whispered Mabbon. ‘The witch is here.’

Heavy gunfire suddenly raked at them. They flew for cover behind the pillars of the colonnade. The throaty las-fire punched holes in the stone flags, and sent paving stones spinning into the air.

Closing in behind Gaunt’s group, the ordo fire-teams turned to blast at the sudden source of fire. They got off a few shots before the heavy gunfire turned on them, cutting many of them down. Men crumpled or jerked back, smashed off their feet. Some of them got to cover. Some of them fell, hideously wounded.

‘Into them!’ Baltasar Eyl commanded.

Gnesh moved forwards along the cloisters, hosing with his heavy las-gun. Las-bolts squealed and spat from the massive, oil-black weapon slung over his shoulder. His shots were chewing the corners off the colonnade’s stone pillars. Facing stone cracked and shattered. Brick dust bloomed like shocks of pollen. Ordo agents toppled and fell. A Sirkle, hit twice, smashed back into a pillar, and slid down, dead.

Around Gnesh, elements of the philia laid in support. Their gunfire greeted the S Company formations arriving behind the ordo units. The Commissariat storm-troopers took cover, and began to return fire with their hellguns. In less than a minute, the western cloisters of the great quad had turned into a furious, howling nightmare of a firefight.

This is the Tower of the Plutocrat I remember, Gaunt thought.

He looked around, gauging the best exit route. Las-rounds smacked into the wall above him. Somewhere, a grenade went off. Above the gunfire roar, he could hear turbofans whining.

Gaunt rose, blew a Blood Pact warrior off his feet with a single bolt, ran, and tried to reach the next archway, hoping to duck in, and provide cover for the men following him.

Imrie of the philia swung out of the archway shadows, and rammed the muzzle of his weapon against Gaunt’s forehead.

‘On your knees,’ he said in broken Low Gothic. ‘On your knees. Where is the pheguth?’

‘Tar shet fethak!’ Gaunt replied, cursing the Blood Pact warrior in his own tongue.

Imrie took a step back in surprise, and then aimed the gun to shoot.

A chunk of paving stone smacked him in the face, cracking his grotesk.

Imrie fell on his back, his weapon discharging uselessly into the ceiling of the colonnade.

Maggs appeared at Gaunt’s side.

‘Don’t give me a bloody gun then,’ Maggs said, and helped himself to Imrie’s weapon. Gaunt didn’t stop him.

Maggs checked the weapon. On the ground, Imrie began to stir. Maggs put the rifle to his head, and fired.

‘One less to worry about,’ he said.

‘We’ve got to find a way out of here,’ Gaunt told him.

Two more Blood Pact shooters opened up on them from the cloister end. Las-bolts chopped and stripped through the air. Gaunt and Maggs ducked down, and fired back.

‘Oh holy Throne!’ Gaunt heard Jaume cry out. ‘Oh holy Throne, this is insanity!’

Maggs adjusted his angle, and took out one of the Archenemy shooters. The other tried to reposition to get Maggs into his sweep of fire, and Gaunt put two bolt-rounds through him and the wall behind him.

‘Run!’ Maggs told the others. ‘Now!’

They all ran.

The Valkyries swung in low over the High Palace. Smoke was pluming up off the cloisters near to the great quad.

Strapped into the open doorway of the leading bird, Larkin looked up at Bonin, who was holding on to the door’s overhead rail.

‘It’s a fething mess down there,’ he yelled over the wind rush.

Bonin nodded. He pulled out a scope, and started spotting.

‘Get your eye in, Larks,’ he said.

‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore,’ muttered Larkin, settling up to his long-las’s scope.

‘Bad guys,’ Bonin said.

‘Ah, gotcha,’ replied Larkin.

Rime and three Sirkles ran down the western colonnade, past the bodies of dead agents and at least two other Sirkles. Rime could hear the strip and slap of fierce gunfire exchanges in the precincts directly ahead of him.

‘Close in, close in!’ he yelled over his link. ‘Condition red! All forces close in and subdue. Kill shots approved, all targets!’

Crossfire ripped through the colonnade, killing both of the Sirkles, outright. Rime stumbled with a flesh wound to his left thigh. The philia warrior known as Naeme ploughed out of hiding behind the inquisitor with his weapon raised to finish his attack.

‘Then it is Golguulest,’ he was saying, ‘then it is Nyurtaloth.’ Naeme was ebullient. He knew in his heart that the mission his philia had been sent on was almost done, and he knew his rite was nearly done too. There were only a few of death’s names left to be recited.

‘Then there is Djastah,’ he said.

‘Then there is Rime,’ said Rime.

Naeme hesitated, and stared at the inquisitor in amazement. There was no denying it. Rime was certainly one of the last names of death.

‘You,’ Naeme breathed. ‘You are–’

Rime raised his hand and caught Naeme by the throat. He snapped the Blood Pact warrior’s neck with an effortless flick.

‘Yes,’ said Rime, allowing the body to fall. ‘I am.’

Karhunan Sirdar knew that the philia was losing bodies fast. The running gun battle through the High Palace was costing both sides dearly. He’d just seen his brother Barc fall, his brains splashed up the wall. The area ahead of the sirdar was littered with Imperial dead.

Ever the strategist, Karhunan reckoned he had enough men left to cut across the line of Imperial assault, and hold it long enough for his beloved damogaur to make the kill.

Yelling the Gaur Magir! war cry of the Pact, he ordered what was left of the philia forward. It had begun to snow quite heavily. The light had gone, the blue of the sky turned to zinc. Karhunan could smell blood and snow.

They had reached the end of their last mission.

He sprayed fire, and cut down three Commissariat storm-troopers, who were trying to advance along the contested colonnade. From cover, Captain Tawil took a shot that hit Karhunan in the gut. The sirdar fired back, instinctively on auto, and shot Tawil to pieces.

Karhunan could smell his own blood.

He winced, and tried to remain upright. He waved his men forward.

The last of his men: Gnesh, Samus and Lusk.

Gnesh led the way, hosing the colonnade with fire. S Company troopers, screaming for want of cover, burst like meat sacks. Gnesh was laughing. There was blood aplenty for all the thirsty gods of the Consanguinity.

Gnesh fell.

Karhunan didn’t see what hit him, but the big man fell with an awful and final certainty, a death fall.

Karhunan screamed in rage. He saw several figures in black fatigues flanking his line along the outside of the colonnade’s wall. He fired at them, chipping stonework.

Mkoll swung up, and fired back. His first burst slew Lusk, and his second winged Samus. Jajjo, at his left-hand side, aimed over the colonnade wall, and nailed Samus with a squirt of full auto.

Howling, Karhunan ran for them.

A tall figure in nightmarish war paint stepped out of the shadows of a pillar in front of him, and fired some kind of powered bow.

The bolt hit Karhunan Sirdar in the forehead, and crashed him over onto his back, dead.

‘Clear,’ Eszrah ap Niht yelled to the Tanith fire-teams.

‘Advance!’ Mkoll bellowed.

‘It’s a dead end!’ Gaunt yelled.

‘No, this way,’ Jaume cried. ‘This leads through to the Honorarium.’

‘Are you sure?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Of course I am. I’ve been coming up here every Friday for the last six months.’ Jaume yelled.

Gaunt didn’t even think to ask the portraitist why.

‘Maggs!’ he yelled. ‘Move Jaume and the doctor into cover in the Honorarium!’

Mabbon had fallen behind. His strength had held up well, but he was flagging now, slowed by the returning pain of his wound. Snow was swirling around them.

‘But–’ Maggs protested.

‘That’s an order!’ Gaunt yelled.

Maggs turned, and scooted Kolding and the terrified Jaume away in the direction of the vast Honorarium.

Gaunt got his arm around Mabbon, and supported him.

‘Not far now, magir,’ he said.

‘You’re a good man, Gaunt,’ wheezed the etogaur.

‘If they take us, please don’t say that to anyone. Tell them I’m your sworn enemy.’

An RPG shrieked down the colonnade, and blew out the roof. The concussion dropped Gaunt and Mabbon hard.

Malstrom stalked forwards through the coiling smoke and the random snow, slamming another fat shell into the launcher. Dust from the blast had given the air a gritty, grainy quality.

Up ahead, the two bodies lay amongst the rubble, swathed in stone dust. Both looked dead. One of them was the pheguth. Malstrom tossed his launcher away, and drew an autopistol. They had done it. The philia had won. All he had to do was confirm the kill.

Coated in stone dust, and looking like a statue come to life, Gaunt sat up abruptly. His bolt pistol was in his hand.

‘Not today,’ he said, and fired.

The bolt blew Malstrom in half, and painted the cloister wall with a terrible quantity of blood. There were no gore mages of the Consanguinity present to read the blood mark, but the prognostications were nothing but violent death.

Mabbon was dazed and woozy. His wound had started to bleed again. Gaunt hoisted him upright, and got his arm under the enemy officer’s armpits. Both of them were covered in stone dust and blood, and both of them were a little deaf from the concussion.

‘Come on. Stay with me!’ Gaunt yelled. He stared up into Mabbon’s face, and slapped his scarred cheek. ‘Stay with me!’

He could hear whining. He thought it was just his ears. Snowflakes touched his face.

The muzzle of a pistol rammed against Gaunt’s temple.

‘I will give you credit,’ Baltasar Eyl said, panting hard. ‘You have been a worthy adversary. You have led my philia a proper dance. But now, we end this.’

His voice was full of accent, of outworld accent. In the extremity of the moment, it had become hard for Eyl to maintain his civilised veneer.

‘One last thing you might want to consider, damogaur,’ Mabbon said in the Archenemy tongue. ‘When you’ve got the bastard, kill the bastard. Don’t talk about it.’

Gaunt threw a savage elbow that smacked Eyl away. The damogaur reeled, his teeth broken, and his mouth bloody, but he still had the gun. Gaunt kicked him in the belly.

Eyl still had the gun.

‘We’ve got targets! Out in the open!’ Bonin yelled.

‘Take them! Take them all!’ Rime was shouting over the static heavy line.

‘Feth that, there’s smoke and snow all over the place!’ Larkin replied, snuggling up his aim as the Valkyrie bucked and wallowed.

‘Big boss says take the shot, Larks,’ said Bonin.

‘Wait…’ Larkin advised. ‘Wait… get the pilot to level us out! All right, I have three targets. Repeat, three hot. What’s the advice?’

‘Instruction is take the shot,’ Bonin repeated over the roar of the cycling turbofans.

‘I aim to please,’ Larkin replied, the long-las banging in his hands.

There was a crunch of overpressure and punctured vacuum. Blood vapour drenched Gaunt and Mabbon, caking their dust-covered faces.

Eyl’s skull had just detonated. His headless body fell against Gaunt. A gunship wailed in overhead, tossing and pluming the rising smoke and the billowing snow. A second later, its shadow went over them,

‘Holy Throne,’ Gaunt stammered.

‘Hit! Hit!’ Larkin yelled.

‘Yeah, but what did you hit?’ Bonin demanded, leaning down over Larkin in the doorway.

‘I only ever see what’s real and true through my scope,’ Larkin replied. ‘I got the bad guy, of course. Didn’t I?’

Gaunt and Mabbon ran towards the Honorarium. Leaking blood, Mabbon was getting slower all the time.

Behind them, vicious fighting was ripping through the great quad’s cloisters as the last of the Blood Pact philia made their stand.

The Honorarium was huge, a massive, gloomy dome of cold, echoing air and silence. Lights illuminated displays at floor level around the vast rim of the building. The skirts of the huge temple housed individual chapels, dedicated to certain heroes or campaigns. In the centre of the floor space was the giant basalt crypt housing Warmaster Slaydo’s remains.

Halfway across the immense open floor space of the Honorarium, Mabbon’s legs gave out, and he fell. Gaunt turned back to scoop him up.

Jaume, Maggs and Kolding had been hiding behind the front rank of pews. They ran out to help Gaunt.

‘We need to get him into cover,’ Gaunt said.

‘He’s bleeding pretty badly,’ Kolding said, opening his kit.

‘Pack the wound. Pack the wound, then!’ Maggs urged.

‘Let’s carry him somewhere quiet and out of the way,’ Gaunt said. ‘Come on. These side chapels look good to me.’

‘Your chapel is just over there,’ said Jaume, pointing.

‘My what?’

‘Your chapel,’ Jaume repeated.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Gaunt snapped. ‘What chapel?’

‘For Throne’s sake,’ Jaume replied. ‘It’s why I was commissioned! Didn’t you even read the letter? I was commissioned to make your portrait for the dedicated chapel here!’

‘I don’t believe Ibram Gaunt is going to be commemorated anywhere in Imperial circles after this,’ said Handro Rime.

He walked towards the group across the broad, sunlit floor space. Snowflakes were tapping against the skylights far above their heads. Rime had his weapon aimed at them, a laspistol.

‘A heretical monster and his enablers. You have fallen a long way from the greatness you once achieved here, Gaunt.’

Gaunt stood up, and faced Rime.

‘And you’re the worst kind of fanatic, Rime. You’ve got this so wrong. You should be thanking me.’

Rime grinned a smile that all of his Sirkles could copy.

‘I don’t think so, you despicable traitor.’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘Whatever I say, you’ll just reply “That’s what a heretic would say”, won’t you?’

‘Of course he will,’ coughed Mabbon.

Gaunt turned. Jaume and Kolding were helping Mabbon to rise. The etogaur was clearly determined to get up and face his adversary.

‘I don’t even want to look at you,’ sneered Rime. ‘Archenemy scum.’

‘It isn’t just Gaur’s Blood Pact that wants me dead,’ Mabbon said to Gaunt, swaying against Kolding’s support. ‘The Anarch’s forces want me silenced too. They’re rather more subtle.’

He looked at Rime.

‘You’ve changed your face a thousand times, but I still know you, Syko Magir.’

‘This animal is talking nonsense!’ Rime declared.

‘Is he?’ asked Maggs.

Rime raised his weapon to shoot the etogaur. The split second he did so, Gaunt realised it was snowing.

Indoors.

The blood-scream knocked them all flat, and blew out the huge skylights of the Honorarium. Howling, the witch came for them, surrounded by a coruscating ball of warp-lightning. She was demented and raving. She was screaming vengeance for the death of her beloved brother. She came at them across the floor of the Honorarium like a typhoon, driving an arctic blizzard before her. Dry lightning tore the air.

All Wes Maggs saw was the old dam who had haunted his mind since Hinzerhaus. All Wes Maggs wanted was to be free of her phantom torment.

He opened fire, screaming, on full auto, and discharged the lasrifle’s entire energy reservoir.

His shots exploded the witch’s cocoon of warp-energy, and shredded her. She took nearly two hundred hits, and by the time her body struck the paving stones, it was pulped beyond any semblance of articulacy. The last few shots lifted her veil for a second as she fell back.

Maggs saw her face, a face he would never forget.

His weapon misfired, and began to chime repeatedly on charge out.

He killed the alert, and lowered the gun.

‘Feth me,’ he stammered. ‘Did I do that?’

Gaunt slapped Maggs on the back. ‘Yes, you did. Makes me glad I didn’t kill you.’

Maggs smiled a half-surprised smile.

‘Wake up, trooper, and help us carry the prisoner to cover,’ said Gaunt. Beyond the walls of the Honorarium, they could hear sirens wailing and gunships thundering in.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Kolding.

Gaunt turned.

Rime was back on his feet. He had a gash across his scalp, and what lay beneath looked more like augmetic artifice than flesh and blood. His face was half hanging off.

He was aiming his pistol at them.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he announced.

Gaunt heard footsteps running out across the echo-space of the vast temple. Troops were deploying into position around the confrontation, weapons trained.

He realised they were his.

‘Glad you could join us, Major Rawne,’ Gaunt said, his eyes never leaving Rime’s.

‘Apologies, sir. Got a little waylaid.’

‘Who’s with you?’ Gaunt called.

‘Varl, Meryn, Daur, Banda, Leyr and Cant, sir.’

‘All aimed at this lunatic as opposed to me?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘Even Cant?’

‘Locked and blocked, sir,’ Cant called out.

‘See?’ said Rawne, ‘Sometimes even he can.’

‘Well,’ Gaunt said to Rime. ‘This is a proper stand-off, isn’t it? Toss down your weapon.’

Rime smiled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Tell your people to surrender. This facility will be overwhelmed in another five minutes.’

‘My people don’t work like that, inquisitor, especially not when the man they’re facing has been identified as an agent of the Anarch.’

‘That’s preposterous! The ravings of a heretic who’d do anything to save himself!’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘Mabbon was certain. He identified you, Syko Magir.’

‘The man is insane,’ Rime scoffed. ‘Put up your weapons. Come on, Gaunt. I know how straight-laced you are at heart.’

The bolt pistol was still in Gaunt’s hand. There was one round left in its clip.

He raised it, and aimed directly at Rime.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe that you are an agent of the Archenemy, and I demand that you drop your weapon, now.’

‘Or what, Gaunt?’ Rime grinned. ‘You’ll shoot me? I know you. I’ve studied your dossier. Without unequivocal proof, you’d never act against the Throne. Ever.’

Gaunt hesitated, and lowered his weapon.

Rime glanced over as Rawne stepped forward.

‘We’re done, thank you, trooper,’ Rime said. ‘Step back.’

‘My boss doesn’t trust you,’ said Rawne.

‘He’s got no actual proof,’ said Rime. ‘And he won’t act. I’ve read his dossier.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rawne, ‘but you’ve never read mine.’

Rime brought his pistol up, firing, screaming.

Rawne took him down with two kill-shots to the chest.

TWENTY-NINE

EXIT WOUNDS

‘Take a seat, Ibram,’ said Isiah Mercure. They were meeting in a room in Section, one of the wings that hadn’t suffered smoke damage.

So, I’m Ibram now suddenly, am I?

‘Full marks for this, sir,’ Mercure said. He was busy at three things at once: a data-slate, a letter, and some reports. ‘Seriously, man, good work. We’re going to run with this. Edur tells me your regiment is prepared to lead the way with the operation? Is that right?’

‘The Tanith First is happy to serve, sir,’ Gaunt replied.

‘Well, I can tell you,’ said Mercure, flashing a quick grin as he finished and closed the data-slate report, ‘that’s good news. It’s great to get good people on your side. You think you can handle it?’

‘My regiment is mobilised, sir. We’ll be heading towards Salvation’s Reach within the week.’

‘A lot depends on this, Ibram,’ said Mercure, ‘and I won’t be there to hold your hand all the way.’

‘I understand, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have just one question. The Inquisition, what has it been told?’

‘Just that the valiant Inquisitor Rime was lost in action during a Chaos uprising,’ replied Mercure.

‘I see. I’d rather not have the holy ordos on my back, on top of everything else.’

‘Understood.’

‘And I want Blenner and Criid released to my jurisdiction.’

‘Agreed.’

‘You can fix that?’

‘You have friends in high places, Ibram,’ Mercure mocked. ‘And you have friends in very low places too. How’s the etogaur?’

‘Stable. Eager to help. He’s–’

‘What?’ asked Mercure.

‘A good man,’ said Gaunt.

‘I had a horrible feeling you were going to say that,’ said Mercure. He stood, and walked to the side table. ‘A drink? A toast?’

‘Why not?’ replied Gaunt.

Mercure poured two sacras and handed one of them to Gaunt.

‘You do realise that you won’t be coming back from this one alive, don’t you?’ Mercure asked.

‘That’s what they tell me every time I ship out,’ Gaunt replied.

‘Really? Damn,’ said Mercure, and chinked glasses. ‘Cheers anyway.’

‘We’re shipping out in a week,’ said Ban Daur. ‘I think you should come with us.’

‘Oh, right, yeah. Why?’ asked Elodie.

‘Because I can’t kiss you like this if you’re light years away,’ he replied.

‘Like what?’ she asked.

He showed her.

‘Right,’ she nodded, ‘I’d better come with you then.’

The vast space of the Honorarium was full of faint echoes and a sense of eternity. On their last day on Balhaut, the Tanith First marched into the temple for a special service of benediction. It was a warm, bright day, the snow long gone, and most of the damage done to the building during the final battle had been repaired. They wore their number one uniforms, and their marching was impeccable, even though they had been stagnating in turnaround for two years.

Once the service was done, and the platoons had filed out, Gaunt walked with Dorden around the rim of the great temple, pausing to look into the side chapels. The bandsmen of the ceremonial brigades were packing up. Drums were being muffled and rolled into their boxes. Buglers and horn blowers were cleaning their instruments, the chin straps of their caps still hooked up over their noses.

Gaunt hadn’t realised how old Dorden had got. The walk was slow.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Dorden said.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not an easy thing, and you won’t like it,’ Dorden added.

‘Let me show you this first,’ Gaunt said.

He led the way into one of the side chapels.

‘Oh, great Throne,’ Dorden gasped.

‘All the satellite chapels have been dedicated to the worlds lost in the first years of the crusade,’ Gaunt said. They sat down together on one of the pews in the side chapel. ‘This is the memorial chapel dedicated to Tanith. This is what Jaume wanted me for, to make a portrait of me to sit on display in here. Can you imagine?’

‘I can’t,’ Dorden replied. He had tears in his eyes.

‘I know. Look, I wanted you to see this, Tol. Of all people, you needed to know this place existed.’

‘Thank the Throne you did,’ Dorden replied.

They sat back, side by side, on the new, waxed pews, and gazed up at the hololithic projection of Tanith.

‘It was a pretty world, wasn’t it?’ Dorden asked.

‘It was,’ Gaunt agreed. ‘Oh, something else. It seems, I’m dead.’

‘What?’

‘According to the guides who work around here, I died during the Famous Victory. You can pay to visit my death venue.’

‘That’s funny,’ Dorden chuckled.

‘No one remembers anything properly,’ said Gaunt. ‘Everything gets twisted and forgotten.’

Dorden nodded. ‘Except the things we care to remember ourselves.’

Gaunt sighed. ‘When they told me about it, I wondered for a moment if I had died here. I wondered if I had died at the Gate and become a ghost, and had been a ghost for all the time I had been with the Tanith.’

‘I can see how you might have arrived at that conclusion,’ replied Dorden. ‘Who am I to deny it?’

Gaunt smiled, and nodded.

‘I need to tell you something,’ Dorden said, turning to look at Gaunt.

‘A bad something?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I said you won’t like it.’

‘All right,’ said Gaunt.

Dorden sat back.

‘I did the examination. I tested that old bastard.’

‘Zweil?’

‘Yes. I did all the tests.’

‘Something’s come back, hasn’t it?’ asked Gaunt.

Dorden nodded. ‘Leukaemia. Blood cancer. It’s all through him.’

‘Oh, Throne. How long?’

‘Zweil? That old bastard will live forever.’

‘But–’

Dorden sighed. ‘He doesn’t like the blood tests, does he? Old Zweil doesn’t like needles. I had to show him how to do it.’

‘So?’

‘When my back was turned, he switched the samples.’

‘So… oh no. No. No!’

‘Hush,’ said Dorden.

‘My eyes won’t let me cry,’ Gaunt said, looking at his old friend.

‘It’s probably best that way.’

‘How long?’

‘Six months, if I’m lucky. But I want to keep going. You know, and Ana knows. Don’t tell anyone else. I want to fight to the end. I want to serve to the end.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘And I’d like to rest here when I’m done,’ said Dorden.

Gaunt looked up at the roof of the Tanith chapel. The dead had a knack of finding their way back to Balhaut.

‘I’ll make sure of it,’ he said.

EPILOGUE

THE NINTH DAY

The Oligarchy Gate, on the afternoon of the ninth day, at Slaydo’s left hand. Ahead, the famous Gate, defended by the woe machines of Heritor Asphodel. Mud lakes. Freak weather. The chemical deluge triggered by the orbital bombardment and the Heritor’s toxins. Molten pitch in the air like torrential rain.

Gaunt kept his head down as the shells rained in.

Wire barbs skinned the air. The thuk of impacts, so many impacts. Clouds of pink mist to his left and right as men were hit. Ahead, below the Gate, the machines whirring again.

They were dug in opposite a small gatehouse with distinctive finials shaped like aquilas. The bombardment was so severe that Gaunt doubted the building would be standing in another day, or even another hour. It would be erased from the world and from his memory.

His sergeant, beloved Tanhause, yelled out over the onslaught. Formation moving up!

Gaunt looked back. PDF units were advancing to the front, scurrying, heads down. He had to admire their resolution. Often, they had little more than bolt-action rifles and bayonets, but still they threw themselves into the front line.

‘How are we doing?’ the young PDF officer yelled over the roar of the bombardment as he ducked into cover.

‘Pretty decently,’ Gaunt yelled back. ‘If we can rally here and press on, we may have a good day yet!’

He looked up. The Tower of the Plutocrat was the most massive structure he’d ever seen. Nothing in the universe could topple it.

‘Ah, who knows what we can do,’ the young PDF officer returned. ‘We might even bring that terrible big bastard down!’

‘I like the sound of that,’ Gaunt grinned. He held out his hand.

‘I’m Gaunt,’ he said.

The young PDFer grasped Gaunt’s hand and shook it.

‘Jaume.’

Gaunt smiled.

‘Good to know you,’ he said. ‘Let’s finish this.’

SALVATION’S REACH

Came then he, a prisoner, into the

House of the Daemon, and he was bound about

and anointed so that his life could be

taken in offering, as was the custom.

But he slipped his bonds, and made a fire

burn inside the House of the Daemon,

and burned it he from the inside out,

and so the Daemon it was that

burned and was slain.

– from the Kinebrach myth of the Rath and the Hero

‘Throughout the year 781.M41, Warmaster Macaroth’s main battle groups remained deadlocked at the frontiers of the Erinyes Group, despite his strenuous efforts to force a breakthrough. Macaroth’s primary crusading strength was held off by a formidable defensive line composed of the forces of Archon Gaur, the Archenemy overlord.

‘Meanwhile, trailwards, the Warmaster’s second battle group had repeatedly failed to dislodge the legions of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant, from the Cabal Systems. Senior advisors urged Macaroth to break off from his bull-headed prosecution of the Erinyes Line, and concentrate on quashing Sek at the Cabal Worlds. With the threat of Sek removed, they counselled, the Crusade could safely resume an assault of the Archon’s position. But Macaroth rejected the notion, claiming it would give the Archon enough time – perhaps two or three years – to rebuild and retrench to such an extent that the Erinyes Line would become unassailable.

‘Split between these two concentrations of resistance, Macaroth’s Crusade was haemorrhaging momentum and materiel. The Crusade had become two crusades, and even Macaroth’s vast war-tithes, and massive support from the sector lords, could not sustain his ambitions. Furthermore, there was a general and growing fear that, if properly co-ordinated, the forces of Sek and Gaur might combine with such effect, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade force would actually be annihilated.

‘During this critical period, a series of covert operations was planned and executed at key sites across the Sabbat Worlds. The most critical, and the one upon which all the others depended, was undertaken at Salvation’s Reach in the remote Rimworld Marginals. Seen as a huge gamble, and with atrocious prospects for success, the mission was authorised by Macaroth on the basis that, if accomplished by some miracle, it could alter the balance of the war entirely.

‘This was the twenty-sixth year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, and Macaroth was increasingly looking like a man prepared to try anything, and risk everything, to secure a victory.’

– from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE

SUICIDE KINGS

Something, perhaps the year of living by the skin of his teeth on occupied Gereon, or merely the fact of having been born a sly and ruthless son of a bitch, had given Major Rawne of the Tanith First a certain edge.

He could usually smell trouble coming. That morning, he could definitely smell trouble coming. As edges went, his was as fine and sharp as the one along the blade of his straight silver warknife.

At dawn, with the twin suns beginning to burn up through the petrochemical smog across the city bay, he left the regimental billet and walked down to the rockcrete wasteland of the bayside revetment. There, he wandered as far as the bridge, and crossed over to the pontoons in front of the island guardhouse.

The pontoon walkway clunked underfoot. Looking down through the mesh, he could see the water, toxic brown and frothy. The massive galvanic plants along the bay, Adeptus Mechanicus developments that powered and lit the hive city’s core systems, had just flushed their heatsinks, and filled the coastline with its morning dose of radioactive effluent. There was steam in the air, steam that stank of sulphur and rolled like a fog bank, white in the suns’ light. The waters of the bay and estuary had been corrosively acidic for a thousand years. It was sobering to think that anything still lived in it.

But things did. Just below the surface, they squirmed and moved, leech-mouthed, slug-slick, with dentition like crowded pincushions and eyes like phlegm. Rawne could see them, following him beneath the surface; a dark, wriggling mass. What gave them their edge? Was it the sound of his footsteps, the passing heat signature of his body? Pheromones? His shadow on the water?

They were survivors. They had adapted to their environment instead of allowing it to kill them. And they killed anything that threatened them.

Just like him.

Three Urdeshi troopers were manning the guardhouse. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them. They weren’t his concern. He had chosen that particular morning because it was pretty much the last chance he was going to get before the regiment shipped out. The point of no turning back had been reached.

But still, there was the nagging discomfort of his edge. Something was off. Something was wrong. He’d chosen the wrong day to try it. Maybe the troopers suspected him of something, maybe they were wired up for some reason. Maybe something had given away his true intent.

Under ordinary circumstances, the doubt would have been enough to make him abort, turn around, and go home. The uncertainty would have been sufficient to make him blow it off and try again another day when the odds were more favourable.

Except there weren’t going to be any more other days. It was now, or it was never. There were no more chances. The monster, that monster, should have been dead long since. Justice and decency demanded it, and only the dedicated efforts of good men who ought to have known better were ensuring the monster’s salvation.

Dedication. Rawne had always possessed a measure of dedication. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He knew when an order was a bad thing and needed to be ignored. He knew that sometimes a man had to be counter-intuitive. A man had to do what looked like a bad thing so that everything else would be right in the end.

The monster was destined to die. Its death was required, demanded. Efforts had already been made, by more than one interested party. Rawne couldn’t stand by and let things carry on.

Rawne was a man of serious convictions, after all. Thankfully, they’d all been wiped from his record the day he joined the Imperial Guard.

The Urdeshi watched him as he approached. What did they suspect? Did they know what he had really come for?

He stopped at the outer cage gate. The Urdeshi troopers wore black metal pins that indicated they had been seconded to serve the Commissariat’s S Company, the close protection and security detail. They asked him his name and his business, and studied the papers he passed through the metal letterbox. One of them took a long time over the Contact Permission document signed by Rawne’s commanding officer, as though he had literacy problems.

They let him through. They checked his ID tags. They eyed his tattoos with scorn. He was some kind of heathen farm-head from an agri-world, an indentured barbarian, not a proper fighting man from a civilised place like Urdesh. Only his rank kept the insults at bay.

They took his sidearm, put it in the guardhouse locker, and made him sign for it. Then they patted him down.

The Urdeshi had been fairly thorough up until that point, but now the long night shift and a clutch of caffeine headaches began to show. Rawne had been patted down by the very best in his time. He knew precisely how to twist or turn, innocent movements that looked like balance-keeping, so that even somebody taking the pat-down seriously could be misled and misdirected. Rawne kept his hands raised. By the time they’d finished, they would believe they had methodically checked everywhere, where in fact he had kept them entirely clear of one or two areas.

They found the knife. Tanith warknife, straight silver, buckled to his right shin.

‘What’s this?’ asked one.

‘Back-up,’ replied Rawne.

They took it, made him sign for it.

He’d wanted them to find it. It was the decoy. People believed they’d done a thorough job if they found something. People usually stopped searching at that point.

‘You’ve got thirty minutes,’ said one of the guards. ‘That is the permitted duration authorised by your papers. You will be back here in twenty-nine minutes. If you’re not, we will come looking for you and you will be considered a justified target.’

Rawne nodded.

They opened the inner cage gate. Its chain hoist clattered. He walked through the guardhouse and out onto the inner causeway of the pontoons. The tide clearly caught here between the vast stone piers of the island. There was a pronounced stink of sulphur, and a soupy mass of dissolving garbage lapped against the slimy walls of the inlet.

He left the pontoon walkway and climbed stone steps that brought him in under the archway entrance. The island was an artificial atoll of stone and rockcrete built to support a squat, formidable lighthouse tower. The bridge that had originally connected it to the shore had long since rotted away. It had been replaced by the metal pontoon and the walk span.

The lighthouse hadn’t burned for a long time. Dark and neglected, the tower’s thick walls and inaccessibility had been put to other uses.

Once he was out of sight of the guardhouse, Rawne stepped back into the shadows. He reached down to his left calf, and removed the other Tanith warknife he was carrying. He had tied it around his shin with boot laces. The one he’d surrendered had been Meryn’s. Rawne had taken it without asking. Meryn would probably be searching his billet for it already. It added to Rawne’s enjoyment of the whole enterprise to think that, whatever else happened, Meryn would end up on a charge for misplacing his regimental dagger.

Rawne believed the knife would probably be enough. It certainly ought to be enough for any self-respecting Tanith-born to get the job done. But he wanted to cover all the variables.

Off to the side of the lowering entrance archway was a dim stone cistern. It had once been the chute of a garderobe, or a drain-away built to cope with heavy storm swells. The edge of his warknife, deftly applied, freed the lip of the cast iron cover. Rawne hooked his fingers around the bars of the cover and lifted it out. There was a damp stone well underneath, with water lurking in the darkness at the bottom. Other things lurked down there too, things with pincushion gums and egg-white eyes. He could hear them slopping and writhing gleefully, as if entertained by his cunning.

The cord had been attached to the underside of the drain cover, so that it hung down into the shaft of the well, weighted by the waxed burlap musette bag on the end. He pulled the line up, and the bag with it, opened the drawstring top, and took out the heavy object wrapped in vizzy cloth.

It was a collection of objects in fact, all of them dense and heavy. Machined metal components. Rawne spread the cloth on the stone floor beside the drain, and laid the parts out on it. He slotted them together, quickly and skilfully. He’d done it a thousand times before. He could have done it blindfold. Each piece clacked or wound into place. The smell of gun oil was sweet and strong in his nostrils.

Standard Munitorum-issue laspistol, Khulan V pattern. It was one of the original stamped blanks shipped from Khulan for finishing in the armouries of Tanith, prior to issue at the Tanith Founding. The palm-spur had been fitted with a handmade nalwood grip, and age and use had lent the figuring greater beauty than any varnish or lacquer could have achieved.

The pistol had been smuggled into the lighthouse over a period of weeks, one part at a time. It lacked a power cell, a flash sleeve and the side casings. Rawne reached into his belt pouch. Inside were two cigars rolled in black liquorice paper. The S Company sentries had taken them out, sniffed them, and given them back. Each cigar was in a little tin case. Except they weren’t. One of the tin cases was actually a flash sleeve. Rawne blew out the traces of tobacco fibre and screwed the sleeve onto the end of the barrel.

The Urdeshi had also failed to notice that he was wearing four tags, not two. Rawne unlooped the two side plates from the slender chain, dropped the tags back down under the neckline of his vest, and slotted the side plates into position.

Then he struck the tip of his knife into the back of his boot heel, and pulled the heel block away from the upper. The power cell was secured in a cavity he’d hollowed out of the heel. Rawne stamped the heel back in place, then slapped the cell into the gun. He toggled off, armed it, got a tiny green light on the grip just above his thumb. He felt the ambient hum of a charged las weapon.

He dropped the drain cover back, slipped the knife into his belt, and walked up the steps from the entrance archway with the pistol down at his side in his right hand.

There was a semicircular stone chamber beyond, large and full of echoes. Munitorum-issue armoured window units had been bolted or heat-fused into the gaping stone sockets. Rawne passed on into a larger stone chamber, fully circular and three or four storeys high. It was the core of the lighthouse. In the base, dead centre, stood some of the old lampwork, a great, engineered brass contraption with a wick-mount, winding handles, and a reservoir feed from the promethium sump below. A huge frame of gearing and chainlines surrounded it to elevate the lamp to the beacon room at the apex of the tower once it was lit.

The brass lampwork was black with age and the chains had rusted. The gears and winders were so corroded they had frozen, blotched green and white, and would never turn again. Decades of dust had accreted on the black grease of the lamp head and wick assembly in such quantity it looked like some exotic, thickly furred animal mounted on display.

Rawne walked up the stairs that ran around the curve of the chamber wall. There was no rail, and he made no sound, though the latter was not even deliberate. Like many Tanith, he had been taught by that great educator, life, not to give himself away.

He smelled caffeine and the unmistakable aroma of fried nutrition fibre. Slab, staple of the common lasman’s diet, cornerstone of Guard rations.

Rawne reached a landing space. There was a doorway ahead. A guard, another Urdeshi man, was sitting beside the doorway on a chair borrowed from another building. Rawne kept the laspistol against his hip so that the man wouldn’t see it immediately. He kept walking. It was all about confidence. Confidence was the key to everything. Use enough of it and you could pull off any scam, win any fight, or bed any mamzel. The more you acted like you were absolutely supposed to be doing something, the less chance anyone would ask what the hell you were up to, until it was too late, and they were – depending on the circumstances – financially worse off, dead, or surprisingly naked.

The guard didn’t spare him a second look. Rawne passed him, and went in through the doorway.

The room had originally been the tower master’s chamber. It was bare boards and grilled windows, and the corkscrew staircase ran up the inside wall to the platform levels higher in the tower. The room currently contained a heavy wooden cot, a small trolley table and an old wooden chair.

The cot was neatly made, the blanket and bedroll laid out as if for a barrack hall inspection. On the table was a small lumen lamp, some books and a cookhouse tray. On the tray was a tin cup and a flask of caffeine, a salt shaker, a mess dish with the remains of a serving of slab cake, hard biscuits and refried bean paste, and a worn metal spoon. Rawne was surprised they’d allowed a spoon. A determined man could turn a spoon into a weapon. He could sharpen it against stone, stab with it. If he didn’t have time to work its edge, he could improvise. Even blunt, it could do damage to an eye or a throat if driven with enough force.

Maybe it’s me, Rawne thought. Maybe I just see weapons in everything. Maybe to other people, that’s just a spoon.

The books were all Imperial tracts and trancemissionary pamphlets, stamp-printed on brown, low-quality paper. It was all the monster ever seemed to read. He said they helped to settle him and fortify his resolve.

The monster was sitting in the chair beside the table, reading one of the tracts while he digested his breakfast. He was wearing unmarked black fatigues, boots and a brown hide jacket. His shaved scalp and face were covered in deliberate ritual scars, old and puckered, but the hands holding the trancemissionary treatise were soft and unmarked.

The monster became aware of Rawne’s approach. He stopped reading and looked up.

‘Major Rawne,’ he said. ‘I did not expect to see you this morning.’

So damn polite. Like a real person.

‘Pheguth,’ Rawne replied.

The monster looked startled for a second. It wasn’t just the fact that he had been called traitor in his own, abhuman tongue. It was the fluency of it. Rawne’s time on occupied Gereon had allowed him to acquire a conversational grasp of the Archenemy language. He didn’t merely know the word for betrayer, he could deliver it with colloquial authenticity. It was as though a part of the monster’s old life had come back to threaten him.

The monster saw the weapon. He saw Rawne raising the laspistol from the guarded place beside his hip.

‘Major–’ he began.

Rawne said nothing else. He took aim and fired.

The crack of the discharge echoed around the room. Rawne heard seabirds roosting in the upper parts of the lighthouse launch into the air at the sound of the shot. Nothing else.

Footsteps. There would be footsteps. Which side would they come from? What angle did he need to cover?

Rawne looked at the monster. The monster, Mabbon Etogaur, looked back at him.

‘Come on, or you’re a dead man,’ Rawne said.

Mabbon got up out of his chair. Rawne’s shot had severed the heavy iron chain that linked the etogaur’s manacles to a hefty floor pin. He looped up the trailing, cut end of the chain around his right hand.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said.

‘No time to explain,’ Rawne replied.

It was going to be from the right.

The sea window blew in, exploding in a spray of armoured glass fragments. There was a man outside, on the lighthouse’s external walkway.

Rawne tackled Mabbon and brought him down behind the trolley table and the cot. Three more las-shots shrieked in through the blown window space and scorched holes in the opposite wall. Prone, Mabbon looked at Rawne.

Rawne gestured for him to keep down.

The shooter outside switched his lasrifle to full auto and unleashed a storm of rounds into the room. Several struck the side of the heavy cot, splintering the wood and slamming the frame backwards. Some hit the trolley table and knocked it over. Some punctured the back of the old chair and filled the air with dust and floating animal hair fibres.

Silence. Dust and smoke drifted in the sunlight. Mabbon looked set to move. Rawne, still flat on his belly, reached out and picked up the salt shaker that had been knocked off the tray. He used it like a pen, and drew on the stone floor in salt. The looping white lines formed the scratch symbol for ‘play dead’. The Blood Pact scratch symbol. Some said Rawne had learned far more on Gereon than was entirely good for him.

Mabbon looked at the symbol and nodded.

The shooter was cautious. He had killed the guard at the door before Rawne’s arrival: cut his throat and left him sitting in his chair. Then he’d gone out onto the walkway and circled around, probably intending to get up and fire at Mabbon from above. The noise of Rawne’s shot had forced him to make his play earlier than he had intended.

A minute passed, a full minute. It felt like a year to the two men pressed down on the floor behind the cot as they tried not to twitch or breathe. A second minute was almost up before something moved against the light and a figure stepped in through the blown window.

An Urdeshi trooper, by his clothes and his lasrifle; uniforms and Guard-issue weapons could be stolen. The boots crunched on the broken glass.

Rawne let him get a metre or so into the room, then fired under the cot. The las-shot clipped the man’s left calf and he toppled with a squeal. Rawne leapt up at once, bounding over the battered cot to finish things. He was hoping to take the man alive for interrogation, but he was also fully prepared to seal the deal with a kill shot if necessary.

He almost fell off the cot mid-bound as shots tore down from above. A second shooter was firing from high up inside the tower, perched on the rail-less spiral of the stairs.

Rawne landed on top of the first shooter. It was an accident, but he worked with it. The man fought back. Rawne saw his face, close-up, and recognised him. They wrestled. Shots from above struck the floor beside them. The man had Rawne’s wrist. Rawne couldn’t aim his pistol. The man’s lasrifle, looped around the man’s torso on its strap, was wedged between them.

Rawne threw a hooking punch. He couldn’t aim with the pistol, so he struck with it. The butt collided with the man’s cheek and snapped his head around, but the impact tore the pistol out of Rawne’s grip, and it went skittering away across the floor.

More shots struck the ground around them from above. Rawne rolled over hard, dragging his dazed assailant with him, like two lovers tumbling. He couldn’t pull the lasrifle off the shooter because of the strap, but he got his right hand around the barrel to direct it, and his left hand down and low to squeeze the trigger.

The weapon was still set on full auto. Las-shots hosed up the throat of the lighthouse, deflecting off the curved walls, blowing out chunks of brick and stonework. It wasn’t the cleanest piece of shooting Rawne had ever executed, but he managed to drag the chasing wildfire across the section of screwstair where the second shooter was crouching.

Hit, though perhaps not fatally, the second shooter yelped and fell. He somersaulted down a dozen steps, cracking off the stone edges, and then grazed against the curve of the wall and flew right off the staircase entirely. He dropped eight metres, straight down, onto the prisoner’s wooden chair, which exploded into kindling and dust under the impact.

Rawne was up. There was no opportunity for respite. A third assassin had appeared, rushing in through the main doorway. Like the other two, he was dressed as an Urdeshi trooper. He had a lasrifle with a bayonet fixed. He, too, had a face Rawne knew.

Rawne’s laspistol was out of reach. The lasrifle was tangled around the body of the first shooter on the floor. Rawne went at the third attacker instead, closing the distance between them as fast as he could, ripping out his warknife.

The third assassin fired, but Rawne’s straight silver had already parried his bayonet and turned the muzzle aside. The shot went out through the blown window. The assassin tried to re-aim, but Rawne fenced with his blade again and deflected the bayonet so that the next shots went clean up the tower space.

The assassin tried to club Rawne with an underswing of his tilted rifle. Rawne spun his warknife so that the pommel was behind his thumb, then punched the blade sideways, knuckles up. The blow slashed the assassin’s throat, left to right. Blood gouted into the air, as though someone had tossed a beaker of red ink. Rawne ripped back in the opposite direction, and tore a second cut across the man’s torso, right to left. The assassin fell on his knees with a deadweight thump, his lifeblood exiting his body under pressure through the two huge splits. He collapsed onto his face.

Rawne stepped back, spinning the warknife back upright in his hand, and then swung around, alerted by a sound from behind him.

The first shooter had got back up on his hobbled leg, raising his rifle to his broken cheek to shoot Rawne in the back. But Mabbon had seized him from behind. The etogaur’s broken manacles were wrapped around the man’s throat, crushing the life out of him. Mabbon’s face was absolutely expressionless.

The man struggled and made a cracked choking noise. Mabbon slammed his face into the stone surround of the blown window and then let the chain go slack, dropping him dead on the floor.

‘The timing of your visit was quite fortunate,’ he remarked.

Rawne nodded, picking up the third assassin’s rifle in case there were any further surprises.

The three dead assassins all had the same face.

‘Rime wants you dead,’ he said.

‘Half the sector wants me dead,’ Mabbon replied.

Rawne shrugged.

‘So, did you get some kind of tip-off that Rime was sending his Sirkle after me today?’

‘No,’ said Rawne. ‘This was a coincidence. I came here this morning to prove a point.’

‘What point?’

‘That the Tanith First can protect you better than the S Company details the Commissariat assigns to you. We’ve all used our visits in the last few weeks to test security, to look for weakness, to smuggle things in. Today, I was going to demonstrate that if we could get a weapon inside, so could anybody, and thus convince the Commissariat to assign S Company duties to my platoon so we could take over from the buffoons they’ve been using to watch you.’

‘Because Gaunt would be happier that way, because he trusts his own to do the job properly?’

‘Something like that,’ said Rawne. ‘And it’s Colonel-Commissar Gaunt to you.’

‘My apologies,’ said Mabbon.

Rawne looked at the bodies. Outside, he could hear men approaching, and an alarm started to sound.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘as demonstrations go, this proved the point well enough.’

‘I’m pleased that my security will be your business for the remainder of my stay here, major,’ Mabbon said.

‘The Suicide Kings will look after you,’ said Rawne.

‘Suicide Kings? Like the card game?’

‘Never mind. It’s a private joke,’ said Rawne. ‘Anyway, there won’t be much of a remainder. That’s why I had to make my point today. It’s also why Rime had to make his move. That suggests he has good intelligence.’

‘You’re moving me. We’re going to begin at last?’

‘Approval has been granted,’ said Rawne. ‘The mission has been authorised. We make shift at nightfall tomorrow.’

‘I take it that when we make shift, we will be en route to Salvation’s Reach?’ Mabbon Etogaur asked.

‘That’s classified,’ said Rawne.

TWO

ELODIE ON THE SHORE

With just a day to go, the Makeshift Revels were well underway.

It was all new to Elodie, of course. Everything was new, even her surname. Dutana. Elodie Dutana. It was her mother’s family name, a name that belonged to her but which she had never used. She’d left a number of temporary professional surnames behind her on Balhaut, and taken up her mother’s name to help rid herself of older memories and unsuitable associations.

She was Elodie Dutana, and she was part of a regimental entourage, and she was the companion of a brave and handsome Imperial Guard officer. It was a new life, and she liked it, and she intended to make the most of it.

She’d been through the whole process of embarkation once before, back on Balhaut, but it had been a blur, and she hadn’t taken much in. Besides, they had been shipping out to what Ban Daur described as a ‘dispersal point’, not a warzone. There had been no sense of apprehension.

Now there was. The dispersal point was a city called Anzimar on a planet called Menazoid Sigma. It had taken sixteen weeks on a stinking troop-and-packet ship to reach it from Balhaut, and they had been there eleven months.

Balhaut, where Elodie had spent the rest of her life, had been a place of towering, majestic cities. It had been the site of the Famous Victory, and though the wounds of war were still healing during her lifetime, and it was still possible to walk past empty lots or the shells of buildings during a day’s business, Balhaut seemed to retain its air of dignity and significance.

Menazoid Sigma, what little she had seen of it, had little of either. Anzimar was dirty and industrial, and sat on a polluted bay where galvanic reactor plants filled the air with smog. There were twin suns, which was unsettling. Everything was noisy and stained. Everywhere smelled of chemicals. Elodie wasn’t sure if the troop-and-packet ship hadn’t been a preferable place to spend some time.

Everyone said the same. It was an ugly place, and not a good posting. They were only there for a time, waiting for routing orders to come through. Menazoid Sigma was simply a place to stop and resupply, a place to make ready. Some of the Tanith men, the ones who had served the regiment longest, talked about Menazoid Epsilon, which was apparently a neighbouring system where they had fought many years before. There was no sense at all they were pleased to be back in this part of the Sabbat cluster.

She had become part of the community attached to the Tanith First regiment. There were at least as many hangers-on following the regiment in supporting roles as there were serving lasmen. Elodie was still getting used to her status, her role, her responsibilities. She was still learning who everyone was. Eleven months, even eleven months spent on a sinkhole like Menazoid Sigma, was enough time to serve as an apprenticeship.

She was, in effect, an officer’s wife. Her man was Captain Ban Daur, commander of G Company. Like many of the regiment, he was from the industrial world Verghast. He was a good man. Elodie quickly found that her impression of him was one shared by most: Daur was a genuinely good man. He was handsome, intelligent and principled. He wasn’t loved by the men, but he was admired for his fairness and determination. He was honourable, and he could be relied upon. He had prospects for advancement, and they weren’t at all hurt by the fact that, unlike most of the Verghastites serving in the regiment, he was from a good, mid-hive family. He came from breeding. He was not some lowly miner or labourman. Juniper said he was a good catch.

None of which was why Elodie was with him. She was with him because he was the one, and she’d known that since the moment she’d first seen him that day in Zolunder’s Club on Selwire Street.

They had not formally married. The matter hadn’t really been discussed. Marriage was permitted, and simply required certain documents and certificates to be signed by the commanding officer. There was no reason to believe that Daur’s commander would refuse his request.

But they had not got around to it. Just a few weeks spent with the regimental train had shown Elodie that formal bonds were unnecessary. Soldiers understood loyalty, and loyalty was the glue that held everything together. She was Ban’s woman, and everyone respected that. They didn’t need a piece of paper to prove it.

As an officer’s woman, Elodie entered entourage society at a comparatively high level. She had certain automatic privileges. Her status earned her respect from the other women. She got to decorate Daur’s arm at certain regimental suppers. Officers were courteous to her. Daur’s rank often secured him his own quarters rather than a shared billet, and she got to share that. She was, she knew, envied by some. There was nothing she could do about that. Juniper called her a trophy, whatever that meant.

The entourage train was a curious community. At the uppermost level were the wives and the women, the wet nurses and the children. A regiment always bred offspring. There were the pleasure girls and the camp followers, the women who were not attached to the regiment by way of blood like a wife or a mother, but by way of reliance. Their living came from the regiment, so they had to follow the regiment wherever it went. And just as their living came from the regiment, so did the livings of the seamsters, the button-makers, the dentists, the potion-grinders, the launderers, the entertainers, the musicians, the portraitists, the cooks, the bottlemen, the victuallers, the errand boys, the knife-sharps, the menders and fixers, the polishers, the cobblers and all the rest, most of whom brought along families of their own. It was an ungainly, parasitic entity that lived so that its host could live, and went with it everywhere, the two dependent on one another for survival.

She spent most days in the entourage camp, talking to the other women. A few, like Juniper, had become her friends and confidantes. They had helped her to find her feet. Juniper had taught her to take certain duties away from Daur’s adjutant. Uniform work was a good one. She could get them cleaned and mended, get the correct one laid out ready for him. She could learn where to go to get the right replacement button or piece of braid, who to ask for the right brass paste, where to take a pair of boots for resoling. Daur had objected at first, saying that it wasn’t her place to wash his clothes. He hadn’t brought her along to shine his boots. She insisted she wanted to. She needed a greater purpose than to look well on his arm by the light of chandeliers. An officer’s woman and his adjutant often developed an elegant partnership. Daur’s adjutant was a man named Mohr. He would advise her, quietly, on expected dress regulations, or send her a note if something was needed from Daur’s quarters. In return, Elodie left service business to Mohr and made sure she wasn’t around or, worse, undressed, in Daur’s quarters when the adjutant took the daily brief. Sometimes, she even advised Mohr of Daur’s mood at the start of a day, a courtesy Mohr often reciprocated at day’s end.

That morning, there was no question what kind of day it was going to be. Before dawn, the cookfires had lit and the musicians had begun turning up. The Makeshift Revels were a festival, a carnival that marked the departure of a regiment from its station. As soon as rumours began to circulate that a regiment was about to make shift, the revels began. All manner of traders and peddlers came to the shore and set up shop, bringing street entertainers, beggars, whores and, inevitably, thieves. It was the last chance for the soldiers to indulge before departure, the last chance for the entourage to acquire items before the next halt, the last chance for the host town to earn coin from the visiting troops.

It felt to Elodie like the heady holiday fairs that led up to a major feast day back on Balhaut. It was noisy and brash and cheerful, and there were treats and temptations to savour. But there was a gaudy, apocalyptic air about it too. The regiment was going to war. No one yet knew where, or what kind of war, and no one even knew the exact hour they would make shift. Such things were classified. Certainly, though, they were not leaving Menazoid Sigma the way they had left Balhaut. They were not heading for a dispersal point or a holding station. This was the real thing, and some of those leaving would never come back, not to here or anywhere.

She rose early. There were things to do. Daur hadn’t told her specifically, but it was probably the last day on shore. She had kissed him while he was still shaving at the mirror, and left their quarters. He was going to need his number one jacket by lunchtime. There was some kind of reception. She’d left the jacket with a tailor on the fifth row the night before and she needed to collect it.

It was early still, the suns just rising in the smog, but it was busy already. The shore bustled around her. Because the Guard camp at Anzimar was literally on the shore, Elodie had assumed that was what ‘the shore’ meant. The camp was a large town of prefab and rockcrete barrack buildings and halls housing, at present, six different regiments including the Tanith. It was flanked on one side by the sprawl of the city, and on the other by vast rockcrete skirts, the huge soot-scorched platforms where the bulk landers waited, cargo doors open, to swallow up the regiment and carry them up to the ships in high anchor orbit. The landers were huge, monolithic craft. The landing skirts met the shoreline and, with their hold jaws open and the waters of the bay behind them, they looked like oceanic monsters that had come ashore to bask and eat.

Elodie had learned that ‘the shore’ was simply Guard slang for any camp they occupied before shipping out. The shore was a lasman’s temporary connection to one world before he marched on to the next. Sometimes a shore was a real shore, like it was on Menazoid Sigma. Sometimes it was a hive top, or a desert platform, a forest town or an island base. Sometimes it was an orbital station, sometimes it was a dizzying metropolis.

One more thing to learn. There was always one more thing to learn.

She was wearing a simple dress and a shawl and an old pair of combat-issue boots. It was cool, but the temperature would increase as the suns came up, and the cold stink of chemicals would acquire a burning tang. Plumes of brown filth trailed from the peaks of the galvanic reactors across the bay. There was fog out on the water.

The revel camp was a temporary fair of stalls and traders that had grown up between the barrack buildings at the landing skirts. Bright, hand-painted signs numbered the rows and thoroughfares to guide people around. Crowds were already growing. There were acrobats and tumblers, men hawking song sheets and hymnals, barrows selling hot slab fritters and fried biscuits, a smell of caffeine and sacra and lho-stick smoke, the tapping of tinkers and cobblers at work.

Trinkets were the most common purchases for the rabble crowd, parting gifts and keepsakes and forget-me-nots. Engravers at small stalls worked to mark names onto cheap jewellery and lockets. Ecclesiarchs and trancemissionaries sold safeguard charms and rosaries; prophylactics against harm, the eternal protection of the God-Emperor. They also handed out pamphlets and treatises for uplifting consolation during the voyage. Blessings were obtainable, and so were sermons, delivered from portable pulpits. Garlands and posies were sold in abundance, and the victuallers and black-marketeers did a busy trade in foodstuffs, drink and smokes, indulgences for the last night on shore or the long nights in transit.

The crowd parted and a jester came by, clown-masked, striding on stilts. Behind him came a gang of laughing children, most of them regimental offspring. Elodie recognised many of them. Some she knew by name. That little girl was Yoncy. She was one of the ones Juniper minded, so Elodie had come to hear the story. For a while, Yoncy and her brother had been minded by a woman called Aleksa, but Aleksa had passed away and Juniper had taken on the care of them. The children were orphans from Verghast, and they’d been adopted by Tona Criid, a woman officer who’d found them on the battlefield. It turned out later their father wasn’t dead at all. He was Major Gol Kolea of C Company. He hadn’t wanted to overturn their little lives any further by taking them away from their adoptive mother, so he’d stayed out of it, and just kept an eye on them through Aleksa. Now the boy, Dalin, was a trooper, the adjutant of E Company, and the girl was getting quite big. The regiment had become their family, and had provided for them.

Still, they had suffered and lost a lot. Tragedy had marked their lives. You could see it in them, especially the little girl. From the time she had first seen her, Elodie had detected the most haunting sadness in Yoncy’s eyes.

The girl was a pretty little thing though. She raced past after the stilt-clown, giving Elodie a wave. Behind her, letting her run along, came the brother, Dalin. He was in uniform, a fine young man, watching his sister’s enjoyment with a smile. A last hour of shore leave for him before duties began. He’d bought a little medal of the Saint on a ribbon, no doubt for his sister.

He saw Elodie.

‘Mam,’ he said.

‘Dalin,’ she returned.

‘A good day,’ he said.

‘I would think almost any day is a good day to leave Anzimar,’ she replied.

He laughed.

Elodie walked on, past a bottle stall. She saw two Tanith men purchasing flasks of amasec. One of them saw her and suddenly looked guilty. He put the bottle he had been studying back hastily.

‘How are you today, mam?’ he asked.

‘Well, soldier,’ she said. His name was Costin. She knew it, because Ban had pointed him out as a man who had known great trouble with drink over the years. He was embarrassed because an officer’s woman had seen him buying liquor.

‘I was considering a gift,’ he said. ‘For my good captain, Domor, to mark this making shift. I would otherwise not touch the stuff.’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself, soldier,’ she said.

But perhaps he did. As a hostess in the clubs of Balhaut, Elodie had observed much about the relationship between men and their poisons. Costin was clearly a sot. The raw redness of his face told her that. He drank quantity, not quality, or his Guard pay would not stretch to cover his habit. He was the sort of man who would brew his own sacra to ensure a cheap supply.

So why would he be purchasing a fine bottle of amasec that ought to be locked in a colonel’s tantalus? Was it truly a gift as he said? Where would a man like Costin get that sort of money?

She reached the tailor’s stall on the fifth row and joined a short queue that was being entertained by a fire-eater. Sixteen Valkyrie assault carriers wailed overhead in formation. Elodie watched the entertainer, oiled and lithe, caper as he blew cones of flame from his burning wands.

‘Quite a trick,’ said a voice from beside her. ‘I tried to learn it once, in the hope that it might impress the mamzels.’

She turned and found Commissar Blenner standing in the queue behind her. He smiled and doffed his cap.

‘Good day, Lady Daur,’ he said.

‘Not quite lady yet, sir.’

‘You should see about that,’ he replied.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, before–’

Blenner paused, as if he had strayed into territory he regretted.

‘I always believe,’ he said, changing tack, ‘that sensible provision is the greatest defence against the vagaries of war.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir.’

‘Please,’ he said, ‘a blind man could see you are no soldier, so there is no need to address me like one. Vaynom, I insist.’

Commissar Blenner had, like her, joined the regiment at Balhaut. He was, Ban had told her, an old friend of the commander’s, and he’d been brought in to supplement the Tanith First’s commissar strength, now that Commissar Hark’s work had become so specialised.

Elodie had encountered Blenner at several formal dinners. He didn’t look like a soldier. He seemed a little pudgy and unfit, a touch bloated from an easy life of inaction. He looked like an Administratum clerk dressed up as a soldier. He had, perhaps, been handsome once, but he was no longer as handsome as he thought he was, and his roguish manner was a little obnoxious. Elodie had met his type many times in the clubs of Balhaut. Privileged, silver-tongued, charming enough to like. But you’d always wonder where he was going to put his hands.

‘You are here for the tailor?’ she asked.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘My coat is being stitched. I have an influx to greet. Duty calls us all.’

It was her turn. She took Daur’s jacket from the tailor, inspected the work, and paid.

‘Good day, sir,’ she said to Blenner. ‘May we all make shift safely.’

‘The Emperor protects, dear lady,’ he replied. He watched her walk away. The view was worth the effort.

‘Now, where’s my damn coat?’ he said to the tailor.

Blenner put on his stormcoat as he walked through the crowd. No one, not even the enforcers’ serjeants-at-arms policing the revels, got in a commissar’s way. He crossed a small yard where men were playing camp ball, and entered the infirmary.

Inside, a big Tanith thug was stripped to the waist and sitting backwards on a wooden chair while one of the orderlies, a skinny fellow still wearing his medical smock, applied a tattoo to his shoulder blade with an outsized needle. Blenner stood for a moment, watching in fascination. The man was big and hairy, and smelled of liquid promethium. This wasn’t his first piece of ink. The new tattoo, half done, was a playing card, the King of Knives. Colour would be added later.

‘Is that really an appropriate use of medical facilities?’ Blenner asked.

The orderly jumped up, realising Blenner was there. His smock was clean, but his fingers were permanently stained with blue ink. He had a cup full of needles. The man receiving the tattoo turned his big, bearded face and looked over his shoulder at Blenner. He made no attempt to get up or show respect.

‘I’m sorry sir, I had a moment,’ said the orderly.

‘You do this work?’ Blenner asked, peering at the tattoo.

‘I’ve always done it, sir.’

‘He’s good with needles,’ said the big man.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Blenner.

‘Lesp, sir,’ said the orderly.

Lesp. Lesp. So many new names and faces to remember.

‘What is that?’ Blenner asked, gesturing to the tattoo.

‘King of Knives, sir,’ said Lesp.

‘The Suicide King,’ growled the big man.

‘And what’s your name?’ Blenner asked.

‘Brostin,’ he said.

‘You know what, Trooper Brostin?’ said Blenner. ‘I think you should get up off your arse and show me some civility.’

Brostin got up. He looked down at Blenner. He stank of fire-grease.

‘Don’t you like my ink?’ he asked.

‘I don’t like your attitude,’ replied Blenner.

‘Life’s full of disappointments,’ said Brostin. ‘Sir,’ he added.

‘What does it signify, the King?’ Blenner asked.

‘It’s what I’m going to be, isn’t it?’ said Brostin. ‘B Company, first platoon. We’re going to be the Suicide Kings.’

B Company, Blenner thought.

‘You’re one of Rawne’s?’

‘I belong to Rawne and I belong to the fire,’ said Brostin. ‘I have done since before I belonged to the Guard.’

Blenner looked at Lesp.

‘This isn’t a suitable place to conduct this kind of business,’ he said.

‘Sir.’

‘I should have you both up on a damn charge.’

‘Is there a problem?’ asked a quiet voice.

Blenner turned, and found himself face to face with the regiment’s new medicae. The man had joined the company at Balhaut, just like Blenner. Blenner didn’t have much time for him. The man’s name was Kolding, a civilian drafted in by Gaunt. He was an albino, which Blenner had a little trouble with. It was off-putting. Kolding’s skin was pale, and his eyes were always hidden behind dark glasses. His voice was soft and colourless too.

Blenner’s main problem with Kolding was that the man was a death doctor, a mortician, an examiner of corpses. In Blenner’s considerable opinion, Kolding had no business practising on the living. Blenner couldn’t fathom what Gaunt saw in the man.

‘I came in here,’ said Blenner, ‘and I found this activity going on. It’s not good enough.’

‘Why?’ asked Kolding quietly.

‘Because–’ Blenner began. ‘Because.’

Doctor Curth came into the room behind the albino.

‘Lesp is one of the regiment’s most sought-after inkers, commissar,’ she said.

Doctor Curth had entered carrying a stainless steel tray of clean instruments. She was looking at him intently. Blenner liked her. She was a handsome, slender woman. He’d often imagined her looking at him with that sort of intensity. Except that this felt uncomfortable, as though she was deciding where to make an incision.

‘This is filthy and unauthorised, doctor,’ Blenner said.

‘I’ll handle this, doctor,’ she said to Kolding, who nodded and walked out of the room.

‘Let’s talk about it in here,’ Curth told Blenner. She glanced back at Lesp and Brostin, and said, ‘You two, get on. Finish later.’

She led Blenner into her small consulting room.

‘Lesp is an artist. Ink is important, especially to the Tanith, though the Verghast and Belladon men are taking to it.’

‘There is a matter of uniform code–’

‘Certain regulations have always been overlooked when it comes to the Tanith and their ink,’ she said. ‘There is a long established precedent. To make a discipline issue out of it now would be unwise.’

‘There is a health issue,’ he replied. ‘Ink and needles… This is supposed to be a hygienic area.’

‘I can’t think of a better place to keep the tools sterile, can you?’ she asked. ‘I’d rather they did it here, where needles can be boiled and tattoos dressed than have to treat men for infections caught from filthy backroom work.’

Blenner opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

‘I… see I have a good deal yet to learn about the operation of this regiment, doctor. Can I call you Ana?’

‘No, commissar. That wouldn’t be seemly. Now, how can I help you?’

‘I just stopped by for a moment.’

‘You did,’ she said. ‘You look stressed. Troubled.’

‘Is that a medical opinion?’

‘It’s the only kind I give.’

‘I was hoping to see the doctor.’

Curth hesitated, and pursed her lips.

‘I am a doctor, commissar.’

‘And quite the most fragrant I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to consult with a male doctor. Privately.’

Curth nodded. She wasn’t surprised, especially with a lizard like Blenner. She honestly had no idea why Gaunt tolerated him. He undoubtedly needed powder for some pox he’d picked up, and was too ashamed to let her examine his pathetic genitals.

‘Doctor Kolding is–’

‘Doctor Dorden,’ said Blenner firmly.

‘I don’t really want to disturb Doctor Dorden,’ she said.

‘I do,’ he replied.

Curth sighed, and got up. She went to the door of Dorden’s room and knocked.

‘Commissar Blenner wants to see you,’ she called.

‘One moment. I was just about to step out.’

‘He says it won’t take long,’ said Curth. She looked at Blenner, who nodded his head to concur.

‘Send him in.’

Dorden, the regiment’s chief medicae, was sitting behind his desk swallowing, with the aid of a glass of water, the last of the six pills he took every two hours. There was no longer any disguising his weight loss and the thinning of his hair. His illness was not a secret, but it was not discussed. All Blenner knew was that the man had already out-lived every prognosis.

Blenner closed the door behind him.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Dorden.

‘I would like you to give me something,’ said Blenner.

‘What, exactly?’

‘A tonic, sir, a remedy.’

‘For what, commissar?’

‘That which ails me, doctor.’ Blenner forced out a merry laugh.

Dorden did not smile.

‘I don’t have all day,’ Dorden said. ‘Well, I hope I do, but I don’t know how many more days after that I’ll get. So if you’d cut to the matter directly.’

Blenner cleared his throat.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said.

‘We’re all afraid. Throne, I know I am.’

‘Forgive me, but I am serious. I am quite un-manned by it.’

‘So get a grip.’

‘Doctor, I have to lead these men.’

‘You’ve led men before,’ said Dorden. ‘You’ve had a long career. Who were you with before us? The Greygorians? You’ve seen action.’

‘Look, between you and me,’ said Blenner, sitting down opposite Dorden and leaning forwards, ‘life with the Greygorians was pretty charmed. I mean, Throne! It was a ceremonial detail. We did marching and pomp and colour drills. It was a life of bloody luxury!’

‘I’ve heard you talk, at length, about your exploits under fire,’ said Dorden.

‘Yes, well. I tell a good story.’

‘Does Gaunt know this? He brought you into our company.’

‘He must know. Throne, I don’t know. He knew what I was like back when we were at scholam. I haven’t changed. He must know.’

Dorden steepled his thin, white fingers.

‘Vaynom,’ he said, ‘we are on the eve of making shift on a mission so significant, we haven’t even been told the parameters yet. Everyone is apprehensive. It’s perfectly natural.’

‘But–’

‘Vaynom, what are you scared of? Is it dying?’

‘Throne, I’m not ready to die!’ Blenner spluttered. ‘I haven’t made my peace yet! You might be braced for it, but I surely–’

He stopped and looked at the doctor.

‘That was a terrible thing to say. I apologise.’

‘No need. You’re right. I’m ready. What we’re heading for doesn’t frighten me at all.’

‘Well, I’d like a little of whatever you’re having, then,’ said Blenner.

‘That can be arranged,’ said Dorden. ‘Look, Vaynom, I wonder if this is actually not about dying. I wonder if what you’re really afraid of is being found out. I wonder if you’re scared about being put in the line of fire and letting him down.’

Blenner sighed.

‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t even considered that. I was still hung up on the dying part.’

Dorden smiled. He got up and took a small brown bottle down from a crowded shelf. He handed it to Blenner. It was full of little oval pills.

‘One of these every day, or when you feel agitated. They will improve your fortitude and help you think clearly. Come to me when you need more.’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ said Blenner. ‘Now listen. I don’t want this–

‘I can assure you that what’s just passed between us will remain in confidence.’

‘Thank you.’

‘One last thing, commissar. If you really want to fortify yourself, you should do what I’m about to do.’

‘Yes?’ said Blenner.

‘Prayer and worship, commissar. I have become a regular shrine-goer. I think it’s kept me alive longer than any pills. Look after the soul, and it benefits the man built around it.’

Shore services were usually held in the camp chapel, but during the Makeshift Revels, the ecclesiarchs had taken to preaching and blessing in the open, out in the fair.

Ayatani Zweil was just beginning his morning address when Dorden arrived. Zweil was standing on a munitions box, codex in hand, with two young boys from the camp train stood either side of him swinging censers. They looked bored, but he’d paid them to do it. He’d chosen a site at the end of one of the stall rows, and a crowd had gathered. Dorden joined the back of it.

‘The Saint, Saint Sabbat, made these worlds,’ Zweil said. ‘She made these worlds with her grace for us to live in, and that’s why we’re fighting to free them. She watches us, you see. When we work and fight and sleep and eat. She even watches us when we’re on the privy, which is disconcerting, I know, yet reassuring. Where was I?’

The old priest’s sermons were certainly unconventional. When he had finished, he came down through the dispersing crowd to find Dorden.

‘I’m always happy every morning to see you in my congregation,’ he said, taking Dorden’s hands.

‘Because I’m evidence of another soul brought into the fold?’

‘No, just pleased you haven’t died in your sleep. I had a dream.’

‘You do have those…’

‘Last night. Lovely young ladies in it. Very distracting. Then I had another dream. The Saint came to me.’

‘Did she?’ asked Dorden.

‘No, she was busy with something else, so she sent a dog. The dog said, ayatani, it said, you have to pray and do good works. It’s your job to make sure that Dorden outlives you.’

‘I see.’

‘Have I told you this before?’

‘Yes, last week.’

‘Ah, I ought to get some new material. Maybe a parable. Parables are good. I had one once, a very nice blue it was, but rather too tight.’

‘You don’t really know what a parable is, do you?’

‘How obvious is that?’

‘Father, coming to you each day to pray is doing me good. I know it. I have been granted more life than I had reason to expect.’

Zweil took him by the arm and they began to walk along the bustling row, two old men together. The boys with the censers followed.

‘I’m going to look after you,’ said Zweil. ‘I am. It’s only right. I sort of got you in this terrible pickle. If I hadn’t swapped blood samples on you, it would have been me with the cancer.’

‘Father, medicine’s not really a strong field of expertise for you either, is it?’

‘Balls. I know what I mean. I’m going to look after you. Of course, taking you to war’s probably not the best plan in that case.’

‘I’ve always liked the Makeshift Revels,’ said Dorden. ‘Great spirit to them. Great anticipation.’

‘Bag o’nails.’

‘What?’

‘Bag o’nails. It’s another name for these revels. A corruption, you see, from “bacchanals”. I’m thinking of getting a tattoo. The face of the beati. Your boy Lesp, he does ink, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. The beati. With illumined clouds.’

‘Where are you going to get it?’

‘Here on Menazoid Sigma,’ said Zweil. ‘Oh, now doesn’t he look disturbingly smart!’

They had crossed the path of trooper Wes Maggs. Maggs was wearing full dress uniform and looked very uncomfortable.

‘Don’t mock me, father,’ he said. ‘I hate getting gussied up.’ The uniform was a blue so dark it was almost black, with silver braiding and insignia, including the old 81st emblem. There was a red sash, silver aiguillettes and, on the left breast, the formal medal of Belladon: the belladonna flower, its stylised scarlet petals shedding a single drop of blood like a tear.

‘What’s this all in aid of?’ asked Dorden.

‘I’m part of the honour guard,’ said Maggs. ‘For the influx. I don’t know why they picked me. I don’t do ceremonial.’

‘Which influx?’ asked Dorden.

‘The Belladon one,’ said Maggs.

‘Don’t keep them waiting,’ said Zweil.

‘Is it true?’ asked Dorden.

‘Is what true, doctor?’ asked Maggs, fiddling with his cap band.

‘About Wilder?’

‘So I hear,’ Maggs called as he hurried away.

‘You’re late,’ said Major Baskevyl as Maggs ran up.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Take your place.’

Two full companies had assembled on the landing skirts in dress uniform. Banners were flapping in the wind. There was the flower of Belladon and the Tanith crest. The landing ship had just come in.

‘Stand ready,’ said Baskevyl as he walked to join the other officers. D Company was his, and F belonged to Ferdy Kolosim. Both companies snapped to attention. Kolosim nodded as Baskevyl approached.

‘A good day for us,’ said Kolosim. ‘A new company. A Belladon company. Yes, sir. Just the sort of reinforcements this regiment needs.’

‘This regiment does all right,’ said Baskevyl. ‘But the point is well made.’

‘Is it true? It’s Wilder’s brother?’ asked Captain Sloman.

‘That’s what I hear,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘It’s his brother. He personally requested the transfer to join us. They’ve been trying to catch up with us for three years.’

‘Just in time for this show,’ said Kolosim. ‘Do we know what sort of strength he’s bringing? A full company? What specialism?’

‘We don’t know anything,’ said Baskevyl.

‘We could use heavy infantry,’ said Sloman. ‘Maybe some serious crew weapons.’

‘Start showing those damn Tanith scouts how to fight a war Belladon style,’ said Kolosim.

They all heard something. A sudden loud crash and blast.

‘What the–?’ murmured Baskevyl.

Drums. Marching drums, rattling and hissing, beating a perfect pace. Cymbals. The thud of bass kettles. Over that, suddenly like sirens, the bellow and parp of brass.

The reinforcement company came down the ramp of the landing ship into the suns-light to meet them.

‘Is this a joke?’ said Ferdy Kolosim.

It was a full colours band. They came out in match step, hammering their slung drums. The brass of their instruments gleamed. Their banners were bright and crisply new. At least half of the musicians were women.

‘Fury of Belladon…’ said Sloman.

‘Quiet!’ snapped Kolosim.

The band wheeled and marched until it was formed up and facing the reception guard. Their parade drill and formation work was certainly impeccable. They halted, and the bandmaster timed the music to a precise finish.

He stepped forwards beside his commanding officer to meet Baskevyl’s group.

‘Major Baskevyl, Tanith First,’ said Baskevyl, taking the salute. ‘With me, Captain Kolosim, Captain Sloman and Commissar Blenner. Commissar Blenner has been recently instructed to focus on discipline for the Belladon contingent.’

‘An honour,’ snapped Blenner.

Baskevyl was relieved to see Blenner. The commissar had arrived late, only taking his place during the band display.

‘Captain Jakub Wilder,’ said the commander. ‘This is Bandmaster Sergeant Major Yerolemew.’

Baskevyl could see it. Wilder had the look of his late brother, the man who had led the 81st and been Baskevyl’s commander and friend. Lucian Wilder, war hero, had given his last command on Ancreon Sextus more than five years earlier. Jakub looked like a younger, slighter version.

‘We stand ready to join the Tanith First,’ said Wilder. He held out a scrolled document with a red ribbon to Baskevyl. ‘Our attachment paperwork is in order, and has been approved by the Munitorum.’

‘You’re a ceremonial band,’ said Kolosim.

‘Three sections, with a fourth reserve,’ said Wilder.

‘The thing is, we don’t… we don’t really need a marching band,’ said Kolosim.

‘Captain Kolosim means,’ said Baskevyl quickly, ‘that we weren’t expecting to have the ceremonial aspect of our regiment enhanced in this way.’

‘We don’t just play instruments. We have weapons,’ said Wilder, his mouth tight. ‘We know how to fight.’

‘No insult was intended,’ said Baskevyl.

‘If I may?’ asked the bandmaster, stepping forwards. He was a tall, older man, with a lined face and a vague trace of white hair. He wore a mighty, square-cut beard and a monocle. In his left hand was his golden baton. He had no right hand. The right sleeve of his long tunic coat was pinned up, empty.

‘Nearly seven years ago, we were instructed to join the 81st,’ he said. ‘Captain Wilder, my commander’s brother, had requested us, for morale purposes.’

I remember, thought Baskevyl. I remember him saying ‘I’ve written for them to send us a band, Bask. I think it’ll put a spring in our step.’ Throne, I thought he was joking.

‘You know what transit connections can be like,’ said Yerolemew. ‘We were delayed. We arrived at Ancreon Sextus long after you had departed. I assumed we would be rerouted to join another Belladon regiment. But Captain Wilder here, he… he was very keen to join his late brother’s command. He got himself assigned to us and pushed for the posting to be ratified.’

‘It’s difficult,’ said Wilder. ‘There were other delays. A squad of bandsmen and their instruments is easily subbed out for a combat team if transport is limited. We were always a lower priority. But I wanted to be here. We wanted to be here.’

He swallowed hard. Baskevyl saw a boy trying to do his best, desperate not to let down his big brother. He made the sign of the aquila and held out his hand.

‘I knew your brother,’ Baskevyl said. ‘It was an honour to call him friend. And it’s an honour to have you here. Welcome to the Tanith First, Captain Wilder.’

At his side, Commissar Blenner palmed another pill from the bottle in his stormcoat pocket, dry-swallowed it behind a pretend cough, and then smiled.

He felt better already. Whatever the poor doctor had given him was splendid stuff.

A colours band. A colours band. He could manage that. It was precisely his kind of thing. Soldiers, but without the annoying fighting part.

‘What the feth?’ murmured Larkin. ‘Is that a band?’

‘Nah, you’ve been at the hard stuff again, you mad old bugger,’ replied Jessi Banda. ‘It’s a hallucination.’

‘Actually,’ said Raess, ‘Larks is right. It’s a fething colours band.’

With Larkin in the lead, ten company marksmen, the ten best, had been making their way through the revel crowds together. The going was slow, because the old sniper wasn’t as fast on his feet as he used to be. He limped on the artificial foot. Mad or not, they were all deferential to him, even the cocky Verghastite Banda and the hard-as-nails Belladon Questa. They all had lanyards, but Larkin could outshoot any of them.

The crowd had parted, affording them a brief view down onto the landing skirts where the transports were coming and going. They could see the Belladon banners, the flash of suns-light on brass.

‘Throne,’ muttered Lyndon Questa. ‘My lot have brought a bloody band with them.’

‘Good to see the Belladon adding to the combat strength of the regiment,’ said Banda.

‘Screw you,’ said Questa.

‘In your dreams,’ she smiled.

Nessa signed a question, and Larkin signed back, pointing her towards the scene below. She hadn’t heard the drumming.

A smile crossed her face.

‘Do they sound good?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s the important bit to focus on, Nessa,’ said Banda.

They left the crowd and entered a loading dock hall where Munitorum crews and servitors were unloading supply crates from long-bed trucks.

‘What are we gn… gn… gn… doing here, Larkin?’ asked Merrt, his crude augmetic jaw forcing his trademark stammer.

‘It’s a surprise,’ said Larkin. ‘Gather round.’

A group of Tanith lasmen were already present, led by Captain Domor.

‘Morning, Shoggy,’ said Larkin.

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Domor.

‘Well,’ said Larkin. ‘Commander said we’re going to be doing some specialist training, didn’t he? My shooters, your boys?’

‘Yes, but he didn’t say what, and he didn’t say why,’ said Domor.

‘Ah, but one has got to be smart,’ said Larkin. ‘One has got to sneak past Gaunt’s adjutant, perhaps by distracting him. I find Banda works well.’

‘Beltayn’s putty in my hands,’ purred Banda.

‘Then, while Bel’s got his hands full–’ said Larkin.

‘Metaphorically speaking,’ Banda put in.

‘–one has got to take a look at the regimental supply manifests. See what sort of kit is coming in, and who it’s been assigned to. One can then build a picture.’

‘Is one going to share this picture,’ asked Raglon, ‘or is one going to get a punch in the mouth?’

‘Patience, Rags,’ said Larkin. He hobbled over to a stack of crates. ‘These are yours, Shoggy. Full of kit for your boys. These are mine. Give me that crowbar, Raess.’

Raess handed Larkin the bar. The old marksman began to lever the lip off one crate.

‘You can’t do that!’ a Munitorum tech exclaimed.

‘Feth off,’ Banda growled at him. The man scurried away.

‘Well, look at that,’ said Larkin, lifting the first item out of the packing crate with a smile.

‘What in the name of the God-Emperor is this?’ asked Raess.

‘Hard-round rifles,’ said Banda, taking one for herself. ‘Old, shoddy, bolt action hard-round rifles. What the gak?’

‘What’s this ammo?’ asked Questa. He held up a large calibre round. It had a brass firing cap and a head that looked like it was made of glass.

‘I want my longlas,’ said Banda. ‘I don’t want this.’

‘What are we supposed to be hunting?’ asked Nessa.

Larkin tucked the rifle he was holding up to his cheek, eased the old but well-maintained bolt action, and took a sample aim.

‘Larisel,’ he said. ‘Like in the old days.’

‘The old coot’s finally lost it,’ said Banda.

Larkin swept his aim, and suddenly found he had a target squared in his iron sights.

‘Sorry!’ he exclaimed, lowering the rifle. ‘Didn’t see you there, mam.’

‘I’m looking for Captain Daur,’ said Elodie.

‘He’s down at hall two, mam,’ said Domor. ‘For the influx reception.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Elodie. She was holding the dress jacket. ‘I thought he said four. Thank you.’

She hurried back out into the suns-light.

‘Are you going to explain?’ Raess asked Larkin.

‘Certainly,’ said Larkin, still savouring the feel of the weapon.

‘And why am I here, exactly?’ asked Merrt. ‘You know I can’t gn… gn… gn… shoot any more.’

‘Merrt, my friend,’ said Larkin. ‘You were the best shot I ever saw. I’ve decided I’m going to teach you how to do it again.’

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Elodie. ‘I got lost.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Daur. He took the jacket from her and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ve got time yet.’

‘Do you need me?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can take it from here.’

‘I’ll see you later, then,’ said Elodie.

‘There is one thing I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said.

‘It can wait until you’re done with this,’ she said, and slipped away.

Back at their quarters, she tidied a few things away. She hoped she hadn’t caused a problem by being tardy with the jacket.

Elodie started packing. Under a small pile of books in a locker drawer, she found a small set of documents.

Petition for Allowance to Marry, the papers said.

Ban Daur put on his dress jacket and buttoned it up. Then he put on his cap and buckled on his officer’s strap and holster.

Major Kolea appeared in the doorway, flanked by Commissar Ludd. Both were in full dress too.

‘Are you ready now?’ asked Kolea.

‘Yes.’

They walked out through the depot hall on top of the oil-stained landing apron in front of it. The Arvus lighter had just set down. Steam was weeping from its drive vents.

Flanked by a small honour guard of Tanith and Verghastite troopers, Daur, Kolea and Ludd approached the small craft. Its hatch was opening.

Six figures stepped out. The four leading the way were dressed in a uniform that made Daur’s heart swell with unexpected pride. Blue, with a spiked helmet. Verghastite Hive Guard, very similar to the PDF uniform he’d worn back in the day at Vervunhive.

Two were Guard escorts, one of whom was carrying a double-headed eagle on a leather gauntlet. The eagle, cybernetically modified, was hooded. It twitched and ruffled its feathers.

The tallest figure was a woman, wearing the rank pins of a major. She was older, strong and slightly haggard. The other, shorter, was a female captain.

‘Major Pasha Petrushkevskaya,’ said the older woman. She made the sign of the aquila. ‘Reporting for duty to serve the Tanith First.’

‘Welcome,’ said Kolea.

‘I have six full companies,’ Petrushkevskaya said. ‘All Verghast-born and founded. They await in orbit to transfer to your vessels. They are bursting with pride to follow in the great tradition and join, at last, the regiment of the People’s Hero.’

‘I am Major Gol Kolea.’

Petrushkevskaya saluted.

‘Your name is also celebrated,’ she said. ‘The great scratch company hero. It is an honour.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kolea. ‘Though I understand you also served in the scratch companies during the Zoican War.’

‘We never met,’ said Petrushkevskaya.

‘It was a big war,’ said Kolea.

She nodded.

‘This is my second in command,’ she said, gesturing to the smaller, younger woman at her side. ‘Captain Ornella Zhukova.’

‘Once of the Hass West PDF Command,’ said Daur. He smiled broadly.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,’ said Zhukova. She was very neatly pretty, with olive skin and short black hair tied in a ponytail. Her features were elegantly symmetrical. ‘I was just a junior, and you were a captain.’

‘You know each other then?’ smiled Kolea.

‘A pleasant reunion,’ said Zhukova.

Petrushkevskaya stepped back to introduce the other two figures in her party. One was a lithe woman of startling beauty. Her head was shaved to a fine down of hair, emphasising the sculptural arch of her skull. She was wearing an armoured bodyglove and had an astonishingly crafted steel rose in her lapel. The weapon at her hip was shrouded with a red cloth, as was the Verghast custom. She was a civilian, an up-hive lifeguard, Daur realised, a very expensive and capable employee.

The other figure was clearly her principal. He was wearing a plain black bodysuit and boots, a young man no more than fifteen or sixteen years old who had not yet lost the frailty of adolescence. His thin face was striking and narrow, almost feminine in its beauty. His hair was blond.

‘This is Meritous Felyx Chass of House Chass,’ said Petrushkevskaya.

‘Sir,’ Kolea and Daur said in unison.

The boy regarded them haughtily.

‘Where is Gaunt?’ he asked.

‘We were sent to greet you,’ said Kolea, ‘and express the warm–’

‘It’s not good enough,’ said the lifeguard. Her accent was the very hardest end of Verghast. Her lips were as red as the shroud covering her gun.

‘It’s all right, Maddalena,’ said the boy.

‘It’s certainly not all right,’ the lifeguard said. She stepped up to Kolea, face to face.

‘Verghast sends six companies to reinforce your regiment,’ she said, ‘in honour of the debt owed to your commander by our hive, and the People’s Hero can’t be bothered to receive us in person?’

‘That is, unfortunately, the case,’ said Kolea.

‘This young man,’ said the lifeguard, gesturing to the slender boy, ‘is Meritous Felyx Chass, of House Chass, grandson of Lord Chass himself. His mother is heir to the House entire. He has come to honour your regiment by joining it as a junior commander. Are you telling me that Ibram Gaunt has something more important to do than greet him?’

‘Two things,’ said Kolea, his voice perfectly calm. ‘First, it’s Colonel-Commissar Gaunt to you, you arrogant up-hive bitch. And second, yes, on this occasion, he does.’

THREE

SILVER, SNAKE AND SCAR

Tall double doors burst open as though they had been rammed by a siege clearance squad, and the band of officers continued on their way down the long colonnade. They were striding swiftly, boots clattering on the marble floor, coat tails trailing, not in step but at the speed of a forced march. Any faster and they would have broken into a run. To either side, along the imposing route, the sentinel guards snapped to rigid attention as the determined figures swept past.

They were officers, with a gaggle of ceremonial guardsmen trotting to keep at their heels. The ceremonials were struggling with sheathed sabres, lances, pennants, standards and pole honours that hadn’t been designed to be ported in haste.

The main group was led by a formidable augmented human, his towering frame elongated and buttressed by the frames of bionic articulation that cradled his once virile form. He wore emblems of black carrion birds. Lord Militant Cybon was one of the great architects of the Crusade, and his war record needed no interpretation or explanatory notes. He was a conqueror of worlds, a Guard commander of the highest distinction, and had served the great Sabbat Worlds theatre since the very instigation, at Warmaster Slaydo’s side. He was famously ruthless, and he was famously out of favour now the warmastery was held by Macaroth, who looked to younger blood.

Almost at Cybon’s side was Isiah Mercure, a senior figure in the sector’s Commissariat, head of the Intelligence Division. Far shorter than Cybon, upholstered in sallow flesh, Mercure was a grey-haired man with pock-marked skin. He somehow radiated just as much presence and authority as the regal lord militant.

Behind those two came four figures in pristine Commissariat uniforms, three males and a female: Viktor Hark, the robust and powerful senior commissar of the Tanith First; Nahum Ludd, his young and earnest junior; Usain Edur, the regal, dark-skinned commissar serving Mercure as his aide; Luna Fazekiel, a senior commissar from Mercure’s division.

Behind them, and in front of the struggling ceremonial guard, strode a man whose stark, black garb combined the uniform of an Imperial commissar and the authority of a colonel of the Guard. He was tall and lean, and his narrow face, made hollow by care, had the steel threat of an unsheathed weapon about it because of the peculiar quality of his eyes.

The man’s name was Ibram Gaunt.

Without even breaking stride, Cybon raised his left hand and delivered it like a breaching post. The blow opened another set of double doors, which slammed against the colonnade walls. Another line of sentinel guards flew to attention, eyes front. The party swept on.

‘Should we wait for the Administratum envoys?’ Edur called.

‘Screw them,’ Cybon growled.

‘There are formalities, protocols,’ Edur said.

‘Screw protocols,’ said Cybon.

To the left of them, a row of tall windows looked out onto the Anzimar Landing Fields. Lighters and transports hove in through the morning smog towards the main rockcrete aprons. Vendetta gunships roosted like hawks on the sky shield platforms that sprouted around the defence work of the field perimeter like a wreath. Gaunt saw the ship, the armoured ship, out on its own at one corner of the apron, re-entry heat still fuming off its hull in the damp air. The field crews were keeping a respectful distance. It was an Imperial machine, but it wasn’t a pattern used by the Guard or the Navy.

Another set of doors smashed open. Ahead of them lay the entrance to the audience hall. Gilded doors, four times the height of a man, wrought with bas relief lions and carnodons, eagles and angels. Angels of death.

Appropriate, thought Ibram Gaunt.

It was the first set of doors they had come to that Cybon hadn’t smashed open as if he was conducting an insertion raid. He and Mercure simply halted. After a half-second for the cue to sink in, Hark and Edur stepped around them, and opened the doors.

The room beyond the doors was vast, stone flagged and dressed with tall, stained-glass windows that turned the light into autumnal colours. High, clerestory levels stole more daylight from above the morning smog, and shed it down in silver beams between dark vault arches. A giant brass aquila had been inlaid into the centre of the floor.

Three figures awaited them under the chamber’s largest window, a vast roundel rendering the Golden Throne in multicoloured glass.

One sat on a wooden bench seat, brooding. The second had his back to the door, gazing up at the stained glass vision. The third loitered nearby, examining some food and drink that had been presented on a small table. It was hard to tell whether the third figure was debating if he was in need of refreshment, or simply puzzling as to what food was for.

All three were male, but none of them were men. None of them were even slightly men.

‘Holy Terra,’ whispered Ludd.

‘That’s the general idea,’ muttered Hark.

The lord militant stepped forwards.

‘I am Cybon,’ he declared, altering the volume of his augmetic voice box to declamatory mode. ‘Who am I addressing?’

The three figures looked up. Their eyes locked onto him like targeting systems. This was not a fanciful impression. Their eyes were literally biologic, autonomic targeting systems, their scrutiny instantly assessing range, movement, identity and armour. To be stared at was to be in crosshairs.

‘I am Cybon, the lord militant repeated firmly.

‘Not you,’ replied the figure on the bench, without getting up. His accent was thick, as though his language and inflection had been worn away by dry winds in some very distant reach of Imperial space.

‘I don’t think you appreciate who you’re speaking to,’ said Cybon.

‘I know you don’t,’ replied the figure on the bench. His massive plate armour was dirty white, edged in crimson. Ropes of beads and small fetish trophies, along with what looked like scalps, hung off the plates. His war helm rested on the bench beside him, his elbows rested on his knees. His bared head was immaculately shaven apart from a forked chin beard and a plume topknot of the blackest hair.

The figure who had been examining the refreshments was clad in grey plate, with a golden chest ornament and his Chapter symbol in blue on a red-edged white field upon his vast shoulder guards. Parts of his armour were decorated in blue teardrop shapes. He held his war helm under his arm. He was clean shaven, with close-cropped black hair that formed small ringlets on his high forehead.

‘Him,’ he stated, pointing directly past Cybon at Gaunt. His gauntleted fist was huge, the pointing finger like a rifle muzzle with a suppressor attached.

‘He’s why we’re here,’ he said, and lowered his hand. His voice was softer than the seated giant’s, and his accent more clipped.

‘There is a protocol–’ Cybon began.

‘We care not for your protocol,’ said the third figure. His armour was gleaming silver with traceries of white enamel. His voice was just an augmetic rasp. ‘He’s why we’re here. He’s the one we will deal with.’

Cybon hesitated, but decided not to reply. Mercure glowered and scratched his neck. Fazekiel swallowed hard. Edur, Hark and Ludd glanced back at Gaunt. The ceremonial guard had decided that it might be better to hover in the doorway than actually enter the chamber.

Gaunt stepped past the members of his party and walked across the chamber towards the three figures. He walked directly across the brass eagle scored into the flagstones and stopped face to face with the third figure in front of the window. He took off his cap, tucked it under his left arm, and made the sign of the aquila across his breast.

‘Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt,’ he said.

The third figure glared down at him.

‘Veegum said you’d seem small,’ he rumbled. ‘I forget how small human small is.’

‘I didn’t know if the Chapter Master would even consider my request,’ said Gaunt. ‘The fact that three of you–’

‘Three’s all you get,’ murmured the figure in grey.

‘We don’t want to be here,’ said the figure on the bench, rising. The bench creaked painfully.

‘There are more significant actions we should be involved in,’ said the figure in silver. ‘This is a waste of our strength, even just three of us. But my Chapter Master made the petition personally. Your estimation is six weeks’ operational time?’

‘Yes,’ said Gaunt. ‘Transit included. And transit time permitting.’

‘And we make shift tonight?’ asked the figure in white.

‘Yes,’ said Gaunt. He took an encrypted memory wafer out of his coat pocket and handed it to the silver giant. ‘Strategic evaluation. Everything we have so far, plus tactical proposals.’

The silver giant took the tiny sliver and passed it to the giant in white without looking at it. The bearded figure slotted the wafer into a data processor on the cuff of his vambrace. There was a low hum, and small hololithic images began to generate and rotate in the palm of his hand.

‘May I know you?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Brother-Sergeant Eadwine, Silver Guard,’ said the silver giant, tapping his own chestplate. He gestured at the giant in grey.

‘Brother Kater Holofurnace, Iron Snakes.’

He indicated the figure in white.

‘Brother Sar Af, White Scars.’

‘Who made these tactical assessments?’ asked the White Scar, still reading the hololith display.

‘The basics were drafted by Strategic Operations,’ replied Gaunt, ‘but the better parts were modifications made by my men. The regimental scouts, in particular.’

‘Is it the usual nonsense?’ asked the Iron Snake.

Sar Af, the White Scar, ejected the wafer and handed it back to Gaunt.

‘It’s not actually useless,’ he said. ‘I’ve made some initial adjustments. There will be more notes.’

‘I look forward to discussing them,’ said Gaunt.

‘There won’t be a discussion,’ said Sar Af. ‘There will simply be notes.’

‘Then I look forward to adjusting them,’ said Gaunt.

‘You can’t do this without us,’ said Sar Af, a shadow passing across his face. ‘In truth, few can see why this would even be attempted. The odds are long, the risks unrewarding, the objective insubstantial. It’s a tiny and extravagant sideshow, and Brother Eadwine’s Chapter Master is clearly growing sentimental in his dotage to even humour you over this.’

‘If that were true,’ said Gaunt, ‘you wouldn’t even be here.’

‘They’re so…’ Ludd whispered. ‘They’re hostile. Like we’re not on the same side.’

‘We’re on the same side,’ Hark muttered.

‘But–’

‘The Adeptus Astartes Space Marines operate on a different level to us, boy,’ said Mercure quietly. ‘We fight the same war, wage the same crusade, but their operational context is far removed. They attempt what we cannot even consider. They undertake what unmodified humans cannot. We are brothers in arms, but our paths and concerns seldom overlap. It’s simply the Imperial way of war.’

‘So if they’re here…’ Ludd began.

‘If the angels of death have come,’ hissed Cybon, ‘because they deem this operation worthy of their attention, it means Salvation’s Reach is going to be an unimaginably bloody hell.’

FOUR

BONDING

Lamps had been lit throughout the complex of the Anzimar Barracks, partly to add to the festival nature of the Makeshift Revels, mostly to combat the gloom of the afternoon smog. It was especially oppressive that day, and would not clear before nightfall. Already, the camp and landing fields felt as though they were cast in an evening shade.

Gaunt returned across the outer quadrangle with Hark, Ludd, Edur and Fazekiel. They could hear exuberant music playing from the halls, the clatter of dishes and glasses from the refectory. The influx reception was underway.

‘At least we’re dressed for it,’ said Hark.

‘I thought the lord militant was going to become apoplectic,’ said Ludd, who was still processing the meeting they were coming from.

‘Lords militant don’t like to be slighted, Ludd,’ said Hark. ‘Not in favour of mere colonels. Not even for that rare beast the colonel-commissar.’

‘Cybon understood the game,’ replied Gaunt. ‘He was playing a part too. He knew they would want to make the bond personally, with me. But the Chapter Master wouldn’t have looked at my petition if it hadn’t come with the explicit backing of Crusade high echelon and a lord militant or two. Cybon was an enabler. He had to be present for form’s sake, even if it was just so they could belittle him.’

‘Are they ever polite?’ asked Ludd.

‘They’re Space Marines,’ said Gaunt.

‘But to be so disrespectful to a lord militant–’

‘They’re powerful beings,’ said Gaunt. ‘They like to remind people where that power lies.’

‘So they’re never cordial or–’

‘I don’t know them, Ludd,’ said Gaunt. He stopped sharply and turned to look at the junior. The others came to a halt around them, in the middle of the quad square. ‘I’ve made no particular study of their etiquette.’

‘No one knows them,’ said Edur quietly.

‘They know you, sir,’ said Ludd to Gaunt. ‘That’s what that was about. You’re calling in some kind of favour.’

Gaunt’s jaw tightened. In the gloom, his eyes seemed haunted by an uncanny light.

‘Not a favour,’ he said. ‘You don’t ask the Adeptus Astartes Space Marines for favours. It’s about compacts and alliances. It’s about doing enough to simply get noticed, so that when you ask them for something, they care who you are.’

‘You realise we all look alike to them, don’t you?’ said Hark.

Ludd laughed, and then realised it wasn’t supposed to be a joke.

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘What?’ asked Gaunt, turning to start walking again.

‘What did you do to get noticed?’

‘Just enough,’ said Gaunt and walked away.

‘Balhaut,’ said Fazekiel. The others looked at her. ‘The Tower of the Plutocrat. The Oligarchy Gate. The infamous Ninth Day,’ she said. ‘Gaunt’s Hyrkans stood alongside the Silver Guard at the height of the battle. He certainly would have had dealings with them, possibly with Veegum himself. His achievements would have brought him to their attention. Perhaps even won their respect. Certainly, made enough of a mark so that years later, when he asked them for help, they would bother considering it.’

She looked at Ludd. She was only a few years his senior, but there seemed a gulf of maturity between them.

‘It’s all in his case file,’ she said. ‘Standard biographic data. There’s more detail, some of it classified, but not hard for someone with Commissariat clearance to get if they’re prepared to dig.’

‘You’ve made a study of him?’ asked Ludd.

‘You seem surprised,’ said Fazekiel. ‘I am going to serve under him. I want to know about him so I know what to expect and how best to perform my duty. Any commissar would do the same before attachment to a new command. The surprise, really, would be that you haven’t.’

‘I don’t know why I would,’ said Ludd, blushing slightly.

‘So you don’t ask stupid questions at the wrong moment?’ Fazekiel suggested.

‘I think Nahum is probably a more intuitive servant of the Throne than you, Luna,’ said Edur gently.

‘It’s not a matter of intuition,’ she replied. ‘It’s not a privacy issue, either. It is in no way invasive to study and understand the career record of an officer you’re serving. It improves your performance. It’s common sense.’

A despatch officer ran up, saluted, and handed Hark a message wafer. Hark acknowledged receipt with a press of his biocoded signet ring. He read the wafer, and then put it in his pocket.

‘We should get to work,’ he said. ‘There are newcomers to accommodate, and final arrangements to be made. Here’s something for you to ponder, Ludd. Fazekiel has accounted for the Silver Guard’s presence. But the other two. An Iron Snake and a White Scar. Why three Chapters?’

‘I’ll find out,’ said Ludd. ‘Meanwhile, when do the rest arrive?’

‘The rest of what?’

‘The Space Marines?’

Hark smiled. ‘We get three Space Marines, Ludd. Just three. They are rare and they are precious. Long gone are the ages when they marched across the stars in their hundreds or thousands. We’re lucky to have three.’

‘Under most circumstances,’ said Edur, ‘three is more than enough.’

‘Let’s hope this is one of those circumstances,’ replied Hark.

‘How will you find out, Ludd?’ Fazekiel asked.

‘I’ll ask them,’ Ludd replied.

‘Why is that funny?’ he added.

Crowds had gathered around the infirmary, forming queues. Most of the regimental community wanted to get out and enjoy the last few hours of the Revels or, if they were permitted, join the influx reception in the barracks hall. They could hear the band music all the way from the infirmary. But there were certificates to get, and that meant getting your shots.

Elodie joined the queue. The regiment’s medicaes were administering inoculations to all members of the retinue. The shots were a mix of anti-virals and counterbiotics, and emperythetical electrolytes, intended to protect them from foreign infection and cushion some of the traumas of shift travel. If you didn’t have a certificate from the medicaes proving you’d had your shots, you couldn’t embark. This time around, Elodie had been told, you also needed a bond.

They were all talking about it in the queue around her. An accompany bond was a document of disclaimer issued by the Munitorum that showed the bearer understood that he or she was transiting into a warzone. Regimental retinues usually followed their units to reserve line camps or waystations adjacent to the battlefield. For a bond to be necessary this time, it indicated that, for whatever reason, the retinue would be following the Tanith First directly into the line of danger. They would be at risk. Their safety could not be guaranteed. They had to sign a bond to say they understood and accepted this jeopardy, or they could elect to remain behind. The Munitorum hadn’t required the Tanith retinue to be bonded since Ouranberg in 771.

It was a hard choice, because remaining behind was a tricky option. For a spouse or a child, or for a tradesman whose livelihood had come to depend on a regiment, remaining behind meant risking never being able to reconnect with the unit. If you missed the shift, you might never get passage to wherever the regiment got posted next. You could spend months or even years trying to catch up with a unit on the move, like that ridiculous band had, so she understood.

For Elodie, it was no choice at all.

‘Are you quite well, Mamzel Dutana?’ the old doctor, Dorden, asked her when her turn came. He swabbed the crook of her elbow with rubbing alcohol while his orderly prepared a syringe.

‘I am, doctor. But there are things on my mind.’

‘You are anxious, no doubt, about what awaits us. War wounds us with anxiety from beyond the range of any weapon.’

She nodded.

‘You seem untroubled, if I may say so,’ she said to the old man. He seemed very frail, but his hands were rock steady, and she felt only a tiny pinch as the needle went in. ‘I can only suppose it is because you have done this before?’

‘You’re not my first patient, Mamzel Dutana.’

‘I meant war, doctor.’

‘Ah. No, you never get used to that. But you’re right, I can’t for the life of me recall where I’ve left my trepidation.’

Elodie went back along the shore, through the revel crowds, a small wad of cotton pressed to her needle mark. She went to the hab shelters that stood in a row behind the laundry tents. It seemed actually to be getting dark, as though true evening was extending through the murky smog.

‘Juniper?’ she called. ‘Juniper?’

The tents smelled strongly of carbolic soap and damp rockcrete.

‘Juniper? Are you here?’

She ducked into Juniper’s hab and came up short. The woman fuelling the small stove inside wasn’t Juniper.

She was a soldier, a sergeant, lean and powerful with cropped white-blonde hair.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Elodie.

‘You looking for Juniper?’ asked Tona Criid.

‘Yes.’

‘She just stepped away to get bonded,’ said Criid. ‘I’d come to see Yoncy, so I said I’d stay while she got sorted.’

The little girl that Elodie had seen in the crowd earlier was in the corner of the hab, eating beans from a bowl. She had the medal of the Saint on its ribbon around her neck. Elodie could see that Yoncy wasn’t going to be a child for much longer. She was small for her age, and appeared no older than a seven- or eight-year old, but she had to be eleven or twelve at least. Perhaps a life of slab and Guard rations had stunted her growth a bit. Perhaps she was one of those children who would suddenly become a young woman in one adolescent explosion. There was something quite knowing about her, Elodie felt. She still wore her hair in bunches, and swung her feet when she sat on an adult chair to emphasise her size. But it was as though she was slightly playing up the childlike effect, as if she knew it got her treats and favours. Everyone was her uncle or her aunt.

‘I wanted to ask her something,’ said Elodie. ‘I’ll come back.’

Criid shrugged as if that was good enough. There was a slight awkwardness, as if they didn’t know what to say to each other.

‘Actually,’ said Elodie, ‘can I ask you something?’

Criid closed the stove door, took a look at Yoncy to make sure she was tucking into her food, and then walked over to Elodie.

‘For what reason would a soldier take a wife?’

‘Apart from the obvious, you mean?’ asked Criid.

‘Yes, apart from that.’

‘There’s no better reason than that,’ said Criid. ‘None of my business, I’m sure, but how you feel is the only important reason.’

Elodie nodded.

‘Has Ban asked you a question?’ Criid asked.

Elodie shook her head.

Criid shrugged.

‘Like I said, not any of my business.’

Elodie took the small fold of papers out of her dress pocket.

‘Look at this,’ she said quietly.

‘Petition for allowance,’ said Criid, reading.

‘He hasn’t said anything. Nothing. But he’s got the paperwork. He’s filled it in.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Criid, handing the papers back. ‘Too fast? You going to say no?’

‘No.’

‘Good. It’d be bad in all sorts of ways if we go into this with a senior captain nursing a broken heart. Wait, is this about the accompany bond? You don’t want to be bonded? Are you staying here?’

‘No, no. That’s fine. I’ve got mine.’

‘So?’ Criid asked.

‘I don’t know why he hasn’t told me.’

‘We’re moving out in a hurry. It’s not romantic, but he wants to get it squared away before we dig in.’

‘It just feels like there’s another reason,’ said Elodie. ‘Another reason why he wants to.’

‘Is it because he might die?’ said the little girl from the other side of the room. They both looked at her. Yoncy had lowered her spoon and was staring at them, half a smile on her face.

‘Is it because he might die?’ Yoncy repeated. ‘He wants to get married in case he dies.’

‘Go wash your face,’ said Criid. ‘You’ve got gravy all round your mouth.’

Yoncy laughed, and slid down off her chair. She ran into the washroom at the back of the little hab.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Criid.

‘No, I’m sorry. I should have thought about what I was saying. It was insensitive.’

Criid frowned.

‘Insensitive? What? Oh, you mean because of Caffran?’

She shrugged as if it was nothing.

‘It hurts me he died, not that I didn’t get to marry him first. It wouldn’t have made a difference to us, a piece of paper. Though it does to some. Some marry, you know, to provide.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Elodie.

‘If you’re not actually married, with a piece of paper to show for it,’ said Criid, ‘then the Munitorum doesn’t recognise you as a widow. So some lasmen marry just to qualify for the viduity benefit. It’s not much. Just a few crowns a year, I think, a widow’s pension. But it matters to some people.’

‘Not to me,’ said Elodie. ‘Do you think that’s why he wants to do this?’

‘I don’t know. It might matter to him to know that you’d be provided for. A captain’s widow probably gets a better allowance.’

Elodie folded up the papers and put them away.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Criid.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’

‘You look pale. I’ve said too much.’

‘No.’

‘You haven’t really thought about any of this, have you?’ asked Criid.

‘I thought I had. It seems I hadn’t.’

‘Then you’d better,’ said Criid. ‘He’s a soldier. Soldiers die.’

‘We all die,’ said Elodie.

‘Yes,’ Criid nodded. ‘But not as fast as soldiers.’

Gaunt walked up the steps towards the entrance of the barracks hall. Smog and approaching evening had combined to create a gloom like twilight. The hall windows shone with lamplight.

Beltayn was waiting for him in the entrance way.

‘Something’s awry,’ said Gaunt.

‘It’s a band, sir,’ said Beltayn.

‘I can hear what it is, I just couldn’t for the life of me explain why.’

‘I’ll leave that pleasure to Major Baskevyl, sir,’ said the adjutant.

‘Anything else?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The new seniors are keen to meet you.’

‘Of course. You explained that I was unavoidably detained?’

‘I did, sir. Some took it better than others.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Transfers behind just before midnight local,’ said Beltayn. He handed Gaunt a data-slate. ‘Our transport has been confirmed as the Highness Ser Armaduke. It’s a frigate, Tempest-class. Whatever that means.’

‘So the Fleet couldn’t spare a battle cruiser after all.’

‘No, sir. Actually, the Fleet didn’t spare this either. As I understand it, the Highness Ser Armaduke was substantially damaged during the Khulan Wars and has been in the depot reserve for the last twenty-seven years. It’s had what I’ve been told is called “modification refit”, but its performance still doesn’t allow it to be fully Fleet certified.’

‘You’re saying it’s a piece of scrap that would otherwise have gone to the breakers?’

‘I’m not saying that, sir,’ said Beltayn, ‘because I know nothing about the Navy or shiftship doings. I’m just a common lasman, sir.’

Gaunt looked at the documents on the slate.

‘Oh, the faith they show in us. Giving us a ship they don’t mind losing because they’re pretty certain it’s going to be lost.’

‘I’ll remember to keep that insight to myself, shall I?’ asked Beltayn.

‘Yes, please,’ said Gaunt handing the slate back. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, sir.’

Gaunt gestured up in the direction of the double-headed eagle that was perched on the head of a large statue of Saint Kiodrus nearby. The eagle ruffled its wings and shuffled on its marble perch.

‘Not even that?’

‘Doesn’t belong to me, sir,’ said Beltayn, ‘and I didn’t put it there.’

Gaunt went into the hall. Long, candle-lit tables were set for dinner, but the assembled guests were generally standing, talking in groups, drinks in their hands. Servitors whirred through the press. Regimental colours – Tanith, Verghastite and Belladon – were in abundant display. On a low stage to one side, the band was playing vigorously.

‘Where have you been?’ asked Blenner, intercepting him almost at once.

‘Oh, you know, colonel-ing and stuff,’ said Gaunt.

Blenner had a drink in his hand.

‘I hate bashes like this,’ he said, leaning close to Gaunt so he could whisper and still be heard over the band.

‘The band wasn’t your idea, was it?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Why would you think that?’ asked Blenner, looking wounded.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gaunt. ‘There’s something about it that feels like an elaborate practical joke.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Blenner. He took what appeared to be a pill from his stormcoat pocket and knocked it back with a sip of amasec. He saw Gaunt looking at him.

‘What?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

Kolea was approaching with several officers Gaunt didn’t recognise.

‘Commander,’ said Kolea, ‘it’s my honour to introduce the senior officers of the new Verghastite influx. Major Pasha Petrushkevskaya and Captain Ornella Zhukova.’

Gaunt saluted them both.

‘It’s my shame,’ he said, ‘that I wasn’t here to greet you. You’ve come a long way and you’re contributing a great deal.’

‘We understand,’ said Petrushkevskaya. ‘Major Kolea was good enough to explain that you were detained by an important strategic briefing.’

‘I was. I am still sorry. Vervunhive has a very, very important place in this regiment. It is an honour to receive reinforcements from Verghast.’

‘It is an honour to serve under the People’s Hero,’ said Zhukova.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Gaunt.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Zhukova, bright-eyed. ‘To this day, your name is spoken with honour and respect at every level of hive life. Did you know that in Hess West Sector alone, there are four public statues of you? I have picts, if you would like to see them.’

‘Thank you, but I’m confident I know what I look like,’ said Gaunt.

Zhukova laughed.

‘You are certainly more handsome in person,’ she said.

‘Now, I really like her already,’ said Blenner, stepping forwards. ‘Don’t you, Ibram? I really like you, Captain Zhukova. The colonel-commissar is a terrible old bore, and pretends he doesn’t like people going on about his heroism, or how handsome he is. But we can all see that for ourselves, can’t we? Between you and me, he secretly loves it, and I recommend you do it as often as possible, no matter how much he protests.’

‘Blenner,’ Gaunt hissed.

‘In fact,’ Blenner went on, ‘the more he protests, the more he secretly likes it.’

‘Really?’ laughed Zhukova.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Blenner. ‘I should know. I’ve known him all my life.’

‘Have you?’ asked Zhukova. This seemed to impress her. ‘That must be wonderful. What an example he must have set.’

‘I can’t begin to tell you,’ said Blenner, placing one hand on his heart and tilting his head to the side. ‘He’s quite inspiring. Although, and few know it…’ he dropped his voice and leaned forwards. Zhukova bent forwards to listen, her eyes even wider.

‘…I taught him a great deal about life and the deportment of an officer,’ said Blenner.

‘Did you?’ exclaimed Zhukova.

‘I don’t like to talk about it. It’s not as if I’m looking for credit or recognition. It’s enough to know that I’ve helped to shape the character of an Imperial hero.’

‘Of course it is,’ Zhukova agreed.

‘Blenner!’ Gaunt hissed, rather more emphatically.

‘You’re very comely, Captain Zhukova,’ said Blenner. ‘May I say that? I don’t mean to speak out of turn, and I certainly mean nothing inappropriate by it. I speak only as a commissar, in a purely professional regard. My business is the morale and discipline of the fighting lasman, and in that regard, your captivating looks are quite a potent weapon to have in our arsenal. I mean this purely analytically! The men will follow you, obey you. They will be devoted to you, and–’

‘Captain Zhukova is well aware of the effect of her looks on the male soldier,’ said Petrushkevskaya. She was not smiling. ‘Indeed, we have had conversations about it.’

‘I’m sure you have, major, I’m sure you have,’ said Blenner. ‘You understand it too, don’t you? The importance of something like that. Just in strategic terms. Now… Pet-rush-kevs-kaya… That’s right, isn’t it? Quite a mouthful. We should think about shortening that to something the men can get their tongues around.’

‘Commissar Blenner,’ growled Gaunt. ‘Major Petrushkevskaya’s name is Petrushkevskaya. That’s what the men will call her. They’ll damn well learn how to say it. Anything else would be disrespectful.’

‘Of course,’ said Blenner. ‘I only meant–’

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Petrushkevskaya. ‘Actually, it has been an issue. I’m generally known as Major Pasha. It’s what I was called in the scratch companies, before my rank was official. Sort of an affectionate name, but it has its uses. Simplicity being one of them.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s fine. Though I generally discourage the ranks from adopting informal names. A lack of discipline in anything, even the form of words, represents a lack of discipline that could spread.’

‘That must be why we’re called Gaunt’s Ghosts,’ said Blenner.

Zhukova laughed.

Gaunt had to bite his lip to prevent himself from snapping at Blenner in front of them. He looked for another outlet to vent at.

‘Where did that feth-awful band come from?’ he asked.

‘Uhm, sir?’

He turned. The others turned with him. Major Baskevyl had joined them, bringing another new face, an officer of Belladon extract. The man’s face was oddly familiar, and clearly tinged by anger.

‘Sir,’ said Baskevyl, ‘this is Captain–’

‘It’s my feth-awful band, sir,’ said the officer. ‘My command is a fighting unit of three sections that happens to carry the role of colours band for ceremonial occasions. Its presence is meant to reflect the martial prowess and splendour of Belladon, and to enhance this regiment. It is honourable and dignified. It has been devoted to the matter of joining this command for years, and has made considerable efforts to arrange transfers to do so. It is the marching band my brother personally requested.’

Gaunt waited a second before replying. He looked the man full in the face.

‘You’re Wilder’s brother.’

‘I am.’

‘I meant no disrespect. I didn’t know your brother–’

‘No, you did not. And precious little trace of him remains here. When he took command of this regiment, the previous names were merged. I see all sign of the 81st has now vanished from the regimental title. A revision you made, I presume?’

‘The new title was clumsy,’ said Gaunt, showing no emotion. ‘Belladon has, however, left a profound and positive mark on our ranks, and your brother’s stewardship of this regiment, and his legacy, is not forgotten.’

Wilder jutted out his chin a little, but remained silent. Gaunt saluted him.

‘Welcome to the Tanith First, Captain Wilder. The Emperor protects.’

Wilder returned the salute.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘It must be said, captain, that we were not expecting to be reinforced by a colours band.’

‘They’re fighting troopers, damn you!’ Wilder cried. He swung at Gaunt. His fist stopped dead, the wrist clamped tightly in Blenner’s right hand. The speed with which Blenner had moved to intercept was quite impressive.

‘I don’t think, Captain Wilder,’ said Blenner, holding the wrist firmly and speaking directly into Wilder’s furious face, ‘that striking your commanding officer would be a great way to end your first day in this regiment. It might even be a way of making it your first and only day.’

He laughed at his own joke. Zhukova laughed too, brightly and rather over-emphatically. The band had stopped playing and everyone in the hall was watching.

‘But it is your first day,’ said Blenner calmly and clearly, ‘and this is an emotional moment. It has perhaps sharpened your grief over the memory of your brave brother. That’s understandable. It’s taken you a long time to get here, and you’re standing here at last. We’ve all taken a drink. It’s the end of a long day and there are longer ones ahead. So, why don’t we make the fresh start here, and not five minutes ago?’

He looked at Gaunt.

‘I think that would be a prudent idea,’ said Gaunt.

Blenner let Wilder’s wrist go. Wilder lowered his hand and straightened up. He smoothed the front of his jacket.

‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘I apologise. Thank you.’

‘Nothing more will be said about it,’ said Blenner. He raised his glass high and addressed the room.

‘Welcome to the Ghosts. Fury of Belladon!’

Fury of Belladon! they all sang back, even Petrushkevskaya and Zhukova, and glasses clinked.

Gaunt turned to the band and gestured encouragingly.

‘Play up! I was just getting used to it.’

Sergeant Yerolemew smiled, nodded, and brought the band back into full order. The music blasted out again.

‘Deft,’ Gaunt whispered to Blenner.

‘I have my uses,’ Blenner replied.

‘I still don’t need a band,’ Gaunt added quietly. ‘Can we see if we can at least lose their instruments in transit?’

‘I’ll have some people look into it,’ whispered Blenner.

‘And keep an eye on Wilder. He’s trouble.’

‘There’s an old saying, Ibram. Keep your friends close, and the brother of the dead hero you replaced as commander closer. Or confined to quarters.’

The undercroft of the barrack hall was an extensive warren of vaulted wine cellars, pantries, larders and basements. Light shone out of the noisy scullery. The kitchens were filled with heat and steam and the smell of herbs and roasted meat, and kitchen staffers were loitering in the cool scullery entrance, beaded with sweat, as they took quick breaks between servings. From overhead, the boom and muffled clash of the enthusiastic band rang like a minor seismic disturbance.

Viktor Hark walked down the stairs beside the scullery, through a waiting group of overheated servers and pot boys, and turned left into the main undercroft space. The arched stone was whitewashed, and it was cool and dry, with just the hint of cold brick and the background top note of chemical smog that got into everything in Anzimar.

Lamps had been lit down here. Glow-globes and candles had been set at the long bench table.

First Platoon, B Company, had assembled. Varl and Brostin, Mach Bonin the scout, Kabry and Laydly, LaHurf, Mkaninch and Mktally, Judd Cardass and Cant the Belladonians, Mkrook, Senrab Nomis the Verghastite. Rawne, the presiding genius of B Company and the regiment’s second officer, stood in a corner, leaning against the wall.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Hark, and held up his hand as they began to scrape back chairs and rise. ‘As you were.’

There were bottles and glasses on the table, and an earthenware pitcher of water. None of the bottles had been opened.

‘Trouble on the island this morning, so I hear,’ Hark said to Rawne.

‘I handled it,’ said Rawne.

‘You certainly did,’ replied Hark. He reached into his coat, took out the message wafer that had been delivered to him in the quad, and handed it to Rawne.

Rawne unfolded it and read it.

‘Congratulations, major,’ Hark said.

Rawne allowed himself a small smile. The men began to whoop and pound their fists on the table.

‘Further to the incident this morning,’ said Hark over the row, ‘and in light of the serious security failings demonstrated by Major Rawne, First Platoon, B Company, the Tanith First, is hereby charged with the secure management of the prisoner for the duration of this operation. In such respect, First Platoon, B Company, the Tanith First, will be designated an S Company by the Commissariat for purposes of authority and powers.’

The men whooped even more loudly.

‘Major Rawne is supervising officer. I will consult directly on S Company procedure. That’s “S” as in security.’

‘I thought it was “S” as in special,’ Cant called out.

‘It’s “S” for shut your hole,’ replied Cardass. Men laughed.

‘One word of advice,’ Hark shouted over the hooting and thumping. ‘Don’t screw this up.’

‘Would we, sir?’ replied Varl. ‘Would we screw anything up? Ever?’

‘We screw some things up,’ said Bonin.

Varl frowned. ‘Yes, we do,’ he admitted. He looked at Hark and grinned. ‘We’ll try really hard not to do that this time, sir,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what I was worried about,’ said Hark. He started to walk towards the exit. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Your first duty shift starts tonight. You take over when the prisoner is transferred for embarkation.’

‘Wait!’ Rawne called after him. ‘If you’re our liaison officer, Commissar Hark, you ought to witness the whole of our little founding.’

The men had quietened down.

‘Whose “founding”?’ Hark asked, turning back.

Rawne smiled, and picked up an empty ammo box that had been standing on the floor at his feet. He shook it, and metal objects inside it clinked together.

‘The Suicide Kings,’ Rawne said.

The men whooped and hollered again.

‘That’s a card game, major,’ said Hark.

‘Lots of versions of that game around the sector,’ Rawne said. He handed the ammo box to Cant, who reached in, rummaged, and took something out. The box then passed to Varl.

‘Lots of versions,’ Rawne repeated, watching the box get passed around, each man taking something out. ‘Lots of variations. The version we call Suicide Kings, that came from Tanith in the first place, you know.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Hark.

‘The Suicide King himself,’ said Rawne, ‘in a standard deck, that’s the King of Knives.’

‘The King of Knives!’ Brostin echoed lustily as the box reached him and he took something out of it.

‘You see,’ Rawne continued, ‘the Tanith called the game Suicide Kings because of that card. The King of Knives. You know why?’

‘No, but I am convinced you’re about to tell me,’ said Hark.

Rawne smiled. ‘Back in the old times, ages past, the ruler of Tanith, the High King, was protected by a bodyguard company. The finest warriors, Nalsheen. They were his close protection, his last line of defence. Instead of blade-tipped staffs, they used straight silver blades, just warknives, so they could close around the High King and protect him with their bodies, and not endanger him with the swings of long reach weapons. It was a great honour for a man to join the bodyguard company, but the chances were he’d die in that service. So when a man took up the duty, the Tanith granted him the powers of king in his own right. The High King was protected by men who had the authority of kings themselves. Absolute power in return for absolute service.’

Rawne looked at Hark.

‘They were known as the Suicide Kings,’ he said. ‘They lived the lives of kings because their lives could end at any second, and they never questioned the sacrifice.’

The box had come back to him. There was one item left in it. Rawne took it out and held it up.

It was a Tanith cap badge, the skull and daggers, but it was dulled down to matt black to hide its glint, and the side daggers had not been snapped off, as was the Tanith custom. A letter ‘S’ had been etched onto the forehead of the skull. Every man in the room apart from Hark had one.

‘That’s what we’ll be,’ Rawne said. ‘Suicide Kings. That’s what the “S” stands for, and this’ll be our mark.’

‘You’ve left the side blades on,’ said Hark.

‘For this mark,’ Rawne nodded. ‘Surrounded by straight silver, the way a high king should be.’

‘You surprise me with your sentimentality sometimes, major,’ said Hark.

‘Open the bottles,’ Rawne said to Brostin. ‘We’ll celebrate. Except for the four men who have drawn a badge with a cross scratched on the back.’

The men turned their badges over. Bonin, Mkaninch, Nomis and Laydly had drawn the crosses.

‘Water from the jug for you four, because you’ll be taking the first turn of duty,’ said Rawne. ‘Luck of the draw. Sacra for the other kings. And one for the good commissar, I think.’

Hark took the small glass of eye-watering sacra that Mktally passed to him.

‘Suicide Kings,’ he said, tipping it back.

Though not drunk, Jakub Wilder was by no means sober. The reception was dire and dull in equal measures, and he’d drunk a skinful to try to blot out the fool he’d made of himself with Gaunt. The man made him sick, made him angry. He should have landed that blow. He should go right back, take out his service pistol and shoot the arrogant bastard between the eyes.

They were serving junk too. Some kind of fortified wine. Wilder wanted a proper drink. A grown up drink.

He left the hall and stood in the open for a while to get some fresh air. When he started to feel cold, he went back inside. He bumped into a woman in the entranceway. A damn fine looking woman, damn fine, in a blue dress. An officer’s wife, probably. An officer’s woman.

‘I’m sorry, mam,’ he said, and realised he was slurring slightly.

‘Not at all,’ she replied.

There were stairs down into the undercroft. Wilder had seen the servers bringing bottles up from the cellars. Maybe he could find himself some amasec, some of the stuff that had run out so damn fast at the start of the evening.

He went down the stairs. It was cool and gloomy. He could hear the main reception party, and also the sounds of men celebrating something in one of the undercroft spaces. Some private drinking party, no doubt. He’d avoid them.

Wilder found his way to the cage sections of the pantry where the bottles were racked. He shook the bars, but the cages were locked. The storekeeper would have the key. Damn.

‘There’s always a way to open things,’ said a voice from behind him.

Wilder turned. There were three men behind him. They were sitting out of the way in a corner of the pantry area, crowded in around a small table under an arch. Coming in, he hadn’t seen them.

‘Excuse me?’ he said.

They were Tanith. Two were Tanith born and bred. They had the pale skin and the black hair. One was a red-faced, drunken-looking bastard, the other… well, he just looked like a bastard. Handsome but hard-faced, like there was a bad smell right under his nose. He was a captain from his pins, the red-faced sot a common trooper. The third man wore the black uniform of the regiment, but he was fair-skinned and blond. His eyes were watery blue and his hair was thin, like white gold. There was an aristocratic air about him, a slight snootiness. A cross between a haughty aristo and a deep sea fish that never sees the light and becomes translucent.

‘I said,’ the captain spoke cooly, ‘there’s always a way to open things.’

‘You got a key, have you?’ asked Wilder.

‘As it happens, I have.’ The captain reached into his pocket and held up a small brass key.

‘What are you… the pantry keeper?’ asked Wilder.

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘I’m the guy who knows how much money to pay the pantry master to get a second key cut.’

‘You were looking for a drink?’ asked the aristocratic fish, looking down his nose at Wilder with his milky blue eyes. That hair of his, it only looked white gold because it was so thin. It was pale, like his eyelashes. He’d probably been red-headed as a kid. A little snooty kid in the scholam.

‘I was looking for a drop of proper amasec,’ said Wilder.

‘Then you don’t even need the key,’ said the captain. ‘That is, if you’d care to join us.’

Wilder blinked. He realised he was swaying a little, so he steadied himself against the cellar arch. He realised there was a very expensive bottle of amasec on the table between the three men.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said.

‘Get another glass, Costin,’ said the captain.

The red-faced drunk reached up onto a side shelf and took down a heavy lead-glass tumbler. He put it on the table and carefully filled all four from the bottle.

‘You’re Wilder, right?’ asked the captain.

‘Yes.’

‘Welcome to the First,’ the captain said. ‘I knew your brother. He was a good man. I’m Captain Meryn, E Company. These gentlemen are friends of mine. Trooper Costin.’

The raddled Tanith nodded at Wilder.

‘And this is Sergeant Gendler. Didi Gendler.’

‘A pleasure,’ said the aristo fish. The accent was strong, hard. Wilder had heard enough to know it wasn’t Tanith, and it certainly wasn’t Belladon.

‘You’re a Vervunhiver?’ he asked.

‘No, no,’ said Meryn. ‘Didi’s not just a Vervunhiver. He’s not some scum off the bottom of your boot. Are you, Didi?’

‘Captain Meryn does like his little jokes,’ said Gendler.

‘Sergeant Gendler is better than the rest of us,’ said Costin. ‘It’s well known. He’s proper breeding, is Sergeant Gendler.’

‘I’m just an honest soldier,’ said Gendler.

‘Didi is nobility,’ said Meryn. ‘He’s up-hive blood. Noble-born to a good main-spine family.’

‘Really?’ asked Wilder. ‘How’d you end up in a shit-hole like this, then?’

Gendler stiffened and his languid eyes narrowed.

‘It’s all right,’ said Wilder. ‘No offence meant. I ask myself the same question every morning.’

Meryn grinned. He held up one of the brimming little glasses.

‘Come and join us, Captain Wilder.’

Wilder took the glass and pulled up a stool.

‘What will we drink to?’ he asked. ‘What will we talk about?’

‘Well, sir,’ said Gendler, ‘if you’re down here and not upstairs, it rather suggests you don’t want to be upstairs, or that you’re not welcome. Which, in turn, suggests that we’ve already got something in common, the four of us.’

Wilder looked at the amasec in his glass, and licked his lips.

‘I’m down here,’ he said, ‘because I was sick of that damn party, and I was looking for something to drink to wash away how much I bloody hate the guts of that bastard Gaunt.’

He paused and looked up at the three men sharply, suddenly aware of what he’d said out loud.

‘Now, you see?’ said Meryn. ‘That’s something else we have in common.’

From the shadows of an adjacent corner in the undercroft, eyes watched the four men in their huddle. Eszrah Ap Niht, known as Ezra Night, warrior of the Gereon Untill, kept himself in the darkness, and listened to them talk.

‘Leaving the party early, sir?’ asked Elodie, passing Gaunt in the doorway of the barrack hall.

Gaunt stopped and saluted her.

‘No, mam,’ he said. ‘I’m just stepping out to clear my head. The band can be…’

He faltered.

‘I can hear what the band can be for myself,’ said Elodie, smiling.

Gaunt nodded.

‘I just need a moment to collect my thoughts. There are a few matters to attend to. You’re looking, if I may be so bold as to say, quite stunning this evening.’

Elodie curtsied playfully. She was very pleased with the fit of her blue dress.

‘Thank you, colonel-commissar,’ she replied. ‘You may be so bold.’

‘You’re looking for Captain Daur, no doubt?’

‘I am. He’s inside, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Gaunt. ‘Go join him, and have a very fine last evening on this world.’

Elodie went into the hall. It was crowded and busy with noise. Music and conversation, laughter and the chink of glasses. There were several hundred people present, not counting the staff. The band was making an enormous sound.

‘Have you seen Captain Daur?’ she asked Corporal Chiria, Domor’s adjutant.

‘I think he’s over there, mam,’ said Chiria. She pointed.

Elodie looked. She caught sight of Daur. He was talking to a woman. They were clearly friends. They were laughing. The woman was very good looking. She was wearing an officer’s uniform.

‘Who’s that he’s talking to?’ asked Elodie.

‘Her?’ answered Chiria. ‘That’s Captain Zhukova. She’s influx, arrived today. From Vervunhive. Turns out she and Captain Daur knew each other really well, back in the old days, at the hive. Funny, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ said Elodie.

‘Are you all right, mam?’ Chiria asked. The corporal was a big woman, with a powerful frame. Her face was famously scarred, and it made her seem threatening, but Elodie knew she was very sweet-natured.

‘Yes,’ said Elodie. ‘Of course. I think I just found out the answer to something.’

Merrt pulled the trigger. It was funny the things you didn’t forget. Basic marksman skills, hunting skills, they never went away. Like how to pull a trigger. You didn’t squeeze or jerk it, you didn’t do anything that would shake or upset the fine balance you’d achieved between the weapon and your stance. Pulling the trigger, that most significant act in the art of shooting, was, at its best, the most minimal. A draw. A slow tightening of the finger during the exhale.

The old rifle cracked. Merrt felt the kick of it. He slotted back the bolt-action to eject the shell case.

‘You missed,’ said Larkin.

‘I gn… gn… gn… know.’

‘But you missed less terribly than you did the last ten shots,’ Larkin grinned. He sat up, lifted his scope and took a look down the makeshift range. They’d set up on stretch of sea wall at the far end of the camp area, looking out down the plascrete shore to the filthy waters, with nothing between them and the far shore of Anzimar City three kilometres away except the toxic tide. There was a little jetty of rusting metal steps that led out from the end of the sea wall to a small stone derrick that was sometimes used as a beacon point. The jetty allowed Larkin to limp out to the stone platform and set up empty bottles and cans for practice. Effective range was about three hundred metres. Add in the strong breeze, the smoke and degrading light, plus the poor quality of the old rifle; it was quite a target to take.

Merrt slotted in another round, clacked back the bolt-action. Larkin took a sip of sacra from a flask. It was getting cold and the water stank.

‘Best make the most of this,’ said Larkin. ‘After tonight, all practice is going to be shipside.’

Merrt sighed.

‘It’s not like I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been able to remember what to do. I didn’t forget how to shoot. I just stopped being gn… gn… gn… able to.’

Merrt had once been a crack shot, some said as good as Mad Larks, though it was impossible to make that assessment after so many years. On Monthax, a bitter lifetime ago, he’d taken a las-round in the mouth during the jungle-fight. The medicaes had rebuilt his lower face, fitting him with a crude and ugly prosthetic jaw. Apart from ruining his life, it had spoiled his aim. Larkin knew Merrt was right: you just had to watch him to see he knew what he was doing. He just couldn’t translate technique into actual results. Throne knows, he’d tried. Merrt had spent years trying to re-qualify for his lanyard and get a longlas back.

‘This trip’s a shooting party,’ said Larkin, taking another sip, ‘so I need the best shooters I can get.’

‘That’s not me,’ said Merrt. ‘Not any more.’

‘But you were, Rhen.’

‘Exactly.’

Larkin sniffed.

‘You know what your trouble is?’ he asked.

Merrt tapped his jaw.

‘Nope,’ said Larkin, and reached out to tap a finger against the top of Merrt’s head.

‘Right,’ said Merrt. ‘It’s gn… gn… gn… psychological.’

The jaw tripped him all the time. Apart from being ugly, it tended to seize and clamp, as if he were fighting the neural links the medicaes had wired it to. On some words, not even difficult ones, Merrt ground his jaw as if he were stuck in verbal quicksand. It got worse when he was edgy.

Larkin was no medicae, but life had given him some insight into head stuff. The stress factor suggested that it wasn’t the physical impediment of the jaw so much as a nerve thing, like a nervous tic. Augmetics, especially bulk-fix battlefield stuff, could do strange things to you. Rhen Merrt, Emperor bless him, saw his problem as simply one of gross impairment. He was busted up, ergo he couldn’t shoot any more. Larkin saw it was finer scale than that. The crude and halting neurodes of his augmetics were a constant reminder to Merrt that he was broken and imperfect, even during that one, serene, perfect moment of firing. He could never achieve full concentration. Result: shot ruined, every time.

That was Larkin’s hunch. Except he couldn’t prove it.

And even if he was able to, what could he do about it? Get them to remove Merrt’s jaw?

‘Take another pop,’ said Larkin.

‘So you gn… gn… gn… can watch me miss again?’

‘No,’ said Larkin. ‘I’m not watching the bottles on the wall. I’m watching you. Take the shot.’

In the hall, Bandmaster Yerolemew had finally ushered the players to stop. It was time for them to break, to case their instruments, and enjoy some of the drink and food on offer. Two Tanith pipers on the opposite side of the hall had taken over entertaining the assembly.

The bandsmen came off stage, some carrying their instruments. Erish, one of the standard bearers, was helping Elway re-attach the drum banner to the frame of his field drum. Erish was a big guy, heavily muscled from carrying the weight of the colours staff. He had a back and shoulders that came out like a tulip bulb. On static parade, he played clash cymbals. Nearby, Ree Perday, one of the leads in the brass section, admired him appreciatively as she cased her brass helicon. Gorus, who played woodwind, was adjusting his reed.

‘I need a drink,’ said Gorus. ‘I thought they were going to keep us playing all night.’

‘Not like they even seemed to enjoy it,’ replied Perday. She took off her high, crested cap and stroked her pinned-down hair.

‘Who?’ asked Erish, overhearing. He pushed past a pair of bandsmen with fanfare trumpets to join her. ‘Point out a face, and I’ll smack it.’

‘He would, too,’ said Gorus.

‘Did anyone see where Cohran went?’ Perday asked. ‘He’s been looking odd all day.’

‘Odd?’ asked Grous.

‘Like he was sick.’

Bandsman Pol Cohran was less than two dozen metres away from Ree Perday when she asked after him. He had left the stage, and wandered into the latrine block behind the hall.

He was one of the youngest bandsmen, tall and well-made, good looking. He was especially handsome in the immaculate finery of his parade uniform.

The truth of it was that Pol Cohran was actually a kilometre away, floating in a sump-water tunnel under the groundworks of the main landing field, his white and bloating corpse providing a source of food for the gel-eyed, pin-toothed residents of the lightless ooze.

In the hall latrine, the other Pol Cohran caught his own reflection in the glass of the small window, cast by the lamp. He looked at himself. For a moment, his face rippled. There was a wet click and crack of bone movement as he relaxed the concentrated effort he had been sustaining, and cranial kinesis restored the normal structure of his skull. An entirely different face looked back.

He rested a second, enjoying the slackening of muscles and the loss of tension, then brought Cohran’s face back with a muffled, gristly clack of bone.

Gaunt had been using office quarters across the quad from the barracks hall. The night sky was smog-dark like stained velvet. There was an acrid back-note of pollution in the air.

He left the bright and noisy hall behind him and went up to his lodgings.

The door was unlocked. A lamp was on. Beltayn was the only one with a key, and Gaunt had just seen him in the hall.

He drew his power sword. The steel slid out of the scabbard silently. Peering through the crack in the door, he could see no sign of an intruder.

Gaunt stepped inside, sword ready. He was making no sound at all. A man didn’t fight alongside the likes of Mkoll and Leyr all these years and not learn how to move like a ghost.

The office area was empty. Or had the papers on his bureau been disturbed? The bedchamber, then. Gaunt could feel that someone was there.

He moved around to the doorway. There was the tiniest flash of movement. His sword came around in a defensive block.

Something stopped it. Something parried his blade. It was moving fast and it was very strong. He reprised, a more aggressive blow. The slash was blocked, then something blurred into him. Gaunt sidestepped, but the attacker was too fast. He took a glancing blow across the shoulder and crashed sideways into a small library table which crashed over, spilling its load of books and data-slates.

Off-balance, he swept the sword around, now igniting its energy charge so that the already lethal cutting edge of the old weapon was enhanced by fierce blue fire. His attacker, still less than a blur, executed a handspring over the sizzling blade and landed behind him. One arm clamped his throat and another pinned his sword arm.

He head-butted backwards, then kicked back, smashing himself and the attacker locked to his back into the office wall. Objects fell off shelves. He used his left elbow and the heel of his boot to dislodge the attacker. The grip tightened, clamping the carotid arteries in his neck. He felt himself greying out. Before the chance went, he drove backwards with even more fury and he and his attacker collided with the desk and brought it over onto the floor with him.

He’d dropped his sword, but the throat-grip had gone. Gaunt came up with his bolt pistol aimed at his attacker’s forehead.

She came up with a laspistol aimed at his face.

‘Drop it,’ he said. He didn’t recognise her.

‘You’re Gaunt,’ she said. Clipped accent. What was that?

‘Yes.’

‘Then this is an unfortunate mistake.’

‘So drop the pistol,’ said Gaunt, ‘or I’ll paint the wall behind you with your brains.’

She thought about it, pursed her lips, and then tossed the ornate and expensive laspistol onto the floor beside her.

‘Identify yourself,’ said Gaunt, his aim not flickering from her forehead.

‘This is an unfortunate mistake,’ she repeated.

‘Not as unfortunate as making me repeat an order,’ he replied.

She was lithe and extraordinarily beautiful. Her elegantly sculptural head was shaved to a fine down of hair. She was clad in an armoured bodyglove and the holster at her hip was shrouded with a red cloth.

‘Maddalena Darebeloved,’ she said. Her lips were very red. ‘I am a licensed lifeguard of Imperial House Chass, Vervunhive.’

Gaunt eased his fingers on his gun-grip thoughtfully, but didn’t move his aim.

‘House Chass?’ he repeated.

‘You did not greet us this afternoon,’ she said.

‘I was detained,’ replied Gaunt. ‘Who’s “us”?’

A second person emerged from the bedchamber. He was a young man of no more than fifteen or sixteen years dressed in a plain black bodysuit and boots.

‘You did not come to greet us,’ said the lifeguard. ‘We came to your quarters to wait for you.’

‘The door lock is gene-coded. Only my adjutant has a copy of the bio-key.’

‘Any door can be opened,’ said the woman.

‘This is not how I wanted to meet you,’ said the young man. He had blond hair, and his youth lent him a feminine aspect.

‘This is not how anyone wants to meet me,’ said Gaunt. ‘Who are you?’

‘This,’ said the lifeguard, indicating the slender boy, ‘is Meritous Felyx Chass, of House Chass, grandson of Lord Chass himself. His mother is heir to the House entire. He has come to honour your regiment by joining it as a junior commander.’

‘Really? Just like that?’ asked Gaunt.

‘He is part of the influx. The reinforcement effort provided by Great Vervunhive out of respect for you and your achievements.’

‘All of which I appreciate,’ said Gaunt. ‘I just don’t remember saying that highborns could just invite themselves into the command echelon.’

‘It reflects great honour on both House Chass and this regiment,’ said the lifeguard, ‘if the son of the House serves in the Crusade in this capacity.’

‘It won’t reflect anything at all if he gets killed in the sort of Emperor-forsaken hole the scion of a Royal Verghastite House should never be seen in,’ said Gaunt.

‘That’s why I’m here,’ said the lifeguard.

Gaunt hesitated. He looked at the boy.

‘Your mother. That would be Lady Merity Chass?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘She asked me to convey her warmest greetings to you.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I am seventeen effective,’ he said.

‘I was on Verghast in 769. That’s just twelve years ago. She had no children then. Even allowing for shift dilation–’

‘I said I was seventeen effective,’ replied Meritous Chass. ‘I am eleven standard actual.’

‘As is common with high status heirs and offspring on Verghast,’ said the lifeguard, ‘my charge’s development has been slightly accelerated through juvenat and bio-maturation techniques so that he achieves functional majority as swiftly as possible.’

‘So you were born just after the Vervunhive conflict?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Just after,’ nodded the boy.

Gaunt blinked, and then lowered his pistol.

‘Throne damn you,’ he said, ‘please don’t say what I think you’re about to say.’

‘Colonel-commissar,’ said the lifeguard, ‘Meritous Felyx Chass is your son.’

FIVE

HIGHNESS SER ARMADUKE

At midnight, local time, a new star woke in the skies above Anzimar. The city’s population was hurrying to attend the day’s Sabbat Libera Nos service, which had been held in the temples of the Beati every midnight since the Crusade began, in the hope of vouchsafing a brighter tomorrow. Some of the hundreds of thousands of citizens bustling from their homes, or even their beds, or suspending their labour, at that time may have turned their eyes skywards, for since the very origin of the species, mankind has entertained the notion that some ineffable source of providence may look down upon us. The upward glances were vain, involuntary wishes to glimpse the face of salvation.

No one saw the star light up. The smog that night was as thick as rockcrete.

Ship bells rang. At high anchor at the edge of the mesopause, the Imperial Tempest-class frigate Highness Ser Armaduke lit its plasma engines. The drives ignited with a pulsing fibrillation before calming into a less intense, steady glow.

Below the ship lay the troposphere and the stratosphere. The shadow of the terminator lay heavily across Menazoid Sigma, and the smog atmospherics were so dense there were no visible light concentrations from the night-side hives. Part of the world was in sunlight. The foetid clouds, brown and cream, looked like infected brain tissue.

Small ships buzzed around the Armaduke like flies around a carcass. Fleet tenders nestled in close to its flanks. Launches, lighters, cargo boats and shuttles zipped in and out. The Armaduke’s hatches were all wide open, like the beaks of impatient hatchlings. Entire sections of the frigate’s densely armoured hull plate had been peeled back or retracted to permit access. The old ship, ancient and weathered, looked undignified, like a grandam mamzel caught with her skirts hoisted.

Above the ship lay the exosphere. The vacuum was like a clear but imperfect crystal, a window onto the hard blackness of out-system space and the distant glimmer of tiny, malicious stars.

The Highness Ser Armaduke was an old ship. It was an artefact of considerable size. All ships of the fleet were large. The Armaduke measured a kilometre and a half from prow to stern, and a third of that dimension abeam across the fins. Its realspace displacement was six point two megatonnes, and it carried thirty-two thousand, four hundred and eleven lives, including the entire Tanith First and its regimental retinue. It was like a slice cut from a hive, formed into a spearhead shape and mounted on engines.

It was built for close war. Its hull armour was pitted and scorched, and triple-thickness along the flanks and the prow. The prow cone was rutted with deep scars and healed damage. The Armaduke was of a dogged breed of Imperial ship that liked to get in tight with its foe, and was prepared to get hurt in order to kill an enemy.

To Ibram Gaunt, closing towards it aboard one of the last inbound launches, the ship had the character of a pit-fighter, or a fighting dog. Its scar-tissue was proud and deliberate.

Like the ritual marks of a blood-pacted soldier, he reflected.

The plasma engines pulsed again. Hold doors began to seal, and cantilevered armour sections extended back into position. Gaunt’s craft was one of the last to enter the central landing bay before the main space doors shut. The swarm of small ships dispersed, either into the Armaduke to share its voyage, or away to planetside or the nearest orbital fortress. Formations of Fury- and Faustus-class attack craft had been circling the ship at a radius of five hundred kilometres to provide protection while she was exposed and vulnerable. Now they formed up to provide escort. Buoy lights blinked. Lines detached. Fleet tenders disengaged and rolled lazily away, like spent suitors or weary concubines. The Armaduke began to move.

Initial acceleration was painfully slow, even at maximum plasma power. It was as though an attempt was being made to slide a building – a basilica, a temple hall – by getting an army of slaves to push it. The ship protested. Its hull plates groaned. Its decks settled and creaked. Its superstructure twitched under the application of vast motive power.

The other ships at high anchor unhooded their lamps to salute the departing ship. Some were true giants of the fleet, grand cruisers and battleships six or seven kilometres long. Their vast shadows fell across the Armaduke as it accelerated along the line of anchorage. To them, it was a battered old relic, an orphan of the fleet they would most likely never see again.

The Fury flight dropped in around the ship in escort formation. The plasma drives grew brighter, their flare reflecting off the noctilucent clouds below, creating a shimmering airglow. Mesospheric ionisation caused bowsprite lightning to dance and flicker along the Armaduke’s crenellated topside until the advancing ship passed into the exosphere and the wash of the magnetosphere’s currents swept the lightshow away.

Stepping out of the launch into the excursion hold as the ship ran out, Gaunt sampled the odour of the vessel’s atmosphere. Every ship had its own flavour. He’d travelled on enough of them to know that. Hundreds – or sometimes thousands – of years of recirculation and atmospheric processing allowed things to accumulate in a ship’s lungs. Some smelled oddly sweet, others metallic, others rancid. You always got used to it. A ten- or twelve-week haul on a shiftship could get you used to anything. The Armaduke smelled of scorched fat, like grease in a kitchen’s chimney.

He would get used to that. You could get used to the smell, the chemical tang of the recycled water, the oddly bland taste of shipboard food. You got used to the constant background grumble of the drives, to the odd noises from a vast superstructure constantly in tension. Once the drives were lit, the hull flexed; once the Geller Field was up and the ship had translated into the warp, the hull locked tight, like a well-muscled arm pumped and tensed. You got used to the acceleration sickness, the pervading cold, the odd, slippery displacement where the artificial gravity fields fluctuated and settled.

Once translation had been achieved, you got used to the ports being shuttered. You got used to ignoring whatever was outside. You got used to the baleful screams of the Empyrean, the sounds of hail on the hull, or burning firestorms, or typhoon winds, of fingernails scratching at the port shutters. You got used to the whispers, the shudders and rattles, the inexplicable periods of half-power lighting, the distant subterranean banging, the dreams, the footsteps in empty corridors, the sense that you were plunging further and further into your own subconscious and burning up your sanity to fuel the trip.

The one thing you never got used to was the scale. At high orbit, even with the vast extent of a planet close by for contrast, a starship seemed big. But as the planet dropped away to stern, first the size of an office globe, then a ball, until even the local sun was just a fleck of light no bigger than any other star, the embrace of the void became total. Space was endless and eternal, and the few suns no bigger than grains of salt. Alone in the bewildering emptiness, a starship was dwarfed, diminished until it was just a fragile metal casket alone in the monstrous prospect of night.

The Armaduke was accelerating so robustly now that the fighter escort was struggling to match it. Course was locked for the system’s Mandeville point, where the warp engines would be started up to make an incision in the interstitial fabric of space. The warp awaited them.

The crew and control spaces of a starship tended to be kept separate from the areas used for transported material and passengers, even on a military operation. The transporters and those they were transporting needed very little contact during a voyage.

But the Armaduke was still twenty-six minutes from the translation point when Gaunt presented himself to the shipmaster. He did not come alone.

‘No entry at this time,’ said the midshipman manning the valve hatch. He had six armsmen with him, all with combat shot weapons for shipboard use.

Gaunt showed the midshipman his documentation, documentation that clearly showed he was the commanding officer of the troop units under conveyance.

‘That’s all very well,’ said the midshipman, displaying that unerring knack of Navy types to avoid using Guard rank formalities, ‘but the shipmaster is preparing for commitment to translation. He can’t be interrupted. Perhaps in a week or so, he might find some time to–’

‘Perhaps he’s done it a thousand times before,’ said Gaunt’s companion, stepping out of the bulkhead shadows, ‘and doesn’t need to do more than authorise the bridge crew to execute. Perhaps he ought to bear in mind that his ship is a vital component of this action and not just a means of transportation. Perhaps you should open this hatch.’

The midshipman went pale.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, his voice as small as a shiftship in the open void.

The shipmaster’s name was Clemensew Spika. He had three Battlefleet commands behind him, but his career was in decline. A grizzled man of medium height, who conducted his command in full dress uniform, he was standing proudly at the gilded rail of the upper deck platform when they entered, gazing out across the bustling main bridge towards the vast forward viewer with a noble expression on his face. Gaunt wondered if he’d been standing there anyway, or if he’d struck the pose when he heard they were coming.

He turned as they came up to him, looking Gaunt in the eye, then tilting his head up to look at the Silver Guard warrior beside him.

‘We are underway,’ he said. ‘Could this audience have waited?’

‘No,’ said Eadwine.

‘Is this translation especially problematic?’ asked Gaunt.

‘No,’ replied Spika. He gestured for them to follow him, and instructed his first officer to watch the steersmen. At the back of the upper deck was a small stateroom reserved for briefings or quiet counsel. Spika sat and indicated they should do the same. Eadwine remained standing.

Apart from one wall panel that displayed a detailed summary of ship function, the room was decorated with painted sections framed in scrolled gilt. Each painted panel showed a different view of Khulan: the Regal Palace, the Waterfalls at Hypson, the Tombs at Kalil, the Imperial Lodge in High Askian, the Smarnian Basilica.

‘You understand how your vessel will be engaged in this venture?’ asked Eadwine. His augmetic rasp had little colour or tone.

‘Of course,’ replied Spika. ‘Rendezvous at Tavis Sun, resupply, then direct to the Marginals.’

‘I mean there,’ said Eadwine. ‘In the Marginals.’

‘Boarding action,’ said Spika. ‘I understand.’

‘You will be required to stay on station,’ said Gaunt.

‘I know.’

‘There will be no fleet support,’ Gaunt added. ‘The Armaduke will be vulnerable.’

‘I know,’ repeated Spika.

‘There are several things we don’t know,’ said Eadwine. ‘The dangers are considerable. We will be running silently for the last realspace section. There will be navigational hazards. Clearance and manoeuvre will be restricted. The deployment will be multi-point. Sustained. We do not know what we will find inside the target structure.’

‘At all?’ asked Spika. ‘I understood that this mission was based on intelligence of–’

‘It is,’ said Gaunt. ‘But it is limited. It may be out of date.’

‘It may be a pack of lies,’ said Eadwine.

‘Encouraging,’ said Spika.

‘Depending on levels of opposition, you may be required to commit your armsmen,’ said Eadwine.

‘I wasn’t told that,’ said Spika.

‘Is it a problem?’

‘The armsmen of the Highness Ser Armaduke will fight for the life of the ship if necessary,’ said the shipmaster firmly. He paused. ‘But I have been given a complement of young recruits. Few have battle experience. I was given to expect that you would be doing the fighting.’

Gaunt glanced at the towering Space Marine. Eadwine’s helm hung from his belt. He was looking with what resembled interest at the painting of the Waterfalls at Hypson.

‘The Navy has been economical with your briefing,’ said Eadwine. ‘What do you understand this mission to be about?’

‘About a matter of strategic importance,’ replied Spika. ‘Specifically, from my point of view, the opportunity to put this newly refitted ship and its young crew through a proper shakedown prior to re-certification.’

Neither Gaunt nor Eadwine replied. Spika looked at them. There was something infinitely sad in his pale blue eyes, as if he had been trying for weeks now to overlook the obvious.

‘A cynic might, I suppose, interpret this differently,’ he said.

‘How might that go?’ asked Gaunt.

‘An expendable and not entirely void-worthy ship and a young crew of little experiential value,’ said Spika, ‘given into the charge of a man who will never make admiral now and who asks the wrong questions of his superiors. A mission that is so likely to end in disaster, only scraps can be risked.’

‘A good dose of cynicism is always healthy, I find,’ said Eadwine.

‘There were other clues,’ said Spika, a hardness in his voice. He looked at Gaunt. ‘I reviewed your file, those sections that were not restricted. Glorious moments early on, at Balhaut especially. Great favour. The achievements since have been considerable. I mean that. No one could fail to be impressed by your service record. But recognition has been scant since Balhaut. There is a sense that you have squandered great opportunities, and ended up achieving little credit for the expenditure of great courage and tenacity. Like me and my ship, you and your regiment are useful but disposable commodities.’

‘A good dose of cynicism is always healthy,’ replied Gaunt.

‘I don’t care who you are,’ rumbled Eadwine. ‘I don’t care if you’re the Warmaster himself. This is the Imperium of Mankind. We’re all of us disposable commodities.’

The lights dipped. There was a shudder. The warp embraced them.

‘I hate that,’ said Larkin. He froze and refused to continue walking until the ship lights returned to their original brilliance. There was an underdeck tremor. A distant exhalation.

‘Worst part of any trip,’ he added. The lights came back up, a frosty glare in the low deck companionway. He started walking again.

‘The worst?’ asked Domor.

‘Yes,’ said Larkin. ‘Apart from getting there.’

‘All true,’ said Domor.

They had reached the armoured hatchway of a hold space originally designed as a magazine for explosive ordnance. Rawne and Brostin were waiting for them.

‘I want a badge like that,’ said Larkin.

‘Well, you can’t have one,’ said Brostin. ‘It’s only for the kings.’

‘The kings can kiss my arse,’ said Larkin.

Domor looked at Rawne.

‘This could continue all day, major,’ he said.

‘And it still wouldn’t become amusing,’ Rawne agreed.

‘Gaunt wants us to see him,’ said Domor. ‘Is that all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Rawne. ‘Provided you’re who you say you are.’

Larkin winked at Rawne.

‘Come on, Eli, these’d be pretty rubbish disguises, wouldn’t they?’

‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Domor, a smile forming. ‘We forced our own faces to change shape?’

‘I’ve seen stranger things,’ said Rawne.

‘Nobody here is surprised,’ said Larkin.

Rawne nodded to Brostin. The big man banged on the door, and then opened the outer hatch.

‘Coming in, two visitors,’ said Rawne over his microbead.

‘Read that.’

A peephole slot in the inner door opened, and Rawne stood where the viewer could see his face.

The inner hatch opened. Rawne took Domor and Larkin through.

‘Got anything he could use as a weapon?’ asked Rawne.

‘My rapier wit?’ suggested Larkin.

Mabbon Etogaur was sitting on a folding bunk in one corner of the dank magazine compartment. The walls, deck and ceiling were reinforced ceramite, and the slot hatch for the loader mechanism had been welded shut. The prisoner was reading a trancemissionary pamphlet, one of a stack on his mattress. His right wrist was cuffed to a chain that was bolted to a floor pin.

Varl was sitting on a stool in the opposite corner, his lasrifle across his knees. Cant was standing in another corner, nibbling at the quick of his thumbnail.

Larkin and Domor came in and approached the etogaur.

He looked up.

‘I don’t know you,’ he said.

‘No, but I had you in my crosshairs once,’ said Larkin.

‘Where?’

‘Balhaut.’

‘Why didn’t you take the shot?’ asked Mabbon.

‘And miss a touching moment like this?’

‘That’s Domor, that’s Larkin,’ said Rawne, pointing.

‘Don’t tell him our damn names!’ Larkin hissed. ‘He might do all sorts of fethed-up magic shit with them!’

‘I won’t,’ said Mabbon.

‘He won’t,’ Rawne agreed.

‘He can’t,’ said Varl.

‘Why not?’ asked Larkin.

‘Because how else would I be the punchline for another of Varl’s jokes?’ asked Cant wearily.

Larkin snorted.

‘He won’t because he’s cooperating,’ said Rawne, ignoring the others.

‘And if I did,’ said Mabbon, ‘Rawne would gut me.’

‘He does do that,’ Larkin nodded.

‘What did you need from me?’ asked Mabbon.

‘A consultation,’ said Domor. He had a sheaf of rolled papers under his arm, and a data-slate in his hand.

‘Go on,’ said Mabbon.

Larkin took the pamphlet out of Mabbon’s hand and glanced at it.

‘Good read?’ he asked.

‘I enjoy the subject matter,’ said Mabbon.

‘A doctrine of conversion to the Imperial Creed?’ asked Larkin.

‘Fantasy,’ replied Mabbon.

‘He’d be a fething funny man if he didn’t scare the shit out of me,’ Larkin said to Rawne.

‘We’re leading the insertion effort,’ said Domor. ‘There’s training to be done, planning. We want to use transit time to get as ready as possible.’

‘Are you combat engineering?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Yes,’ said Domor. ‘Larks… Larkin, he’s marksman squad.’

‘I saw the lanyard.’

‘We want to go over the deck plans and schematics you’ve supplied so far. It may mean several hours work over a period of days.’

‘I’ll try to build time into my schedule.’

‘Some of the plans are vague,’ said Larkin.

‘So are some of my memories. It’s all from memory.’

‘If you go through them a few times,’ said Rawne, ‘maybe you can firm things up.’

The etogaur nodded.

‘If you go through them so many times you’re sick of them, maybe we’ll actually do this right,’ Rawne added.

‘I’ve no problem with that,’ said Mabbon. ‘I offered this to you. I want it to happen.’

Domor showed him the data-slate.

‘We want to talk about this too,’ he said. ‘This firing mechanism. We need to mock some up for practice purposes. You say this is fairly standard?’

‘It’s representative of the sort of firing mechanisms and trigger systems you’re going to find,’ said Mabbon, studying the slate image.

‘It’s just mechanical,’ said Larkin.

‘It has to be. They can’t risk anything more… more complicated. They can’t risk using anything that might interfere with, or be interfered with by, the devices under development at the target location. It’s delicate. Any conflict in arcane processes or conjurations could be disastrous.’

‘So just mechanical?’ said Larkin.

‘Complex and very delicate. Very sensitive. But, yes. Just mechanical.’

Larkin took the slate back.

‘It looks very… It looks very much like the sort of thing we use,’ he said. ‘It looks pretty standard.’

‘It’s the sort of trigger mechanism I would rig,’ Domor said.

‘Of course,’ said Mabbon. ‘Tried and tested Guard practice. This is the sort of thing I taught them how to do. And I learned it the same place you did.’

Larkin looked at Domor. There was distaste on his face.

‘Go get the folding table,’ Rawne said to Varl. ‘Let’s look over these plans.’

In berthing hold six, the lights stayed dim for a long time. When they came back up, it was without enthusiasm.

The air was fuggy. Too many bodies, too much breathing, not enough decent atmospheric processing.

‘This is a dump,’ remarked Ree Perday. The cots were stacked three deep and close together. It was a forest of prone bodies. There was virtually no room to stow the band’s instruments.

‘Well, it’s our dump,’ said Bandmaster Yerolemew. moving through the rows. He tapped an empty bunk with his baton.

‘Who’s not here?’

‘Pol Cohran, sergeant major,’ said Gorus.

‘Where is he?’

‘Acceleration sickness, sergeant major,’ said Perday.

‘Cohran doesn’t get acceleration sickness,’ said Yerolemew.

‘He does this time,’ said Erish.

‘White as an undershirt,’ muttered Gorus.

‘Not one of your undershirts,’ said Perday.

‘Settle down,’ said the bandmaster.

‘Maybe the bandsman needs to see a medicae?’ asked Commissar Blenner. He’d been watching from the end of a bunk row.

‘Didn’t see you there, sir!’ snapped Yerolemew, straightening fast. The others began to move.

‘Please don’t,’ said Blenner, coming forwards. He took off his cap. It always took the sting out, he thought, when the cap came off. ‘This isn’t an official inspection. I just came to greet you, make sure you were stowed.’

‘That’s kind of you, sir,’ said Yerolemew.

‘I can afford to be kind now, sergeant,’ said Blenner. ‘You can pay me back later by behaving yourselves.’

He crooked an eyebrow to the crowd and got a little chuckle.

‘You’ll find I’m a pretty fair sort, generally. Come to me in good faith and I’ll always hear you out. Thank your lucky stars my name’s not Hark.’

More laughter, and it was genuine.

‘Anything to report so far? The facilities suiting your needs?’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Perday, ‘but there’s precious little room to store our instruments.’

‘No, there isn’t, is there?’ said Blenner glancing around. ‘Gaunt said something about storing them… where was it now? Airgate sixty.’

Still more laughter, some of it outraged.

‘I know, I know!’ said Blenner. ‘No respect, is there? No respect for the simple, pure, uplifting decency that is a colours band. Am I right?’

It seemed he was.

‘I tell you what we’re going to do,’ he said. ‘This mission, it’s pretty vital. It’s dangerous too, I won’t lie. But what we’re going to do is spend the time proving that a marching unit is indispensable to the regiment. Indispensable! As soldiers and as musicians, you’re going to prove your worth.’

That got a big cheer.

‘Fury of Belladon!’ Blenner tossed in for good measure, and circled his raised hand like a potentate on a balcony taking a march-past.

As they began to settle again, he turned to the sergeant major.

‘I was looking for your commanding officer,’ said Blenner.

‘I can show you to his quarters,’ Yerolemew replied. ‘I was just settling the company.’

‘You carry on, sergeant major,’ said Blenner. ‘I’m sure somebody else can show me. That young girl, for example. She seems very accommodating.’

‘Perday?’ called Yerolemew.

‘Sir, yes, sir!’

‘Kindly show Commissar Blenner through to Captain Wilder’s quarters.’

Perday jumped up.

‘This way, sir,’ she said.

She led him off the bustling berthing deck and onto a rather more gloomy corridor where the officers had been given cabins. The deck was a mesh. Below, there was a maintenance trench and a sluice.

‘What’s your name, trooper?’ asked Blenner.

‘Ree Perday, sir.’

‘Ree. Ree. And what’s that short for?’

‘Uhm, Ree, sir.’

‘I see,’ said Blenner. Not one to be deflected, he pressed on. ‘And where are you from, Ree Perday?’

‘Belladon, sir.’

‘Yes, silly of me to ask.’

In the shadow of a maintenance hatch in the trench below, the thing with Pol Cohran’s face watched them pass overhead. He had hidden so he could relax the tension in his face again. Bones clacked as cranial kinesis reasserted Cohran’s visage.

‘What was that?’ asked Blenner.

‘I didn’t hear anything, sir,’ said Perday.

‘I hope it wasn’t rats,’ said Blenner. ‘I do hate rats.’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘Especially when you spot them leaving the ship first.’

Perday laughed, and knocked on a cabin door. It was open.

‘Sir? Captain?’ she called. She peered inside.

‘Oh, Throne,’ he heard her say.

Blenner pushed past her. The cabin was small and unfriendly. Wilder was sprawled on the deck. He’d been sick at least once. The smell of amasec was pungent.

Blenner rolled him over. He was bonelessly limp, but he was still breathing. There were fumes coming off him you could have lit with a lucifer.

‘Oh, you bloody idiot,’ Blenner muttered.

‘What do we do, sir?’ asked Perday.

‘Go get a mop, Perday, and a pail of water,’ said Blenner. ‘Don’t tell anybody why. When you come back, watch the door and don’t let anybody in.’

She looked at him, helpless and anxious.

‘Go on.’

She hurried out.

Blenner sighed, and then hoisted Wilder up and carried him over to the bunk. He groaned in his stupor.

‘I could just shoot you for this, you realise that?’ said Blenner.

Wilder opened his eyes, but there wasn’t much of anything in there.

‘You’re a bloody fool,’ said Blenner. ‘I gave you a chance tonight, and you’ve already screwed it up. There’s going to come a point when I can’t help you any more, do you understand?’

Wilder closed his eyes.

‘Can’t and won’t,’ said Blenner.

Perday reappeared.

‘Where’s the mop, girl?’ Blenner asked.

‘Sir, I was just looking for one, sir, but I thought you should know. Company inspection, sir. Company inspection right now.’

‘Throne, Wilder, you’ll be the death of me,’ said Blenner. He got up.

‘Perday, use the jug of water there, and get a spare shirt or vest out of his holdall. Try to mop up this mess. Quickly, now.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Blenner put his cap on and went to the cabin door. Baskevyl, Sloman and Edur had just appeared at the end of the corridor; walking, talking.

‘Blenner,’ said Edur. ‘I was going to invite you to join us, but I couldn’t find you.’

‘I was already inspecting,’ Blenner said. He pulled the cabin door shut behind him, so they couldn’t see in past him.

‘Inspecting?’ asked Edur.

‘More a meet and greet. I didn’t know a surprise formal was due?’

‘Standard Belladon practice to spring a surprise on a new intake during the first thirty-six hours,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Perhaps you should familiarise me with some standard Belladon practice,’ said Blenner. ‘Seeing as the Belladon are my special responsibility.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Baskevyl. ‘I didn’t mean to cut you out of the process. I should have consulted you.’

‘No harm done.’

‘Would you like to walk in with us now? Maybe Captain Wilder too?’

Blenner pulled a face. He dropped his voice and leaned in close.

‘There’s a slight problem,’ he said. ‘The captain’s been struck down with a nasty bout of acceleration sickness.’

‘Really?’ said Baskevyl.

‘Nasty.’ Blenner nodded. ‘It’s widespread, actually. More than one bandsman has got it. I’ll be sending for a medicae to give everyone a check. The thing is, Wilder could join us, but he looks like death warmed over, and frankly I don’t want him losing face by seeming weak in front of the men.’

‘Quite right,’ said Sloman.

‘Here’s an idea,’ said Blenner, his voice still low. ‘Why don’t we do this inspection once I’ve had everybody checked? Give them a fighting chance to turn out properly on a first show. I mean, come on, between us, they’re not going to get a fighting chance to do anything much more impressive, are they?’

Sloman laughed. Baskevyl tried not to.

‘That’s good policy, I think,’ said Edur solemnly. ‘This time tomorrow, maybe?’

They went back the way they’d come.

Blenner stepped into the cabin. He breathed deeply, and quickly necked one of Dorden’s pills. Perday had done a good job of washing the deck. She was bagging the shirt she’d used for laundry.

‘You’re a kind man, sir,’ she said. ‘You said you were fair and you clearly mean it. Others would have hung the captain out for this.’

‘Don’t tell me that,’ said Blenner. He pointed at Wilder. ‘Tell him that when he wakes up tomorrow morning.’

‘The shipmaster seems reliable?’ asked Lord Militant Cybon. ‘This Spika? He was the Navy’s choice.’

‘He seemed agreeable enough,’ said Gaunt. ‘Sanguine.’

Cybon nodded.

‘Amasec?’

‘I’ll take a small one, sir.’

Cybon’s staterooms were some of the most comfortable passenger apartments on the Armaduke. Gaunt believed a senior helm officer had been rehoused to accommodate the lord militant for the voyage. Gaunt had opted for a standard officer’s quarters of the lower deck beside the other Tanith seniors.

‘Should I have seen him? He knows I’m aboard,’ said Cybon as his aide marched off to get some amasec. The lord militant eased his augmetic frame down into a reclining flight throne. The chamber’s desk was alive with hololithic displays. Cybon liked his information fresh and frequently renewed.

‘I think I made the right noises,’ said Gaunt, taking the small amasec that the aide offered him. The glass was from the lord militant’s own travelling case. There was a small rook crest etched on the crystal.

‘He knows you’re aboard, but it’s not general news,’ Gaunt went on. ‘And you’ll be leaving us when we rendezvous with the fleet at Tavis Sun. So Spika needs to get used to me being the voice of authority.’

Cybon nodded and sipped his amasec pensively.

‘You took a Space Marine with you?’

‘Eadwine. Of the Silver Guard.’

‘Sensible. That’ll put the wind up him at least.’

There was a long pause.

‘Times are changing, Gaunt,’ said Cybon. His augmetic voice was a soft rumble.

‘Sir?’

‘It’s been a long time since Balhaut. Moods change. Fortunes shift. People go in and out of favour.’

‘This has always been my experience, sir,’ Gaunt said. ‘Were you saying this in relation to anything particular?’

Cybon shrugged. Augmetics hissed. He steepled his fingers around his glass, gazing at it. ‘You and I were ascendant at the same time, Gaunt. Before Balhaut. Under Slaydo. It was a good time for us. We were connected.’

‘We were. I don’t feel I’ve been unfairly treated since.’

‘I don’t feel you have either,’ said Cybon. ‘You made your bed. You looked at the opportunities, and you decided to stay in the field. You’ve made the best of that choice. Throne knows, some part of me wishes I’d made similar choices at certain points in my career.’

‘Your career and command are enviable, sir. And it’s far from over.’

Cybon nodded.

‘If this mission goes well, Gaunt, it could mean a lot. It could mean a lot for the cause, but also for you, and for everyone who supported the effort.’

‘Which would include the Warmaster.’

‘Naturally. But I doubt he’s paid close attention to this one. Do you know how many missions he is required to scrutinise and approve every day? Across the sector? Come on. This is one raid, part of a sequence, in a corner of the Sabbat Worlds not seen as directly strategic. If it fails, it’s forgotten. If it succeeds…’

‘It could make a man’s career?’

‘It could make the careers of many men, Gaunt. It could alter the emphasis of operations. It could provoke a… an overhaul. A much needed overhaul.’

‘I see.’

Cybon wiped his lips with the back of his finger.

‘I will remember you for this, Gaunt. I will credit you where credit is needed. I hope you will do the same.’

‘Of course.’

Cybon looked at Gaunt. ‘It’s already begun, you know?’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘Four weeks ago, unadjusted, the first attack. There have been seven more since. In the space of these six months, sidereal, twenty-eight raids will take place at selected locations across the trailing portions of the Sabbat Worlds. All of them will work according to the philosophy cooked up by you and Mercure. The tactics. The clues left. The information broadcast. Some of those transmissions are very authentic.’

‘They’re as authentic as we could make them,’ said Gaunt.

‘Twenty-eight raids,’ said Cybon. ‘It’s not even a massive commitment of men and materiel. Nothing so grand the Warmaster has to approve resourcing. The coordination, that’s the clever part. It’s smoke and mirrors.’

‘It’s mostly smoke and mirrors, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘The effect will be very diluted if we don’t pull off this attack.’

‘Then that’s what you’d better do, isn’t it?’ said Cybon.

Meritous Felyx Chass had taken a seat in the corner of Gaunt’s quarters and was reading a data-slate. He got up when Gaunt walked in. Gaunt gestured to him to sit again.

‘Ravenor,’ said Chass, indicating the book. ‘I’ve never been particularly taken with his work.’

‘Really?’ said Gaunt.

‘He died badly, didn’t he?’

Gaunt shrugged. ‘What matters is what he did first,’ he said. He sat down at his desk. Maddalena Darebeloved was a silent presence in the far corner.

‘You can always wait outside,’ said Gaunt.

‘He doesn’t leave my sight,’ she replied.

‘I have a problem here,’ said Gaunt. ‘You tell me you’re my son. That’s both a surprise and a hindrance to a man in my particular circumstance.’

‘I don’t mean to be a–’

‘What do you mean to be?’ asked Gaunt.

‘My mother thinks it would benefit me, as a future leader of House Chass, to learn from you.’

‘Learn what? How to fight? Honour? Duty? You can learn all that from her.’

‘My mother?’

‘No, her,’ said Gaunt, pointing at the lifeguard. ‘But let’s talk about your mother for a moment. According to you, you’re her first and only son. That makes you heir to the House. Why is she risking your life like this? First sons, sometimes second sons too, they’re kept closeted in protective custody to safeguard the bloodline. Getting sent out into the Imperium is usually the fate of subsequent offspring.’

‘Verghastite philosophy is somewhat different–’ Maddalena began.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Gaunt. He was immediately annoyed with himself for snapping. He didn’t know what it was, but the lifeguard really got under his skin.

‘House Chass has always believed in experiential improvement,’ said Chass. ‘To see the Imperium, to learn about it, to learn from my father, these are all things that will benefit me when I finally take my place.’

‘Your mother has never travelled, not as far as I know.’

‘She would have,’ said Chass. ‘But she may be required to assume the House sooner than expected. My grandfather is ill.’

‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’

Gaunt got up, and began to pace thoughtfully. ‘I’m afraid I think this is about prestige,’ he said. ‘You associate with the famous war hero of Vervunhive, and earn some glory of your own, you’ll go back as more than just a popular heir to the House. That kind of borrowed gloss will get you a planetary seat, a governorship. I think House Chass has great ambitions to fulfil through you.’

‘You are dismayingly arrogant,’ said Maddalena.

‘Just tell me I’m not also right,’ said Gaunt.

There was a knock at the door. Maddalena instinctively reached towards her sidearm.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Gaunt. ‘Enter!’

Beltayn came in, with Nahum Ludd and Trooper Dalin.

‘You sent for these men, sir?’ he asked.

‘I did. Come in. You might as well stay and hear this too, Beltayn.’

Chass had risen to his feet. Both Ludd and Dalin looked at him, curious.

‘This, I have just discovered, is my son,’ Gaunt said. He ignored their looks of surprise. ‘I didn’t know I had a son, and now I find myself compromised by the knowledge. This is a risky mission, and potentially none of us may come back. Taking the son I’ve just met along on what could be a suicidal venture hardly seems like the greatest exercise in parental responsibility.’

Gaunt looked at Ludd and Dalin.

‘However, I could hardly leave him behind on Menazoid Sigma either. He wants to join us. He wants to serve with us. That’s a reasonably admirable ambition.’

‘I don’t want special treatment,’ said Chass.

‘Good, because you’re not getting any,’ said Gaunt. ‘Ludd, I hate to add to your existing workload, but I want you to prepare and process enlistment papers. If he wants to be a Guardsman, it had better be official.’

‘And I take it you want me to keep an eye on him too, sir?’ asked Ludd.

‘No. Not at all,’ said Gaunt. ‘I want you to keep an eye on her.’ He pointed to Maddalena.

‘The young Lord Chass here,’ said Gaunt, ‘is noble born. He has a bodyguard. A good one. It’s the only special favour I’ll show him, allowing her to remain. She can look after him, but she will not get in the way of operations. The moment she does, you can remove her. My full authority. You can shoot her, if needs be.’

‘He can try,’ said Maddalena.

‘Ludd is an Imperial commissar,’ Gaunt said to her. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t even think bad things about him.’

He turned back to the others.

‘His lordship must not compromise my decision making, especially not on this mission. I cannot, will not, worry about him, or second guess my choices because of him. Dalin, you’re about his age, so I want you to show him the ropes. There’s no time for basic and induction. Let him shadow you, and teach him what he needs. I ask this as a favour, not a command. When the real fighting starts, we’ll be keeping him away from the brunt of it.’

‘I want to–’ Chass began.

‘Enough,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show him the ropes, please, Dalin. But I don’t want him even compromising your duties as adjutant. He eats and sleeps like any common lasman.’

‘He should receive a rank,’ said Maddalena. ‘Some privilege for–’

‘If he wants to learn from me,’ said Gaunt, ‘he can do exactly what I did and start from the bottom. Take it or leave it. You asked for this, so don’t complain now you’ve got it. If he doesn’t like it, he can leave us at the fleet rendezvous and go home to his mother.’

He looked at them.

‘That’s all,’ he said.

Mkoll, chief scout of the Tanith First, prowled silently through the vast and dark cargo decks of the Armaduke. He was hunting.

The engines rumbled distantly. He hadn’t set out to look for anything in particular. He just wanted to get the lay of the land, learn the geography of the ship. Just in case.

He also wanted to get his equilibrium settled as fast as possible. Ship time unsettled him. He got through it by walking, and learning every obscure corner of whatever craft he was aboard. It was a form of meditation.

Half an hour into his first walk around, crossing a vehicle deck where mission equipment was secured under lash lines and the air smelled of disinfectant, he’d first seen the bird. It was moving through the cargo galleries, swooping from one set of hold rafters to the next. It looked as lost and as trapped as he felt.

He set to following it. It was big. A twin-headed eagle. At first, he wondered if it was some kind of vision, but it was real enough. He’d been told the intake had brought a psyber animal aboard with them. A mascot. It had evidently got loose.

It kept apace of him. He followed it through two of the small holds, then around an engineering deck where the few servitors didn’t seem to notice it. It avoided the busy spaces, the troop decks, the vast and heated furnace rooms of the drive chambers where hundreds of crewmen toiled like slaves.

Like him, it sought the lonely parts of the ship.

He wondered how he could catch it without harming it. If it stayed loose, it could get lost or trapped, and die of starvation. The death of an aquila on the eve of a mission would not be the best omen.

Mkoll followed the bird into a vast hold space that had been left empty. Junk and spare plating had been piled up there. He heard a voice call out.

The eagle turned, surprised, and then immediately followed the voice down.

It settled on a metal spar beside two figures. They were sitting right out in the middle of the empty space, perched on scrap metal, a small fire burning in an oil can.

One of the men was Ezra Night. He was permitting his companion to examine the function of his reynbow.

Ezra saw Mkoll, and called out.

‘Histye soule! Come join herein.’

Mkoll walked over to the fire.

The other figure lowered the reynbow and looked Mkoll up and down. He was a Space Marine of the White Scars Chapter. He was in full plate, his helm on the deck by his left foot.

‘You are the master of the scouts?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard all about you. Sit.’

SIX

RELATIVITY

Aboard the Highness Ser Armaduke, only the ringing of ship bells marked the passage of time. There were no day or night shifts. Some vessels established a day/night cycle with their lighting systems, but this was evidently not Shipmaster Spika’s habit. The Armaduke ploughed onwards in a state of twilight gloom, the decks morose and half lit. There was some talk of power conservation and economies of reserve, but few could avoid the suspicion that the habitat conditions were deliberate. On some decks, power went out completely and inexplicably, for hours at a time. The heating and air circulation of certain compartments and sections ceased and then, after a while, resumed with a bronchial rattle of ducts and flues. The agreed belief was that the Armaduke’s grim conditions had nothing to do with Shipmaster Spika’s conservative approach to power consumption, and everything to do with mechanical decay and infirmity.

In the troop decks, the men and women of the company and its retinue gathered around lamps, or worked by wick-light. Most slept for many hours longer than necessary. Sensing a malaise, Hark initiated a program of fitness and training that involved free marches and squad runs around the outer perimeter of the main hold levels, a circuit of almost five kilometres.

Boredom and inactivity were the real dangers of warp travel. Confinement and idleness allowed minds to stagnate, allowed anxieties to fester. At one end of the scale there would be discontent and despair, and the scale moved up through spats and feuding, criminal activity and mutinous behaviour. Unhappy minds were also more easily preyed upon by the powers of the warp.

The confidential transit estimated at the point of departure suggested three to six days to Tavis Sun, for the fleet conjunction, and then another six to Salvation’s Reach. There was no reliable science. Some warp routes remained stable for centuries. Others vanished into hectic maelstroms overnight. All sorts of variables affected the journey time, both appreciated shipboard and external sidereal. One could travel for a month and arrive the day before one’s departure. One could set out for a three-day shift and never be seen again. If the bulk of the Armaduke’s rationed power was being diverted to turn the warp engine cogitators and assist the ship’s Navigator to track the beacon of the Astronomicon and ascertain the best possible route vector, then the passengers and crew of the Highness Ser Armaduke would be grateful enough.

Only the chiming of the ship’s bells marked the passage of time, but that was only the local time of the ship, a measurement of the turning of the clocks and horologs it took along with it into a hostile ocean outside time.

Nahum Ludd hurried through the quarter decks with the dockets and enlistment papers he’d finally managed to prepare for Meritous Chass. He’d hoped to have them done by the end of the first night shift aboard, but it was now well into the second day. There had been inspections to run, the settlement of the quartered troops, and the usual discrepancies between pharmacological supplies and other materiel signed aboard, and those actually physically present. Since before the long sojourn on Balhaut, but especially since, the regiment had a chronic problem with misplaced drugs. Ludd and Hark had worked closely with Dorden and Curth to curtail the losses, to little avail. There was always a grey market of procurement inside the Imperial Guard, and sometimes it was downright black. In the early days, Rawne had been ringleader for unofficial activity, but he had made a visible effort to keep his hands clean. Either he was a good liar, or others had usurped his criminal enterprises. Ludd had his eyes on a few people. Men always looked for power and control, and rank was one way of securing it. There were others. The trouble with the Tanith First was that they were loyal. They were loyal to the Throne and they were loyal to Gaunt, but that loyalty was ingrained, so they were almost perniciously loyal to each other. That meant they closed ranks and kept secrets. The underhand dealings that went on at the heart of every regiment were especially stealthy in the Ghosts.

Ludd was quite unsettled by the appearance of Chass. He’d said as much, privately, to Hark.

‘You’re threatened,’ Hark had said.

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Young man, young commissar, following in the master’s footsteps, Gaunt’s protégé,’ said Hark. ‘Then the actual son turns up.’

‘In this version of reality you describe, I see myself as Gaunt’s son?’ asked Ludd.

Hark nodded. ‘You even cut your hair the same way.’

‘I thought I was your protégé,’ said Ludd.

Hark had sniffed.

‘You wish. I’m one of a kind.’

‘This is just more of your systematic tormenting, to keep me on my toes, isn’t it?’ Ludd had asked.

‘If I told you that, it would have no beneficial effect whatsoever.’

Ludd wasn’t convinced. It was, perhaps, slightly true that he didn’t like the idea Gaunt might soon have a new favourite. But there was something else. Chass looked so much like Gaunt. Once you knew, it was painfully obvious. He was slender and gracefully slight by comparison, of course; just a boy, and a dainty, frail one at that, but Ludd recognised the likeness in him. If anything, Chass’s youthful features were even more refined. In inheritance from his mother’s side, perhaps. Gaunt was a well-made man. Chass, as an adult, would be more than just handsome.

It was the recognition that was difficult to deal with. Ludd saw Gaunt in Chass. It felt like he already knew him. It made him admire him, without even knowing him or wanting to. He responded to Chass, and he didn’t like it.

Ludd’s route took him down a grand companionway outside the Verghastite quarters, past the amusing spectacle of Mkoll presenting a double-headed eagle to the laughing Major Pasha. She was calling for her standard officer to take charge of the mascot, which flapped and clacked on Mkoll’s raised wrist. Women from the retinue, laden with tubs for the laundry, had stopped to watch and laugh.

An archway to Ludd’s left looked out over an assembly deck, a secondary hangar bay that could be brought into use by means of freight elevators from the primary excursion deck. It was the size of a parade ground. Out in the middle of it, he saw a single figure, training.

The figure was a blur. It was a close combat drill, executed using a bladed spear and a hovering practice remote.

He slowed and stopped. He watched. It was a genuinely terrifying display of speed, skill and aggression.

Though he had somewhere to be, Ludd took a deep breath and walked into the assembly space.

As he approached, the figure twisted and finally caught the drone, killing it with his spear’s blade. It fell to the deck. The warrior bent down, picked up the broken drone, and tossed it into a bucket where other smashed remotes had accumulated. He took up another one from a box beside the bucket, and prepared to arm and launch it.

‘What do you want?’ he asked. He hadn’t even looked at Ludd.

‘I want to know if I’m permitted a question.’

Brother Kater Holofurnace of the Iron Snakes turned to look at him. He had his massive spear in one paw and the drone in the other. Ludd felt fear in his bowels, in his gut, in his throat.

‘Commissar?’

‘Yes. Ludd.’

‘I do not care in any way about your name. You are a discipline officer?’

‘Yes.’

‘I will give you one answer,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Give me your question.’

‘There are three of you. Three lent to us for this mission. Why three different Chapters?’

‘That’s your question?’

‘It is.’

Holofurnace pursed his lips.

‘You are a discipline officer. You should know it is improper and unprofitable to interrupt a man when he is schooling for war,’ he said.

Ludd paused.

‘Is that your answer?’

‘It is.’

‘But–’

‘I never said my answer would match your question.’

Ludd opened his mouth, but didn’t know what else to say.

‘You can go away now,’ said Holofurnace.

Ludd turned. He heard the remote hum as it was launched. He heard the chop of the spear as it started to spin.

‘The truth is, I don’t want to know,’ said Elodie.

‘That’s not the truth at all,’ said Juniper. The amusing distraction of the eagle had finished. The women were moving on towards the laundry.

‘You’re helping us with the wash today, are you Elodie?’ asked Urlinta.

‘No. Why are you doing laundry?’ asked Elodie. ‘We’ve only been in shift a day.’

‘There’s always washing and mending to do,’ said Juniper.

‘You can tell she’s an officer’s woman, can’t you?’ laughed Urlinta.

‘As for this business,’ said Juniper, ‘you want to know about it.’

‘I thought he was a decent man,’ said Elodie.

‘That is generally the opinion held of your nice captain,’ said Juniper.

‘Then again,’ said Nilwen, ‘he’s a man. And he’s a lasman. They’ll stick it anywhere.’

‘Nilwen isn’t really helping,’ Juniper told Elodie. ‘So, he knows this woman, this officer? From Verghast, you say? So what?’

‘She’s very attractive,’ said Elodie.

‘Oh, case closed,’ said Urlinta.

‘Have you seen yourself?’ asked Nilwen.

‘He was going to ask me to marry him,’ said Elodie. ‘He had the papers. Then he didn’t. He didn’t the day she arrived. They’ve got a history, and it’s made him think twice.’

‘Sweetheart,’ said Urlinta, ‘if Daur was the sort who was going to drop you just like that the moment the next pair of tits–’

‘Officer tits,’ put in Nilwen.

‘–officer tits came along,’ Urlinta continued, ‘he would not have let you get bonded to come on a trip like this.’

‘Urlinta is right,’ said Juniper. ‘He wouldn’t have let you come along on an outing like this, not like this one, if he wasn’t serious. That would just be unforgivable.’

‘Unless,’ said Nilwen, ‘unless he’s a man. And a lasman. In which case being a heartless bastard is standard operating procedure.’

‘Nilwen–’ Juniper began.

‘I tell you, they will stick it anywhere.’

‘I’ll stick you anywhere,’ said Urlinta.

‘It’s not helping,’ Juniper said. ‘We all know Daur. He’s a fine man. One of the best. You can just tell.’

Elodie frowned.

‘I was sure of that,’ she said. ‘I’d never have left Balhaut if I’d felt differently. I’d never have chosen this life. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ said Nilwen. ‘None of us chose this life, did we ladies? It chose us.’

She and Urlinta cackled.

‘Stop fretting about it,’ Juniper said to Elodie. ‘You’ll give yourself frown lines, then he really will start looking elsewhere.’

‘I just want to know about this woman,’ said Elodie. ‘How well did he know her?’

‘Do you really want to know that?’ asked Urlinta.

‘Yes,’ said Elodie.

‘I wouldn’t want to,’ said Juniper. ‘She’s just a face from the past. You don’t want to start obsessing, El. Really, you don’t.’

‘Actually, we don’t mind,’ said Nilwen, ‘because we can gossip about it.’

‘I tell you what,’ said Juniper. ‘I’ve been getting to know some of the girls from the new intake’s retinue. The Vervunhivers. One of them might know something. I’ll ask around.’

Blenner stopped just outside Wilder’s quarters, took the pill bottle out of his pocket, and shook it. There weren’t many left. He was going to need more before long. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation with Dorden. The old doctor was bound to comment on the speed with which he had used the first supply. Well, screw him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t followed instructions. ‘One of these, every day, or when you feel agitated’. Well, he’d been agitated quite a lot. A hell of a lot.

Maybe he could deal with one of the orderlies, show them the label, get them to fill out a scrip. He could avoid Dorden’s awkward questions entirely. That ruled out the inker, then. Lesp, his name was. He’d already managed to piss him off. He couldn’t go looking for favours there. Blenner thought about Curth for a moment. The idea of her made him smile, but not in any useful I-can-help-you-get-more-pills way. He just had an unbidden mental image of the good doctor Ana with nothing but a bio-monitor and an encouraging bedside manner.

What about the freak, Kolding? Blenner didn’t like him, but the man was new. Maybe he would respond to persuasion.

‘Looking for me?’ asked Wilder.

Blenner turned, deftly pocketing the bottle.

‘I was about to knock.’

Wilder looked terrible. His eyes were hollow and he needed a shave.

‘Come in,’ he said.

They went into Wilder’s quarters. There was still the faint smell of the counterseptic Perday had used to scrub the floor.

‘How are you?’ asked Blenner.

‘What is this going to be?’ asked Wilder. ‘A formal reprimand? A quiet word?’

‘Let’s start with the latter, shall we?’ asked Blenner. ‘You made an arse of yourself last night. It could have been the end for you. It almost was. But you were covered.’

‘So that’s two I owe you?’ asked Wilder. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I gather Trooper Perday told you?’

Wilder nodded.

‘She told me what the two of you did.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Blenner.

Wilder sat down and rubbed his chin.

‘I know how this goes,’ he said. ‘You want to make sure I know how much I depend upon you. I’m your man. You can call in favours.’

‘Your experience of the Guard hasn’t been particularly positive, has it?’ Blenner said. ‘Does it occur to you that I might just be trying to make sure a decent officer doesn’t flush his career away? His career and his life?’

‘Really? I don’t believe you. Everyone’s got an ulterior motive.’

‘You really are a bitter man, Wilder. You think the worst of everybody.’

‘And I’m never disappointed.’ Wilder shrugged. ‘Look at me, commissar. This was my brother’s command. Now he’s dead, and my face doesn’t fit, and I’m a scum junior whose been a laughing stock since the moment he arrived because he brought a bloody band with him.’

‘I know what it’s like to be in someone’s shadow,’ said Blenner quietly. ‘For you, your late brother. For me, my schoolboy friend. Ibram Gaunt. In a way, Gaunt for both of us, then. Hard acts to follow.’

‘He’s surprisingly unpopular,’ said Wilder.

‘The men love him.’

‘Not all of them. Most, yes, but a few… a few malcontents, they loathe him. This isn’t one big happy family.’

‘Interesting,’ said Blenner. He sat down facing Wilder.

‘I’ll deny I said it if you tell him.’

‘I won’t tell him,’ said Blenner. ‘Look, you expect me to have an ulterior motive. Fine. I’ll have one. If it makes you feel better, Captain Wilder, I don’t care about your pathetic existence at all. I care about the fact that my commissarial remit… my career, right now… is focused on the Belladon in this regiment. And if I have to disgrace or execute their drunken bastard of an officer in the first week, I’m never going to win them over. Make sense?’

Wilder nodded.

‘They said you’d tried hard last night.’

‘Tried hard?’

‘To make a good impression. I spoke to a few of the men today. Commissars come in two flavours, the lasman’s best friend and the lasman’s worst enemy. It’s an odd fact, but in the long run, the rabble prefer the latter.’

Blenner took off his cap and finger-combed his hair. He glared at the deck.

‘They saw that’s what I was doing, did they?’

‘They’re lasmen, commissar. Not idiots. Besides, they liked you. They’ve heard all about Hark. Gaunt too. You sound infinitely preferable.’

Blenner looked at him.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘In the end,’ said Wilder, ‘what they need is a bit of steel. When the shooting starts, they don’t want a friend. They want someone they can absolutely depend on. The shooting’s going to start soon, commissar. Who would you want at your side? The happy clown or the cold-hearted bastard?’

Blenner’s hands were shaking. He wanted to take a pill, but he didn’t want Wilder to see.

‘We could–’ he said, and faltered. He breathed deeply and tried again. ‘We could work together, captain. It seems to me we could both use a little support. A little mutual effort could clean your slate and strengthen my position.’

Wilder nodded.

‘We could try that. All right. Novobazky.’

‘What?’

‘Lucien had an excellent working relationship with his commissar,’ said Wilder, ‘Genadey Novobazky. They were together five years. The one before, Causkon, he was useless. But Novobazky was a real rabble rouser. He could talk, you understand me? Lucien used to write to me about him. The letters home. Novobazky could win a battle, he said, just by opening his damn mouth.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Blenner.

‘Died on Ancreon Sextus with Lucien.’

‘So not every battle, then.’

‘Don’t be smart, commissar. Do yourself a favour and look up his service record. The text of his declarations.’

Blenner got up.

‘Get your house in order, captain. We’ll speak again.’

Wilder nodded. He didn’t get up.

‘I’ll take your advice,’ said Blenner at the door. ‘So take some from me. Forget about your brother.’

‘Really?’

‘This is the Emperor’s Imperial Guard, Wilder. It’s about a lot of things, but family isn’t one of them. Blood ties get in the way. They just get in the way. They are a weakness. Look at Gaunt and his son–’

‘His what?’

Blenner hesitated.

‘It’ll be known soon enough. His bastard child arrived the same time you did. Vervunhive aristo with his own lifeguard. It was a surprise to Gaunt, and he’s trying to treat it like it’s nothing, but it will affect him. Don’t let your brother do the same thing to you.’

‘I see.’

‘The Guard is the only family you ever need, captain. Blood relatives are just a complication.’

Wilder sat alone for a while after Blenner left. He drifted off in thought, and then realised Didi Gendler was standing in the cabin doorway, grinning at him.

‘You look a little the worse for wear,’ said Gendler.

Wilder got up. Gendler exclaimed in surprise as Wilder grabbed him by the tunic front, dragged him into the cabin and slammed the door. He smashed Gendler back against the bulkhead.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Gendler stammered.

‘You bastards screwed with me! A friendly drink? I don’t even remember getting on board!’

‘I was under the impression you were a grown up, Captain Wilder,’ snapped Gendler. ‘It’s not our job to moderate your drinking. Blenner stop by to put you on a charge, did he?’

Wilder looked away and let go. Gendler straightened himself up.

‘You should thank us,’ said Gendler.

‘Why?’

‘You only got to your cabin because of us. When we realised how much you’d tucked away, Captain Meryn had me and Costin smuggle you aboard. We were looking out for you. You’d have been shot for disgracing the uniform otherwise.’

Wilder didn’t reply.

‘In fact, the captain sent me to check on you. He told me to give you this.’

Gendler held out a small glass bottle.

‘What is it?’

‘A cure-all. Knocks back the effects of a hangover. From the captain’s own supply.’

Wilder took it.

‘This is from regimental stores,’ he said, reading the label. ‘Medicae supplies.’

‘Don’t be naive, captain. If you know the right people, you can get anything you need.’

‘And who do you know, Gendler?’

‘The right people.’

Wilder looked at the bottle again, and then unstoppered it and drank it.

‘It’s good stuff,’ said Gendler. ‘Costin swears by it. He’s been functioning on it for years.’

‘I take it you and Captain Meryn are businessmen,’ said Wilder.

‘We provide unofficial services. Someone has to. There’s a demand. We’re good at it.’

‘It takes money. And organisation.’

‘We have both,’ said Gendler. ‘Like I said, we’re good at it. Time was, Rawne was the biggest noise in the shadow trade.’

‘The second officer?’

‘Right, you’ve met him?’

‘Not yet,’ said Wilder.

‘He’s rather more legitimate these days,’ said Gendler. ‘Legitimate and busy. Captain Meryn thought it was only fair and helpful to take some of the hard work off his plate.’

‘Why?’ asked Wilder.

‘Oh, don’t be dense,’ said Gendler. ‘There are winners and losers in any regiment. Rawne’s becoming a bit of a winner. And he’s always made sure Meryn lost out. Promotions. Advancements. Sometimes, you have to take charge of your own destiny. Meryn, me… you. We see a kindred spirit in you.’

‘Someone to join your losers club?’

Gendler laughed without smiling.

‘Thwarted men with ambition can do great things, Wilder. They can rise and make others fall. The privilege of rank, of opportunity. Failing either of those, the simple comfort of riches.’

‘Is this about getting on, or revenge?’ asked Wilder.

‘Why can’t it be about both?’ smiled Gendler.

Wilder was feeling better. The cure-all had certainly been effective. He laughed.

‘What do you and Meryn really want from me?’ he asked.

‘Cards on the table?’ asked Gendler. ‘All right. Friends help each other. And everyone’s got an angle. What’s your angle? The most useful commodity is protection. Any shield that will let us operate unseen. It’s early days, but you already seem to be on good terms with Blenner.’

‘So?’

‘He’s a soft touch. A soft touch commissar. The best protection a Guardsman could ever ask for.’

‘I don’t know him at all,’ said Wilder.

‘That’s not true. Besides, you could know him better. You could cultivate him. Find a weakness. Find his angle. Find leverage.’

‘Could I?’

‘It’s what friends do,’ said Gendler.

Wilder didn’t reply. Gendler shrugged and turned to leave.

‘I think he’s got a habit,’ said Wilder quietly.

‘What?’

‘Pills, I think. Anxiety is my guess. So, a narcotic.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Gendler, smiling.

‘I’ve seen the habit before. He had a bottle. Didn’t want me to see. Then he was twitchy. He wouldn’t have tried to hide it if it was on the level or something he wasn’t ashamed of.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Is it?’ asked Wilder. ‘It sounds like persecution to me. Is that the angle you were looking for? What will you do? Expose him? Control his supply and make him your puppet?’

‘He’s only useful if he stays in play,’ said Gendler. ‘We wouldn’t want to strangle his supply. We would want to increase it. Become the friends he can rely on.’

‘You’re a bastard, Gendler,’ said Wilder.

‘An effective bastard.’

‘You must feel right at home here,’ said Wilder, shaking his head. ‘Everyone’s a bastard, one way or another. Even the mighty Gaunt has a bastard of his own.’

Gendler stopped, his smile vanishing.

‘What did you just say?’ he asked.

The woman’s name was Galayda. She was one of a group of Verghast intake that Juniper stopped in the laundry halls. Everybody was perspiring from the warm damp air. There was a hard chemical stink of ultra-processed water and cleaning chemicals.

‘Ban Daur?’ Galayda said. She was from Hass West, Vervunhive, a hab girl who had lost everything in the war and ended up attached to a scratch company man called Herzog, who was a sergeant in Major Pasha’s brigade.

‘He was PDF,’ said Juniper.

‘I didn’t know any Hive Defence,’ said Galayda. ‘I fought for a while in the scratch company after I lost my ma and pa in the bombing. Gak, we all did. That’s where I met Herzog.’

‘But you put away the gun after the Zoican War?’

‘I’m no soldier. A scratch company isn’t soldiers. It’s desperate people. A soldier’s wife, though. That’s more me.’

She looked at Juniper. Her sleeves were rolled up and her arms were stained and sore with chemical soaps.

‘Sorry I can’t help your friend.’

‘No matter,’ said Juniper. ‘I’ll find someone who can.’

‘Stavik might know,’ said the woman next to them.

‘Yes, he might,’ said Galayda.

‘Stavik?’ asked Juniper.

‘He’s one of the squad leaders under Major Pasha,’ said Galayda. ‘I think he was Hive Defence.’

‘He was,’ said the other woman. ‘He was at the wall fort.’

‘Or you could always ask Zhukova,’ said Galayda.

‘As if,’ laughed Juniper.

‘Yes, you want to watch Zhukova,’ said the other woman, lifting another tub of sheets. ‘She’s awfully pretty, but she’s a hard-nosed bitch.’

‘Kolea,’ said Galayda. ‘He’s one of the regiment, isn’t he?’

‘Major Kolea?’ asked Juniper. ‘Yes, he’s the senior Verghastite officer.’

‘The scratch company hero,’ said the other woman. ‘They still talk about him in the hive, like they talk about Gaunt.’

‘You knew him?’ asked Juniper.

‘Only by reputation,’ said Galayda. ‘I think my Herzog might have met him a few times in the final days. But I knew his poor wife and her kids. Well, my ma and pa, they lived in the same hab block. I always thought that must have driven him on to be such a hero, losing his family. They died, didn’t they? Her and her kids. They died a few days before the bombing took my ma and pa.’

‘She died,’ said Juniper. ‘The children actually survived.’

‘They did?’ asked Galayda. She seemed genuinely amazed.

‘They’re with the company,’ said Juniper. ‘Captain Criid as she is now, she found them, looked after them. Adopted them, basically. It was only later we all found out that Kolea was their father.’

Galayda looked like she might cry.

‘Oh, it’s like a blessing from the Emperor,’ she exclaimed. ‘All this pain and sadness, and in the middle of it, a happy story! They both lived? I can’t believe it!’

‘I know them,’ smiled Juniper. ‘I look after the youngest sometimes. The boy is now a trooper himself.’

‘The eldest, you mean?’ asked Galayda.

‘The boy,’ said Juniper. ‘Dalin.’

‘They were both boys. Two boys,’ said Galayda.

‘No, a boy and girl,’ said Juniper.

‘I could have sworn they were both boys,’ said Galayda. ‘Oh well, isn’t a happy ending a lovely thing?’

‘I should never have come here,’ said Meritous Chass.

‘It’s your birthright,’ replied Maddalena.

They were on a walkway overlooking a holdspace reserved for drill. Chass was watching the men parade. The great banks of lamps around them kept fizzling and fading in and out.

‘I’m not really interested in that,’ he said. ‘This is dire. He doesn’t want me here.’

‘He’s just surprised, Meritous.’

‘I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, Maddalena, I hate that name. One of those stupid family traditions. Felyx, or sir.’

The lifeguard shrugged.

‘He’s just surprised,’ she said. ‘He has a child. He didn’t know. He will need to process it.’

‘How long will that take? What if he processes it and decides he’s better off without me?’

‘You’re depressed.’

‘It’s hard not to be. Have you seen this rotting hulk? It’s falling apart. We’ll be lucky if the warp doesn’t claim our souls. And the Tanith, I mean, the real Tanith. I know they helped defend the hive, and our House owes them, but they’re like barbarian auxiliaries.’

‘That’s probably because they are barbarian auxiliaries,’ said Maddalena. She suddenly snapped alert, her hand close to her weapon.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s Trooper Dalin.’

Dalin was approaching them along the walkway. He seemed nervous.

‘You know why Gaunt picked him, don’t you?’ whispered Maddalena.

‘No.’

‘He’s Kolea’s son. The son of the other great hero of Vervunhive.’

‘It’s all about image and reputation with these people, isn’t it?’ whispered Chass.

‘Commissar Ludd sent me,’ said Dalin. He looked like he was deciding whether to salute or not. He couldn’t look Chass in the eye. ‘The enlistment papers are ready. Then I need to get you some kit, then a billet. It makes sense to attach you to E Company with me. I’m the captain’s adjutant.’

‘Show me the way,’ said Chass.

Maddalena moved to follow him.

‘Stay here,’ Chass told her. ‘Just for now, let me do this by myself.’

‘Your mother charged me not to let you out of my sight.’

‘He’s on a shiftship in the warp,’ said Dalin. ‘Exactly where do you think he can go?’

SEVEN

FACES

Cavity 29617 was a hold space, a long and slightly irregular chamber that ran beside and under one of the main plasma engine housings. It was low priority, and had only the rudiments of light and atmospheric processing. From the junk and dust, it was an attic or basement – or whatever they called such things on starships – that hadn’t been used in a few centuries.

That suited Merrt.

Cavity 29617 was out of the way. It wasn’t one of the big holds reserved for training exercise and technique work, and it was far smaller than the hangar decks used for parade and mass drill. It was narrow and long, which gave him some range. It had a breeze running through it from the processor vents, which gave it a cross-draught and made it feel a bit like outdoor conditions. And no one went there, so no one could see him being useless.

Since his injury on Monthax, years of practice had failed to yield any results. Merrt had tried: he’d shown a persistence and resolve rare even by marksman standards. He had worked to rebuild his shattered skill.

The only thing he was sure of was that he should have given up trying a long time ago.

But Larkin, his old friend and rival, was in another of his mad moods. He had invested his manic attention in Merrt, and Merrt didn’t have the heart to let him down. He knew he would let him down, but he wanted to be seen to make an effort, so it didn’t seem like he’d just let it happen. A few dozen hours’ extra target practice, what could that hurt? It proved that Larkin was his friend, and he was willing to humour his friend’s confidence. It meant that when he finally had to say he couldn’t do it, he’d know that he couldn’t do it. He had proof. Evidence. He’d tried, so the failure was softened.

Merrt had the bolt-action rifle Larkin was using to train him and a box of shells. Larkin had yet to explain the full significance of the old mech weapons in terms of the mission profile. A longlas was a far superior weapon. Only a few people in the Tanith First knew what they were heading into and what they might be expected to do when they got there. Merrt knew Larkin himself only understood bits of it. Just enough to train specialisms.

The one and only thing everybody knew was that they were not heading for a happy place. The next mission was going to be damn hard work.

Merrt had lined up some old tin cups, pots and lubricant canisters as targets, and set himself up in a seated position, his back against the cavity wall to take his weight, the rifle braced across a stand he’d rigged from an old metal bench. He’d then adjusted and finessed the rest using a couple of the sand socks every marksman carried in his pouch. He had a simple optic scope for range finding, but he used it separately, lining up an angle then putting the scope aside to take final aim along the iron sights of the gun.

He allowed for air drift, and the rifle’s innate inclination to dip and rise on discharge. The weapon had a tiny left-hand bias, which Larkin had corrected for by adjusting the sights with a watch maker’s screwdriver. Merrt let his tension out, then let all the air in his lungs go, a long slow exhalation so that even the stir of respiration or the tremble of suspended breathing wouldn’t affect the aim. The only thing he couldn’t reduce was the infinitesimal quake of his heartbeat, so he timed to fire between beats. Beat… line up the shot… beat… check the line… beat… fire.

The shot echoed down the cavity. The round clipped the lip of a tin pot, and made it judder. He’d been aiming for a mark on the pot about a middle finger’s distance away from what he’d actually hit.

Hopeless. Fething hopeless.

To even be considered for a lanyard, he’d have needed to partially overlap the target spot.

‘That is a poor shot.’

Merrt jumped. It wasn’t so much that someone had surprised him, it was that someone so big had miraculously appeared in his line of sight.

He scrambled up, knocking over the stand.

‘Gn! Gn! Gn!’

Surprise gave way to fear.

The White Scar squinted down the range, then looked back at the human with the rifle.

‘Very poor,’ said Sar Af. ‘Pathetic. Why do you even bother?’

‘Gn… gn… gn…’

‘Speak up? Are you simple?’

‘I’m gn… gn… gn… practising!’

Sar Af frowned. He coughed, and then rubbed the tip of his nose with armoured fingers that could crush bone.

‘You will be here a long time,’ he said.

‘I’ve been here a long gn… gn… gn… time already,’ said Merrt.

Sar Af nodded. He held out his hand.

‘Give it to me.’

His voice reminded Merrt of Jago. Dry winds, gusting forlornly through dusty valleys. Sandstone eroded by the air. Merrt handed him the rifle.

Sar Af took it; a stick, a toy. He sighted down the barrel, holding it one-handed, as if to check the barrel was actually straight. The trigger guard was entirely too small for his fingers.

He handed it back.

‘I cannot use that. Shoot again.’

‘Sir?’

‘Again.’

Merrt reached to reset the stand and pick up the sand socks.

‘Do not bother with that. Just take a good shot from where you are. Just aim and shoot.’

Merrt slunked the bolt, ejected the shell case, took another round out of the box at his feet, and chambered it. He glanced at the Space Marine. The giant was simply staring down at him, impassive.

Merrt put the gun up to his cheek, chose a tin cup, sighted, breathed out, and fired. The shot clipped the cup hard enough to spin it off the block. It made several dull, hollow sounds as it bounced on the hold deck.

‘Still pathetic,’ said Sar Af. He looked at Merrt. ‘Good enough for Guard fire on a field, I suppose, but not precise enough for anything else.’

Merrt didn’t know what to say.

The White Scar was still looking at him, but his mind was far away. It felt to Merrt like the Space Marine was precisely playing back at a painstakingly slow rate the memory of Merrt taking the shot so he could analyse it.

He stopped, looked back at Merrt, and then suddenly reached out a hand, grabbing Merrt by the jaw and throat. The hand turned Merrt’s head to the side. Merrt struggled and choked.

‘This jaw. This augmetic repair, it is your problem,’ said Sar Af. ‘You are being defeated by your own concentration. Your focus is so intense that as you fire the gun, it stimulates the neurodes in your jaw and you twitch.’

‘I gn… gn… gn… twitch?’

‘Just as you fire. Your jaw clenches.’

Sar Af let him go.

‘It is physically impossible for you to shoot well.’

Merrt swallowed.

‘Come back again tomorrow,’ said Sar Af.

The main refectory was in the mid decks. The walls and floor were plated with dull, galvanised steeling, and the metal tables and benches were bolted in place. There was a constant clatter of utensils and dishes against metal surfaces, and the air frequently fumed with steam from the galley.

Wilder picked at the slab on the plate in front of him.

Meryn sat down opposite. He had a covered dish of food and a tin beaker. Meryn drank the contents of the beaker in one swallow, then slid the empty beaker across the table to Wilder.

Wilder looked at the cup. Meryn took a fork out of his top pocket and began to eat.

‘How’s yours, Jakub?’ he asked, pleasantly.

Wilder didn’t reply. He picked up the empty beaker and looked in it. There was a little brown paper wrap in the bottom of the cup.

‘What’s that?’

‘Happiness,’ replied Meryn, still eating.

‘For me?’

Meryn chewed to empty his mouth before replying.

‘They’ll make our mutual friend Blenner happy, which is the same thing.’

Wilder put the cup down again as if he had no intention of touching the little bag of narcotic pills.

‘Where are they from?’

‘Costin,’ said Meryn.

‘He grows them on a special tree, does he?’

‘Do you want them or not?’

Meryn leant his elbow on the table, rocking the fork in his hand. He stared at Wilder, chewing another mouthful.

‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Wilder.

Meryn sighed.

‘Yes, I suppose if I don’t get told, you certainly wouldn’t.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means some people get on and some don’t, Jakub. Some people enjoy favour. You were right, what you said to Gendler about Gaunt’s brat.’

‘Why would I have lied?’ asked Wilder.

‘No reason. Gaunt’s got my adjutant running around looking after the spoiled little brat. The kid’s no soldier. Not old enough. Doesn’t look like he’s done a hand’s turn in his life. Certainly never fought. He’d blow away if the Archenemy so much as farted. Got his own cabin, though.’

‘His own cabin…’

Meryn grinned.

‘Can you believe that? Gaunt pretends he wants him treated like all the others, like every common lasman, but then his psychobitch lifeguard – because every common lasman has a lifeguard, don’t they? Then his lifeguard says he can’t share a general billet with other men. Oh no. She insists. She needs him behind a door she can defend.’

‘She said this to Gaunt?’

‘Of course not,’ said Meryn. ‘She says it to me. See how he did that? He declares that we’re going to treat the brat like everyone else, then makes it my problem, so that the stink of favouritism doesn’t stick to him.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Wilder.

‘Gave him the small end cabin on the officer quarter block near mine.’

Wilder sat back, and sipped from his beaker.

‘Doesn’t that undermine Gaunt’s wishes?’ he asked.

‘Gaunt’s passive aggressive. He says one thing, but he means another. Come on, Wilder, you know how this goes. If I’d stuck to my guns and made the boy sleep in the general barrack, I’d have suddenly found myself getting all the shit details. It would have become E Company’s turn to hose out the latrines, or spearhead the next attack.’

‘So Gaunt gets his way and it looks like someone else’s idea,’ said Wilder.

‘You’re beginning to see the Imperial truth,’ grinned Meryn.

‘Why do you hate him so much?’

Meryn shrugged.

‘He killed my world. My life. That deserves payback, sooner or later. But it’s not that, so much. Everything I have, everything I’ve built up, I’ve made it for myself. Company command. Rank. Privilege. Influence. I did it all myself. I don’t get things handed to me. I’m not part of his inner circle.’

‘Who is?’

‘Kolea. Baskevyl. Mkoll. Even Rawne these days, because apparently Rawne left his balls behind on Gereon. I don’t owe Gaunt anything. He owes me everything. And he’s never going to give it, so I’m taking everything I can.’

‘What about Gendler?’

‘Gendler’s the same,’ said Meryn, cutting another mouthful with the side of his fork, ‘Gaunt took his life away. You have to understand, Didi was a rich man on Verghast. Up-spine. Noble blood. Lost it all in the Zoican War, family, property. And what choice did he get? Live in poverty in Vervunhive during the long years of post-war rebuild and deprivation, hoping that one day his legal claims for compensation might be heard in the assizes? Or take the Act of Consolation, where the dispossessed could join the Guard and start a new life?’

‘Gendler made his choice,’ said Wilder.

‘Yes, he did. He said goodbye to his old life, to what family he had left, and came to serve Gaunt. And has Gaunt ever recognised him? Seen fit to make him more than sergeant? Didi cut ties with his relatives forever, but Gaunt? They bring his fething son through the warp to be with him. He gets to bring his past with him. He gets to have a life. He gets to have a family. The Emperor’s Imperial Guard makes sure of that. We sacrifice so he gets to be what he is. It’s always about favour, Jakub, just like I said. It’s always about favour and who you know.’

Wilder thought about it. Meryn watched his face.

‘I know you feel it too, Jakub,’ said Meryn. ‘Just like us. Your brother. His command. His regiment. And look how they treat you. Like a joke.’

Wilder put down his fork.

‘Life’s unfair,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Right. So you make it fairer,’ said Meryn.

‘How?’

‘Well Didi says we should kill Gaunt’s kid,’ said Meryn.

He smiled at the horrified expression on Wilder’s face.

‘Calm down. Didi’s just a bit angry. It’s the Vervunhive connection. Gaunt’s not even up-spine blood, and he gets noble favour. Seriously, it’s a joke. We’re not going to murder anybody. Didi had sunk a few. He was just being toxic. There are less dramatic things we can do that will be just as satisfying.’

‘Like what?’ asked Wilder.

Meryn nodded to the beaker.

‘You take those,’ he said, ‘you put them to work. That’s a start.’

He got up, stepped off the bench and picked up his plate.

‘Where I came from,’ he said, ‘men were raised as hunters. Hunters plan. They stalk. They take their time. You know what a hunter’s greatest weapon is, Jakub?’

‘No.’

‘Patience,’ said Meryn.

Eyes that were remarkably good copies of Trooper Pol Cohran’s watched the shift change at the deep hold containment area.

It had taken a few hours to find out where on board the prisoner was being held. The armoured well of an old battery magazine had been converted into a cell. That was smart thinking. The battery magazines had thicker walls than the discipline brig.

The enemy had placed security measures in the hands of a dedicated squad. The squad, first platoon of E Company, had been granted Commissariat S status. They were also regimental veterans, die-hard Ghosts, so there was little chance of co-opting or turning one.

Cohran watched from the shadows. He checked the approaches, the ways to and from the cell, the routines. Where did food come from? How was it brought? How many times a shift? What opportunities were there to intercept and tamper with it? At any time, there were four of the S Company guards around: two outside the hatch, two in the tank.

Cohran, at least the thing that was playing the role of Pol Cohran, was patient. Observation times were limited, because Cohran’s absence from the quarters deck would be noticed at certain times. He didn’t want to give up the identity. More particularly, he didn’t want the state of alert to be heightened because a trooper had gone missing.

But he was also keenly aware that his opportunities – and he had to choose one quickly – had fast-approaching expiry dates.

Blenner poured himself a second mug of caffeine and fantasised about slugging a dash of amasec in it. He had never been comfortable making shift, the day-less nights and night-less days, the dreams, the dislocation. He hadn’t been sleeping well. The prospect of days or even weeks more did not fill him with relish. Give him a nice world and a straight fight instead. Actually, the fight could belong to someone else. Just a nice world would do.

He took another disdainful look at the data-slate he had been reading from. Excerpted pieces from the service record of Novobazky, pulled from the regimental archive. Wilder had been right. Novobazky could certainly talk. For hours at a time. It was giving Blenner a headache.

He took a pill. There were only a few of them rattling around in the bottle now. He didn’t like to think of them as a crutch, but he really didn’t like to think of facing life without them.

‘You look terrible,’ said Fazekiel, sitting down at his table in the staff section of the refectory.

‘Is there no beginning to your charm?’ asked Blenner.

She grinned, and began to arrange the food on her tray. She’d made them serve items like slab and veg paste on separate dishes. There was a lot of fibre, and a large canister of thick grey nutrient drink rather than caffeine.

She saw Blenner staring.

‘Healthy mind in a healthy body,’ she said.

‘In an entirely miserable and deprived body maybe,’ he replied. He looked at her drink. ‘What’s wrong with caffeine? That stuff will kill you. And what’s with the separate dishes?’

‘I don’t like things to touch,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It’s messy and undisciplined.’

‘Really?’ Despite the hour and his heavy head, Blenner grinned. Luna Fazekiel was always immaculate. He’d never known anyone adhere to dress code so exactly, even by the demanding standards of the Commissariat. She was obsessively clean and punctual, obsessively regimented and organised.

‘Something funny?’ she asked. She was a handsome woman, and a highly effective commissar, but control smoked off her like blood fog off a power blade. There was no margin for error with her. No give. The troop mass saw that in her, and that’s what made them respect her.

‘No, no,’ he said.

‘Thought you’d be at the inspection,’ she said.

He looked up.

‘Weren’t you the one who postponed it?’ she asked.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Where is this trooper?’ asked Edur.

‘Sir, I don’t know, sir,’ replied Yerolemew, rigidly at attention.

Edur looked at Wilder.

‘Comment, captain?’ he asked.

‘The trooper’s absence is unauthorised,’ said Wilder, staring at the empty cot. In the hold space around him, the bandsmen of his command stood beside their made-up cots in perfect rows. He knew they would all have been looking at him if they hadn’t had eyes front.

‘There’s the absence itself,’ said Edur, ‘and then there’s your sergeant major’s ignorance.’

‘I think they’re connected,’ said Wilder. ‘If Sergeant Major Yerolemew knew where the trooper was, the absence wouldn’t be unauthorised.’

‘Don’t get clever, captain,’ said Baskevyl.

Wilder could see that Major Baskevyl was uncomfortable. From what he’d heard, the major was a fair man who was probably unhappy seeing the good name of Belladon put under pressure.

‘What’s the trooper’s name?’ asked Edur.

‘Cohran, sir,’ said Yerolemew.

‘I will issue a citation,’ said Edur. ‘It will be for both the trooper and–’

‘Cohran is shift-sick,’ said Blenner. He’d walked into the hall behind the inspection party.

‘It’s a bad case,’ he added. ‘Afflicted a lot of personnel this time out. You had a touch yourself, didn’t you, captain?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilder.

‘I signed a chit and sent Cohran along to the infirmary,’ said Blenner.

‘The sergeant major was unaware,’ said Edur.

‘Because I’ve only just done it, and I was coming to tell the sergeant major about it,’ said Blenner.

Edur stared at him for a second.

‘That’s the thing about surprise inspections,’ said Blenner pleasantly. ‘They don’t fall at neatly punctuated moments.’

‘Very well,’ said Edur. ‘Let’s carry on.’

The inspection continued for another forty minutes. When Edur and Baskevyl were gone, Blenner took Wilder to one side.

‘Find two or three troopers you can trust. That girl, for example. Get them to find Cohran.’

Wilder nodded.

‘You didn’t send him to the medicae, did you?’

‘No,’ said Blenner. He wrote out a permission slip, tore it off his workbook, and folded it. ‘Get this to him, and tell him where he was supposed to be. Fast. Then tell him to come and find me and we’ll make sure this never happens again.’

‘Thank you,’ said Wilder.

‘Don’t thank me. My neck’s on the line too.’

Wilder thought for a moment, and then took something out of his pocket.

‘I wondered if you could do anything with these,’ he said.

Blenner took the small bag of pills.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘I found them,’ said Wilder.

‘Where?’

Wilder shrugged.

‘Could there be… more of them?’ asked Blenner.

‘Probably,’ said Wilder. ‘Troopers are always finding a way of getting their hands on stuff. I’m sure some might turn up again.’

‘I see,’ said Blenner. He looked at the little bag and put it in his coat pocket. ‘I’ll take care of it, captain.’

‘Good,’ said Wilder. ‘I thought that would be for the best. Just thought we should keep it quiet.’

They looked around as Sergeant Major Yerolemew approached them.

‘Begging your pardon, sirs,’ he said. ‘Message just received. The full regiment’s to assemble on the main excursion deck in an hour. The commander’s going to address us.’

‘I suppose now we’re underway,’ said Wilder, ‘we get to find out where we’re going.’

‘I suppose we do,’ said Blenner.

There was great activity through the mid-decks of the ship as the regiment assembled for the address. At his bridge position, Shipmaster Spika watched his passengers bustling like hive insects through the oily tunnels and dank companionways. He adjusted settings and switched the pict view of several screens.

People intrigued him. People who didn’t live in the void, like he did, seemed so contained by the fabric of the ship, so penned in. They were cattle, being transported to market. They did not inhabit the vessel the way he and his crew did.

His seat was a worn leather throne mounted in a gilded carriage. There were two big banks of control levers at the end of each armrest. The mechanisms were so old that many of the levers had been replaced: new metal bars and handle-tops seam-welded onto the eroded or broken spurs of the originals. Even some of the replacements had begun to wear. Spika adjusted the levers and his chair, mounted on a long, gimbal-jointed lifting arm, rose up out of the upper deck platform and extended out over the vast bridge. From there, he could sweep down and observe main console functions over the shoulders of key officers, or loft himself up into the domed roof to study the hololithic star-map projection or converse with the twitching, harnessed navigator.

He’d been invited to attend the address. A note had been delivered from the colonel-commissar fellow. He wouldn’t attend. He knew where they were going.

Besides, the warp was rough and troubled. There was a lively tide and unusual levels of dispersion and turbulence.

He needed to be on the bridge, at his station, in case things got rough.

‘What’s going on?’ Elodie asked Daur, passing him in the bustling central line hall.

‘Review,’ he replied. ‘Address. We get told our destination.’

‘Really?’ asked Elodie.

‘This is the point of it all,’ said Daur. ‘The point where we commit. The real start of the mission. Look, I’ve got to get on and get G Company assembled. I’ll come and tell you everything later.’

‘Everything?’ she asked.

‘I promise.’

They moved off in opposite directions. Pol Cohran stepped out of the shadows of a colonnade arch and merged with the flow of hurrying figures, just another hustling trooper.

He’d heard what the captain had said.

We get told our destination.

Priorities had just changed again.

‘You. You there!’

Cohran stopped, and turned slowly. Some of the personnel passing him bumped against him. Twenty paces behind him, Commissar Edur was glaring at him.

‘Cohran? Trooper Cohran?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come here, damn it!’ Edur snapped, indicating a spot on the deck directly in front of him. The river of people around them parted and found other routes to take. No one wanted to get in the way of an Imperial commissar, especially not one who was clearly aggravated. Furthermore, no one had seen the newcomer Edur raise his voice yet.

‘Right here, trooper!’ Edur ordered.

Cohran hesitated a moment longer. He weighed his options, and realised they all depended on him maintaining his deception. In full view like this, in front of dozens of regimental personnel, his options were drastically limited.

He walked back to Edur, and stood in front of him, hands behind his back.

Edur wrinkled a lip.

‘Under the circumstances,’ said Edur quietly, ‘I think an attitude of attention shows more respect.’

Cohran snapped to attention.

‘This isn’t the infirmary,’ said Edur.

‘Sir?’

‘I said this is a long way from the infirmary, trooper.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your acceleration sickness got better then, did it?’ asked Edur. ‘You don’t look sick to me. Or did the grace of the beati and the God-Emperor shine forth upon you and heal you?’

‘May they live forever in our hearts and our minds, sir,’ said Cohran.

‘Watch your tone.’

‘Sir.’

‘Let’s see this slip, trooper,’ said Edur.

‘Slip, sir?’

‘Your chit, trooper. The permission slip Commissar Blenner gave you.’

‘I…’ Cohran began. He paused. ‘I believe I must have lost it, sir.’

‘Let’s go, trooper,’ said Edur. ‘This way.’

‘I’ve got to report for the review and address, sir,’ Cohran said.

‘Move,’ said Edur.

Edur pointed and walked Cohran off the central line hall into one of the transverse access corridors. Edur stayed close behind Cohran, a menacing escort. Two men ran past the other way, carrying a cargo crate between them.

‘I should go to the address, sir,’ said Cohran.

‘Enough, trooper.’ said Edur.

‘It’s mandatory. If I miss it, the captain will–’

‘I said enough. You’re already in trouble for not being where you were supposed to be.’

‘But, I–’

‘Seriously, how deep do you intend to dig your way into this, Cohran? Punishment squad deep? Flogging deep?’

More men went by in the other direction, hurrying, buttoning up their jackets.

‘I just went to the infirmary, sir,’ said Cohran. ‘I can’t miss the review.’

‘I’m about out of patience with you, Cohran,’ said Edur. ‘I think you’ll be looking at the inside of the brig for quite a time, while I fathom out why Commissar Blenner tried to protect you. People like you frustrate me, Cohran. If you’d just faced up when I confronted you, I’d have probably let you off with a citation. But this blather, this effort to wriggle out. It’s what dilutes the Guard, you hear me? It’s the kind of rot-thinking that eats out the heart of a good regiment. You’re a weak man, Cohran, and there’s no excuse for it.’

‘I’m sick, sir,’ said Cohran. He stopped walking.

‘You’re not sick. Get on.’

Cohran shivered and groaned, as though something unpleasant had just undermined him on a gastric level.

‘Cohran?’

‘I’m going to throw up…’ gasped Cohran. He turned and blundered off the transverse into the narrow access tunnel of a engineering inspection bay, clinging to the wall and heaving.

‘Cohran!’ Edur strode after him. His hand went to his holster.

Cohran had gone a short way down the dank metal tunnel. There was a purr of heavy machinery from the bay up ahead. The light levels were much lower than out in the transverse, where people were still hurrying by. Cohran leaned his forearm and his head against the machined metal wall plate, breathing hard.

Edur drew his pistol and aimed it at the side of Cohran’s head.

‘You must think I’m a Throne-damned idiot if you think I’m going to fall for this play-acting,’ he said. ‘This just escalated to serious charges, you worthless–’

Cohran snapped around. With a speed Edur could not explain or anticipate, Cohran’s raised hand caught his wrist, knocked the aim aside, and propelled Edur backwards into the opposite wall of the tunnel. He hit hard, grazing the back of his head and driving the wind out of his lungs.

Cohran reversed his turn, embraced Edur’s gun-arm, extended it, and then broke the wrist.

Edur howled in pain. Cohran took the pistol out of the limp hand and tossed it into the engineering bay behind him.

It was done. Pain-shock alone would floor the commissar and–

Usain Edur was a strong man. A deep sense of righteous indignation broke through his wash of pain and surprise. It was a reserve that had kept him alive on several battlefields, a focus that allowed him to push past the undermining fog of injury or confusion.

He threw himself at Cohran, leading with his left shoulder. They cannoned together, and Edur dragged Cohran along a section of wall plate, splitting his lip and gouging his cheek. Cohran barked out a snarl and drove his elbow back into Edur’s collar-bone. Edur smacked back against the opposite tunnel wall.

He came at Cohran again, leading with his good hand. Cohran had turned to square up, head down, fists raised. As Edur surged forwards, Cohran swung a punch that caught Edur across the ear and drove him sideways. He stumbled into the end of the tunnel wall, and staggered off it into the engineering bay.

Cohran came after him. He needed to control things again, quickly, before somebody passing along the traverse heard or saw what was happening. The bay was more out of the way than the tunnel. The purr of the machinery masked their sounds. A single servitor menial turned from an inspection panel to note the visitors to his workspace with uncomprehending eyes. Caliper digits flexed as it tried to process the interruption to its basic task functions.

The centre of the bay area was a deep through-deck shaft that accommodated the rising spire of an accumulator stack. The ancient brass rings and steel-cased capacitor rods whirred and rotated. Fronds of energy crackled down in the shaft below the iron handrail.

Cohran barged Edur across the bay and into the rail, twisting his back and damaging his lower spine. Edur cried out in pain, lashed out, and connected with his broken hand. The blow, to the forehead, was enough to make Cohran flinch backwards, but the pain from the grinding bone made Edur gag and slump, his eyes and mouth wide, gasping like a landed fish.

Cohran kicked him in the chest, then again in the face, smashing Edur’s head back so it bounced off the guardrail. Edur collapsed in an awkward heap against the rail, his legs bent under him.

Cohran stepped forwards to snap his neck and finish the game.

He stopped dead, looking down the snout of Edur’s pistol. Somewhere during the scramble, the commissar had got hold of it again. He was aiming it with his good hand, his broken hand curled like a dead fledgling against his chest. His head was swaying and blood was drooling from his mouth. He’d lost some teeth, and one eye was beginning to swell shut.

‘Little bastard…’ Edur slurred.

The surprise reversal made Cohran lose control of his face for a second. The features rippled.

‘What the hell are you?’ Edur asked.

It was enough of a distraction. Cohran punched, his fingers gathered into a beak-shape. The inhuman force of the blow demolished Edur’s face and exploded the nasal and brow bones back into his brain. The hand holding the pistol dropped heavily. Edur’s pulverised face bowed forwards as if in prayer. Blood pattered out of it in three or four separate streams.

Cohran straightened up. He could feel blood running from his own cheek and lip. He turned. The servitor had risen to its feet, agitated. Cohran stepped forwards, grasped it by its ceramite jaw and cranium, and snapped its neck. He broke off one of the servitor’s digital tools and used it to gouge out the unit’s optics and burn out its visual memory core.

Cohran looked around. He peered over the rail and saw the long drop into the gloom of the exhaust sump at the foot of the stack. Without prevarication, he tipped Edur’s body down the shaft, watched it tumble and deflect off lower guard rails and then disappear. He threw the servitor in after it.

He needed to get cleaned up. He needed to get to the excursion deck.

‘They’re present and correct,’ said Beltayn.

Gaunt nodded. He put on his cap, peak first, adjusted it, and took a calming breath. Then he walked in through the vast entry hatch. Beltayn fell into step behind him, with an escort squad from A Company led by Criid and Mkoll.

The Armaduke’s main excursion deck was a vast hangar space with a floor plan equal to several parade grounds set end to end. Light shafted down from the lantern arrays bolted in amongst the girder ribs of the roof. Large craft, such as troop carrier landers and cargo runners, had been towed to the far end, away from the forward space doors. Some were enclosed in cages of gantry scaffolding so that servitors and Mechanicus crews could work on their maintenance. Small craft – the lighters and shuttles – had been hoisted up into the rafters on magnetic clamps and hung overhead like hunting trophies. On the port wing-hinge assembly of one suspended Arvus, a two-headed eagle perched and glared balefully down at Gaunt as he advanced out into the open space of the deck.

The entire regiment had assembled on the principal landing platform. The troopers were wearing operational uniforms rather than formal dress, but the clothes and kit had been cleaned and prepared to the highest standards. They were arranged in company blocks, with their officers to the fore of each section. A cantilevered through-deck elevator had been raised to form a podium in front of them. Company colours were displayed: Tanith, Verghast, Belladon.

The retinue had been permitted to attend. They clustered around the doorway or filled the second and third tier galleries of the deck’s upper levels. As he walked out through them, Gaunt saw two faces he recognised: Daur’s girl, Elodie, aloof and vigilant; Maddalena Darebeloved.

‘No representation from the Adeptus Astartes?’ Gaunt asked Beltayn quietly as they walked.

‘They seem constantly occupied, sir,’ Beltayn whispered back. ‘It is reported to me that the Iron Snake spends all his time in relentless combat practice, and the Silver Guard does nothing but study schematic simulations.’

‘What about the White Scar?’

‘No one knows, sir. He seems to be roaming the ship.’

‘And no representation from Spika’s crew?’

‘I think they’re busy doing ship-y things, sir.’

They came out onto the main platform ahead of the review, and Rawne, his eyes front, barked out a stern order. The regiment seamlessly came to attention with one ringing clash. At this signal, Sergeant Major Yerolemew raised his golden pace-stick, and Trooper Perday tilted her head back, raised her helicon, and blasted out a pure, clean, solo fanfare.

Gaunt winced slightly. The playing was fine. In fact, it was perfect, and the sound remarkably uplifting. He just wondered when the Tanith First had become that sort of regiment, and when he had become that sort of commander. It had never been about ceremony.

He stepped up on to the elevated platform, made the sign of the aquila and told the regiment to stand easy.

‘With this new strength,’ he said, in a voice that was used to carrying effortlessly, ‘already welcomed into our fold, we stand together for the first time.’

His eyes drifted across the sea of faces. They were attentive and still, but only a few betrayed any emotion. Ban Daur could never hide that earnest hint of determination. Major Zhukova, a new face for Gaunt, was positively glowing with pride. There was something wry and mischievous in Hlaine Larkin’s eyes, and it was a distinctive and familiar as the ever-present hint of dissatisfaction on Viktor Hark’s.

Then there was Meritous Felyx Chass. He was in the front rank of E, behind Meryn, flanked by Dalin Criid. Dalin or Ludd had procured a set of Tanith blacks and a camo-cloak for him. He looked breakable and frail, like a child dressed up as a soldier. It was almost as if Dalin had brought his little sister out onto the parade ground. Chass looked a good ten years younger than the youngest members of the company.

With a slight pang and a curious sensation of surprise, Gaunt realised who Chass reminded him of. With that expression of resolution not to fail or let anyone down, Chass looked like a boy, the Hyrkan Boy, the cadet in the corner of regimental picts of the fighting Hyrkan 8th, standing between Sergeant Tanhause and Commissar Oktar.

‘We have embarked, and are underway,’ said Gaunt. ‘And, isolated by the shift, we no longer risk the dangers of loose talk in a home port. I can now tell you a little of the mission we are undertaking.’

No one moved, but he could sense their expectation.

‘From the accompany bonds, you know this endeavour will be direct and risky. We will be making a shipboard attack on an enemy facility. That facility is located in the Rimward Marginals, at a place called Salvation’s Reach. Specialism briefings will begin immediately after this address, and section leaders will be informed of specific mission requirements. We have, according to the revised estimate, about a week of lead time before we translate and begin deceleration approach of the target area. However, an estimated twenty-three hours from now, we will translate to effect a conjunction with other Battlefleet elements at Tavis Sun. This resupply is expected to last just a few hours, and is ship to ship. Unless this mission is altered or aborted, we will not see a friendly port until this work is complete.’

He raised his head slightly, regarding them all.

‘I expect only the very best of you. I can’t pretend I can guarantee you will all return. But I ask you the one question I have always asked you. Do you want to live forever?’

There was a sudden, rousing cheer of approval from the ranks, like a close shell-burst, that made the double-headed eagle up on its perch flap its wings.

‘Now get to your stations and begin preparation,’ said Gaunt. ‘Dismissed.’

As the congregation began to dissolve, Pol Cohran stepped out of the back rank of the band section and headed towards the nearest exit. A spray of synthetic skin had sealed his cuts and disguised the discoloration, but he had no wish to be in the company of others for longer than was necessary.

Now he had information, and it was essential he used it.

Beside the elevated platform, Gaunt turned to Hark and Fazekiel.

‘The men seem to be in good spirits,’ he remarked, watching them disperse.

‘They were inactive on Balhaut for too long,’ said Hark. ‘And the newcomers are keen to prove themselves.’

‘We are indeed,’ said Fazekiel.

‘By the way,’ said Gaunt, ‘where’s Edur?’

‘I haven’t seen him since the start of day-cycle,’ said Hark.

Vaynom Blenner walked into the infirmary section that had been reserved for the regiment’s use. There were another three infirmary units aboard to administer to the crew. This suite was old and poorly maintained. It was clearly a back-up facility. The chrome and stainless steel surfaces and wall plates were stained with limescale deposits and other, less appealing, residues. Autoclaves chugged like poorly maintained generator engines. The central examination room radiated into a ward, two surgical theatres, and some side chambers for storage and supplies, along with private office spaces for the medicae personnel.

There was no sign of anybody. Blenner walked into the ward. One cot was occupied. Trooper Fulch from N Company had torn his shoulder unloading munitions boxes.

‘Where are all the doctors?’ Blenner asked.

‘They were here just a minute ago, sir,’ said Fulch.

Blenner walked back out into the central examination room. Kolding suddenly emerged from one of the rear chambers. He was looking for something. He saw Blenner.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

Blenner stared back at the albino levelly.

‘Where’s Dorden? I deal with Dorden.’

Kolding stared back at him. His eyes were unreadable behind those damn tinted lenses. He was worse than that damn native partisan Ibram insisted on keeping around.

‘Dor-den,’ said Blenner, elaborately separating the syllables as though Kolding was a simpleton.

‘You’ll have to come back,’ said Kolding.

‘Throne I will! I want to see Dorden now!’

‘Kolding, what’s taking so–’

Curth emerged from the back with an urgent demeanour. She stopped short as soon as she saw Blenner.

‘Commissar.’

‘I want to see Dorden,’ Blenner said.

Curth looked quickly at Kolding. She took something out of a cabinet drawer and handed it to him.

‘Go on,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be right there.’ Kolding disappeared back into the rear of the infirmary.

‘That man needs training in interpersonal skills,’ said Blenner.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Curth.

‘And you need training in basic comprehension,’ said Blenner. ‘I want to see Dorden.’

He realised instantly that she wasn’t in the mood for playful scolding. Her mood was hard and prickly, even by Ana Curth standards.

‘There’s an emergency,’ she said. ‘He can’t attend you just now. How can I help you?’

Blenner pursed his lips. He wanted Dorden, but he quite liked the excuse to have to deal with her. His business with Dorden could probably wait.

He took the little bag Wilder had given him out of his coat pocket and tossed it to Curth. She caught it neatly, one-handed.

‘What are these?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’

She opened the bag, tipped a couple of the tablets out into her palm and squinted at them.

‘It’s a narcotic. Somnia. It’s a morphiac derivative. That’s a Munitorum pharmaceutical stamp. Where did you get them?’

‘They… turned up during a routine search. Are they strong?’

‘Pretty strong. I mean, I’d think twice about prescribing them. Effective, but addictive. I sometimes use the liquid version as palliative relief on very damaged patients.’

‘So, to ease their last hours?’

‘Yes. I’d have to have very compelling reasons to issue them otherwise. Perhaps to a patient in chronic pain who is allergic to safer compounds. You found one of the men with these?’

‘Yes. You missing them?’

‘I’d have to check, but I don’t think so. We carry such small quantities of this as standard, Lesp or one of the other orderlies would have noticed.’

‘There is an ongoing problem though, isn’t there?’ asked Blenner.

‘Yes, and we’re working on it. But it’s usually milder sedatives that are easier to misplace. Harder stuff like this is rarer. It could have come out of the ship’s supplies. Do you want me to ask the ship’s chief medicae?’

‘No,’ he said. He paused, and then repeated the word. ‘No, I just wanted them identified. Thank you.’

‘Well, if that’s all,’ she said. She clearly had somewhere else she wanted to be.

‘I’ll take them with me,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘I should dispose of them,’ she replied. ‘Oversight of pharmaceuticals is a medicae responsibility.’

‘It’s still a discipline matter for now,’ he said. ‘I’ll need them back as evidence.’

She resealed the bag and tossed it across to him.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He thought about the almost empty bottle in his pocket, but couldn’t bring himself to front her up with the question. He didn’t want her knowing. He needed to speak to Dorden.

Blenner nodded politely and walked out of the infirmary. Curth issued a deep exhalation of tension and hurried away into the back rooms.

In the hallway outside, Blenner collided with the orderly, Lesp, who was rushing towards the infirmary, leading Ayatani Zweil by the arm.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ Blenner exclaimed. He shot a look at Zweil, expecting some cantankerous barb back. Blenner had been around the regiment long enough to know that the old priest’s mouth didn’t possess a safety catch.

The look on Zweil’s face took him by surprise. Care, anxiety, dread.

‘What’s going on?’ Blenner asked. His mind put the pieces together. An empty infirmary. Kolding and Curth trying to get him to leave. The orderly bringing the priest in a hurry.

‘Oh, Throne,’ said Blenner, and turned back, striding through the infirmary into the back room.

‘Wait. Please!’ Lesp called after him.

‘Vaynom, what’s-your-name, Blenner. Show some Throne-damned respect and don’t be an arsehole!’ Zweil yelled. They were both rushing after him.

Blenner burst into the back office. Curth looked up from a tray of instruments in surprise, and the surprise quickly turned to despair at the sight of him. Kolding was on the far side of the room, administering a shot of something.

Dorden had brought a trolley table over when he fell. Gleaming instruments lay scattered across the deck mesh. They’d made him comfortable with bolsters from the day bed, but they hadn’t dared lift him. He looked so thin and pale.

‘This isn’t the time,’ said Curth.

‘What’s going on?’ Blenner asked.

‘Could you give the medicae some dignity and leave, please?’ she said, coming over to Blenner. Lesp led Zweil past them to the old doctor’s side.

‘Yes, there’s no need for you to be here,’ said Zweil as he went by.

‘Is he dying?’ Blenner asked. Dorden was now partially obscured by the figures crouching around him. He hadn’t even seemed conscious when Blenner walked in.

‘You know he is,’ Curth replied quietly. He could see she was battling to retain her professional composure.

‘I mean now,’ said Blenner.

‘He’s been well for the last week,’ she said, her voice still low. ‘Amazingly so. But I think the stress of making shift has taken its toll. He collapsed just now. I think we can stabilise him and get him some bed rest.’

‘He shouldn’t have come on this mission,’ said Blenner.

‘It would have been crueller to leave him behind,’ Curth replied.

‘Should Gaunt know? I should get Gaunt.’

‘No!’ she replied, fiercely. ‘He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want a fuss. Let him rest!’

‘You’ve brought the damn priest to him,’ said Blenner. ‘If he’s come to administer the Imperial Grace, then Ibram deserves to–’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Zweil’s his friend. He’s been supporting him through this. It seemed right to fetch him here. Gaunt doesn’t need this on his mind just now.’

Blenner swallowed.

‘I didn’t mean to just burst in,’ he said.

‘It’s all right.’

‘You could have said something. I do have a few circumspect bones in my body.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said.

‘I really should say something to Ibram,’ said Blenner. ‘If something happens, and he finds out I knew–’

‘Then you don’t know,’ said Curth. ‘You didn’t see anything.’

Blenner thought about this, and nodded. He turned to go.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

A tiny flash of surprise crossed her face, as if it never occurred to anybody to ask her that.

‘Yes, commissar. Now get along so we can work.’

Blenner left. Curth went to Dorden’s side.

‘I think he’s stabilised,’ said Kolding quietly.

‘You should take things more easily,’ said Curth.

‘Why?’ whispered Dorden. His voice was the vaguest whisper of dry leaves.

‘Because doctors make the worst patients,’ said Curth.

‘Actually, carnodons make the worst patients,’ said Zweil. ‘I knew a tamer, a circus man, worked the bag o’ nails on Hagia, and he owned this performing–’

He paused. He saw the looks he was getting.

‘However, for now, I will stipulate that doctors, in fact, make worse patients that carnodons.’

Dorden managed a tiny smile.

‘Even carnodons, let’s say, with infected gums that haven’t eaten for a week, and then you accidentally leave the cage door open…’ Zweil trailed off into a mumble.

‘Did I hear Blenner’s voice?’ Dorden asked.

‘He’s gone now.’

‘I don’t want a fuss,’ said Dorden.

‘He’s gone,’ Curth repeated. ‘He won’t say anything.’

‘Nothing to say,’ said Dorden. ‘I’ll be on my feet again in a moment. I’m just tired.’

Curth looked up and saw Lesp trying not to cry.

‘He probably wants his pills,’ said Dorden. His voice was so far away. He beckoned Curth closer with twig fingers. ‘He comes to me for a little tonic. To settle him. Make sure you look after him, Ana.’

‘I will,’ she promised. ‘But let’s look after you first.’

Close to the warp engines, the noise was immense. Everything, every surface, every wall panel, every tooth in a person’s head, vibrated at an ultrafast frequency.

Layers of armour plate and bulkheads secured the drive chambers. Some sections were sealed chambers where only conditioned servitors or crewmen in protective armour could venture during drive function. Hard, hot yellow light shafted out through the letterbox viewing slits of the reinforced hatches like the glow from a furnace room port.

Vast engineering spaces were filled with dripping, frosty coolant systems, or the black-greased pistons of circulation pumps and galvanic generators. In sooty caverns full of smoke and flame, ogryn and servitor stokers shovelled granulated promethium resin into the chutes of the combustion generators, the huge conventional turbines that ran the Armaduke’s non-drive systems. In other, cooler chambers, ancient and perfectly machined empyroscopic rotors spun along horizontal axes, maintaining the ship’s spatial equilibrium and helping to sustain the integrity of the Geller Field that protected the ship from the psycho-reactive fabric of the immaterium.

The creature with Pol Cohran’s face concealed the body of the engineering ensign he had just murdered in a tool locker, and entered the massive engineering chamber containing the Armaduke’s Geller field device. He’d had to kill three times to get this close. The ship’s drive sections were not specifically secure or patrolled, but access or activity by anyone who wasn’t officer class or engineering division was immediately noticed. The first crewman had died because he’d seen Cohran. His body was now incinerating in a promethium furnace and Cohran was wearing his grimy overalls. The second and third crewmen had died because Cohran had needed to extract deck plan specifics and information about the drive deck layout. One was now crumpled at the bottom of a coolant drain, and the other had just been hung by the throat from a hook between stoking shovels and furnace tongs.

Sound and vibration in the Geller field device chamber was oddly disconcerting. The air was dry, and there was a considerable static field that made his skin prickle. There were rubberised handrails around the chamber so that crewmen could earth themselves and not cause a shock or spark fire off the metal surfaces.

He could feel the throb of the machine in his gut, the pulsing of its operation in his sinuses and eyeballs. The device, a piece of technology vital to all warpship function, generated a subatomic field around the ship, a bubble of realspace that protected the vessel from the vicissitudes of the aether around it. Once the warp engines had breached the veil of the warp, a starship depended on its Geller field to insulate it from the lethal and corrupting touch of the immaterium by maintaining a psychic ward.

Cohran knew he was in a position to end it all. Sabotaging the Geller field device would take some doing, and would probably require the use of something explosive or combustible, but he was more than capable of procuring and using either. If he could collapse the Geller field while the Armaduke was still in the warp, then the ship would perish. It would be torn apart by the unreality storms of the raw aether, shredding in an instant. Either that, or the daemonic essence of the warp would find form and intrude into the ship, or the minds of the occupants. Unwarded, the ship would be vulnerable to the spawn of the Realm of Chaos, and everyone aboard would know only the extremity of madness before the Ruinous Powers devoured them.

Then everything would be gone and done, and finished, the pheguth and his treachery, the threat that treachery represented, this whole vainglorious undertaking. The creature wearing Pol Cohran’s face would have completed the mission he was charged to perform by his master, Rime, and his master’s master, the Anarch. He would have finally stopped the Imperial Guard’s determined efforts to deploy the pheguth Mabbon Etogaur against the armies of the Gaur.

But during his address, Gaunt had betrayed other secrets. The target was Salvation’s Reach. That intelligence needed to be communicated. More importantly, they were due to make conjunction at Tavis Sun. They would be rendezvousing with Battlefleet elements, possibly one of the considerable crusade fleet packs that were maintaining Imperial superiority in this part of the sector.

To destroy the pheguth and his handlers, and the Armaduke along with it, that was a victory. To achieve all that and cripple a Battlefleet division, that was a truly worthy opportunity.

A more subtle form of sabotage was needed. A more insidious piece of manipulation. His master had taught him well, trained him to improvise imaginatively in just such circumstances, to make the best use of elements at his disposal for the greatest effect.

Cohran opened the casing of the control circuits that governed the empyroscopic rotors.

He was not going to collapse the Geller field. He was simply going to alter its rhythm.

Something, somewhere, trembled.

‘What was that?’ asked Shipmaster Spika.

None of the bridge crew answered him directly. Copious quantities of data shunted through their connective links and displayed across the monitor plates. The air was filled with the dry scratchy voices of vox links talking to each other.

He’d felt a minuscule vibration, an almost subliminal palsy. It had come to him through the deck, through the data-stream of the ship, one tiny aberrant shudder in a constant vortex of noises and rhythms and pulses and information.

He consulted his data viewers and asked questions of his cogitators. Nothing seemed wrong, nothing out of place, not within the margins of operation, and certainly not given the temperamental and mercurial nature of an old warpship like the Highness Ser Armaduke.

Spika sat back and thought. It had probably been nothing, or a fleeting glitch that had corrected itself.

But it was a nothing he hadn’t liked at all.

Cavity 29617 was cold. Merrt had been waiting there for about half an hour, unwilling to practise or set up shots, unwilling to leave.

He sat at one end of the long chamber, arms hugged around the old rifle.

‘You are here. Good.’

Sar Af was standing behind him. Merrt got up quickly.

‘You gn… gn…. gn… told me to come back,’ he said.

‘And you have proven you can follow instruction,’ said the White Scar.

He reached out a hand and grabbed Merrt by the jaw and throat, turning Merrt’s head to the side. Merrt struggled again.

‘Let me gn… gn… gn… go!’

‘This jaw. It is definitely your problem,’ said Sar Af. ‘You are being defeated by your own concentration. Your focus is so intense that as you fire the gun, it stimulates–’

‘Yes. Yes! You told me all this gn… gn… gn… yesterday!’

Sar Af let him go.

‘It is physically impossible for you to shoot well.’

Merrt swallowed.

‘Again, you told me so yesterday. Did you ask me back just so you could gn… gn… gn… humiliate me?’

Sar Af stuck out his chin, as if considering a response. He turned away.

‘Set up a shot,’ he said.

Merrt stood for a moment, then picked up several tin pots and walked the length of the cavity. He set the pots out along the top of the block and walked back to where the Space Marine was waiting.

Sar Af had produced something from an equipment pouch. Merrt realised that it was a disposable shot injector just a second before the White Scar grabbed his head again and jammed it into his jawline, behind his left ear.

The pain was considerable. Merrt cried out and staggered backwards, his eyes watering.

‘What the feth are you gn… gn… gn… doing?’ he asked.

‘Just wait.’

Sar Af took the injector and tossed it away.

Merrt had a lancing pain in his ear and a horrible warmth spreading through the line of his throat and his jaw. He started to gag slightly as the numbness increased.

‘Attend to yourself,’ said Sar Af. ‘You are drooling.’

‘What have you gn… gn… gn… done to me? What gn… gn… gn… was that stuff?’

‘Muscle relaxant,’ said the White Scar innocently. ‘Quite powerful, I suppose. A tranquiliser. The sort of stuff a medicae would use for pain control. During an amputation, for instance.’

Clutching his throbbing, disturbed face, Merrt looked at the Space Marine in horror.

‘Pah, relax,’ said Sar Af. ‘I am not going to cut anything off. Not literally.’

Merrt tried to answer, but he only managed to make a deep and inhuman rumbling in his throat. His entire jaw and cheek was numbed and immobile. The lower half of his face was inert and paralysed.

‘The jaw,’ said Sar Af, gesturing towards Merrt. ‘That jaw of yours. It is the root of your inability.’

The Space Marine went over and picked up the old rifle. ‘You are being defeated by your own concentration,’ he said as he came back, as though he were repeating some litany lesson that needed to be repeated so that an unwilling student might eventually learn it.

‘Your focus is so intense that as you fire the gun, you twitch. So we need to remove the jaw from the equation. It cannot twitch if it cannot twitch.’

Merrt felt ill. The paralysis was so unpleasant that he felt he might be sick, except he couldn’t guarantee that his mouth would open to allow it. Visions of choking on his own vomit filled his head and made things worse.

‘Take the shot,’ said Sar Af, handing him the rifle.

Merrt glared back at him, hoping his toxic stare might communicate what his voice could not.

‘Take the shot,’ Sar Af repeated.

Merrt took a deep breath. He pulled back the bolt, took a round from his pocket, slipped it into the breach, locked the bolt back into place, then turned and lined up on the row of pots. A standing stance, unbraced apart from his own posture. No rest, no sand-sock, no tripod, no back brace: neither a recommended nor reliable position. He didn’t care.

‘Go on,’ said Sar Af. ‘Take the shot.’

Merrt settled his shoulders. He felt spittle on his lip, the dull throb of numbness under his ear. He took aim along the iron sights.

He breathed out.

He fired.

EIGHT

CONJUNCTION

Dead space. The visible universe was a weathered brown blackness, as if the void was somehow filled with a fog of dirty starlight. Nebulous beige streamers of some exotic matter streaked the depths. More than anything else, there was distance, the unfathomable distance of gazing out from the bounds of a harsh and inhospitable solar system, a few lonely rocks tumbling around a dull, grinding, electromagnetic light source into the humiliating immensity of the interstellar gulf.

Then lightning struck.

The lightning was a spear one thousand kilometres long. At the heart of its blinding shock-light was a twisting vein of toxic yellow, like scorched ceramic. At its origin point, an interspatial bubble of rupturing subatomics, the root of the lightning was brighter than any star, and shot through with threads of sour green and galvanic blue.

The lightning flashed and died, then another spear flashed, and then a third that was twice as long as the first two. It scored a line of light across the dark firmament, and left a fading afterimage like a jagged fault line.

A fourth flash followed, this one finally puncturing realspace and eating a hole through it, like a hungry flame burning through a sheet of paper. Suffixed by a halo of aftershock lighting, the Highness Ser Armaduke translated through the puncture, leaving the warp behind and coasting slowly out into the materium. Aetheric energies coursed off its flanks like thawing ice, shredding away in its wake and disintegrating.

The translation point behind it popped and crackled as it healed and faded, puffing and cracking like a membrane under pulses of thumping pressure. The Armaduke stabilised and adjusted its realspace passage. Its auspex and detector grids began to pattern-search and composite the visible starfields to verify the navigation plot. Vox systems were enabled.

Six minutes after achieving translation, a deck officer brought a data-slate to Shipmaster Spika.

Spika adjusted his silver-plated voice-horn on its stalk.

‘Translation complete,’ he announced, his voice ringing through the ship. ‘Tavis Sun. Tavis Sun. Approach now factoring for fleet conjunction.’

He turned off the speaker and looked at his deck officer.

‘Have we detected the elements?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ said the officer. ‘If they have made the schedule, we expect to track them in the next twenty minutes.’

‘Has engineering come back on that consultation I requested?’ Spika asked. Since that first anomalous tremble hours before, he had been attempting to trace the aberration.

‘I understand a full field-and-rate diagnostic is on its way up,’ said the officer.

‘Hurry them, please,’ said Spika.

A klaxon sounded.

‘Battlefleet elements detected,’ another officer called out. ‘Holding position around the local star. Close, and preparing for vox-hail.’

They were back in realspace. Cohran could feel it. He had attempted to slip up-deck towards the main voxcaster assembly, but it was proving too difficult. There was too much activity, too many people who would see him and question his business in a crew section. He wouldn’t be able to stay in the vox room long enough to achieve his goals.

Instead, ever pragmatic, he headed back down towards the old munitions magazine that was serving as a cell. From his observations, the guard detail would be approaching a shift change. The men would be tired.

And there were only two of them at the hatch.

A full interdiction flotilla was waiting for the Armaduke. It was a patrol group from Battlefleet Khulan: four frigates and two cruisers supported the Aggressor Libertus, an Exorcist-class grand cruiser, and the Sepiterna, an Oberon-class battleship. In their train was a family of bulk transports and fleet tenders. As soon as they identified the Armaduke making its long curve approach in from the system rim along the invariable plane a barrage of vox-hails went up. Several squadrons of fighters were launched from the flight decks of the capital ships, and one of the escort frigates, the Benedicamus Domino, impelled forwards, void shields up, to meet the approaching vessel while its identity was confirmed.

Tavis Sun glowered behind the fleet spread, a malevolent red coal. The immense ships were just blowfly dots against its hot, dark mass. It was an old star, rheumy and frail, bloated and throbbing with wheezing electromagnetic gasps, like a feast-day fire dying in its grate at the end of the night. Its rasping, radiostatic voice blurred and chopped the vox transmissions, sandpapering the communication links. The star was bleeding cold gas and hot radiation into its lifeless system as it used up the last few millennia of its fuel mass. Dark spots like tumours appeared in its flushed coronasphere. Occasional septic pulses of energy and flame flared out into its stellar shadow. The planetary bodies that orbited it were scorched dead rocks or rings of debris, the residue of the ferocious burn the star had suffered a million years earlier at the start of its terminal decline.

The Highness Ser Armaduke gunned in, riding the gravitic slope, twenty million kilometres out and closing. Its flight decks and excursion bays began to prepare for open cycle. Tender boats and suppliers scooted forwards from the fleet line and fell in behind the Benedicamus Domino.

At the master station, Spika took the report from his deck officer.

‘Incoming hail from Cragoe, Master of the Fleet,’ said a vox herald.

‘One moment,’ said Spika, reading, speeding his way through the data-slate.

‘What is it, sir?’ asked the deck officer.

‘Fleetmaster Cragoe is hailing again,’ called the herald.

‘Look, look at this,’ said Spika. The deck officer peered at the hololithic displays Spika was consulting. They were field effect summaries from the immaterium leg. The deck officer had seen similar profile reports a thousand times.

‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.

‘Fleetmaster Cragoe is hailing again!’ called the herald.

‘Wait,’ Spika growled. ‘Look, here. You see?’

‘I see a Geller field profile,’ said the deck officer.

‘Nothing untoward,’ Spika agreed, ‘until you see how it compares to the one at the previous interval and the one at the interval that followed.’

‘I still don’t see, sir.’

‘The Geller field was altering during transit. Its configuration was changing.’

‘Within tolerances,’ said the deck officer. ‘Isn’t that normal fluctuation?’

‘It repeats,’ said Spika, his voice tight and unhappy. ‘It repeats, you see? There is a pattern to it, but you only see it when you run the sampled profiles one after another. That’s not normal field variance. That’s an artificial repetition.’

‘Artificial, sir?’ asked the deck officer.

Along the deck frame of the launch platform, hazard lamps were cycling and the chamber was shuddering with the din of airgate alarms. A massive overhead clamp had just positioned the elegant blue and white Aquila lander on the blast deck, and servitor teams were detaching the cradle lines and feeders with power tools.

Gaunt walked with Lord Militant Cybon towards the boarding ramp. Over their heads, a series of hard metal thumps accompanied the retracting hoist, and the thick delivery hatch that led up into the Armaduke’s starboard small ship hangar rumbled shut.

Staff aides hurried past them, carrying the lord militant’s luggage. A duty officer approached, and saluted.

‘Transfer standing by, sir,’ he said. Cybon acknowledged him with a slight nod.

‘The Sepiterna awaits,’ said Gaunt.

‘As does the Warmaster,’ replied Cybon. ‘I should be with him in eighteen weeks, in time enough to communicate the essence of this plan in person. And in time to consider its success.’

‘Or otherwise,’ said Gaunt.

Cybon studied him. The lord militant’s eyes seemed very old, as though they had seen too much. Gaunt’s, by comparison, were very new for precisely the same reason.

‘I never took you to be a pessimist, Gaunt,’ rumbled Cybon.

‘I’m not, sir,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Just a pragmatist.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Cybon.

‘That’s just what I tell the men,’ said Gaunt.

‘And if he doesn’t protect you, you don’t need protecting,’ Cybon added.

‘I’m not sure if that’s entirely reassuring,’ said Gaunt.

‘It’s not supposed to be,’ said Cybon. ‘Do I look like a sentimental old bastard to you? I’m simply passing on what experience has shown me.’

He turned to board the lander. Gaunt could feel the air pressure in the bay begin to change as the airgate began to cycle to release.

‘Safe voyage,’ said Gaunt. He regretted it instantly. Sentiment didn’t sit well with either of them. Cybon snorted derisively.

Halfway up the ramp, he turned to look back at Gaunt.

He made the sign of the aquila, nodded, and disappeared into the shuttle.

‘Clear the deck space,’ shouted the launch officer. ‘Clear the deck space!’

The Armaduke continued to decelerate towards the ships sent out to greet it. They were entering the close approach phase, with the Battlefleet’s fighter screen spreading out wide around the newcomer. A small speck, bright and fast moving, left the starboard flank of the coasting Armaduke like a launched flare and began to accelerate away towards the main fleet grouping.

From an observation bay, Gaunt watched the Aquila on its way. He turned, descended the steps and pushed through the busy deck crews and launch personnel to reach the nearest access hallway.

He met Hark and Kolea coming the other way. They didn’t have to say anything for him to know they were looking for him and the news was going to be bad.

‘Edur’s dead,’ said Hark.

‘How?’ Gaunt asked, immediately imagining some shipboard accident.

‘A maintenance crew found his body at the bottom of an inspection hatch fifteen minutes ago,’ said Kolea. ‘Injuries consistent with a fall.’

‘A fall?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The sort of fall you might have if you’d already been beaten to death,’ said Kolea.

‘Throne,’ Gaunt murmured. ‘Viktor, mobilise the regiment. We’re going to find the killer immediately. I’ll go directly to the shipmaster and inform him of the situation. We’re going to need the cooperation of him and his crew if we’re going to section the ship.’

He looked at Kolea.

‘Gol, get to Rawne. Fast as you can. Tell him security has been compromised.’

Rawne approached the armoured hatchway of the magazine-turned-cell. Cant and Mktally were waiting for him.

‘Open it,’ Rawne said.

‘You’re not due for another two hours–’ Cant began.

‘There’s a problem. Open it.’

Cant turned to bang on the outer hatch. Mktally hoisted his lasrifle and covered the approach hall.

Coming in right behind Cant, Rawne already had his straight silver drawn in his right hand, the blade up his sleeve. His left hand deftly slipped the loop out of his hip pocket.

‘Where’s your badge, sir?’ asked Mktally.

‘What?’ asked Rawne.

‘Your badge? You said we should all wear them.’

Without hesitation, Rawne threw the knife. He delivered the straight silver with a vicious and expert underhand throw, and the blade buried itself in Mktally’s heart.

He fell back against the corridor wall, and slid down, instantly dead. Before he’d even begun to topple, Rawne had hooked the loop over Cant’s head from behind.

It was a steel string from a colours band lyre. Cant had barely time to notice it was there when Rawne twisted the loop to tighten it. The string cut into his neck like a cheese wire. Cant toppled backwards into Rawne, blood pouring from an almost three hundred and sixty degree throat wound, his mouth wide open, unable to breathe or cry out.

Rawne let Cant go. The trooper’s legs were still twitching. There was a considerable pool of blood. Rawne drew his laspistol. He took one last look at Cant’s beached fish expression, and rearranged his own features. There was a hideous and painful scrunch of bone and muscle, and a second Cant faced the entrance. He banged on the door, then opened the outer hatch.

‘Coming in, one visitor,’ he said over his microbead.

‘Read that.’

The peephole slot in the inner door opened, and Cant stood where the guard inside could clearly see the face he had made for the occasion.

The inner hatch began to unbolt.

‘What’s the matter with you, Cant?’ asked Kabry, looking out at him. ‘You’re supposed to stay outside.’

Cant shot him in the face and kicked the hatch wide open.

‘Fleetmaster Cragoe demands that you issue a full response, sir!’ the vox herald pleaded.

‘Shut that man up,’ Spika snapped to his number one. ‘I’m trying to think.’

There was a commotion behind him. He glanced around to see the Guard commander, Gaunt, pushing his way onto the master station platform, ignoring the attempts of the deck officers to head him off.

‘Shipmaster Spika has no time to deal with you now!’ one of the officers was repeating in a whining tone.

Gaunt punched him in the mouth and laid him out on the deck.

‘Sorry,’ he told the man in what seemed like a genuine tone of remorse. He reached Spika’s side.

‘We’ve got a serious problem.’

‘How do you know about the Geller field?’ asked the shipmaster.

‘I–’ Gaunt began. ‘What about the Geller field? I’m talking about a security breach. A killing.’

Spika blinked slowly.

‘It’s so they know we’re here,’ he said quietly.

‘It’s what? ‘ asked Gaunt. ‘What is?’

‘It’s so they know we’re here. It’s a trail they can track…’ Spika’s pitch was rising. ‘Oh, Holy Throne of Terra.’

He wrenched his silver-plated voice-horn up close to his mouth.

‘Alert! Alert stations. Shields up. Shields up. Shields up!

The bridge personnel turned from their positions and stared at him. They were young. Painfully inexperienced. A few of them clearly thought it was a surprise drill.

‘Don’t gawp at me, you mindless idiots! Do it now!’ Spika yelled.

Multiple alarms and bells began to sound. The bridge crew went into a kind of overdrive, dashing in all directions. Light levels dipped as the shields woke up. Squealing and clattering, ceramite shutters began to close like eyelids across the realspace ports.

‘Are we under attack?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I think the prospects are very likely,’ replied Spika.

‘Lord Militant Cybon is out there in a small unescorted ship,’ said Gaunt.

Spika ran his tongue around the inside of his lips as he thought about this.

‘Damn him,’ he said. He looked at the Officer of Detection, whose seat was surrounded by dead-eyed auxiliary servitors spinally hardwired into the deck.

‘Full sensory sweep,’ Spika said. ‘Locate the lord militant’s ship, track it, and prepare to put us between it and any attack if necessary.’

A different series of alarms sounded.

‘Contact! Contact!’ the officer of detection announced. ‘Translation signature three AU to port.’

‘A ship? Identify!’ yelled Spika.

‘Tracking one signature. Tracking a second signature. Tracking a third.’

‘Three?’ asked Spika.

‘Tracking a fourth!’

Lightning struck.

The lightning was a spear one thousand kilometres long. This time it was red, like the most malignant hatred, and shot through with snakes of yellow and coral-pink.

The lightning flashed, puncturing realspace and eating a hole through it, like acid eating through a plate of steel. Surrounded by a crown of thorns of aftershock lightning, four starships translated through the corroded wound, ploughing out into the materium like missiles fired from a launcher.

The first two were Destroyer-class escorts. The third, close behind them, was a much larger cruiser.

The fourth, trailing slower and more ponderously still, was a monster, a vast battleship.

All four vessels were blackened as if they had spent too long scorching in the heart of a sun’s furnace. A volcanic red light lit them from within, glaring from their window ports and coiling across their surfaces like veins filled with magma. They had once been Imperial ships, all of them of the most ancient patterns and design. But that identity, and those lives led in Imperial service, were distant memories. Gross corruption had stolen them from the Imperial fold aeons before and transformed their adamantine carcasses to the whim of the Ruinous Powers.

The ships began to scream. Hellish noises and foetid transmissions blasted out through their vox networks as though each one possessed a voice, part animal howl, part augmetic rasp. On the Imperial ships, vox heralds collapsed at their consoles, their brains bursting as the amplified shrieks burned through their systems and shorted them out.

Each Archenemy ship howled out its name as it gunned in; gut-howls that came from their inner cores, from the smoking hearts of their reactors. It was like the bellowing of mindless, stampeding cattle, or the idiot shouting of lobotomised bulk servitors that knew nothing but their own names.

Ominator! Ominator! raged the first destroyer.

Gorehead! spat the shredded vox-casters of its twin. Gorehead! Gorehead!

Necrostar Antiversal! declared the blood-shot cruiser.

Last of all, deepest, and most awful, the voice of the monstrous capital ship, like the deathscream of a black hole.

Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex!

NINE

THE FIGHT AT TAVIS SUN

Kabry fell backwards into the pheguth’s cell, the back of his skull blown out. A sticky sheen of blood and tissue coated the wall and floor surfaces behind him. Cant forced his way into the cell, laspistol drawn.

It had all happened in a second. Chained at his seat, Mabbon Etogaur looked up, saw Kabry twist over dead, and dropped the trancemissionary text he was reading.

The other guard on duty inside the cell that shift was Varl. He screamed at Mabbon to get on the floor, and threw himself at the open hatch door. His lasrifle was still strapped around his body.

Varl’s weight hit the hatch and swung it hard into Cant. The impact staggered Cant halfway back out of the hatchway, but his chest and shoulder prevented the hatch from fully closing so that Varl could bolt it.

Varl put the full yield of his augmetic shoulder into keeping the hatch pinned on the attacker, but with his body wedged against the door, he couldn’t unship his rifle. He yelled a few savage curses as he rammed the hatch repeatedly.

Cant had his right arm and shoulder inside the cell. He was pushing back, his left hand and cheek pressed against the outside of the hatch.

His laspistol was in his right hand.

He raised it and fired into the cell, shooting blind. Shots smacked off the rear wall and the floor. One grazed the ceiling. Two of the bolts ricocheted like cometary fragments off the dull metal surfaces. One punched clean through the back of the pheguth’s seat. Mabbon was face down on the floor, as far out of the firing line as the chain would allow.

Cant fired again, intent on filling the interior of the cell with sizzling, rebounding las bolts.

Calling Cant a name that would not have impressed his poor, dead mother, Varl stabbed him through the forearm with his warknife. The blade cleaved through muscle and bone and bit into the steel liner of the cell, staking Cant’s right arm against the wall inside the hatch, so he was pinned like a specimen. Pain forced Cant to drop his pistol.

Varl redoubled his efforts to shove the door, hoping to crush or crack bone. Cant growled in discomfort.

‘You like that, you bastard?’ Varl shouted. He stepped back and threw the hatch wide so he could gun the assassin down.

Cant faced him.

Varl hesitated, seeing the face of a friend and comrade. He didn’t hesitate long, but it was just enough for Cant to form a beak with the fingers of his left hand and smash Varl in the chest. Varl was thrown clear across the cell.

Alarms started to shriek. The bracket lamps in the approach corridor began to flash and cycle. Battle stations. There was a strong ozone whiff as the void shield generators lit up.

Cant yanked Varl’s warknife out of the wall and freed his pinned arm. Blood ran down his wrist and dripped off his fingers. He took a step forwards.

Varl was trying to get up, gulping in air as he tried to fill lungs that had been pressed empty. His face was bright red, his eyes wet with tears.

Lasfire ripped up the approach hallway and spanked off the hatch and the hatch surround, causing Cant to duck in alarm. Cowering, he turned. At the far end of the hallway, Kolea was approaching, firing his rifle from the hip.

The assassin threw himself flat, rolled close to Mktally’s corpse outside the hatch, and tore the lasrifle away from the dead Tanith. Sitting up, the assassin returned fire down the approach. Kolea dived behind a bulkhead to avoid the hail of bright las rounds.

‘Varl!’ Kolea yelled. ‘Varl, close the hatch.’

The assassin was no longer wearing Cant’s face, nor Rawne’s. Pain, and the necessity of redirecting his strength into the fight, had obliged him to revert to his own face. It wasn’t the one he’d been born with, but it was what amounted to his true identity. It was the face of Sirkle. All of the rogue Inquisitor Rime’s minions had the same visage.

Kolea fired again, two or three loose bursts. The shots spattered around the hatch end of the approach. Sirkle fired back, full auto, his rifle lighting up with bright petals of muzzle flash. The barrage caused Kolea to duck back into cover. Sirkle turned around to unload into the cell and finish his mission.

He was just in time to see the pained, red-faced Varl slamming the cell door in his face.

The hatch locked. Sirkle roared in frustration. He turned back and began blasting down the hallway again, walking forwards, preventing Kolea from getting out of cover or returning fire.

Head down behind the bulkhead rim as shots hammered against it, Kolea yelled into his microbead.

‘Holding level. This is Major Kolea in the holding level. I need security here now! Security and medicae. Urgent!’

Kolea couldn’t hear if there was any reply. The fury of the gunfire coming at him, combined with the shrill of the alarms, filled the boxy hallway.

Sirkle advanced, firing as he came.

The interdiction flotilla didn’t wait to be fired upon. There was no mistaking the intent or allegiance of the howling daemon ships that streaked in towards them from the disintegrated stretch of realspace fabric.

The Aggressor Libertus lit off first, rolling out of its line position ahead of the massive Sepiterna. Advancing at a crawl, it delivered a series of punch-fire barrages with its main batteries, which surrounded its steepled, armoured flanks with a corona of fire.

Benedicamus Domino also commenced firing. It began to come about out of its rendezvous heading with the Armaduke and retrained on the attacking group. Its turrets began to spark and crackle as it directed its fire forwards across the gulf. It was attempting to screen and support the decelerating Armaduke, which was all but aft-end on to the attack.

The other escorts, holding their places in the gunline relative to the capital ship, began their own rates of fire.

The range was considerable, but the Archenemy ships were closing rapidly, and they seemed to drink in the Imperial barrage. Firefly darts of light crackled around the ruddy glow of their shields. Even the formidable main weapon fire of the Aggressor Libertus flashed off their shields like rain.

They continued to howl out their names, throaty and malevolent, scorching out the Imperial vox systems, drowning their audio traffic, distorting their auspex returns.

Ominator! Ominator!

Gorehead! Gorehead!

Necrostar Antiversal!

Behind them all, the doom-voice of the daemon monster.

Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex!

‘Have you located Cybon’s launch?’ Gaunt demanded.

‘I’m trying to,’ replied Spika. With the vox system compromised by the daemon ships’ relentless aural assault, the bridge crew of the Armaduke had switched to voice relay, shouting commands, instruction and data from position to position. Gaunt realised that the shipmaster was doing a thousand tasks simultaneously. Spika was watching every single bridge position, and the main board of his station, plus the strategium’s tactical plot. He was listening to every shouted relay, every nuance of dialogue, and chipping in with orders that sent crewmen rushing to obey. He had both hands on his master systems, operating dials and power-modulation levers without looking. He was feeling the soul and motive energy of the Armaduke as it spoke to him through the deck, the seat, the metal controls.

‘Coming about,’ he said.

‘You’re turning to face them?’ asked Gaunt.

Not even looking at Gaunt, Spika manipulated another control and reeled off a string of corrective heading numbers. Below, the steersmen hurried to obey his command.

‘How do you usually fight, colonel-commissar?’ Spika asked. ‘With your back to the enemy?’

Gaunt didn’t reply.

‘I can mark more of my batteries as status effective if I present head-on or broadside,’ said Spika.

‘Side-on makes us a bigger target,’ said Gaunt.

‘Only while we’re turning.’

‘Shouldn’t we run in alongside the Sepiterna?’ Gaunt asked. In truth, he had very little idea of the fight’s comparative geography. The three-dimensional strategium displays were moving too swiftly, and the type of detail they were processing was far removed from the tactical flows he was used to reading. They made the essentially flat plane of a battlefield seem elegant and pure.

But he knew enough to know that the Armaduke was turning into the line of fire, and that, along with the Benedicamus Domino, they were placing themselves ahead of the flotilla’s main strength and directly in the path of the howling daemon ships.

‘I’m not going to leave the Domino alone to face this,’ said Spika, working his controls. ‘Two frigates, side by side. They can harm a lot of hull between them.’

‘But–’

Spika looked at him for the first time. It was just a brief glance, but Gaunt was struck by the singleness of purpose he saw in Spika’s eyes, the fortitude and, in a tiny measure, the anticipation.

Shipmaster Spika had been too long away from fights worthy of his talents. He wasn’t going to run or back down.

Gaunt raised one hand in a gesture of submission.

‘You don’t come down to the surface and tell me how to deploy my men,’ he admitted.

‘I certainly do not,’ replied Spika. ‘I imagine I would be tremendously bad at it.’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Spika. ‘Now keep quiet or I’ll have you ejected from my bridge.’

He stood up.

‘Enhance the strength of the port voids as we turn. Artificers, power to the primary batteries. Bombardiers, load up. Detection, find us a target we can burn. And find the thrice-damned lord militant so we can screen him!’

Gaunt had seen Spika’s spirit before. It was an old warrior’s lust to achieve one last hoorah, to prove he was still worthy of the uniform. It was a desire that often manifested in suicidal decisions.

Given what was bearing down on them, a man prepared to take potentially suicidal risks might be their only hope.

The Armaduke began to turn. Once fully executed, the manoeuvre would put it in a modest gunline formation with the eager Benedicamus Domino, which had slowed to a dogmatic attitude of confrontation and was blitzing with all weapons. Huge volleys of main battery fire were ripping past and above both ships from the main gunline thousands of kilometres astern.

The Sepiterna had begun to spit huge, ship-killing bolts from its primary batteries.

The onrushing daemon ships wore the fusillade. Their shields wobbled like wet glass as they soaked up the punishment. They were half a million kilometres out, closing at a sharp angle to the system plane, as if they intended to perform a slashing strike down and across the Imperial gunline.

Then the black shape proclaiming itself Necrostar Antiversal began to glow brightly from within, a red glare that started in its heart and spread through its tracery of red veins, straining with light and heat like a charred volcanic cone about to split and blow open under pressure from within.

A vast froth of red corposant enveloped the daemon ship’s prow, chained lightning that crackled and coiled like live snakes. With a sudden flash, the lightning boiled over and lanced a jagged red bolt out ahead of the ship, a whiplash discharge of immense aetheric energies.

The bolt wasn’t even a direct platform-to-target strike like a main plasma or laser weapon. The lash of it flew out sideways, wild and frenzied, untamed and unaimed. It coiled madly out into void space and only then whipped back towards a target, like a lightning strike jumping as it hunted for something to earth itself against.

The jagged, blinding discharge struck the Benedicamus Domino like the vengeance of a displeased god, blowing out its forward shields and exploding its upper decks. There was no sound. A snap shockwave of heat and debris ripped out from the impact, followed by a slow, widening ball of white light that was too hard to look at. Bridge viewers dimmed automatically. When the glare died, the Domino was revealed on fire and listing, sections of its upper structure and hull architecture annihilated or left glowing gold along burned edges.

Spika maximised the magnification to get a look at the frigate. The pict image jumped on the bridge screens, fuzzed, and then steadied and resolved.

‘By all that’s sacred…’ Gaunt breathed.

Screaming its name again, like a child driven to raving madness by a fever, the Necrostar Antiversal bled more corposant and unleashed another shot.

The second bolt of jagged red fury hit the Armaduke as it turned.

Gol Kolea realised he might have actually passed out for a few seconds. He hoped it had only been seconds. Something had made the ship shake like a toy rattle, and he’d bounced off the hallway wall and deck.

It was dark as he came round, apart from the emergency lighting and the flashing hazards. The air was full of smoke, and it wasn’t just the heat discharge from the fire fight. There was dark fuel smoke in the ship’s air circulation system, like blood in water.

They’d been hurt.

He snapped awake and got up, clutching his lasrifle. There was no sign of the assassin. He could hear bewildered and rapid vox chatter coming out of every duct and wall-link as the crew tried to re-establish control of the pole-axed ship. He felt as if he were standing at a slight angle to the horizontal, as though the deck were tilted. That suggested the inertial systems had been damaged. Kolea didn’t know much about warpships, but he was sure it wasn’t a terribly good sign.

The main lights blinked back on as power was restored. It made the smoke seem thicker. Kolea hurried down towards the cell hatch, keeping his aim up and wary. There was still no sign of the killer.

‘Varl,’ he yelled ‘Varl, open up!’

He knelt down. Mktally looked like he was asleep, but he was stone dead, a warknife transfixing his heart. Cant was a mess of blood, so much blood it was hard to look at. What appeared to be a noose of wire had almost decapitated him.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Kolea whispered.

Cant was alive.

‘Varl! Open the door!’ Kolea yelled, clamping his left hand around Cant’s throat to try to staunch the blood-flow. Cant was unconscious, but he was trembling with pain.

‘I’m not falling for that again,’ Varl yelled from behind the hatch.

‘Open the fething hatch, Varl. It’s Gol!’

‘Right, and last time it was Cant! I’m not an idiot. Suicide Kings, Gol. I’ve got a job to do! If you are Gol, you’ll know I’m right. If you’re not, go feth yourself!’

Kolea heard movement. He kept his left hand clenched around Cant’s neck, but hoisted his lasrifle in his right.

‘Identify!’ he yelled.

Figures appeared in the approach hallway, moving towards him through the smoke wash. It was Bonin, with Cardass, Nomis and Brostin. Their guns were up.

‘Kolea?’ Bonin called.

‘I need a medicae!’

Coughing, Zweil pushed past the B Company men and lowered himself beside Kolea.

‘Oh, the poor boy’s gone,’ Zweil said.

‘Are you a gakking medicae?’ Kolea snapped.

‘Not this week, major.’

‘Then could we get a real medicae before we resort to last rites?’ Kolea snarled.

‘Just let me give the poor lad some consolation in case,’ mumbled Zweil, fishing out a pocket icon of the Saint and a silver aquila on a chain.

‘Let me through,’ said Dorden. He looked down at Cant.

‘Gol, I’ve got it,’ Dorden said as he bent down and put his hand over Kolea’s. ‘On three, let me take the compression. Two, three.’

Kolea took his hand away. It was wet with blood.

‘Will he live?’ he asked.

‘He shouldn’t even be down here,’ said Zweil. The old priest glanced at Dorden. ‘Oh, you mean the boy. I get you.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Dorden. He began working at Cant’s throat, pulling back the neckline of the jacket. ‘Where’s my pack?’

Bonin ushered Kolding through. The albino was lugging a medicae supply kit.

‘I need wadding and some sterile gauze,’ said Dorden.

Kolding nodded, opening the kit and taking items out.

‘Sacred feth,’ Dorden murmured as he worked. ‘Look at this.’

Kolding peered in.

‘What?’ asked Kolea.

‘The badge,’ said Kolding quietly. ‘The Suicide Kings badge. This man had it fixed to his collar. It hooked under the garrotte. If it hadn’t got in the way, the wire would have gone clean through to the spine.’

Kolea looked up at Bonin.

‘Small mercies,’ said Bonin.

‘It’s still a damn mess,’ said Dorden. ‘We need to release the wire, but it’s pinching the carotids. If they’re torn, taking the wire away will make him bleed out.’

‘We can’t patch him without taking the wire off,’ said Kolding quietly.

‘Damned either way,’ said Dorden. ‘I’m not even sure how we’re going to patch the wound anyway.’

‘Tape and carbon bond,’ said Kolding.

Dorden looked at him.

‘Not a procedure I’ve heard of, Doctor Kolding.’

‘Not a medicae one,’ admitted Kolding, ‘but in the mortician’s trade it works well. I suggest it because once we take off that wire we’ve got to move quickly.’

‘You’re not serious?’ asked Kolea.

‘It’s the best suggestion I’ve heard,’ said Dorden, ‘and I’m senior medicae here.’

Kolea got up and looked at Bonin and the other troopers.

‘The killer’s got to be close by. He’s hurt. He fled when everything went dark.’

Bonin nodded. He had already started to search the hallway.

‘I’ve got a blood trail. Let’s go.’

‘Why did everything go dark?’ asked Kolea. ‘Did we hit something?’

‘Something hit us,’ said Judd Cardass. ‘I think we’re in some kind of battle.’

Kolea looked up at the ceiling. The superstructure of the ship was creaking and groaning.

‘Seriously?’ he asked. Apart from the bump, he wasn’t sure how anyone could tell.

‘Report,’ Shipmaster Spika was yelling through the smoke. ‘All departments report!’

The main lights of the bridge chamber stuttered and came back on. Damage klaxons were whooping. Some of the ornamental glass shades on the platform lights had been dislodged, and had shattered on the deck.

Voices peeled off reports from every direction. Spika listened, trying to adjust his console. The main display had frozen. He thumped it, and it hiccupped back into luminous green life.

‘Shut up. Shut up!’ he yelled above the conflicting voices. ‘Artifice, do we have shields?’

‘Negative, master. Void shields are down.’

‘Get them operational. At once!’ Spika thought hard. ‘Position? Inertial station, I want our relative now.’

Data zapped onto his screen, the figures echoed aloud by the voice of the officer at the Inertial desk.

‘Still side-on…’ Spika murmured. The hit had wallowed the Armaduke like a heavy swell and halted the starship’s lumbering turn. Not a good place to be, especially without an active shield system.

‘Steersmen! Complete that turn.’

At the long, brass- and wood-cased helm station, the hardwired steersmen cranked the attitude controls.

‘Shield status?’

‘Repairs underway, master!’

‘I want a two-minute corrective burn to these adjusteds. All plasma engines,’ Spika declared, following his order with a string of four-dimensional coordinates.

‘Plasma engine four reports fire. Output suspended,’ said the duty officer at Spika’s side.

Spika recalculated faster than his cogitator. He announced a corrected set of coordinates.

‘Cap engine three, and boost five and six to compensate,’ Spika ordered. ‘Bring us about. Bring us about!’

‘Corrective burn in five, four, three…’ the duty officer announced.

‘Tell the artificers to crack the whip!’ Spika told another subordinate. ‘The stokers must put their backs into it. Feed those damn furnaces. Death is the only excuse for not shovelling!’

‘Sir.’

The deck shuddered and the lights dimmed as the burn began.

‘Gunnery!’ Spika yelled, selecting another pict screen. ‘As soon as you have capacity, you may fire at will.’

‘Aye, master!’

Spika looked at the strategium, assessing the proximity of the Archenemy line. It appeared that one of the unholy escorts – Ominator by its wild animal screams – was peeling towards the shield-less Armaduke to finish the duel while the others gunned directly for the main line. It had lofted attack ships from its carrier decks.

Spika’s poor relic of a ship had survived the first knock, though the list rolling up the damage report display was chilling. Spika had a feeling it had been less of a case of their shields doing their job, and more a case that the Necrostar Antiversal had developed insufficient power for another blast so soon after crippling the Domino. The Armaduke had survived because the discharge had been underpowered.

Even underpowered, it had blown out their shields.

Spika could smell fear in the air. All of his young and inexperienced officers were ashen and shaken. The hardwired servitors twitched in their sockets and plug-racks, neural links pulsing. Even the more veteran crewmen, like the Officer of Detection and the Chief Steersman, looked frantic.

They were terrified. His ship was terrified. Spika could taste the wash of cortisone and other stress hormones flooding the ship’s neural and biological systems. There was a stink of terror mixing with the smoke in the air-circulation system. Thirty thousand souls, locked in a metal box, in the dark, under fire. Most of them had never known anything like it before.

He remembered his life as a bridge junior. It was the absence of information that really gnawed at you. Only the shipmaster and the officers with access to the strategium feed had any real notion of what was going on outside, and then only if the Officer of Detection was doing a decent job. In a void fight, realspace ports shuttered and closed, and everything became feed only. Even if the ports had remained open, there was nothing to see. You were brawling with – and being fired upon by – an object that might be thousands of kilometres away in the interstellar blackness, and moving at a considerable percentage of the speed of light. There was the shake and terror of impacts, the raging engines, the cacophony of voices and data-chatter, but everything else was blind and far-removed, separated from the realm of the senses. No wonder juniors lost their nerve, no wonder the helm servitors and data-serfs wept and moaned as they worked at their logic stations, no wonder the stokers wailed and lamented as they laboured in the fiery caves of the engine vaults. Every soul depended on the uniting perception, the singular view, of the shipmaster. He alone could appreciate the grand dance of a fleet action, the war going on outside the metal tomb inside which the crew toiled. Every man worked without even understanding what benefit his small contribution was making. If death came, it overwhelmed suddenly, utterly lacking in warning or explanation.

The world would come apart in light, and then fire and hard vacuum would annihilate you.

The Officer of Detection cried out. Spika checked the scope.

The monster Ominator had launched munitions at them. Deep-range warheads were rippling through the void at them on plasma wakes.

Spika swore. He expected some comment from Gaunt.

To his surprise, the colonel-commissar was no longer at his side.

Elodie tried to focus. She’d been doing something. Something really ordinary. That was it, she’d been signing something. The ship had just that minute shuddered, and a metallic voice had announced they were arriving at wherever it was they were supposed to be going.

Some men from the regiment had come into the transport decks with yet more Munitorum paperwork for the retinue to sign. They’d circulated. Costin, the drunkard, had brought stuff to her when it was her turn. He just needed her to make her mark. It was another disclaimer, all part of the accompany bond.

Elodie had barely paid attention. The sustained quake of re-translation had disquieted her, and some of the children and younger women had become upset. When the metallic voice made its announcement, there had been cheering, and loud prayers offered in thanks to the Saint and the Emperor. Lay preachers and men of faith got up to lead the retinue in hymns of deliverance from the warp.

Then other things had happened very quickly. Things she didn’t understand. Sirens had begun to sound. Klaxons and bells. Sudden tension and fear had flashed through the hold habitats of the retinue company, an alarm born of ignorance. No one knew what was happening.

Realspace port shutters in the outer chambers that had only just begun to re-open after the immaterium transit were suddenly closing again. Old shutter motivators groaned at the sudden reverse. Members of the retinue had been waiting days to see out of the ship, if only to glimpse the brown darkness of space and the reassurance of distant stars, and now that solace was being denied them, all over again.

And the voice. The metallic voice. It was shouting words that sounded like battle stations.

How could they be in a battle? That seemed so unlikely.

Abruptly, as she was puzzling it out, something happened to the ship. Something hit the ship so hard everyone was thrown about, and the lights went out, and the air began to reek of smoke. When the lights began to flutter back on again, people were screaming. The children were wailing. Men and women had been hurt by the fall, bruised or bloodied by striking the deck or furniture fittings. Elodie struggled up, helping an older woman beside her. She was amazed at her fear. She’d never felt so numb and helpless. Costin had fallen too, spilling his papers all over the deck mesh. He was panicking. As she helped the older woman, Elodie glimpsed him taking a deep pull from a flask. The noise of panic in the chamber was almost overwhelming.

‘We’re in a fight! A fight!’ someone shouted.

‘We will perish in the void!’ someone else shrieked.

‘Be calm. Be calm!’ Elodie heard herself saying to the people around her. She had no calm of her own to share. She wanted to know why she could smell smoke. She wanted to know if the world was about to turn upside down again, and if the lights would come back on if they went out again. The screech of the alarms seemed designed to promote acute anxiety.

She saw Juniper. The woman was frantic.

‘Where’s my little dear?’ Juniper was crying. ‘Where’s my dear little girl? I lost her when the lights went out.’

Elodie put her arm around Juniper to steady her, and looked around, searching the seething crowd. People were rioting in every direction.

‘Yoncy?’ Elodie yelled. ‘Yoncy, come here to us!’

‘Where are you, Yoncy?’ Juniper called.

Elodie saw Captain Meryn, who’d been supervising the troop of men on paperwork detail.

‘Have you seen Yoncy?’ she asked.

Meryn had an ugly expression on his face, a sick look of fear. He glared at her.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Captain’s Criid’s little girl!’ Juniper blurted, crying. ‘The dear thing will be trampled!’

Meryn pushed past them. He said something that Elodie didn’t hear properly.

She was pretty sure it was something like, Do I look like I care? Or words to that effect.

There was a sudden rekindling of panic as the ship’s plasma engines began to thrash and rumble at an accelerated rate, making everything reverberate. Elodie clutched Juniper, who was sobbing and shaking.

‘We’ll find her,’ she insisted. ‘We’ll find her.’

Elodie assumed that the trauma couldn’t get any worse. But there was a sudden bark of cracking gunfire. Everyone flinched and ducked, and almost everyone screamed.

The crowd began scattering. Those who couldn’t flee threw themselves flat onto the deck or took cover behind cots, crates or bunk blocks.

There was a Tanith trooper barging down the central hold space aisle towards Elodie and Juniper. Elodie didn’t recognise him. There seemed to be something wrong with his face, as if it had become blurred. His right hand was soaked in blood and brandishing a lasrifle. As he advanced, the soldier was cracking off bursts of autofire above the heads of the crowd to scare them out of his way. The gunfire bursts pattered and sparked off the high hold ceiling.

His left hand was around the throat of the terrified child he had snatched up as a shield.

It was Yoncy.

TEN

SHIELDS

Spika stared at his comparatives for a second. His plasma engines were burning hard, and he could feel the grav torque pulling at the ship’s seams as it surged into the hard turn.

They were never going to make it. They were never going to turn in time. They were certainly not going to pull clear of the munitions spread rushing towards them. He had ordered counterfire to try to track and detonate some of the incoming torpedoes, but even with the detection systems on their side, it was like trying to hit an individual grain of sand with a bow and arrow during a hurricane. Another few moments and the enemy munitions would be sufficiently in-range to establish target lock and start to actively hunt them.

A warhead spread that large would demolish an unshielded hull like an eggshell.

Spika had one choice. In truth, he had two, but one of them was ‘die’, so there was little to discuss. Ominator, shrieking its name in grotesque pulses of noise through the void, like a wounded animal in a trap, was coming for them. Aggressor Libertus was racing away from the solid Imperial gunline to offer support, but it was six or seven minutes away from being any use.

Spika adjusted the heading values and added nineteen seconds to the burn duration.

The chief steersman glanced at him.

‘Execute!’ Spika yelled.

Through the glass, darkness.

‘I can’t see anything,’ said Felyx.

‘Get behind me,’ hissed Maddalena Darebeloved.

Felyx glanced at her.

‘You’re ridiculous. Simply ridiculous,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a street hit, this is a void fight. How is getting behind you going to protect me?’

He turned back to the realspace port. They’d found a stretch of hull-side hallway in the outer accommodation deck where the realspace shutters had failed to close properly. There was a limited view out into the blackness. Felyx was leaning close to the thickened armaglass to peer out, but he was seeing little more than his own reflection.

‘I can’t see anything,’ he whispered. There was nothing visible outside, just darkness. Not even stars. For all the commotion going on inside the Armaduke, there was apparently nothing to warrant it.

Dalin watched Felyx and his lifeguard. There was a tremendous noise coming from the transport decks behind them, a palpable edge of panic. Dalin was anxious, and very distressed by the great surges of engine noise, and the rapid shifts and sways in mass and gravity. He felt like he was on a boat in a heavy sea.

‘We should go to the bunker spaces,’ he said.

‘Someone speaks sense,’ said Maddalena.

‘Being in a bunker deck isn’t going to help much if we’re hit,’ snapped Felyx. ‘If the ship goes up, there’s nowhere to hide.’

‘Being in a bunker deck offers better chances of survival than standing beside an unarmoured window that could blow out to hard void at any moment,’ said Maddalena. ‘Don’t make me pick you up and carry you.’

The shipwide alarms were still sounding, and personnel were running past them. The smell of smoke remained intense, but it had been partly obscured by a rising stink of heat. The engines were running hot. Furnaces were seething.

‘My first void fight, and this is what I witness,’ complained Felyx, peering out again, bobbing his head to try different angles. ‘I suppose everything is too far away for us to see.’

‘Really?’ asked Dalin. He was honestly surprised. He’d never really thought about the scale in those terms. He understood that the void was big, but he’d never imagined a situation where ships the size of the one they were travelling aboard could engage without being able to see each other.

The ship was the size of a city! How ridiculous was it to fight something so far away you couldn’t see it? A lasman had to appreciate his enemy, or at least his enemy’s position, in order to fight. And what kind of gun could–

Somebody ran up to them, out of breath. Dalin turned, and suddenly stiffened. Maddalena also snapped around in surprise.

‘What in the God-Emperor’s name are you doing here?’ asked Gaunt.

Felyx turned from the realspace port at the sound of Gaunt’s voice.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Gaunt snarled. Dalin blinked. There was something in Gaunt’s manner, an agitation, that he had never seen before. ‘Get to the bunker spaces. The shelter decks. Come on!’

‘I–’ Felyx began.

‘Shut up and move,’ Gaunt barked. He looked at Maddalena. ‘Some lifeguard you are! Do your damn job! Get him into a shelter cavity! There are standing orders for this kind of situation. I could have you all on charges!’

He looked at Dalin.

‘I’m disappointed in you, trooper. I thought you could be trusted to keep these people in line.’

Dalin stood to attention.

‘No excuses, sir.’

Gaunt looked back at Felyx and his minder.

‘No excuses, but they probably aren’t cooperating, are they? Did you tell them to go to the bunker decks?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gaunt stared at Maddalena.

‘Do your job.’

‘What’s happening?’ asked Felyx.

Gaunt glanced at him.

‘We’re in a fight.’

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Of course you can’t!’ Gaunt snapped.

‘How many ships? Are we winning?’ Felyx asked.

‘Go to the bunker, now!’

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Felyx. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere important?’

Gaunt hesitated.

‘Go to the bunker,’ he growled.

‘Holy Throne!’ Dalin blurted.

There was something to see outside. In the time they had been speaking, something had loomed silently, filling the realspace ports. They had indeed got the scale wrong, but in the opposite direction. The blackness they had been staring at had been the lightless shadow of another ship’s flank. Now it resolved as they surged past it. They saw where the hard-edged light caught the upper hull and gun towers, saw the glowing lines of fusion burning where vast sections of deck had been scoured away. Clouds of debris, like glitter, filled the void. Brutal ribbons of escaping energy licked and flared from ruptured power plants in the ship’s exposed entrails. Chunks of armoured hull wallowed past on slow, lazily spinning trajectories. They were right alongside another ship, but had been in its shadow and too close to see it before.

The other ship was stricken and all but dead. It looked like a burning hive, seen from the air.

‘I will escort them to the bunker right away, sir,’ said Dalin.

They all turned as they heard the same noise. A sharp, snapping report had come from the direction of the transport decks, a crackling chatter that for all the worlds of the Imperium sounded like gunfire.

‘Now get behind me,’ said Maddalena.

The plasma engines were exceeding the operational limit of their tolerances. Immeasurably old, and refitted more times than Spika cared to imagine, they were simply no longer able to develop maximum thrust from cold or low power at short notice.

The hull frame wasn’t up to it either. The Highness Ser Armaduke had never been an elegant or graceful ship, not even in the heyday of its youth, millennia before. It was dogged and robust, not agile.

The hull, wrenched by the extreme forces of the manoeuvre Spika was attempting, was crying out in pain. Crew members, especially hardwired servitors and serfs, were screaming as waves of techno-empathic pain gripped them. Several dropped dead. The steel and plastek cranium of a high-function servitor at the environmental station burst apart in a spray of firefly sparks, the pressure slap shearing the metal plates from the skull beneath, revealing the bone and organic traces of the Imperial human who had forfeited his life to the augmetic processes of Navy service many standard lifetimes before. Scorched rivets and yellow teeth scattered across the deck. An artificer’s assistant with a porcelain face lay down beside the manifold console as if to sleep. It scrunched into a foetal position and died without reopening its optics. A bulk servitor, a loader in the upper forward starboard magazine, suffered some kind of cerebrovascular crisis, and beat its reinforced head apart against a munitions silo wall. Hyper-strain triggered a convulsive fit in a precision drone serving the strategium, and its subtle haptic limbs began to thrash so rapidly they became a humming bird blur.

Spika ignored the losses. He disregarded the rupturing seams of the outer armour, the inner frame sleeves, the hullskin compartments. He paid no attention to the atmospheric failures on four decks, the brownouts and blackouts, the energy drain as available resources were re-routed to the realspace engines and the shield repairs. He took no heed of the rank of realspace windows that blew out along a distorting hull ridge and opened sub deck 118 to hard vacuum. He ignored the critical alert hazards that were flashing at the top of the engine console, warnings that the frantic, red-lining plasma drives were close to failure and shut down.

By the Golden Throne of Terra, he had never seen a master’s console alight with so many alarms at once. He knew he had a survival margin that could be measured in milliseconds.

The Armaduke could not outpace the free-running torpedoes delivered from the Ominator. It could only hope the warheads found something else first.

‘May the God-Emperor forgive me,’ said Spika.

The Armaduke, engines searing white hot, turned the ship in behind the listing bulk of the stricken Benedicamus Domino. The sundered hull of the wounded frigate eclipsed Spika’s ship.

Spika knew that there were likely to be ten or even fifteen thousand crewmen still alive on the Domino. But the Domino was past saving. The Armaduke was still alive.

The warheads, thirty of them, rained into the starboard side of the keeling ship, which had been knocked side-on into the path of the enemy by the first strike. Only wisps of shield remained. Two torpedoes detonated as they ploughed into the dense, glittering debris field that fogged the vacuum beside the Domino like a cloud of blood beside a floating body. Another triggered as it struck the hard, pressurised release of environment gases squirting through the Domino’s burst hull.

All three detonations, miniature starbursts too bright to look at, disappeared a moment later as the other twenty-seven warheads encountered the primary hull. Concentric rings of shockwave and overpressure criss-crossed, and twisted the fabric of the hull apart, like raindrops rippling the still surface of a pool. Light bloomed, a supernova, a ferocious pink-tinged white that scared away the blackness of the void like a sunrise and turned the Benedicamus Domino into a sharp-edged black silhouette.

The frigate perished. Disintegration crept through its structure from the blast point outwards, vaporising the hull’s armour jacket, chewing away the superstructure, sloughing away surface plating like fish scales. Tidal waves of liquid flame poured and gurgled through each deck level, and then ate away the deck planes in between. Firestorms surged up connective shafts and access wells, boiled through environmental systems, and torched the ship’s leaking atmosphere. Within a second of the main strike, geysers of fire and explosive shockwash were squirting out through the other side of the ship like exit wounds, blowing out shuttered ports, carrier deck doors, airgates and gun stations. Out flung debris, including several furies and cargo shutters washed out of the Domino’s bays, born along like flotsam in the blast, spattered against the Armaduke’s outer hull.

Then the shock pulse hit, a double hammer blow: first the electromagnetic punch then the kinetic rip. The Armaduke rode them out, shuddering, lurching.

The glare faded. The Benedicamus Domino was left as nothing but a blackened metal mass of fused and glowing scrap, an iron-rich asteroid fragment.

Shipmaster Spika fought back the urge to vomit. Adrenaline had spiked critically in his system: his augmetic neurides were overheating, and his vision had reduced to a grey tunnel. Dataflow assault was so intense his stomach was churning and he wanted to gag.

He yelled a new heading at the chief steersman. He entered the engine correctives manual at his master console, nursing the screaming plasma engines down to a more gentle roar, cooling and banking down their excessive output, swinging the Armaduke on a more gentle turn to avoid the Domino’s radioactive cadaver and square with the Ominator.

The Ominator’s jubilant, taunting shrieks had been briefly silenced by the electromagnetic pulse of the multiple detonation, but now it was back as the vox system recovered. It was crowing, almost laughing out its name in a voice scarred and scaled by vox distortion. The Ominator had direct-line speed, the proper momentum and attack rate of a charging predator. It had not been obliged to bleed valuable speed and energy through stumbling evasions and desperate antics, the way the Armaduke had.

‘Gunnery!’ Spika commanded. He used a haptic reader to communicate the munitions spread he desired. The Ominator’s attack squadrons were already rolling in on them, zipping over and under the smoking mass of the wrecked Domino.

‘Shields as a matter of urgency,’ said Spika, trying to clear his throat of rising acid. ‘We’re going at them, and we’re going to burn them all the way back to hell.’

ELEVEN

THE CLEAR SHOT

Everybody was down on the deck, the women sobbing, the children bawling. Elodie was holding on to Juniper to stop her throwing herself at the man who had seized Yoncy. He had a gun, and he was shooting it wildly. Anyone who waved a gun, and was prepared to fire it in a crowded room, anyone who was prepared to snatch a little girl as a shield, that was someone you didn’t try to tackle.

Elodie wrestled Juniper down, slapping her pawing hands aside. Elodie was moaning. Everyone was making some kind of sound: distress, fear, desperation.

Everyone except Yoncy. Elodie saw that Yoncy was still and expressionless. Trauma had clearly conquered her. She was like a doll in the crook of the gunman’s arm.

The man rattled off a few more shots to keep them all ducking. More screams came from the womenfolk. He was backing towards the hatch under the portside walkway, coming right down past them. Elodie wished she could work out what was wrong with the man’s face. It was twisted, distorted. It wasn’t a proper face at all.

‘Drop her! Drop the girl!’

More panicked screams. Elodie glanced around and saw three Ghosts rushing into the transport deck from the far end, rifles at their shoulders, covering the man and his hostage as they prowled through the rows of cowering retinue personnel.

The man who had shouted the order was a Belladon, Cardass. To his left was Bonin, the Tanith scout, weapon up and sighted. To Bonin’s right was Gol Kolea.

Kolea’s lasrifle was at his cheek. The expression in his eyes tore Elodie in half. It was part hatred, part anguish.

His daughter. His little girl.

‘Drop her!’ Cardass yelled again.

The gunman answered with some inarticulate noise as though his mouth wasn’t working properly. His face seemed tangled.

Elodie felt her heart fluttering. She so wanted to get up, to tear the girl out of the maniac’s grip.

She saw Captain Meryn. He was cowering right beside her, next to one of the cots. Costin was nearby too, his head in his hands, the documents he’d been carrying scattered around his knees. One of the gunman’s wild shots had clipped his shoulder, leaving a grazed burn.

Meryn’s eyes were bright with fear, like those of a cornered animal. He wasn’t carrying his rifle, but Elodie could see the laspistol holstered at his waist.

‘Shoot him,’ she hissed, holding Juniper down. ‘Captain, shoot him!’

Meryn ignored her.

‘Shoot him!’ Elodie repeated.

There was a clear angle. The gunman was side on to them, and he hadn’t seen Meryn or his comrade. Any half-decent shot could have put a las bolt through his head or his torso, missing the girl entirely.

‘Are you mad?’ Meryn rasped back.

‘You can take a clear shot!’

‘Shut up!’

‘Captain, shoot him!’

‘Shut the feth up!’ Meryn snarled.

‘Put the girl down,’ Kolea ordered. His voice cut the air and the panic like a scythe. It was toneless, as if the light had gone out in his heart.

‘Back off! Back off!’ the gunman yelled back, the words clawing, imperfectly shaped, out of his deformed mouth. The strain of his efforts had finally overcome the Sirkle’s face-shifting abilities.

Kolea, Bonin and Cardass had him triangulated, all aiming straight for his head. They were squinting down the top sights of their weapons, shoulders hunched, trotting forwards with short, hurrying steps.

Elodie wondered if any of them would dare take the shot.

‘Put the girl down!’ Cardass demanded.

‘Forget it,’ Kolea said. ‘Judd, forget it. He’s got nothing to lose any more. He’s not going to let us take him.’

He lowered his rifle to his chest, though he still kept it pointing at the gunman.

‘Are you?’ he asked. ‘You bastard. You’re going to make us kill you, and you’re going to make us kill the girl to do it.’

The gunman said something. His lips were too slack and misshapen for the words to be intelligible.

The ship shook. It was violent and abrupt. There was no sound, and no light came through the sealed port shutters, but the ship juddered as though it had been dropped.

A moment’s distraction.

Rawne dropped from the portside walkway onto the gunman’s back. The impact felled the gunman and took Yoncy over too. Rawne’s straight silver blade plunged into the killer’s right shoulder. His weapon went off, spraying las bolts into the air.

All three of them tumbled. Rawne lost his grip on the warknife. The gunman kept his grip on Yoncy. With a bellow that made the civilians sheltering around them shriek, Rawne got hold of Yoncy and wrenched her out of the killer’s grasp. He simply hurled her into the air, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps in the belief that a fall injury would be preferable to letting her stay in the killer’s reach a moment longer. The killer lashed out and clubbed Rawne in the face with the edge of his rifle.

Hoisted, Yoncy tumbled. Elodie sprang forwards, her arms outstretched, and managed to catch her before she bounced off the sheet metal deck. The little girl was heavy. The impact tore muscles in Elodie’s forearm. She kept her grip, rolling, trying to shield Yoncy from the landing. They crunched down onto Elodie’s right shoulder, Yoncy cushioned against Elodie’s breasts and stomach. The back of Elodie’s head struck against the leg of a cot and she blacked out for a second.

There was blood in her mouth, in her nose. She blinked. Yoncy was yelling and thrashing on top of her, squirming, kicking her heels. Pain flooded Elodie’s skull and her right arm.

The gunman was back on his feet. The warknife was still wedged into his shoulder blade. Rawne was down, flattened on the deck by the clubbing blow. The killer pointed his lasrifle at Rawne to cut him apart.

Kolea’s first shot blew the gunman’s right arm off at the elbow, causing the dismembered limb and the lasrifle it was aiming to spin like a slow propeller. Kolea’s second shot blew out his chest in a splash of burned blood and splintered ribs.

Kolea’s third shot traumatically deformed his head far more significantly than anything the face-slip had achieved.

The killer went down, full length, felled like an old straight nalwood, leaving blood mist in the air behind him.

Elodie’s shoulder was busted. The pain speared into her so sharply she couldn’t move.

Meryn took Yoncy off her and turned to Kolea.

‘She’s all right,’ Meryn said. ‘She’s safe, Gol. She’s safe.’

The Ominator’s attack ships, ugly, cackling arrowhead craft, came in around the dead Domino. They were like miniature versions of their sire, a litter of squealing, ravening whelps.

‘Shields?’ suggested Spika, overcome by a terrible, analytical calm.

‘Repairs still underway!’ sang out an artificer’s junior.

‘Track them. Deterrent fire,’ Spika ordered.

The Armaduke’s smaller, more nimble batteries and gun stations woke up, streaming beams and ripping, stuttering lines of las bolts up into the black. Barrels pumped in their arrestor sleeves as the gun mounts traversed hard, chasing the fast-moving attack ships. Through multiple viewers via multiple pict feeds, Spika watched the enemy pack rip over, darting along the flanks and underside of the Armaduke, banking between crenellated surface towers and engraved armour buttresses, hugging the lines of the ribbed prow, like aircraft flying low-level through the streets of a hive. Battery fire pursued them. Spika saw one attack ship engulfed in flame, tumbling like a firework wheel under its own momentum. He also saw a battery go up, strafed into oblivion. Lights began to go dark across his master console, tiny individual lights among the thousands of system indicators. Prow battery 1123. Prow battery 96 (starboard). Keel battery 326 (centreline). Port tower 11. Environment hub 26 alpha (portside). Detection relay nine beta.

A wave of target strikes rippled down the Armaduke as the enemy squadron raced aft, jinking, evading, gunning for weak spots.

There was a sudden electromagnetic crackle, a distort across most pict feeds, the fuzz-wash of serious las fire. As the pictures jumped and cycled back into life, Spika saw Furies. The Imperial void fighters, all of them from the poor Domino’s fighter screen, were soaring down the length of the Armaduke’s hull in the opposite direction, meeting the enemy squadron head-on. Spika tracked almost three dozen individual dogfights, acrobatic duels that were suddenly, bitterly in progress. Furies banked after enemy craft around shield pylons or detection towers, or harried them down around the flanks and around the keel line. Like ascending birds, Furies and foe-ships locked together, spiralling up and away from the Armaduke as they tried to out-turn each other and gain the kill shot. Some were tumbling. Others turned out in wide arcs, forced away from the frigate in an effort to lose a pursuer, sometimes as far as the glowing mass of the Domino. It was like an angry swarm of insects mobbing the old ship.

‘Shields in twenty seconds!’ an artificer announced.

‘Acknowledged,’ Spika replied. ‘Vox, do what you can to signal the Furies. Warn them we are relighting and they need to be clear when we do.’

‘Aye, master!’

Spika’s attention was on the Ominator. It had clearly not grown tired of saying its own name. Instruments estimated about nine minutes to firing point at their current intercept rate. Spika shook that off. More like seven or six and a half. The Ominator was hasty and hungry. It wanted to get a lick in before the Armaduke was shielded again, and before the storming bulk of the Aggressor Libertus came charging in from the rear line. The Aggressor Libertus was already trading long-range punches with the Necrostar Antiversal as it accelerated. Necrostar Antiversal, realspace drives burning orange-hot, clearly wanted to test its mettle against the Sepiterna.

‘Dammit, do we have any vox?’ Spika asked.

‘Routing available circuits to you, master.’

Spika pulled his silver speaker-horn close.

‘Hailing, hailing, Master of the Libertus. Hailing, hailing, Master of the Libertus. This is Spika, mastering the Highness Ser Armaduke.’

A crackle.

‘This is Libertus, confirm.’

‘Confirm, Libertus. Let the capital ship worry about that cruiser. We can crush this target with pinning fire and then turn together.’

A long pause, full of static.

‘Libertus, confirm?’

‘Agreed, Armaduke. You have guns effective and shields, confirm?’

‘Confirm guns effective. Maintain positions relative. Armaduke now accelerating to close. Be ready to turn wide, repeat wide, if he proves reluctant to run between us.’

‘Relative noted and matched. Acceleration matched. Let’s slay the bastard, Armaduke.’

‘Confirm.’

‘Shields at your discretion!’ the artificer announced.

‘Light them,’ said Spika.

There was a stuttering pulse as the void shield generators cycled into life. Deck lights dipped all the way into brown-out and back as onboard power was briefly refocused. Shielding crackled into being around the advancing Armaduke, forming blistering fields of immaterium distortion. Several Furies, late leaving the side of the Armaduke, tumbled, lights out and power gone, their systems temporarily blanked by contact with the defence fields. Four of the Archenemy’s small hunter-ships detonated, crushed against the expanding shields, their drive plants destroyed by some allergic, alchemical interaction.

Shields raised, the Armaduke began to power past the Domino towards the onrushing Ominator. Aggressor Libertus followed on, about sixty kilometres astern and twenty to starboard.

‘Clear the missile tubes!’ Spika commanded. ‘Main batteries, main mounts – firing solutions on the designated target now.’

He focused the primary rangefinder on the Ominator.

The air in the system still smelled of smoke. At least this disguised the Armaduke’s pervading odour of kitchen grease.

Gaunt walked back towards the bridge, through corridors empty of life. All of the passenger complement was stowed in the bunker decks, and the crew personnel were at their battle stations. Occasionally, a junior rating or a servitor rushed past on some errand.

Gaunt had started out with little sense of the void fight, and now he had none at all. He wondered if they were close to winning, or close to dying. The ship was peaceful. It wasn’t like being in a battle on the field, with the thump of guns, of artillery pummelling the skyline, with airborne overhead. Space was silent. There was no communication of nearby destruction.

But he could tell that a fight was going on. The deck creaked and the superstructure groaned, under tension. Every minute or so, the lights would dip and come back, or the engines would begin another frantic round of thrashing output. Static coated every surface; he presumed that was a side effect of the void shields. He’d seen it in buildings and ground vehicles close to active Titans.

Most of all he could feel the fight inside him, in his gut, his inner ear, his kinaesthetic sense. He could sense the soundless, invisible pull and twist and wrench of inertial compensation. The gravitic systems were fighting to maintain the environmental status quo as the ship lurched and came about. He felt as if he was standing in a quiet, swaying building: it flooded him with memories. Being in a high tower on Balhaut during the first firestorms. Being on the curtain walls of Vervunhive as the Heritor’s woe-machines lumbered in.

At least, he reflected, he hoped it was the gravitic stresses. He hoped it was not the turbulence of his restless soul, troubled by a distress it had never expected.

The hatchway to a grand chamber lay open. Inside, under gently swinging lamp rigs, the Iron Snake Holo-furnace was performing a fast sword drill against hololithic targets.

The sword work was devastatingly swift. Holofurnace was using a cross-stroke and rotational style Gaunt had not seen before, switching from one hand to a two-handed grip depending on the attitude of the sword.

Helmet off, Eadwine was sitting to one side, watching the rehearsal.

He didn’t look up as Gaunt approached, but he knew the human was there.

‘I thought you’d be cowering somewhere,’ said Eadwine, his voice a machine rasp.

‘No, you didn’t,’ replied Gaunt.

‘No,’ Eadwine admitted. He kept watching the Iron Snake’s sword drill. The Iron Snake hadn’t even acknowledged Gaunt’s presence.

‘He is getting sloppy,’ said the Silver Guard warrior. ‘I don’t know what kind of blade-work they teach on Ithaka these days.’

‘Aren’t you concerned about the battle?’ asked Gaunt. ‘I thought you might have gone to the bridge.’

Eadwine turned to look at him.

‘What would that achieve? There’s no part for us to play. Not unless they board us. Are they likely to board us?’

‘I don’t think so.’

The Silver Guard shrugged.

‘Then all we can do is bide our time until we are faced with our kind of fight.’

‘You don’t need to know what’s going on?’ asked Gaunt.

Holofurnace stopped slicing his sword and glanced over.

‘Only if we live,’ he said. ‘If we die, why care about the detail?’

He went back about his training. The sword flashed fast, spinning and interweaving.

Gaunt realised that Eadwine was still staring at him.

‘I do not read your face well,’ said Eadwine. ‘I do not read human micro expressions. They are too weak, insignificant.’

Gaunt didn’t know how to reply.

‘But you seem concerned,’ the Silver Guard went on. ‘Clearly, there is the stress factor of this fight, but you are a man who has known battles. Where is your resolution? There is, it seems to me, another element troubling you.’

‘You read our faces well enough,’ said Gaunt.

Eadwine frowned and nodded, as if quietly please with his achievement.

‘So?’

‘I find myself distracted,’ said Gaunt. ‘Without expecting to, I find myself concerned for the welfare of another person aboard. That concern has surprised me to an extent I find dismaying.’

‘You question your focus.’

‘I worry about maintaining it.’

‘Is it a woman?’ asked Eadwine. ‘A woman? A sexual partner? I understand that can be very distracting for the emotionally compromised.’

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have recently learned that I have a son.’

‘Ah,’ said Eadwine. ‘Offspring. I know nothing about them either.’

He tilted his head, listening.

‘You hear?’ he asked.

Holofurnace had stopped drilling to listen too. Gaunt concentrated. He could make out a distant, repetitive thumping, masked by the engine throb, the steady chug of a machine rotating or cycling.

‘That’s the ship’s primary magazine delivering munitions at the fastest possible continuous pace,’ said Eadwine. ‘We are unloading everything we have at a sustained rate. We are trying to kill something very big.’

TWELVE

KILL RECORDED

Whatever sentience controlled the daemon ship Ominator, its gleeful hunger for murder was so intense that it only belatedly became aware of the way the Armaduke and the Libertus had squeezed it into an untenable position.

They had met its headlong rush at the Imperial position with calm resolve, intercepting its trajectory so that the Ominator was obliged to pass between them. Such was the Ominator’s fever to engage, it was over pacing itself. It became apparent that it was not going to be able to break off or execute an evasion in time, certainly not without rendering itself more vulnerable. Any attempt to hard turn out of the tactical lock would have consumed vast amounts of its power reserve and de-positioned it hopelessly in the battlesphere alignment.

It continued to shriek its name. The shielding around its prow and flanks began to throb with a sub-photonic gleam the colour of burst entrails. Mechanical organs along its spine and between the blades of its ribs began to throb as it gathered power for a main weapon strike.

Advancing steadily, the Armaduke and the Libertus exchanged a brief non-verbal signal and began to hose fire at the enemy ship. Two streams of bombardment ripped out from the Imperial pair, converging like the lines of some infernal diagram on the Ominator. The streams were traceries of pulsed and beamed energy weapons, the unified output of hundreds of batteries slaved to the master tracking cogitators. Heavy ordnance systems spat torrents of hard shell munitions, missiles, ship-to-ship ballistic charges and bombard rockets.

The Ominator soaked it up without breaking stride, taking the titanic barrage from the Libertus against its forward port shields and the destructive abuse of the slightly extended Armaduke across its starboard side and belly.

The two ships maintained their relentless assault. The Ominator advanced in the face of their sustained fury, apparently oblivious, as if the onslaught was entirely futile. The fire rate was stupendous. Two gunners aboard the Libertus were killed by recoil trying to service the hard batteries fast enough, and an artificer aboard the Armaduke was burned to death by an overheating laser assembly. From his command seat aboard the Armaduke, Spika believed he had never seen a ship take such relentless punishment.

The Ominator squealed its name and attempted to fire, but the hellish lightning failed to develop enough to whip out from the hull. It tried again, and then again: two or three more stuttering attempts at ignition.

Then its shields failed, and its hull tore open like a punctured membrane. Shielding energies billowed out into the void around it like ink in water, like ragged sailcloth carried along by a storm-borne ship, like a ruptured egg sac.

Something catastrophic happened deep inside the daemon ship’s hull. There was a considerable though muffled explosion deep inside the ship about two-thirds of the way down its length. It was not a huge, satisfying sunburst of annihilation, but it blew out areas of deck plate and internal structure. Clouds of burning, toxic energy and atmosphere belched out. The mainframe shuddered.

Then the Ominator went dead. All of its onboard light sources died, even the infernal red glow from its core. Its energy output signature ceased, apart from the shreds of radiation and flame coming from the damaged sections. Its drive failed. Its plant failed. Its reactors failed. It became, in a second or two, an inert, dead lump of black machine junk, scorched and holed. Carried by its own forwards momentum, it began to tumble, prow tipping up, drive section rotating under, debris littering out of it like a spiral vapour trail.

The Imperial ships ceased fire. They waited, poised, in case it was a ruse, in case the daemon ship had decided to turn itself into a weapon and ram one of them.

It was lifeless. Blundering on, spinning like a discarded piece of scrap, it passed between them leaving a trickle of ejecta dispersing in its wake.

‘Kill recorded,’ cried out the Master of Detection.

‘For the Emperor,’ growled Spika.

As the Armaduke and the Libertus shared their kill, the vast Sepiterna had turned its guns against the Necrostar Antiversal. The enemy ship had crossed the main Imperial gunline, soaking up fire from the escorts as it paced a long, fast burn of an attack run across the battleship’s bows, a diagonal slash across the alignment of the battlesphere.

Gorehead, a raging little beast, had fired in support of its keening brethren, trying to stifle the gunline’s output and disrupt any aim at the Necrostar. A cloud of small craft had formed forward of the Imperial line, a massive dogfight swirl like pollen spilling from a flower head. Fury flights, along with heavier support squadrons loosed by the Imperial ships, had ripped into the formations of Archenemy killships. One especially sustained duel was being fought to keep the daemon interceptors away from the Aquila bearing the lord militant.

Gorehead’s primary weapons scored a decent hit against an Imperial destroyer called Phalanxor, enough to impair its void shields, and rendered it ineffective for long enough to allow Necrostar Antiversal its passage. Necrostar Antiversal was spitting massive hullcutter missiles at the Imperial flagship, and its primary energy batteries were cycling up to strike.

Sepiterna, an almost stationary island more than ten kilometres long, reached out to deny the obdurate intruder. Beam weapons, red sparks in the brown twilight of the void, found and neutralised the running missiles, igniting quick bright flashes of white fire. Then the principal weapon fired, and slapped the charging Archenemy vessel sideways. Necrostar Antiversal spun away, all stability control lost. Its port bow section glowed with a fierce internal blaze, and atomised structural debris squirted from its lurching bulk. It stopped screaming its name and instead simply screamed. Demented with damage and pain, the Necrostar Antiversal fell away, righted itself, and then began to flee. The flight may have been caused by a drive malfunction or a loss of helm. It was frantic and headlong. The Necrostar’s realspace engines went to full burn, one of them clearly misfiring and crippled to such an extent the ship was leaving a dirty trail of burning fuel and radioactive blowback behind it. It veered away like a comet, and streaked towards the distant limits of the system like a scolded hound, beaten and driven away yelping.

Shipmaster Spika was aware that his artificers were desperate to lower shields. Sustaining them at maximum was depleting the reserves at a nightmarish rate. With fifty per cent of the enemy strength dismissed, surely the fight was done. Any grasp of tactical logic could tell you that.

Spika knew from bitter experience that when it came to void fighting with the Ruinous Powers, tactical logic had little or no place. He had, for many years as a more junior officer, studied the behavioural habits of large carnivores, particularly in such circumstances as hunting, protecting a kill or defending their family group or their young, as well as their actions when wounded or cornered. That, he had found, was most often how Archenemy ships performed. They did not make calculated strategic moves as though the battlesphere was a giant, three-dimensional regicide board. They did not observe the traditions and crafts of Battlefleet tactics as learned and studied by the officers of the Imperial Navy.

They fought like animals in traps, like wounded rogue beasts cornered in a canyon, like predators in the forest gloom. They ignored logic, or technical comparatives, or the output of threat assessment cogitators.

That, in the considered opinion of Clemensew Spika, an opinion not shared by the Departmento Tacticae of the Imperial Fleet, an opinion that had probably hindered the progress of his career over the years, that was why the Archenemy often won.

Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex, the behemoth capital ship of the enemy force, turned towards them. It had lost its appetite for a direct fight with the mighty Sepiterna and its resolved gunline, but it was evidently quite prepared to make a parthian shot or two at the Armaduke and the Libertus, pushed forwards and vulnerable as they were.

Spika ordered a hard evasive turn back towards the sun, and watched on the strategium display to see that Libertus was doing the same. If they could at least place themselves decently in the optimum reach of the main gunline, it might be enough to dissuade the monster from harrying them.

But the Rex was fast. It was the single biggest vessel involved in the fleet action; not as stately and deep through the waist as the majestic Sepiterna, but longer and of significantly greater tonnage. It accelerated, however, like a frigate. A light frigate. It was quite the nimblest supermassive Spika had seen since the Palodron Campaign against the diseased craftworld. Its internal glow, coal red, flared as if bellows had been applied. It powered in, weapon banks developing charge for a shot.

The Sepiterna spurred its whole gunline forwards, but it was a gesture that would have little practical effect in the timeframe. The Aggressor Libertus, a significant ship in its own right, began firing as it turned, loosing as much as it could at the oncoming monster. The daemon ship’s shields held firm. The Libertus’s barrage, enough to strip a hive down to the mantle, spattered off the voidshields like firecrackers.

The Rex fired. The energy whiplash, so bright it was not any sort of colour at all, struck the Libertus in the small of the back, popped its shields like a soap bubble, shattered the hull jacket, and cored a hole down through the decks like someone cracking through decorative icing to slice open a layer cake. It was not one blast, one flash. The jerking, kinking coil of energy linked the two ships together like an electrical arc for almost twenty seconds. Its point of impact was brighter than a spot-welding torch. The burning force sheared through the Libertus, cutting it in a line that ran along its spine towards its prow. The cruiser was almost bisected lengthways. When the awful weapon finally shut off, the Libertus broke up, not cleanly in half like a nutshell, but into two large sections along a surgically straight line. Almost a third of the cruiser’s tonnage sheared away along the port side from central environmental to the prow, armour splintering like glass, internal contents, crew and debris voiding in a cloud like smoke. The sectioning was so precise that Spika could see the cross-cut through the decks through his viewer, like a cross-section display in one of the glass cases at the Admiralty. He saw fires burning inside, pressure compartments blowing, bulkheads shredding, atmosphere venting, hydraulics and other fluids billowing out in quicksilver blobs. He saw slicks of debris litter and realised they were masses of weightless corpses.

A secondary blast blew out the Libertus’s ruptured plasma drives, sending the larger of the two hull portions spinning nose over tail out of a bright yellow explosion. The spinning section clipped the other hull portion and sent it tumbling out to one side, regurgitating material into the void.

The Rex brushed past its kill and closed on the Armaduke, dwarfing it. It was set to send the Imperial battlegroup home with at least three dead.

Its main weapons gathered charge, cracking fury in the reservoirs beneath the skin of the hull. It closed tighter still, perhaps intending to riddle the Armaduke to scrap with its small batteries rather than waste the main charge.

Spika felt its shadow on them. It overhauled them, blotting out the sun, a leviathan ten or twelve times their size. Every sensor on the Armaduke’s bridge screamed. Every alarm sounded. Spika instructed his gun crews to unload everything they had.

Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex boomed its name into the darkness. But it did not stop.

It passed so close by the Armaduke, the frigate shivered hard in its wake, and it kept accelerating, driving out along the unvariable and away, developing speed and translating into the warp. Gorehead, yapping at its heels, followed.

By then, the Necrostar Antiversal had fled through the outsystem and away, wailing in blind pain, and the corpse of the Ominator was tumbling down into the fires of Tavis Sun.

THIRTEEN

TURN AROUND

Dorden took a deep breath. Tension and fatigue had put a tiny tic in the corner of his right eye and a tremble in his liver-spotted hands. Rawne was struck by how grey the old doctor’s skin had become. It reminded him, painfully, of the skin paint used by the sleepwalkers of the Gereon Untill, and of the wood-ash dust that the old nalwoodland communities of Tanith had used to anoint bodies for funerary rites. He’d never made that connection before. He made a point of not thinking about Tanith unless he had to.

‘He’ll live,’ said Dorden.

Rawne nodded. He looked down at Cant. The trooper was unconscious, in a chemically-induced coma, his neck wrapped in bindings and counterseptic wadding. His face was drained of blood, colourless white rather than Dorden’s dead grey. Dorden and the new man, Kolding, had worked for two intensive hours to save Cant’s life. No one could yet tell what brain damage might accompany the catastrophic blood loss of the throat wound.

Rawne patted Dorden’s arm.

‘There’s nothing I could do for the others,’ Dorden said.

Rawne didn’t turn to look at the wrapped corpses of Kabry and MkTally. Two Kings dead, another severely wounded. They had paid a high cost already guarding the pheguth etogaur. And that was without counting Edur and the crew personnel, and the poor bandsman fool that the Sirkle must have slain on Menazoid Sigma in order to worm his way into their midst.

‘Get some rest,’ said Rawne.

Dorden laughed. The infirmary was busy. In the aftermath of the void fight and the commotion aboard, there had been a lot of minor injuries: a few concussions and broken bones. There was still work to be done.

Kolding was nearby, washing Cant’s blood off his hands in a metal sink in preparation for the next patient.

Rawne walked over to him.

‘I understand the technique that saved him was your idea,’ he said.

Kolding stared at Rawne. He wasn’t used to being spoken to or even acknowledged by many of the regiment.

‘It seemed expedient,’ he managed to say.

Rawne nodded. He held out his hand. Kolding blinked. He hesitated for a moment, because he’d only just got his hands scrubbed ready again. The hesitation was too long. Rawne lowered his hand, and nodded.

‘It’s appreciated,’ he said, and walked away.

Ban Daur entered the medicae suite, squeezing past the walking casualties queuing for treatment.

‘Where is she?’ he asked the orderly Chayker.

Chayker pointed.

Elodie was sitting on a cot in the corner, her arm in a tight, packed sling, a compress against the back of her head. Rawne watched Daur cross to her, kneel beside her, embrace her gently. Dorden had said that the woman had torn shoulder muscles and taken a mild concussion catching the child. Brave. Selfless. There were more reasons than just good looks to admire Elodie Dutana. Rawne kept watching as they spoke quietly. He assumed she was telling Daur what happened. Rawne tried to remember the last time anyone had looked him in the eyes the way she was looking at Daur.

Down the far end of the infirmary unit, where it was quieter, Criid and Juniper were sitting with Yoncy while Curth checked the child over. The little girl was perched on a cot and seemed to be enjoying the attention. There was no indication she had been remotely upset by her adventure.

‘I owe you,’ said Kolea, coming up beside Rawne quietly to stare at Yoncy.

Rawne shrugged.

‘I was protecting the Archenemy feth-head, not the little girl,’ said Rawne.

‘Right.’

They both tensed. Meryn had just walked out of the side ward where he’d been checking on Costin’s graze wound. Criid had crossed to Elodie and Daur to murmur a few words, and she turned as she saw Meryn.

‘Ah shit,’ said Kolea.

Criid walked right up into Meryn’s face. They could feel the hatred radiating off her.

‘You didn’t take the shot,’ she hissed.

‘What? Tona?’

‘Don’t give me Tona, you spineless idiot. You had a shot and you didn’t take it.’

‘What? That bitch tell you that?’ Meryn sneered back, jerked his head in Elodie’s direction.

‘No,’ said Criid. ‘Juniper told me. Juniper said you just kept your coward head down.’

‘She’s a fething liar.’

Criid went for his throat. They crashed into an instrument stand and scattered a stack of steel bowls. The bowls clattered across the deck. Some of the civilian casualties started to wail in alarm.

‘Not in here!’ Curth roared.

Kolea and Rawne stormed forwards and got hold of Criid. She fought back in a frenzy of arms and legs as they pulled her away from Meryn.

‘Get off me!’ she shrieked.

‘He’s not worth ten hours in the tank, Criid,’ Rawne growled.

‘He’s not,’ agreed Kolea.

Criid stopped thrashing and shrugged Kolea and Rawne off as they relaxed their grip. She glared at Meryn.

‘You saw what she did!’ Meryn cried. ‘I want her charged!’

‘Grow some testicles and shut the feth up, Meryn,’ replied Rawne.

Meryn pointed angrily at Kolea.

‘He didn’t care! He’s the fething blood-father. He didn’t attack me!’

‘I was just pulling Criid out of the way,’ said Kolea.

‘What?’ asked Meryn, puzzled.

Kolea’s axe-rake of a fist slammed Meryn into the infirmary wall. The impact demolished a wire shelf and smashed a row of glass bottles.

‘Have you all lost your minds?’ Curth yelled. ‘This is a sick bay. Stop it!’

Working together, Criid and Rawne managed to pull Kolea’s muscle-dense bulk off Meryn. Meryn had his arms over his head and face. Blood was squirting out of his nose. When he realised the fists were no longer raining down, he began to get up, slipped, and then rose to his feet. Kolea lunged at him again, but Daur had joined Criid and Rawne to act as anchors, and they wrenched Kolea back between them.

‘What in Throne’s name is going on in here?’ Hark demanded as he pushed into the infirmary.

‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ said Rawne, hauling Kolea back.

‘Yes,’ Criid agreed. ‘We thought Meryn was a human gakking being, but we misunderstood.’

‘They were attacking me!’ Meryn squawked. ‘There are witnesses. Charge them!’

‘It won’t happen again,’ Rawne said.

‘There are witnesses!’ Meryn insisted, outraged.

‘Show me one,’ said Rawne. He looked around the room, at the shocked faces of those present. ‘Anyone?’ he caught Curth’s eye.

Curth shook her head.

Hark frowned.

‘Will this happen again?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Kolea.

‘No,’ said Criid. ‘We’re done.’

Daur punched Meryn square in the face and laid him out on the deck.

‘Call her a bitch again and I’ll gut you, you Tanith bastard,’ he said. He looked at Hark.

‘Now we’re done,’ he said.

With the fight finished, the Armaduke had closed with the fleet. Packet and cargo exchanges were underway, with lighters ferrying supply loads across. Small ships were also attending the two wrecked Imperial ships in search of survivors.

Gaunt went to the ship’s communication chamber. Spika was in attendance, along with Eadwine. Hololithic generation sockets built into the deck manufactured crackling full-size images of Lord Militant Cybon, Fleetmaster Cragoe, and several senior Navy and Munitorum worthies from the fleet complement.

‘I am gratified to see that you survived the transfer,’ Gaunt said to the image of Cybon.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Cybon replied without enthusiasm.

‘The question is,’ said Cragoe, an immense being whose biological bulk appeared to have been reinforced and supported by massive augmetic armatures and plates, ‘will this mission survive? Is your assignment still viable?’

‘Yes,’ said Eadwine simply.

Cragoe snorted.

‘I believe you should abort and turn around.’

‘Do you?’

‘Your vessel was compromised and attacked from within. The conjunction was tracked and discovered. We took significant losses.’

‘But we won,’ said Gaunt. ‘We drove them off. There is no reason to suspect that the fleeing enemy has any intelligence about our target.’

‘And if they do?’ asked Cragoe. ‘If they have other agents aboard your ship?’

‘Then we ride to our deaths, not you,’ said Gaunt.

‘It would be patently ridiculous to get this far and then turn around without solid evidence of compromise,’ said Spika. ‘We identified the means by which they detected us and tracked our position during shift. We will be alert for it in future.’

‘Is there another issue here?’ asked Eadwine.

‘We must consider the obvious,’ said Cybon. ‘Why did their capital ship spare you when it had you cold?’

‘It had exhausted its present charge on the poor Libertus,’ said Spika.

‘The answer is more obvious than that,’ said Eadwine. ‘I have replayed the data feeds of the fight’s closing moments. Your gunline was eight seconds from range. The Archenemy capital ship had no wish to measure its worth against the Sepiterna and her warp escorts. The daemon ship ran rather than fight you. If it had stayed long enough to murder us, you would have achieved status effective and atomised her.’

‘We would have tried,’ said Cragoe.

‘The Adeptus Astartes is paying the Navy a compliment, Fleetmaster,’ said Cybon. ‘I recommend you take it gracefully.’

Cragoe nodded his mountain peak of a head. The pict feed crackled and jumped slightly.

‘It was no false flattery,’ said Eadwine. ‘I believe it perfectly explains the Archenemy ship’s decision.’

‘Then I approve the continuance of the assigned mission,’ said Cragoe.

‘Did all the specialist equipment survive?’ asked Spika. ‘I trust no part of the requisition order was aboard the Domino or the Libertus?’

‘It is all intact,’ said Cybon. ‘We are transferring it now to your outer bays.’

‘You’ll need to clear a primary bay to take the Adeptus Astartes vehicle,’ Cragoe told Spika. ‘It’s no bigger than a gun cutter, but it is massively armoured, and it will need a station of its own or your inertials and gravitics will suffer.’

‘I’ll redistribute the launch bay load,’ said Spika.

‘How long before you can make shift?’ asked Cybon.

‘We’re running repairs now,’ said Spika. ‘The materiel transfer should take another five hours or so. We’ll be ready then.’

When the hololithic presences blinked and dissolved away, Gaunt turned to Spika.

‘My compliments on your combat command,’ he said.

‘Thank you for not getting in the way,’ said Spika. He looked at the huge Silver Guard warrior.

‘That was just flattery, wasn’t it?’ he asked. ‘That bastard ship should have killed us dead.’

Eadwine shook his head.

‘It was the truth as I saw it. I suppose it is possible that the enemy capital ship detected something or someone aboard this ship that it decided it did not want to kill.’

‘If that’s true, we’ll find whatever they were sparing,’ said Gaunt.

‘Has it occurred to you it could be your prisoner?’ asked Spika.

‘The one they were trying to assassinate, you mean?’ Gaunt replied.

‘Were they?’

Gaunt laughed.

‘What are you saying, shipmaster? This whole business was an elaborate ruse to make the pheguth’s story more credible?’

‘It is possible,’ said Eadwine. He glanced at Gaunt. ‘But I think they were running for their lives.’

The central landing deck had been cleared. Launch Artificer Goodchild, the senior flight deck officer aboard the Armaduke, saw the deck lamps begin to rotate and flash as the inbound craft approached. Pressure trembled as the environmental envelope adjusted. He signalled to his servitor crews to stand ready for landing attendance.

The craft sailed into the primary landing backlit by the local star, which was glowering outside the mouth of the bay. Goodchild had heard other flight artificers describe such vehicles, and he had reviewed the archived data, but he’d never seen one in the flesh before. Robust, like a flying tank, it was finished in the Chapter colours and insignia of the Silver Guard: silver-grey, white, and Imperial yellow.

‘We used to go to war,’ a voice said from beside him, ‘and launch a thousand of these into the void, a hundred thousand, to demolish a fleet.’

Goodchild turned to find the massive Iron Snakes Space Marine standing beside him. He made to bow.

‘Do not bother,’ said Holofurnace.

They watched the Adeptus Astartes warcraft settle in to land on the arrestor clamps.

‘But there are not many left,’ Holofurnace said, uttering what seemed like a heartfelt sigh as he gazed at the craft. ‘Like us, I suppose. I miss those days. The Great Wars. Can you imagine, ten thousand of those launching from a supermassive?’

‘I cannot, sir,’ Goodchild admitted.

‘No,’ agreed Holofurnace. ‘Even the thought is too terrifying.’

‘How old are you?’ asked Goodchild.

‘Old enough to remember,’ replied the Iron Snake, ‘and young enough not to care.’

‘You sent for me?’ asked Felyx.

Gaunt looked up from his desk.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I sent for her.’ He pointed at Maddalena.

‘You can wait outside,’ he added. ‘Shut the door.’

Felyx half-saluted, and backed out of Gaunt’s quarters, closing the door. The lifeward was left alone, standing to attention, staring at Gaunt.

‘And?’ she asked.

Gaunt got up.

‘There’s something about you I can’t–’ he began.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. I was thinking aloud and it wasn’t appropriate.’

‘Not appropriate?’

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No,’ said Maddalena.

Gaunt poured himself a small sacra.

‘Do you at least want to stand easy?’

Maddalena relaxed her pose slightly.

‘Why did you want to speak to me?’ she asked.

Gaunt looked thoughtfully at the untouched drink in his hand.

‘He will ruin me,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The boy will ruin me. I want him gone. Pack your things and escort him off this ship. Transfer to the fleet and passage will be arranged back to Verghast. It will take some time, I’m afraid. The Battlefleet isn’t in the business of passenger shifts.’

‘Not acceptable,’ said Maddalena.

‘He will ruin me,’ Gaunt repeated, ‘so I hardly care for your opinion. That fight began and suddenly all I could think of was that my son – my son! – might be in danger! The thought unmanned me. I came to find him. I–’

‘It’s understandable,’ said Maddalena.

‘I know it is,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘That’s the point. He’s my son and I’m going to care about him, even though I barely know him, and didn’t know he even existed until this voyage began. He’s my flesh and blood, and having him here damages me.’

‘How?’

‘Oh, please. Try imagining.’

Maddalena licked her lips with the tip of her tongue as she thought.

‘Your concern for him will compromise your ability to lead. It will undermine your confidence. It will make you fallible and perhaps force command or tactical decisions that are unwise. It could weaken you, and soften you, and take your edge away.’

‘There,’ said Gaunt. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it? So get him off my ship and take him home. I cannot have him on this mission.’

‘Many of your men, your officers… they have brought family and loved ones with them. It is a calculated risk. The accompany bond indemnifies personal loyalty over personal safety and–’

‘My men don’t have to lead this mission.’

‘True,’ she said, ‘though I think the issue is the same.’

‘Thank you for your perspective. Now get the boy off this ship in the next three hours.’

‘You will care about him wherever he goes,’ said Maddalena.

‘What?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Will he get home safely?’ she said, shrugging. ‘Will the fleet ship transporting him be attacked? If he returns to Vervunhive, will he survive the shame of being sent away by his famous father rather than being allowed to serve at his side? Will his chances for political advancement be forever undermined?’

‘Be quiet,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t need to hear that. Damn you. I didn’t ask to know him. I didn’t ask for him to be sent here.’

He shot his drink in one swallow. She walked over to him, took the empty glass from his hand, filled it, and took a sip.

‘The point is, you do know him,’ she said. ‘Now you’re aware he exists, you can’t not know him again. Sending him away won’t help. The humiliation certainly won’t help him, personally or politically. Banishing him won’t help you. This cannot be undone.’

‘Yes, it–’

‘No, colonel-commissar, it cannot. You know him. You know he exists. Whether he’s at your side or a sector away, you will be concerned for his welfare. He’s your son.’

Gaunt took the glass from her hand and knocked back the rest of it.

‘So what you’re saying is, you’ve ruined me anyway?’

Maddalena laughed. She took back the glass and refilled it, taking more of a sip for herself this time.

‘I suppose so. It wasn’t my decision, and I’m sorry for it. It wouldn’t have been my choice to send him to you unannounced.’

She stared into his eyes.

‘Better you keep him at your side than wonder where he is. Better he stays and learns something from you before you die. Better you fight for his life than anyone else’s.’

Gaunt hesitated. There was an anger or a frustration he could barely articulate.

‘I take it he’ll be staying?’ she asked.

Gaunt shook his head sadly.

‘This stuff,’ said Maddalena, holding up the glass and squinting at it. ‘What is it?’

‘Sacra.’

‘It’s not bad,’ she said.

‘There’s something–’ Gaunt began.

‘About me? So you said. And I believe you said such thoughts were inappropriate.’

‘They are,’ said Gaunt. He kissed her mouth. She did not pull away.

‘That’s definitely inappropriate,’ she said.

‘I don’t give a damn,’ he replied.

FOURTEEN

FINAL SHIFT

Tavis Sun was a memory four days behind the Armaduke when Dorden died.

Supplied and stocked with the last pieces of specialist equipment from the fleet group, the frigate had turned and translated away, running out through the murk of the warp towards the cold distances of the Rimworld Marginals.

Lord Militant Cybon had delivered a final broadcast from the Sepiterna, a valedictory address to the entire regiment. Zweil and the ship’s cleric had held services of constancy and deliverance, but the mood on the ship had changed.

They were heading into the dark, into the bleak and underpopulated regions of the Sabbat Worlds, into dead space and zones of risk, into hazardous climes and marginal fields. Though they were thousands strong, together on the ship, they felt the isolation.

Blenner was observing the specialism rehearsals that were being conducted around the clock on several of the main hold decks. The large areas had been cleared, and floor plans had been marked out on the deck in paint. In places, the layouts resembled basic obstacle courses. Squads moved through the areas, reset the obstacles, and then ran the drills again. Most of them were chamber clearance exercises. Ranges had been set up for practice-firing breaching rounds, and the ship’s artificers had rigged up a number of standard template door locks and hatch seals for teams to practise cutting. There was a lot of sweeper training going on too, and when he wasn’t supervising that, Domor was in hold six with his best demolition men, running through methods for making safe explosive devices and triggers. Major Pasha was lecturing the regiment, one company at a time, on improvised explosives and booby traps, and the finer points of pressure pads. She knew her subjects. It seemed to Blenner that Major Pasha had learned a lot of dirty tricks in the scratch war at Vervunhive.

On another range set up in one of the holds, the regimental marksmen were drilling with their old bolt action rifles. They were firing the specially machined, glass-tipped rounds to acquaint themselves with the specific weight and pull of the unfamiliar ammunition. They were saline charges, non-lethal glass projectiles filled with inert salt water.

The accuracy rate required from marksmen like Questa, Banda, Raess and Nessa was painfully demanding. Blenner was, however, astonished at the performance score that Merrt was racking up.

‘I thought Merrt was a lost cause,’ he said to Hark.

‘He was,’ replied Hark. ‘Larkin’s been working with him, one-to-one. The real breakthrough was muscle relaxant.’

‘What?’

‘He’s numbing his jaw,’ said Hark. ‘Apparently, that stops it twitching and ruining his aim. Of course, it means he can’t talk.’

They watched Merrt finish a round of shots and then turn to the other shooters.

‘I wondered why he was signing,’ said Blenner, nodding at Merrt. Everyone in the regiment had learned basic sign language for stealth work. Blenner had assumed Merrt was using it in deference to the deaf troopers like Nessa.

‘Where’d he get that idea from?’ Blenner asked.

Hark shrugged. ‘He hasn’t really explained. Larkin hinted it had something to do with one of the Space Marines.’

Blenner shuddered. The Space Marines, though they were seldom seen around the ship, were a pretty constant reminder that this was going to be more than a pleasant ceremonial excursion. Inexorably, they were heading towards the sort of fate he had spent most of his career in the Guard trying to avoid, the sort of fate where polished buttons, impeccably buffed toe-caps and a winning way with mess-room banter would not matter one iota. It was getting to the point where Blenner couldn’t laugh it off any more.

He’d spent a lot of time reading the stuff Wilder had recommended, the wit and wisdom of Novobazky. The speeches and mottos had survived Blenner’s initial disdain. Novobazky, the Emperor protect and rest his soul, had clearly been a motivating and inspiring man. Blenner had attempted to memorise some of the proclamations. He’d even practised them out loud to the shaving mirror in his quarters.

The trouble was, he didn’t believe them. He couldn’t say them with any conviction. They didn’t make him feel any better about dying, and, if he couldn’t even convince himself, he stood no chance of putting fire into the bellies of his troops.

When he thought about it like that, Blenner felt the fear inside him grow. It made him want to throw back another pill or two, but he had exhausted his supply. There was the contraband he’d confiscated untouched in his desk, but Curth had warned him off that. His hands trembled.

‘Heads up,’ said Hark. A wall hatch had rumbled open and Rawne’s Suicide Kings had entered, escorting the prisoner. Mabbon had been brought to observe and advise the operational drills. He was in shackles, and his face was without expression. Everybody in the hold space gazed at him.

They knew what he was. They knew the price the regiment had already paid simply having him there. They knew what kind of price they were going to pay if he was playing games with them.

Blenner felt an overwhelming urge to find a latrine. Space Marines were bad enough, but the pheguth was worse.

He got into the corridor outside, and found that his urge to crap his pants had diminished. His desire for pharmaceutical support had increased. If drugs could help Trooper Merrt improve his performance, then they would for Vaynom Blenner too.

That was how he came to be sitting with Dorden when he died.

‘I’m worried that I might be taking too many,’ said Blenner awkwardly. ‘I’ve got through the ones you gave me rather quickly.’

‘Don’t worry, commissar,’ said Dorden. ‘You’re a grown-up. I trust you not to abuse them. You’re only taking them when your nerves demand it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ said Dorden. ‘In fact, to make things simple, I’ll sort you out a larger supply. To keep you going.’

The medicae office was very quiet. Blenner had passed Kolding and Curth on his way in. He breathed out.

‘Can I ask you a question, doctor?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ said Dorden. He had got up to fetch a box of pills from a shelf. He was measuring loose pills out, a dozen at a time, into a small set of brass scales.

‘Why aren’t you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes,’ said Blenner. He cleared his throat, nervously. ‘Of… I’m sorry, of dying.’

Dorden smiled, still counting out pills.

‘Death is nothing to be afraid of,’ he said. ‘It happens to everyone. It’s ridiculous to think that the one thing everyone has in common, the one thing that unites us, is an object of fear. I am quite looking forward to it, actually. Duty ends. We are welcomed to the Emperor’s side in some great place of triumph and glory. I imagine… I hope very much… that I will see my son again.’

‘I wish,’ said Blenner. ‘I wish I wasn’t afraid.’

‘You’re not afraid,’ said Dorden. ‘Not of death. You’re afraid of living.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘You’re afraid of the things you’ll have to do before death takes you. Pain, injury, fleeting things like that. You’re afraid of life and the effort that life takes.’

‘I’m pretty sure that death’s the thing really bothering me,’ said Blenner.

Dorden shook his head.

‘You don’t want to be found wanting,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to die knowing those around you despise you or think you’ve let them down. You don’t want to face the Emperor with question marks on the account of your life. You’re not afraid of death, Vaynom. You’re afraid of the things you’re expected to do before you die. Courage. Fortitude. Sacrifice. Endurance. Those are the difficult things.’

Blenner sat back and wiped his hand across his mouth.

‘If that’s the way you see it,’ he said. He stared at the deck. ‘Those are sugar pills, aren’t they? Sugar pills or salt tablets? It’s a placebo.’

‘You’re quite mistaken,’ said Dorden, measuring a last scoop.

‘You would say that,’ replied Blenner. ‘That’s the way they work. But you’re handing them out like sweets. And you’re not even remotely worried that I might end up with a dependency.’

Dorden turned around and looked at Blenner.

‘Don’t bother denying it,’ he said. ‘I can see it in your eyes. That expression. I’m good at telling when people are lying, doctor. It’s my job. I know you don’t want to spoil the effectiveness of the placebo, but just the way you’re looking at me right now, I can… doctor?’

Dorden fell. His left elbow caught the rim of the brass pan on the little set of scales and flipped it, sending the white pills up into the air like chaff. They rained down across the deck like hailstones. Dorden had already slithered down the cabinet, pulling open two drawers, and subsided onto his back. His eyes were like glass. He seemed to be staring at something behind Blenner. Something parsecs behind Blenner.

‘Doctor Curth!’ Blenner screamed, leaping out of his chair so hard it fell over.

Curth ran in, followed by Kolding and Lesp. They crowded around Dorden’s untidily folded form. Blenner didn’t know what to do.

In the face of death, he was speechless.

Curth’s head was bowed. Her skin was pale, as though shock had sucked the blood out of her. She adjusted an intravenous drip.

Blenner stood at her shoulder and stared down at Dorden. The old man’s eyes were closed. Fifteen minutes of furious activity had ended with Dorden on his back on the cart, Kolding and Curth working on him. Blenner had been able to do nothing except watch. He had been fascinated by the way Curth had wept through the entire process without making a sound or halting her work.

‘He was dead for four minutes,’ she said. ‘We restarted his heart.’

‘Is the machine keeping him alive?’ asked Blenner.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just a precaution. He actually started sustaining himself once we got meds into him and resuscitated.’

‘Clinically dead for four minutes,’ said Blenner. ‘What about brain damage?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But the machine’s not keeping him alive?’

‘No,’ she said. She turned to look at him. ‘You are, actually.’

‘What?’

‘If you hadn’t been with him,’ she said, ‘we might not have known he’d gone down. Not for minutes. It would have been too late to bring him back. We were lucky you were in there, badgering him for more of those wretched pills.’

‘Hooray for me, then,’ said Blenner. He paused. He felt like she could see the same faraway thing Dorden had been watching when he fell over. ‘To be fair, I think they’re placebos.’

‘Of course they’re placebos,’ said Curth. ‘Are you an idiot?’

‘Steady on.’

‘He’s not going to prescribe something you scoff like candied fruit, is he?’

She stopped and composed herself.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve just ruined their effect and all his hard work.’

‘I should stop taking them, then.’

She looked him in the eye.

‘I could be lying,’ she said.

‘You could. With you, Doctor Curth, it’s much harder to tell. You could, of course, just be covering because you let it slip.’

‘You’ll never know.’

‘Let’s stop worrying about me, shall we,’ he said, as brightly as he could manage. ‘What about you? Do you need a moment? This is very trying. Can I offer you a shoulder to cry on? A warm embrace?’

‘You never stop, do you?’ Curth asked. ‘One of these days I’m simply going to let you have your way, just to shut you up.’

‘I– I don’t know what to say–’

‘Thank the Throne.’

He walked to the doorway.

‘I think Gaunt needs to know.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe not before, but he needs to know now. He’d want to know. Look, I’ll go and tell him what happened, if you like.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Curth said.

Elodie was alone in Daur’s quarters when Commissar Fazekiel knocked on the hatch.

‘The captain’s not here,’ Elodie said. ‘He’s training in the hold.’

‘It’s you I wanted to see,’ said Fazekiel.

‘Me?’

Fazekiel came in, removed her cap, and pulled the hatch shut.

‘There’s a small problem, Mamzel Dutana. I’m sure it’s nothing, so I wanted to see if I could get it squared away without a fuss.’

‘What is it?’ asked Elodie. She eased her arm, still in its sling. Her head was aching again.

The commissar pulled a couple of sheets of paper out of her coat pocket and unfolded them.

‘We were clearing up after the incident with the gunman. My compliments, by the way, for saving that poor child.’

Elodie nodded.

‘The transport deck hall was a mess. Furniture broken and overturned, clothes scattered,’ said Fazekiel. ‘We found these papers under a cot. They’d been dropped, and had slid under there. Forgive me, I had to read them to work out who they should be returned to. They belong to you. You’ve signed them here, and here.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Elodie said. She vaguely remembered the forms that had been thrust at her.

‘I need to ask you a simple question,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Sometimes people wish to keep these things personal and private, in which case we can clear this up now, just between the two of us, and nothing else need be said about it. Are… are congratulations in order?’

‘Congratulations? I don’t understand.’

‘Are you and Captain Daur married? Sometimes it’s done in secret, I know. Perhaps before we left Menazoid Sigma?’

‘Married?’ Elodie asked. She swallowed. ‘No. No, we’re not.’

‘You’re not?’ asked Fazekiel.

‘No, unless I could be married and not know it. Could he have married me without me knowing it?’

Fazekiel smiled. ‘No, mamzel.’

‘Not even by filling out forms?’

‘No.’

‘Then we’re not married.’

Fazekiel frowned, her face sad.

‘Then we do have a problem. These papers, which you have signed, are part of a certificate for viduity benefits. The sort a wife would be able to claim after the death in service of her partner. A widow’s pension, mamzel.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you’re not married, then this is an illegal claim. An attempt to defraud the Munitorum. Unfortunately, this sort of fraud is quite common, given the large number of Guardsmen in service.’

‘I don’t know about this,’ Elodie stammered. ‘I was just given papers to sign. I was told it was something to do with the accompany bond. I wasn’t trying to scam anything. Please, I wasn’t.’

Fazekiel stared at her, eyes narrow.

‘I believe you,’ she said.

‘I should hope so,’ said Ban Daur.

They hadn’t heard him enter the chamber. He was dripping with sweat and in need of a shower. His company’s drill period was over for the day.

‘Do I get to hear this from the start?’ Daur asked.

‘A fraudulent pension claim has come to light,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Your partner is involved, but appears to me to be innocent. I am obliged to investigate. Mamzel, who gave you these forms? Who told you to sign them?’

‘I forget.’ She thought for a moment. ‘No… it was Costin.’

‘What did he tell you they were?’

‘They were to do with the accompany bond. There was him, and Captain Meryn. Some other troopers too, I’m sure. I can’t remember who. They were moving through the retinue with the forms. They said it was routine paperwork. This was just before the man started shooting.’

Fazekiel nodded.

Elodie looked at Daur.

‘We’re not married, are we?’ she asked.

Daur blinked. He laughed, and then stopped.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think you’d remember.’

Elodie wasn’t laughing. She got up and walked over to one of the wall lockers. Clumsily, with only one hand working, she opened it, took out the petition forms and held them out to Daur.

‘What does this mean, then?’ she asked. She shook the documents. ‘Petition for Allowance to Marry. What does that mean? Why did you fill them out? If you were going to marry me, why didn’t you ask me? Is it that bitch?’

‘What? Who?’

‘Zhukova! Zhu-fething-kova!’

‘What?’

Fazekiel got to her feet.

‘Captain, I’m going to go now. I have to look into this matter. I will be back with further questions. You clearly need to have a conversation with Mamzel Dutana that I don’t have to be part of.’

On the fifth circuit of the drill course, Felyx Chass slipped and fell on a climbing slope. He was bone-tired, and didn’t want to show it. He wanted to impress the other Guardsmen. He’d always considered himself fit, but the training was punishing.

The Ghosts, even influx troopers, seemed so much fitter and stronger. Even Dalin, who was staying close to keep an eye on him, possessed reserves of stamina that Felyx found alarming. The lasrifle was a dead weight in Felyx’s hands. He felt himself lagging, stumbling on the ascents, fumbling through the crawls.

Then he fell.

‘Probably not used to hard work, eh?’ remarked Didi Gendler, helping Felyx up.

‘I’m all right.’

‘Probably comes as a bit of a shock after the life you’ve known,’ Gendler added. There was a malicious look in his eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ said Felyx.

‘No nice lifeguard to carry you around on her back today?’ asked Gendler.

‘She’s busy.’

‘Get on with it, Gendler,’ said Ludd, coming over. ‘Or I’ll make you run the circuit again.’

‘Just trying to help, sir,’ said Gendler. He ran off, throwing a toxic look back at Felyx.

‘Go rest on the bench,’ Ludd said to Felyx.

‘Why don’t you just shoot me?’ Felyx replied.

‘What?’

‘I’ve got everything to prove, so please don’t make it harder for me. They think I’m nothing. A privileged brat.’

‘They don’t think that,’ said Ludd.

‘Screw them if they do. I’m going to continue, commissar. I don’t want any favours.’

‘I’ll run the course with Chass,’ said Dalin, coming up, lapping Felyx.

‘Just carry on,’ Ludd told him.

‘The colonel-commissar asked me to keep an eye out,’ said Dalin.

‘On you go then, both of you,’ said Ludd.

On the sidelines, watching the last of the shift’s exercise drills, Hark came to a halt beside Kolea.

‘Well, they’re clearly both in love with him,’ said Hark.

‘Who?’ asked Kolea.

‘My boy and yours, Gol. Nahum and Dalin. Look at them trying to outdo each other to become Chass’s new best friend.’

‘They’re not stupid,’ said Kolea. ‘Getting in tight with the commander’s son, that’s a fast track to advancement or decent favour.’

‘The regiment doesn’t work like that,’ said Hark.

Kolea looked at him, and smiled. He patted Hark on the arm.

‘For a smart man, you’re surprisingly naive sometimes, Viktor,’ he said. ‘All regiments work like that, even the best ones. This is the Imperial Guard.’

‘There you are,’ said Luna Fazekiel, walking over to them.

‘Is there a problem?’ asked Hark.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of it yet.’ She handed Hark the folded slips of paper bearing Elodie Dutana’s signature.

‘I wanted to see where you think we should go with this,’ she said.

‘You were going to ask me to marry you, and then you didn’t,’ said Elodie.

‘It’s not quite like that,’ said Daur.

‘Then what are these papers for? This petition?’

‘All right. It is like that. A little like that.’

Elodie took a deep breath.

‘So, it’s Zhukova,’ she said, rather too fast. ‘She turns up, and you rekindle your old romance, and suddenly marrying me doesn’t seem like such a great idea–’

‘Oh, Throne,’ said Daur. ‘Please, listen to me. Zhukova means nothing to me. I knew her years back, in the Hive Defence days on Verghast. She was incredibly young. Incredibly stupid, too. She had a crush on everybody.’

‘Including you?’ Elodie asked.

‘Yes, including me. She likes… ambitious and successful men. Officers. I was in her sights for a while, but it was never reciprocated. It was just interesting to see her again. A reminder of old times, of mutual friends long gone. I was being polite.’

She sniffed.

‘You were really that jealous?’ asked Daur.

‘Yes. I always will be.’

He nodded, half-shrugged.

‘I’m honoured to be the subject of such jealousy,’ he said.

‘What about the petition?’ she asked. ‘Explain that.’

He was silent for a long time.

‘I wanted to ask you to marry me,’ he said at last, quietly. ‘I got the paperwork organised, ready for written permission from Gaunt. Then I realised the timing was bad. You know, because of what it would look like.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Guardsmen who get married on the eve of war, they only do it for one reason.’

‘And what’s that?’ she asked.

‘Because they assume they’re going to die,’ said Daur. ‘They want to make sure their wife has the paperwork to support her claim for a widow’s pension from the Munitorum. They do it so their spouse qualifies for the benefit. They do it because they’re not coming back.’

He looked at her.

‘I want to come back,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t going to.’

Curth didn’t want to use the intership vox, or send a message through channels. It was too impersonal. She went to Gaunt’s quarters and knocked quietly on the hatch.

When he didn’t answer, she let herself in, intending to leave him a private note asking him to come and see her.

Maddalena was just coming out of the bedchamber. She was naked. When she saw Curth, she didn’t grab clothes or anything to cover herself. She grabbed her weapon and aimed it at the doctor.

Curth yelped and leapt backwards, her hands raised.

Gaunt came in, pulling a sheet around his waist.

‘Put that away,’ he said to Maddalena. ‘It’s Doctor Curth.’

Maddalena lowered the weapon, put it aside, and disappeared, naked and long-limbed, into the bedchamber.

‘This is awkward,’ said Gaunt. ‘Sorry.’

‘Yes. I shouldn’t have come in without permission.’

‘I assume it is important, Ana.’

She nodded.

‘Out of curiosity, how long has this been going on–’

She stopped herself.

‘Forget it,’ she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. ‘It’s not my business, and it was inappropriate of me to ask.’

Gaunt looked uncomfortable. The scar across his abdominals was old and pale.

‘You can ask,’ he said. ‘We’ve known each other a long time. It’s been going on since the conjunction. I don’t know what it is. It’s just sex.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Curth, without any warmth.

Gaunt frowned. He looked lost for words.

‘Just a hint,’ she said, ‘from a friend. If I was the girl in the bedchamber, overhearing this conversation, I don’t think I’d be happy to hear it was “just sex”.’

‘If you were the girl in the bedchamber–’ Gaunt began.

‘Yes?’

‘Ana, I–’

‘You know what, Ibram. I always thought I might be the girl in the bedchamber one day. Funny that.’

He took a step towards her. The edge of the sheet snagged on the door frame. She held up a hand and turned away.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Just get dressed and come down to the infirmary, please. I’ll wait for you there. I came to find you because Dorden is dying. He’s going now. There isn’t much time left for him, and I think he needs you to be there.’

She paused.

‘Actually, I’m not sure he does. He seems quite content. But I think you need you to be there.’

Most of the regiment had gone to the dining halls for supper. Shift bells were ringing. She was walking back along a half-empty main spinal when Blenner saw her.

‘Doctor Curth, has Dorden gone?’ Blenner asked, crossing to her in concern.

‘No. Not yet.’

‘But you’re crying.’

‘Tension. It’s a tension valve, commissar.’

‘Dear lady, I told you I know very well when people are lying,’ he said. ‘It comes with the job.’

‘It’s the truth,’ she said.

‘It’s not the whole truth, though.’

She snorted a laugh, wiping her eyes.

‘Dorden’s going to die. There’s nothing I can do about it. He’s part of this regiment’s soul, and he’s been my mentor and friend and everything else besides since I signed up. I don’t know what I’ll do without him, and that’s only just hitting me. I’ve known for months, and it’s only just making horrible sense now. He’s going to leave us and we’re supposed to carry on.’

Blenner nodded. He patted her shoulder.

‘And that, on top of everything else, made me realise that nothing and no one lasts. Nothing lives forever, no matter how much we want it to. No matter how hard we fight. No matter how patiently we wait. I see that now.’

‘You were… waiting for something?’ he asked.

‘And I waited too long. It’s never going to happen. I understand that now.’

She wiped her eyes again and looked up at him.

‘I have to go to the infirmary, to make sure Dorden’s comfortable. I have to wait for Gaunt there, and brief him. Later on, I am going to need to be very seriously cheered up. I intend to get extremely drunk, Commissar Blenner. I believe you’re the sort of person it’s fun to get drunk with.’

‘My reputation precedes me.’

‘I will require sacra. I trust you’ll be able to procure some?’

He nodded.

‘I should warn you,’ he added, ‘I feel it’s only fair. After a drink or two, I sometimes forget myself, Doctor Curth.’

She looked him dead in the eye.

‘It’s Ana,’ she said.

FIFTEEN

THE MARGINALS

Ship bells rang, and then a siren sounded, alerting every soul on board to the imminent translation.

A judder, a shake that rattled the bones of the ship, and they spat free and clear into realspace. New sirens blasted and a synthetic voice repeated the words ‘Hostile zone, war footing’ over the speaker system.

Spika had brought them to the target three days early.

‘We’re decelerating into the Rimworld Marginals,’ Spika told Gaunt and Eadwine. ‘Navigation has confirmed our realspace position and vector. Sixteen hours of deceleration into the gravimetric plane of this junk system, and then another five as we close on the target location. From this point we are running battle-ready and shields lit; this is a vox-silent phase. I suggest you begin final preparation. You should be ready to deploy from three hours out.’

‘I’ll make that five,’ said Gaunt.

Spika nodded.

‘I will issue half hourly notices to that point,’ he said.

‘What does it look like?’ Gaunt asked.

Beside him, the Space Marine chuckled, as if the question was an idle whim.

Spika raised his eyebrows and called out to a deck officer. The realspace shutters covering the massive bridge ports rumbled open, and weak yellow light spilled in. There was nothing to see except a murky brown haze with a small bloom of light in its lower right corner, like a lens flare. White speckles, like grains of salt or flakes of snow, glittered past them, moving sternwards: a dingy emptiness where the frail available light looked like it was coloured with urine.

‘You see?’ asked Eadwine.

‘I see nothing,’ Gaunt replied.

‘My point precisely,’ the Silver Guard rasped, amused.

Spika reached out and adjusted some dials on his console. He barked another instruction or two to the observation and resolution officers at the sculptural cogitator stands below him.

A large, gridded sub-frame extended from the port sill to cover the bulk of the window space. It was made of thick armaglass, and inlaid with hololithic sensors and actuators. The frame was thick with armoured trunking and clusters of small repeater screens and secondary monitors. It lit, igniting a graphic overlay of luminous green across its grid, which quickly began to section and analyse. Bands of colour-coded sensory data spiked up the edges of the main grid and across the repeater screens. Columns of text data played out. Spika fine-tuned his controls, centred the main green crosshairs on the bloom of light, and began to enhance and magnify the area until the hololithic pict image filled the grid and blocked out the real view.

There was a little more detail. Magnified, the white bloom was a tangle of solids, rendered white by the reflected glare of the local star. It was still blurry and fuzzy, but Gaunt could see enough to tell it wasn’t a planetoid. There was no regular geometric form. It was like a knot, and skirts of tangled matter trailed out of it to a great distance, like the broken ring of a gas giant. The ‘snow’ effect was more intense on this image. There was a density of moving white specks, almost like static. The image resembled some pallid, flaking, submerged thing viewed under water that was thick with sediment and microorganisms.

‘That,’ said Spika, ‘is Salvation’s Reach.’

The Space Marine seemed slightly interested.

‘The specks?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Is that interference?’

‘Debris,’ Spika replied, shaking his head. ‘The debris field is exceptionally dense, and will grow denser the closer we get to the target. Our shields will bear a lot of it, but there will be manoeuvring, and that will degrade our approach time.’

‘Making us more vulnerable,’ said Eadwine.

Spika shrugged.

‘We will be visible for longer, yes,’ he agreed, ‘but the debris belt will also disguise us. If I do my job right, we can approach the main location and we’ll appear to be nothing more or less than another lump of tumbling junk.’

‘As we proceed from here,’ said Gaunt, ‘I’ll need eyes on this.’

‘Why?’ asked Eadwine.

‘I have operational command, brother-sergeant. As we progress with this raid, I want to be aware of all the information possible, interior and exterior. If the shipmaster identifies a threat, I don’t want to know about it later on.’

‘You’ll see it for yourself,’ said Eadwine. ‘The strategium will afford you quite enough–’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gaunt, ‘you seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I will be on the bridge during the attack.’

‘Of course,’ said Spika, ‘commanding the operation. I have a place prepared for you. Where else would you be?’

‘I will be leading Beta Strike from the front.’

‘You… you’re going in?’ asked Spika.

Eadwine made a sound that approximated laughter.

‘That has always been my practice,’ said Gaunt. ‘I will not send men in to do something I’m not prepared to do myself.’

‘No wonder Veegum liked you,’ said the Space Marine. ‘There is a spot for you on Alpha Strike at my side.’

‘Appreciated. But you know your business, and I know mine. Major Kolea and Major Baskevyl will lead the regiment with you at Alpha.’

‘And Gamma Strike?’ asked Eadwine.

‘Major Petrushkevskaya and Captain Daur,’ said Gaunt. He turned in his seat and pointed across the upper bridge area to the Tanith trooper waiting beside the main access hatch.

‘That’s my adjutant, Beltayn. I want him in my place here at the strategium, with access to your vox system.’

‘My vox heralds can communicate all data between us,’ said Spika.

‘I have no doubt, but I require you to allow Beltayn’s presence. If he translates an order to you from me, it carries my full authority.’

‘I understand,’ said Spika.

‘You should also have your armsmen stand ready,’ said Gaunt.

Spika frowned.

‘Very well. For a boarding action?’

‘Yes. But also for counter-boarding. We will be opening channels into that target. That means if things go wrong, they can get at us.’

Gaunt rose. The other two got up.

‘Let us prepare,’ said Gaunt.

Spika made the sign of the aquila.

‘The Emperor protects,’ rumbled Eadwine.

Gaunt walked off the bridge, Beltayn coming after him.

‘You’ll set up in there,’ said Gaunt. ‘He’s not the most accommodating person in the Imperium, but I’ve made it clear he has to cooperate. You have access. You relay everything. If he tries to fence you out, let me know and put me on speaker.’

Beltayn nodded.

‘Major Rawne and Major Kolea said to let you know that preparation’s begun, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re arming up, and the assault vehicles are being serviced in the through deck hangars ready for loading. There’s this to approve and sign.’

He handed Gaunt a data-slate.

Gaunt read it as he walked.

‘Well, that’s something to cherish,’ he said, authorising the document with a press of his biometric signet ring.

‘Captain Daur wonders–’ Beltayn began.

‘We’ll make time for it,’ said Gaunt.

‘Commissar Hark wants a word.’

‘I see him,’ said Gaunt.

Hark was waiting for them at the entrance to the spinal hallway.

‘What is it, Viktor?’ Gaunt asked.

‘We’ve uncovered a disgrace,’ said Hark. He had taken Gaunt to his quarters, where Ludd, Fazekiel and Rawne were waiting. It was quiet and private. The room was painstakingly neat and ordered, exactly the preserve one might expect of a man like Viktor Hark.

‘I hesitate to use the word “scam”,’ said Hark, ‘because that really doesn’t adequately express how monstrous this is. It’s an ingenious fraudulent scheme. I’ve no idea how long it’s been running. Possibly since before I joined the regiment. Possibly since the Founding.’

Gaunt read his way across the paperwork that Hark and Fazekiel had spread out across the desk. Some of it was torn, or very old. Several pieces were fresh print-out copies from archive sources. His jaw clenched.

‘We only stumbled across it by accident,’ said Hark. ‘Credit where credit’s due, Luna found it. It’s so insidious, it was nigh-on invisible.’

‘What are we looking at?’ Gaunt asked, still studying the various documents.

‘As far as we can tell,’ said Fazekiel, ‘there are three main areas of fraud, but there is significant overlap. First of all, there are fraudulent claims for widows’ benefit for women that don’t exist.’

‘They are all viduity allowances filled out in the names of dead troopers,’ said Hark.

‘In other words, fictional wives were being created, and paperwork retroactively completed, so that claims could be made on the names of deceased troopers,’ said Fazekiel. ‘But there are also viduity claims being made in the names of real wives and partners who are long dead. Women who died with Tanith, or on Verghast. Finally, there are real women, unmarried, like Elodie Dutana, whose identities are being used as spousal signatories. Better than an invented name, you see?’

‘The individual viduity payments are minimal,’ said Hark. ‘But together, and in such numbers, and over such a length of time…’

He stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose, eyes closed.

‘Someone is generating a significant income stream,’ he said. ‘They are defrauding the Munitorum. It’s quite possible that the Munitorum is already aware of the fraud, but it could take years, or decades, before an investigation catches up with the perpetrators.’

‘That’s probably what they’re counting on,’ said Rawne.

‘Someone is making money out of the regiment’s dead,’ said Hark, ‘from those fallen in combat, and from the civilian casualties. It’s desecration. It’s monstrous. Stealing from corpses. Robbing from graves.’

‘Do we know who’s behind this?’ asked Gaunt. His face was white with rage.

‘We’re not yet sure how the money’s being claimed,’ said Fazekiel, ‘or where the payments are put once they have been. They could be getting washed clean through the regimental accounts somehow. That would require collusion from low-grade Munitorum staffers. They could be getting laundered through gambling dens and the black market during shore leave.’

‘They could be stuffed in a musette bag under a cot,’ said Rawne.

‘We’ve got one name,’ said Hark. ‘Costin.’

‘That little bastard,’ Gaunt murmured.

‘He’s definitely involved,’ said Fazekiel. ‘But Hark and I don’t think he could have done this on his own. We suspect he has co-conspirators. And one of them might be quite senior.’

‘It’d be hard to run this without a friendly officer to sign off the occasional card or petition,’ said Ludd.

‘Years ago,’ said Gaunt, ‘I nearly executed Costin.’

‘Aexe Cardinal,’ Rawne nodded.

‘Drunkard. Idiot,’ Gaunt hissed. ‘He got men killed. Most of Raglon’s platoon. I showed him mercy instead. Damn him.’

‘We have a number of reports of Costin being conspicuously wealthy,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Off duty, he’s always got money for good drink, good food, money to gamble. He gets his hands on better amasec than the senior staff.’

‘He didn’t do this alone,’ said Gaunt. ‘Who does he associate with?’

‘Gendler,’ said Hark.

‘Meryn,’ said Rawne.

‘But we’ve nothing on either of them,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Costin’s the only one with ink on his hands, and even then, it’s circumstantial. We haven’t interviewed. We haven’t interrogated.’

‘No interviews. I want to give the order for punishment execution,’ said Gaunt. Ludd didn’t think he’d ever seen such bitten-back fury in Gaunt before.

‘I don’t want to execute our only lead,’ said Hark, ‘even to make an example of him.’

‘And do we want that kind of example a few hours before a raid?’ asked Fazekiel.

‘He’s not walking away from this,’ said Gaunt. ‘Nobody involved in this is going to escape punishment.’

‘I’m not suggesting they should,’ said Hark, ‘but I think we should make a move after the raid. If we execute Costin, or this comes out, it could destroy morale.’

‘The only reason for keeping that little ghoul alive,’ said Rawne quietly, ‘is to crack him. With your permission, I’ll get the truth out of him.’

Hark and Gaunt exchanged glances.

‘It’s the best way,’ said Rawne, ‘seeing as this was all my idea.’

He glanced up, scornful of the horror on their faces.

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it. But the idea was mine. Years ago, just after we left Tanith behind. I remember getting drunk with Corbec and Larkin one night, joking how we could make a killing from the dead. It became a regular gag, how we could compensate ourselves for having such a fething shit existence by claiming for the lives lost on Tanith. In time, it turned into a standing sick joke, gallows humour. Never thought anyone would be so twisted they’d actually try it. I don’t think anyone even thought I was capable, and that’s saying something.’

Gaunt took his cap off and combed his hair back with his fingers.

‘Do it,’ he told Rawne. ‘Whatever it is you do. I want to know who Costin’s in bed with. Do you want us to look the other way, or would you like our help holding him down?’

Rawne shook his head.

‘I can do it. I can put the fear of the Throne in him, and make him give up his confederates. And you won’t have to look the other way. I’m not even going to touch him. It’ll just take a word in his ear. Well, two words, actually.’

‘I won’t ask what they are,’ said Fazekiel.

Gaunt picked up one of the documents from the table.

‘The only reason I spared Costin on Aexe Cardinal was because Dorden pleaded with me,’ he said.

He showed Rawne the paper.

It was a viduity form filled out to benefit Dorden’s long-dead wife on Tanith.

They were six hours out. Ship bells rang to mark the half-hour. For the last two hours, there had been a regular series of thudding, tapping sounds. Debris from the immense Salvation’s Reach junk belt was growing so thick it was bouncing off the Armaduke’s shields.

The regiment was almost battle-ready. There was a tension in the air like an electrical charge. Gaunt summoned the entire strength to the main excursion deck, and ordered the retinue in too. There was no formal order, no regularised ranks or echelons. The regimental assembly simply stood in a group facing Gaunt. All the Ghosts had stopped their preparation work to attend. Some had only half kit, or their hands were dark with gun grease. The women and children gathered in around the crowded deck. Gaunt saw Tona with Dalin and the little girl. Curth and Kolding arrived from the infirmary with Dorden. The old man, his skin the colour of ash, insisted on walking.

‘You should be resting,’ Gaunt said.

‘What for?’ asked Dorden.

‘I still think–’

Dorden shook his head.

‘Ana has administered a very strong opiate, Ibram,’ he said. ‘I find I can get out of bed and walk about. I’m not going to miss this. In fact, I have no intention of missing anything from now until I’m done.’

‘I could order you to your bed,’ said Gaunt.

‘And I could disobey you,’ replied Dorden. ‘What would you do then? Shoot me?’

Gaunt laughed. Curth and Kolding were both trying not to smile, though Gaunt could tell that Curth was simultaneously riven with sadness.

‘I just want to say–’ Gaunt began.

‘If it’s goodbye,’ said Dorden, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

Some of the ship’s crew, including several senior bridge officers, were attending the assembly too. Gaunt was about to clamber up onto a loading platform to address the crowd when the Space Marines arrived.

There was a hush. The three figures plodded into the hangar and across the deck like ogres, the crowd parting to let them through. The Space Marines had donned specialist armour that had been transferred aboard during the conjunction: ancient, ornate suits of boarding armour, precious relics from the most ancient times. Each suit of plate was decorated in the bearer’s Chapter colours. They were the engraved, polished works of master artificers, worn and gleaming, massively layered and reinforced for defence; Gothic, crested and shivering with purity seals. Each warrior carried a huge boarding shield in the form of a half-aquila. Holofurnace carried a long power spear in the other hand, Eadwine a chainsword. Sar Af’s huge right hand was free for his boltgun.

Their helms had visors like portcullis gates. They took up positions in front of Gaunt. Holofurnace held his spear horizontally at thigh level.

Gaunt nodded to them, and then looked at the body of the regiment. The double-headed psyber eagle shuffled and fluttered on its nearby perch.

Gaunt made a short address, just a few words. It didn’t need much. They were ready. They had been waiting since Jago for a real fight, and now it was upon them.

When he was done, he made way for Zweil. The ayatani led the assembly in a blessing and commendation. Just for once, Zweil was restrained and wandered off topic barely at all.

At the end of Zweil’s blessing, Gaunt nodded to Daur and Elodie, and they came to the front. Gaunt read the petition, and the marriage oath was sworn with the regiment as witnesses.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Gaunt told the couple. He looked up at the assembly again and repeated the words. The regiment cheered and clapped the union.

Gaunt looked at Wilder.

‘Captain? Please?’

The bandsmen weren’t in ceremonial rig. They were dressed in duty uniforms for combat, but they had brought their instruments. At Wilder’s command, they struck up a beloved battle hymn of the Imperium.

Daur and Elodie moved together through the crowd, receiving congratulations. When they came to Captain Zhukova, Elodie said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’ Zhukova asked, genuinely puzzled.

‘Never mind,’ said Daur.

Gaunt found Sar Af talking to Dorden. The old medicae looked especially fragile beside the vast Space Marine in his heavy boarding armour.

‘He is dying,’ Sar Af said to Gaunt, as though this was news and had just come up in the conversation.

‘I know,’ said Gaunt.

‘But he is not afraid,’ said Sar Af.

‘I’m not,’ Dorden said.

The White Scar nodded sagely.

He looked at Gaunt.

‘And they shall know no fear,’ he said.

The band was still playing as the crowd began to disperse. Guardsmen said their farewells to members of the support and retinue, and hurried off to finish their preparations. Captain Daur said goodbye to his new wife with a last kiss. Ezra walked into the open centre of the chamber, held up his arm, and the eagle obediently swooped to perch on his wrist. Carrying it as if he were a falconer, he walked out of the hangar at the heels of the scouts and the Space Marines.

Near one of the exits, in the bustle of the crowd, Rawne put out his hand and drew Costin to one side.

‘How can I help you, sir?’ Costin asked.

‘They know,’ said Rawne.

‘What?’

Rawne nodded across the chamber at Gaunt, who was talking with Hark and Ludd.

‘They know,’ he repeated, his eyes hooded, a wicked smile on his face.

Costin blinked. He started to tremble.

‘What do you mean? What the feth are you talking about? They know what? What do they know?’

Rawne’s grin broadened.

‘They know,’ he repeated.

He turned and walked away, leaving Costin gazing after him, wide-eyed.

SIXTEEN

COUNTDOWN

The currents of realspace and the vagaries of the warp had condensed a vast cloud of material in the gravity pit of the Rimworld Marginals. The few pale suns fluttered like candles in the deep ditch of blackness and shone their thin light upon a prodigious pall of flotsam.

At the place known as Salvation’s Reach, the junk belt was at its thickest: a monumental agglomeration of debris almost two hundred thousand kilometres deep at its thickest. Part of it was planetary debris: rocks, dust and other mineral effluent forming solid masses like gallstones or bezoars. Some of it, however, was artificial in origin.

There was tech. There were machine parts. There were the hulks and shells of space machines: ships, barges, carriers, void habitats, supermassives, like some graveyard of wrecks. Craft lost and foundered down through the ages had washed up at Salvation’s Reach, and there they had gathered, collected, mangled each other and, through the action of decay and gravitic pressure, fused into a great knot of material, accumulating like a metal reef.

Some of it was Imperial. Some of it was not. Some of it was of human or human-derivative manufacture. Some of it was not. Some ancient scraps, the carcasses of lost Imperial vessels, were relics of Terran tech that had not been seen for so long they were no longer recognisable to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Old template patterns, unrecoverably deformed, lurked in the silent residue.

Some of it was so old, so worn, so alien, it was impossible to discern the source or original function.

Mechanicus expeditions had been mounted down the years, along with Inquisitorial probe missions, and countless endeavours of salvage and scavenging.

But the Marginals were unstable, inhospitable and remote, and the secrets cast away there were too demanding to recover.

The Armaduke, adjusting its course by gentle realspace burns, slowly crept into this increasingly crowded environment, heading for the solid, planet-sized nugget at its heart.

During the Beati’s original crusade of liberation across the Sabbat Worlds, the Marginals had been the site of a significant fleet action, a turning point in the fortunes of the Imperium that had put the interests of the Sanguinary Worlds and their Archon into retreat. Legend said that Salvation’s Reach had been the name of the Imperial flagship, a flagship that had stood its ground under astonishing enemy fire and died with all hands, holding the line long enough for the Saint’s victory to be achieved. Legend said that the debris accumulated in the junk belt was the wreckage of that titanic fleet action, the battlefield litter of one of the Rim’s greatest realspace engagements.

Other legends said that Salvation’s Reach was the name of a planet, destroyed during that void fight. Different legends said it was the name of the Archenemy supermassive that had finally been scuppered just minutes before it target-locked the Saint’s cruiser.

In Spika’s opinion, none of the legends were any better than half-truths. The debris field included a great deal of space war junk, but it was the accumulated residue of thousands of fights accidentally clustered here, not the devastation left by one fight at this location. Besides, there were too many tech types, too many species variants. Cogitation analysis showed vast differences in the ages and decay of debris samples. Some pieces of scrap were just a few hundred years old. Some were a few hundred thousand.

Spika took the helm himself. This was rare, but his bridge officers did not question it. The insertion run required a shipmaster’s finesse. It needed to be fast and quiet, but their speed was limited by manoeuvrability in the junk zone. Most of the junk could be dealt with by shields, but some pieces were two or three times the size of the Armaduke and required evasion. Obliterating pathway targets was an emergency option only. Spika did not want to draw attention to their approach by disintegrating a looming junk obstacle with battery fire.

Spika was also letting cold momentum take them in whenever possible. With an expert touch, he was allowing the Armaduke to drift from one corrective burn to the next, almost to the point where the old ship began to slide and tumble. Just one more piece of space machine wreckage, drifting towards the core. It was an artful simulation. If the forces dwelling within the metal core of Salvation’s Reach had external sensors or detector grids, the Armaduke’s approach would not be betrayed by a nonballistic trajectory. Spika kept his propulsion systems simmering, ready to breathe and squirt power at short notice to turn the ship or avoid some spinning mass.

Gaunt’s adjutant, Beltayn, had arrived on the bridge and taken up a station near the shipmaster, with access to the strategium. Spika paid him little attention. He seemed a bright enough man, but he was just another drone, and Spika was sure he’d have difficulty picking him out of a squad in a day or two.

What he did pay attention to was the data that Beltayn had brought and loaded, with the help of the hololithic artificers, into the main strategium display. It was the most recent schematic of Salvation’s Reach extracted by mnemonic probe from the mind of Gaunt’s prisoner. This man, this etogaur, had been probed, interviewed and scanned on a daily basis since his capture.

As it had been explained to Spika, the man was a defector. A triple defector. It wasn’t clear, but it seemed that the etogaur had once been an Imperial Guardsman. He had been captured and turned by the forces of the Archenemy, and drafted, because of his training and expertise, into the Archon’s frightful cadre known as the Blood Pact. Later, for reasons Spika didn’t even want to consider, Mabbon Etogaur had renounced that allegiance and broken his pact, joining the Sons of Sek, another martial fraternity. The Sons, as their name suggested, were a consanguinous echelon sworn to the Magister Anakwanar Sek, the Archon’s principal ally and lieutenant.

He was a troubled soul, clearly, a restless heart. How, Spika wondered, did one man contain so much within one lifetime? Bonded into three different institutions that were ordinarily served unto death. Perhaps the original Imperial conditioning had won out in the end, driving Mabbon back to the Emperor despite everything.

If that were true, it was the most stupendous effort of fortitude and devotion. If it were false, they were heading to their deaths.

Mabbon had come to the Imperial side with vital data. He knew that the intelligence and insight he possessed would be the only things that would keep him alive and prevent summary execution. He had data, and he had the means to interpret that data. Despite the psionic scans and mind probes, he had kept certain things obscure. He was smart enough to know that he had to release the information he carried slowly. His life would become redundant the moment he gave it all up. He protected his mind through the conditioned resolve of someone who has both taken and broken the Bloody Pact, and through a variety of engrammatic codings. Before quitting the service of the Archenemy, he had layered into his mind data concerning the Salvation’s Reach facility using a cerebral encrypter; information that could not simply be stripped out, but could only be recovered by methodical and repeated meditation. Since his capture, he had been slowly remembering and building a picture for his Imperium handlers.

The core of Salvation’s Reach was a hulk habitat of considerable size, converted for use as a weapons development facility and manufactory. This facility had originally been set up by the Magister Heritor Asphodel under the instruction of the then Archon Nadzybar. It was remote and inconspicuous, and allowed for the enhancement and testing of weapon systems, be they systems developed by the mad genius Asphodel, recovered xeno artifacts, or gifts from the demented Chaos Gods.

Nadzybar had fallen on Balhaut. Asphodel had perished by Gaunt’s hand on Verghast. The facility remained, inherited by the anarch, Sek. He was using it to strengthen his hand and develop weapon support for his Sons. It was an arsenal, a stockpile, a laboratory. According to Mabbon, Sek felt he should have taken on the mantle of Archon after Nadzybar. The anarch resented Gaur’s rise to eminence and, though obliged by the martial politics of the Sanguinary Worlds to pact with him, had little respect for Gaur’s command of the campaign since Balhaut. Sek envied Gaur’s authority, and he envied Gaur’s revolutionarily disciplined personal army, the Blood Pact. He press-ganged Blood Pact warriors like Mabbon to help him create his own force, the Sons of Sek, and set out to prove that he deserved the mantle of Archon.

It was a compelling claim. The previous decade had shown Urlock Gaur to be a savage chieftain, capable of extreme brutality, even by the standards of the Ruinous Powers. His Blood Pact was certainly supremely effective.

He was also sloppy, and lacked strategic insight. His blunt and ferocious style of warmaking had lost him as much as he had gained. It had driven him back all the way to the Erinyes Group in a series of catastrophic defeats, and only there had he managed to resist Macaroth’s impetus.

In contrast, the Anarch Sek, a far more ingenious and mercurial tactician, had performed superbly along the Crusade’s second front, securing and holding on to the Cabal Systems in the face of the Imperium’s most determined efforts. It was entirely reasonable to expect that if, by means of facilities such as Salvation’s Reach, Sek could show he was a better leader than Gaur, more able, better served and better equipped, the tribes of the Sanguinary Worlds might oust Gaur and look to Sek to take the crown of the Archon and break the stagnation.

Two consequences were clear. Sek’s ambitions had to be stopped. The anarch was so capable that, if finally granted the supreme authority of Archon, he would make the continued prosecution of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade unviable. The Imperium would be forced to retreat and perhaps suspend operations entirely.

More particularly, what better result could the Imperium hope for than to have the fragile partnership of Archon and anarch fracture, and for Gaur and Sek to turn upon each other?

From time to time, Spika glanced at the slowly rotating schematic of Salvation’s Reach projecting up from the main table of the strategium display. As they approached, actual detector readings over-mapped and refined the plans. So far, Mabbon’s intelligence was remarkably precise.

Spika wondered how precise. What might be missing? What might have changed? Mabbon claimed to have visited the facility three times as part of the Sons force, and his memory engram of the structure had been copied from confidential files in the Palace of the Anarch. Details might have altered since then.

Ranged scanning had already indentified the three surface sites, preselected for the strike points: Alpha, Beta and Gamma.

A further question occurred to the shipmaster. It was actually one that had nagged him for days, and which he had been reluctant to voice.

The mission’s credibility rested upon the belief that Mabbon Etogaur had defected back to the Imperial cause; that after taking a path from which there should have been no return, he had rediscovered his loyalty to the Imperium, and brought to them, as an act of contrition and recompense, the means to cripple and disarm their greatest present foe.

What if his defection had simply been back to the Blood Pact, and he was now manipulating the Imperium into doing Urlock Gaur’s dirty work by taking out his chief rival?

Gaunt buckled on his belt, checked his bolt pistol, and slotted it into the holster. He finished buttoning up his tunic and then started to fasten on his sword belt.

Maddalena came out of the bedchamber. She had dressed in some expensive, lightweight and ornate partial combat armour.

‘You’re not coming along,’ said Gaunt.

‘I know, but if the fight spills this way, I want to be ready.’

She looked at Gaunt’s power sword. It was clamped in its rack on top of the locker, ready to fit into the scabbard: the power sword of Heironymo Sondar, an emblem of Vervunhive and the great Verghast victory against the Ruinous Powers.

‘You should show him that,’ she said.

‘Felyx?’

‘Yes. You should show him that sword. Explain what you did to get it.’

‘He already knows,’ said Gaunt.

‘Of course he does,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for him to hear you tell it.’

Gaunt took down the sword, activated its field briefly, felt the throb of its power, then deactivated it and sheathed it.

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said.

There was a knock at the cabin door. Gaunt had begun to enjoy the way Maddalena’s hand went for a weapon at the slightest cue, hardwired to fight and protect.

‘Get in the bedroom,’ he told her.

She raised her eyebrows.

‘I really don’t think we have time,’ she said.

He laughed, though it felt like too serious a time. She got up and disappeared.

Gol Kolea was waiting at the door, in full kit, weapon slung. His salute let Gaunt know it was an official visit.

‘Regiment battle ready and correct, sir,’ he said. ‘Strike Alpha is assembled on the main excursion deck. Strike Beta awaits you in lateral hold sixteen. Strike Gamma is assembled in lateral hold thirty-nine.’

‘Thank you, major. Time on target?’

‘Estimate is now five hours sixteen, sir.’

‘Have the shipmaster informed we stand ready.’

‘I will.’

‘Anything else to report, Gol?’

Kolea shook his head.

‘The mood’s good,’ he said. ‘I mean, everything considered. All the build-up, the extremity of it. I think the Ghosts have been out of the fight too long. For some, it’s been so long they thought they’d never march again. We need this.’

‘We need to win this,’ said Gaunt.

‘Of course, sir. That’s always true. In the grand scheme of things, we need to win this. But for us, for the regiment, we just need to do it, win or lose. We have to get bloody again or we’ll be good for nothing.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Point taken. I think we’re ready to get bloody.’

Kolea nodded at Gaunt’s power sword.

‘You might let the boy take a look at that sometime.’

Gaunt frowned sharply. Kolea held up his hands peaceably.

‘I know, I know,’ Kolea said. ‘I’m hardly the one to be handing out advice on being an effective father.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Gaunt. ‘Have you been talking to someone?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not the first person to say that to me.’

Kolea shrugged.

‘The Ghosts haven’t taken to the boy yet, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a little strange for them, to be honest. But I think they will. I think they’ll respect him because he’s yours. But I think you need to show them you respect him too.’

Gaunt didn’t reply. He put on his cap and picked up his gloves.

‘I’ll walk down with you and inspect the assemblies,’ he said.

Kolea looked back into the apparently empty cabin and pointed with his chin.

‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye first?’ he asked.

Gaunt was forced into a half-smile.

‘Not much gets past you, does it, Gol?’

Kolea laughed.

‘I’m not disapproving, sir. Not my place. And she’s a handsome woman.’

‘She’ll also be here when I get back,’ said Gaunt. He closed the cabin door behind him and set off along the hallway with Kolea.

‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Kolea. ‘Confidence.’

‘That she’ll still be there?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That you know you’re coming back.’

The sheer scale of the debris mass became clearer as they approached. The Armaduke was just a speck, a speck amongst billions of specks surrounding the vast bolus of material. Salvation’s Reach was a planetoid, a veritable planet, except that its mass was not spherical. It was a colossal lumpen ingot, flattening out to a disk form at its extremities, where gravity had moulded it.

Through the outer scopes and telepicts, Spika resolved surface detail akin to some ork ships he’d encountered. Except it was put together with less precision. He saw a compressed jumble of mechanical material, like machines mangled and intermingled by an industrial compactor. There were canyons and ravines, sharp peaks and plateaux, deep fissures and almost smooth plains of hull fabric. Swimming through the dense swarms of loose junk, the Armaduke found itself slipping through floating slicks of promethium and other liquids and particulates, substances that had seeped out of the main mass and bled into space.

Lateral holds sixteen and thirty-nine were situated about two-thirds of a kilometre apart on the port side of the Armaduke. They both had large armoured outer hatches equipped with atmospheric field generators. Prior to departure from Menazoid Sigma, the hatch surrounds of both hold apertures had been reinforced and built out with vulcanised buffer collars.

Spika initiated the final approach. Apart from orbital drydocks, the Armaduke had never been positioned this close to a larger object. It felt counterintuitive to him, though every system was green. A shiftship was built for the freedom of the open void, not to snuggle in against the outer layers of a megastructure, like a tick on the skin of a grox. Spika had been obliged to cancel and mute all the proximity alarms, and fundamentally adjust the ship’s inertial stability to counteract the gravimetric load. The ship itself seemed to sense that the manoeuvre was wrong. Like Spika, the Armaduke was reluctant, as if it felt it was being deliberately crashed into the surface of a planet. The hull frame creaked and groaned uneasily. Burn corrections became hair’s breadth subtle.

With a dull and protracted rumble, and an eerie screech of scraping hull that shuddered through the ship and seemed to issue from some immense, echoing cavity, the Armaduke settled against the skin of the Reach.

Spika killed the drives and correction thrusters. He activated the magnetic clamps and inertial anchors.

He turned to Beltayn.

‘Inform your commander that the mission may now proceed,’ he said.

In lateral holds sixteen and thirty-nine, artificer crews scrambled towards the outer doors, erecting protective screens and baffles around what would be their workspace. Several of them waited for the indicator lights on the control panels of the atmospheric field generators to show green. In order to assure the results, they anointed the panels and uttered the correct propitiations. Processors hummed and throbbed. Machinery was rolled forwards in front of the hatch gates, and power cables were played out. Servitor crews advanced and stood ready with pressure hoses that fed from the water reservoirs inside the Armaduke’s hullskin, water that was dark and sludgy with ice.

Behind the protective barriers in the main body of each holdspace, assembled with their equipment and weapons, the strike teams sat and waited. Some spoke quietly, some rechecked their kit or specialist equipment, some muttered blessings to themselves or smoked lho-sticks, some caught catnaps.

Some watched the artificers at work. The Ghosts were dubious. This wasn’t their field of specialism. Every now and then, some pained metallic squeal would echo through the ship, a grinding shriek from where the cruiser’s hull rested against the bulk of the scrap-metal world they had docked against. Ghosts jumped, made the sign of the aquila, and looked around for the source of the noise.

Just over twenty long, edgy minutes after the Armaduke snuggled itself in against the Reach, tell-tales flashed green in lateral sixteen and thirty-nine almost simultaneously. Gaunt had just arrived in sixteen, where Strike Beta had assembled. At a nod from the chief artificer, Gaunt took a handset from the waiting vox-officer and called through to Major Pasha in lateral thirty-nine.

‘We have green here,’ she reported.

‘Fields stabilised,’ Gaunt agreed. ‘Give the order to open your hatch.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ Petrushkevskaya replied.

Gaunt looked at the chief artificer.

‘Open,’ he said.

The chief artificer nodded, turned and signalled to the bay gallery, where cargo officers activated the hatch gate controls.

There was a gentle clatter. Gaunt turned, and saw that Strike Beta had risen to its feet, en masse, weapons ready.

He knew full well that an almost identical scene was playing out in lateral thirty-nine.

There was thump, a hiss of compression seal pistons, a whirr of retractor motors, and the hold’s massive outer hatch began to open. Effectively, the hull-side wall of the bay slid to one side.

Light from the hold revealed what was behind it: another wall, blackened and scabbed, worn by age and scoured by the void, lumpy and corroded, fused and blistered. This was the outer skin of the Reach.

Alarm lights flashed on and off, warning that the atmospheric field surrounding the docking buffers was fighting to maintain a seal. There was no danger of explosive decompression into the hard vacuum outside, but Gaunt could feel the sharp breeze of the slow leaks: air rushing out around the inexact seal.

‘Can you stabilise it?’ he asked.

The artificers were already making adjustments to the shape and size of the atmospheric field via the control station. Further prayers of efficacy were offered to the machine spirits. Slowly, the lights stopped winking and the sucking air leaks died away.

Silence. Silence apart from the very distant creak and squeal of metal on metal.

Gaunt walked past the protective screens right up to the face of the Reach’s exposed outer skin. It was ugly, like blackened metal scar tissue, ridged and contorted beside the dank but clean hold structures of the Armaduke.

Gaunt took off his glove, put out his bare hand, and touched the alien metal. It was only just beginning to warm from the ambient heat of the hold’s atmosphere. Gaunt felt an eternity of void cold, the legacy of airless dark. He felt the chill contours of threats and promises.

He looked at the chief artificer.

‘Prepare to cut it,’ he ordered.

The vox-officer was standing by. Gaunt relayed the same order to Major Pasha, and then switched channels to speak to Shipmaster Spika.

‘Bridge.’

‘Shipmaster, please signal Strike Alpha to launch. The order is given.’

‘Understood.’

Launch Artificer Goodchild placed the vox-horn back on its hook, stood up and walked down the metal gangplank into his supervision gallery. The brass control board had been purified and blessed, and the votive seals, threads of inscribed paper attached by wax and red ribbons, had been removed from the lever controls and dials.

Goodchild had only to say one word. His servitors and technicians set to work. Greased pistons began to elevate sections of the deck. Exhaust vents clattered open. The main and secondary lighting systems of the principal excursion deck dimmed to cold blue and yellow hazard lamps began to flash. There was a pressure drop as the main airgates and outer space doors opened, hingeing out and away like the petals of a flower. The atmospheric envelope adjusted accordingly. Field strength peaked. Voices murmured all around him: the augmetic drone of servitors mindlessly pronouncing streams of technical calibration figures, and flight crew adepts monotonously repeating the catechisms of service and duty.

On the main deck below, gangs of ratings, many of them bulk-grown abhuman serfs, hauled away the cable lines and mooring wires, cranking them into the under deck drums. The first six boats on the primary landing were laden and waiting, lift systems running. Through-deck hoists were already lifting the next wave of craft up from the parking hangar. It was unusual for small craft like Arvus lighters and Falco atmospherics to be hoisted or repositioned with personnel on board, but the shipmaster had expressed to Goodchild the importance of rapid launch. Laden with lasmen and assault equipment, the landing craft were being loaded into the launch platform like ammunition into a gun.

The first craft lifted and began to accelerate towards the space doors. It was the heavyweight giant that Goodchild had seen aboard at Tavis Sun, a martial brute in the colours of the Silver Guard. Its pattern designation was Caestus, an assault ram vehicle of ancient Adeptus Astartes design, a machine built for boarding actions. Its rear burners lit hot yellow as it cleared the airgate and then turned wild green as it slipped through the hazy edge of the atmospheric field into hard space.

Behind it came the first of the assault carriers: Arvus-pattern craft, both long and standard body variants, followed by four Falco boats. They launched in pairs, their engines making shriller, thinner sounds compared to the guttural throb of the Caestus. The engine sounds died away as soon as the small ships left the atmospheric field.

The second launch wave was already sliding onto the ramp.

Goodchild walked back to his vox station and lifted the horn.

‘We have launch conditions,’ he reported. ‘Launching in progress.’

Vox mic held ready in his hand, Beltayn watched the shipmaster and the other senior bridge officers gathered around the glowing strategium console. On the hololith, little patches of lights were spitting out of the imaged Armaduke, and whipping away in formation around the seam of the Reach structure. Spika had brought the resolution up, so not all of the Reach was being projected. Beltayn saw the little clusters of fast lights, like neon seeds, zipping across the ragged topography of the Reach’s hull away from the Armaduke, flying very low, hugging the terrain to avoid detection. Beltayn noticed the way Spika was drumming his fingertips on the handrail of the strategium as he watched. There was a slightly sour odour on the bridge, the smell of adrenaline. It wasn’t just the stressed crew: bio-wired into the neurosystems of the ship, the abhumans and serfs were reacting in tension too.

The ship itself was nervous.

‘Strike Alpha eight minutes to target,’ intoned one of the seniors.

Spika nodded. His fingertips drummed.

At the helm of the Caestus, Pilot-servitor Terek-8-10 maintained a steady course. His biomechanical hands rested on the helm controls, though he was operating the heavy machine through the neural impulse linkage of his augmetic plugs. Manual control was for emergencies. The chambers of his hearts thrilled to the output of the engines either side of him. Forward view through the small window port was restricted. He was following a tight course through the broken geography of the target area’s surface plotted by auspex and displayed via hololithic router. The Caestus was leading the assault flight, twisting around slopes of junk, banking over torn pylons, hugging the floors of metal ravines and chasms, even flying under accidentally created bridges and outcrops of shredded machinery.

Rear-projecting auspex showed the troop landers tight on his tail, following his lead. Terek-8-10 was also detecting steady vital readings from the three individuals strapped into the inertial suppression clamps in the armoured compartments of the twin hull booms below and ahead of him.

The vitals were impossibly slow, as though the individuals were so calm they were almost asleep.

Terek-8-10 woke up the weapon servitors and their fragile little sinus rhythms lit up alongside the three slow, heavy pulses.

‘Four minutes,’ the pilot-servitor intoned, each word clean and separate, each word significant.

In lateral sixteen, Gaunt watched the artificers roll the Hades breaching drill into position. Its vast cutting head was just a hair’s breadth from the face of the Reach’s exposed hull. The last few blessings were being made over its systems.

The chief artificer glanced at Gaunt.

Gaunt held up three fingers.

Three minutes remaining.

The Arvus was buffeting hard. Freak electromagnetics plagued the ravines and canyons scoring the metal skin of Salvation’s Reach. It wasn’t the most pleasant ride Gol Kolea had ever known.

The cargo hold of an Arvus lighter offered no visibility and precious little comfort. The bare metal box had been fitted out to afford bench-seating for combat-ready troops and enough room to stow their equipment. They were strapped in along facing rows, backs to the hull, feeling every jolt and shake down their spines. There were no windows, just a half-slit through to the tiny helm compartment. The Arvus was a workhorse, designed for loading and lugging. Comfort and luxury had never been considerations.

Kolea shifted in his seat. He had his lasrifle braced upright between his knees, and the harness of the rebreather mask buckled around his neck. Because of the way the boarding shields had been stowed, there was scarcely any room for his feet.

He was right by the rear drop-hatch, ready to lead the way out. He looked back along the cargo hold. Members of C Company were enduring the ride, most looking straight ahead or down at the deck: Caober and Wersun; Derin; Neith, Starck and the flametrooper Lyse; Bool and Mkan with the .30.

Facing him with his shoulder to the hatch was Rerval, Kolea’s company adjutant.

‘Two minutes,’ said Rerval. ‘We’re almost there.’

‘Yes,’ said Kolea. ‘Things will be so much better once they’re shooting at us.’

The liquid dripping from the readied hoses stank of promethium and rust. The smell reminded Ban Daur of the rain that used to fall across Hass West and the fortress tops of Vervunhive. Dirty rain, soiled by the metal factories and engineering fab plants.

He walked the length of lateral thirty-nine, reviewing the squads of Strike Gamma. The Ghosts were drawn up behind the line of protective barriers. There was edginess. Half of the assembled strength was Verghast, the influx from Major Petrushkevskaya’s company. Despite their common bonds and origins, these troops had not fought alongside the Ghosts before, and they had yet to prove themselves worthy of the name.

He nodded to Vivvo, to Noa Vadim, to Pollo and Nirriam and Vahgner. He stopped to speak to Seena and Arilla with their heavy .30. He paused to exchange a joke with Spetnin, Major Pasha’s number two.

Maggs was waiting with Haller, Raglon and the first-wave shooters, Merrt, Questa and Nessa. The marksmen carried their longlas pieces over their shoulders. The whole group was watching Daur’s adjutant, Mohr, who was kneeling beside his voxcaster, listening.

‘All set?’ Daur asked.

‘Have been for months now,’ replied Haller.

Daur smiled. He’d known Haller a long time. They’d come up through Vervunhive Defence together. Haller undoubtedly recognised the rain-smell of Hass West too. Haller had never had the drive and ability to excel like Daur, but Daur knew how hard Haller had been training in the past few months to secure the leadership of one of Gamma’s clearance teams.

Major Pasha joined them, with Hark. The commissar was setting his cap just right, ready for business. Daur noticed that the heavy leather holster of Hark’s plasma pistol was unbuttoned.

‘One minute,’ said Mohr.

The lighting in the Caestus’s hull boom compartments turned red. Secured in their clamps, Holofurnace, Sar Af and Eadwine barely acknowledged the notification.

But steel-cased fists locked around the grips of weapons.

Pilot-servitor Terek-8-10 checked his pict-screens. The final few seconds of data were streaming in, with actual real-time auspex scans and detection results superceding the predicted data and less accurate distance scans.

The Primary Ingress Target had, after detailed analysis, been designated prior to launch. It was a location that appeared on the distant resolutions to be a major airgate or docking hatch, one of the main entries to the Salvation’s Reach facility. Now, as they were closing, the systems were showing the hatch to be a largely defunct ruin, part of the junked architecture. Thermal and energetic traces were showing a smaller airgate structure, still large enough for bulk cargo handling, to be the most recently and regularly used. This second gate was down and to the left of what the plan insisted should be the Primary Ingress Target. Density penetration scans showed the Primary to be both reinforced and back-filled with rubble and debris.

Terek-8-10 didn’t make a conscious decision. The pilot-servitor processed the revised data and adjusted his mission profile for optimum effect. A deft manual adjustment, sixteen seconds from contact, steered the Caestus down and to the left. The secondary airgate locked up as the newly selected target, fixed in the crosshairs dead centre of the data-plates and monitors. It looked like a cliff-face, a cliff-face made of dark, stained and pitted metal.

Terek-8-10 triggered the afterburners.

The short-fire rocket burners lit, and the Caestus lurched as though it had been kicked from behind by a giant. Eight seconds from the cliff-face, the missile batteries mounted on the Caestus’s wings unloaded their blistering shoals of micro-missiles. At the same time, the magna-melta cannon mounted between the ram booms discharged.

The radiant blast of the heat cannon puckered and warped the metal cliff face. The airgate hatch structure bubbled and liquefied, spurting a geyser of white-hot blobs into the void like silt disturbed from the bed of a pond. The epicentre of the hit was left as an oozing sore of white hot metal, a glowing crater that almost penetrated the reinforced hull skin.

Less than a second later, the spread of Firefury micro-warheads impacted, a saturation strike that annihilated the already compromised fabric of the airgate.

There was a light flash, which strobed ultra-rapidly with the multiple detonations, and the gate shredded: first blown in, and then instantly ejected as the pressurised bay behind it abruptly decompressed. In the last few seconds, the Caestus found itself flying into a swirling and exhaling fireball and a storm of debris that hailed off its prow shields and armoured hull, nicking and gouging and scraping. Terek-8-10 held the course firm, despite the monumental turbulence. Both visually blinded and scanner-blanked by the blast’s extreme energy flare, Terek-8-10 fired the heat cannon twice more anyway, lancing devastating energy into the open wound of the blown-out docking bay.

The last seconds ran out. Their flight time was used up, with less than a single second of variation between predicted passage duration and actual elapsed time.

The Caestus was inside Salvation’s Reach.

It punched through the expanding fireball, burning into the hold-space at maximum velocity. The docking bay area was of considerable size. The explosive decompression had thrown it into utter disarray. Half-glimpsed dock servitors, loading vehicles, cargo crates, even cartwheeling personnel, came spinning at them, carried by the riptide of escaping air. Some of them were on fire. A small lighter craft tumbled at them, snagged off a crane gantry, inverted, and met the starboard boom of the charging Caestus. The ram tore it in two, and it shredded back and away over the ram’s drive section. The mangled boat bounced and rebounded off the dock ceiling, wing pieces and engine blocks disintegrating and scattering.

Terek-8-10’s blind cannon blasts had gouged the interior of the bay, turning another two moored shuttles to molten slag. Two or three of the micro-warheads had also gone into the hangar, unimpeded by any obstacles. They detonated deep inside as they finally met solid objects. The Caestus tore through the gantry frame of a cargo loader, folding the girders and scaffolded structure around itself like a garland. The dragged framework ripped two small landers from their ceiling rack moorings.

The Caestus had almost run out of space. The far end of the docking bay was another gate hatch. Automatically triggered, blast-proof door skins were closing across the scored and grubby hatch.

Terek-8-10 fired the cannon, roasting a spear of energy out in front of the Caestus. The afterburners had finished their jolt, but the pilot-servitor fired them again, using reserve fuel, grabbing a last little bit of force and momentum.

The inner doors did not explode. They buckled under the melta-fire, forming pustules and scabs of molten chrome that spalled flakes of metal like dead skin. Still trailing shreds of twisted girderwork behind it like streamers, the Caestus hit the inner doors.

Now they exploded.

The impact stove the doors in. It folded one horizontally and punched it clean out of the hatch frame. The other, weakened more extensively than the first by the melta damage, ruptured like wet paper or damaged tissue, spattering the Caestus with superheated liquid metal.

The Caestus came through the doors into the secondary dock, bringing most of them with it. It had lost a considerable amount of momentum. Part of its port wing had been stripped away by the collision. Stability was impaired. Further explosive decompression caused gale-force cross-winds to wrestle with the heavy craft. The prow shields that had protected it thus far had finally burned out and failed.

It was more projectile than vehicle. It bore on, demolishing, one after another, three lighter shuttles that were suspended side by side above the dock floor on mooring clamps. Terek-8-10 saw sensor displays that told him the Reach’s vast atmospheric processors were running at hyperactive levels as they attempted to compensate for the catastrophic pressure loss. Field generators were fighting to establish a cordon against hard space and seal the deep, gaping wound in the Reach’s environmental integrity.

That was good. The Archenemy was too concerned about retaining its environment to consider the consequences. Atmospheric stability meant the Imperial Guard components following the Caestus in would be able to deploy directly.

The Caestus was almost out of room in the secondary bay. Terek-8-10 fired the magna-melta again and softened the end of the compartment enough to stab the ram-ship through it. The boom arms punched through hull plate, rock infill and inner skin compartment lining. This time, it left most of its other wing behind. Clipped and injured, ceramite armour blackened with firewash and molten metal, it tore through into the next chamber, an engineering depot. Almost all of its effective momentum had been robbed away.

Terek-8-10 stabilised the shuddering craft, slamming it sideways into the casing of a bulk processor as he fought it to a halt. He pulled the lever that dropped the boarding ramps.

‘For the Emperor,’ he howled in an amplified augmetic monotone. ‘Kill them!’

Tell-tale lights on his main console showed him that, down in the transport compartment, three inertial suppression clamps had been released.

SEVENTEEN

BOARDING ACTION

‘They’re in,’ said Beltayn, over the vox. ‘Contact reported.’

‘Begin cutting!’ Gaunt ordered. The artificers nearby had been poised for the order. The blessed engine of the ugly Hades breaching drill thundered into life, and the oily beast, like some giant promethean beetle from the lightless depths beneath some world’s rocky crust, was coaxed forwards. Its heavy tracks clattered on the deck plates of lateral sixteen.

The Hades was a siege engine, a boring drill designed for sapping and trench warfare. Gaunt had seen the engineers of Krieg deploying such devices to great effect when he was still a cadet. Cutting through what amounted to the hull of a starship was not a conventional use, but it was the quickest and most expedient way in that the tactical planners had been able to devise. The Hades’s huge cutting head, a four-part breaching instrument of interlocked, diamantine-tipped rotary power cutters, was mounted on the front of the tank chassis and adjusted by a powerful frame of piston drivers. The power cutters bit from the outside in, so that shredded material passed into the maw between the cutters, down a conveyer belt that ran through the middle of the machine like a digestive tract, and was ejected as spoil through the rear. Seen front-on, the Hades resembled the grotesque concentric mouthparts of some deep sea sucker fish, with rows of teeth surrounding a funnel throat. Deep in that throat, above the belt, was a melta-cutter positioned to weaken and blast the target solids into consumable slag.

The chassis snorted black exhaust fumes. The cutter bits were spinning at maximum cycle. The operator triggered the melta-array and fired several searing blasts into the skin of the Reach.

The skin began to buckle and deform, filling the hold space with a stink of pitch and scorched metal. Then the whizzing teeth bit in.

The noise was painfully loud. It was the shrill scream of a high-speed drill, but mixed with the deep throb and roar of bulk industrial machinery. The heat blasts had softened the hull skin enough for the grinding, rending drill heads to find purchase. Hull metal wailed as it was abraded away. Fine scrap began to tumble out of the belt ejector, shavings polished almost silver by the rotary teeth. Fine dust and smoke rose off the power cutters, which were already super-heating from friction. The crew members standing by unlocked their pressure hoses and began to spray the advancing head with jets of dank water. The Hades operator still applied ferocious heat using the melta, because it was essential for the hull fabric to be soft enough for the teeth to bite. But it was also essential to keep the power cutters cool enough not to fuse and, more importantly, damp down and emulsify the clouds of micro-fine, ultra-sharp spalling that was coming off the cut in clouds like dust. If that got into eyes or throats, if that was inhaled into lungs, it would kill a man through catastrophic micro-laceration. The cooked mineral stink was bad enough. Occasionally, a flaw or imperfection in the hull fabric caused a large shard of debris to splinter off and be flung out by the spinning teeth. These pieces pinged and cracked off the protective screens and baffles. Gaunt knew what the Ghosts behind him were thinking. It sounded exactly like small-arms fire spanking off trench boarding.

One of the operators was struck by a piece of flying debris. It knocked him off his feet, but he got back up again, bruised and shaken. A few seconds later, another operator was hit by a sharpened sliver that went clean through his body armour and into his torso above the right hip. Colleagues pulled him clear, but he was already bleeding out by the time they got him to the hold doorway where the medicae teams were waiting.

‘How thick?’ Gaunt yelled over the howl of the drill.

‘Density scans show just over three metres,’ replied the chief artificer.

‘Time?’

‘Unless the composition changes, eighteen minutes.’

‘How long?’ asked Daur, shouting over the scream of the Hades in lateral thirty-nine.

‘Twenty-eight minutes,’ replied the head of the artificer crew.

‘Strike Beta reports a significantly lower estimate than that,’ said Major Pasha.

The artificer’s face was half-hidden by a grimy protective mask.

‘The alloy composite in this location is appreciably harder,’ he explained. ‘I have compared assay reports from the lateral sixteen cut. There is nine per cent more duracite in this location.’

Major Pasha looked at Daur.

‘We’ll be through when we’re through,’ she said over the noise of the cutting. He nodded glumly.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

‘Alpha,’ said Daur.

They emerged from the Caestus into a wracked, unstable atmosphere with flames leaping around them. Several huge fires blazed through the core of the engineering depot, and sections of the roof were collapsing because of the entry wound made by the boarding ram. Some form of fuel oil had spilled from a punctured tank and covered the deck. It was alight, like a field of bright corn: yellow flames, and their reflection in the black mirror of the oil.

Eadwine, Holofurnace and Sar Af strode through the fire, heedless. Their antique, crested helms made them seem especially tall; their ornate and bulky armour gave them an even more unnatural bulk. Flame light glittered off their gilded pectoral eagles and their barred faceplates, and sparkled off their massive half-aquila boarding shields. All three had their boltguns in their right fists, drawn up to rest on the right-angled corners of their shields.

They began to fire as they advanced, gaining speed, moving from a stride to a bounding jog. Bolt rounds banged out, destroying sensors, auto-defence units, potential items of cover. Spent shell cases tumbled in the air.

Behind them, the Caestus was disgorging the rest of its cargo, the weapon servitors. Two were tracked units with multi-laser mounts, the other four were perambulatory units, burnished silver and chrome in the colours of Eadwine’s Chapter. They had faces of etched silver, wrought in the shapes of skulls, or at least the skulls of angelic beings. Their upper limbs were weapons mounts: autocannons, heavy bolters, rocket launchers. They came through the lakes of fire as obliviously as the Space Marines, advancing like reaping machines through tall crops, blasting as they came. Energy beams seared down the length of the depot space, and bright tracer shots stitched the air. Terek-8-10’s directive scans had already identified the three access points at the far end of the chamber and fed them to the Space Marines via their visor displays.

‘No human bio-traces in active opposition,’ Terek-8-10 reported over the vox link. ‘Several hundred detected trying to flee the chamber. Several dozen more detected beneath debris or rubble, fading.’

Almost immediately, as though the pilot-servitor’s report had been tempting fate, the boarding force started to take fire. It rained down from a steep angle, bursting off boarding shields and the polished chromework of the gun-servitors. Sar Af took one kinetic blow across the side of his helm from a glancing shot that was hard enough to make him grunt.

Terek-8-10 was dismayed.

‘Auspex does not read human bio-traces in opposition,’ he declared.

‘It does not have to be human to want us dead,’ replied Eadwine.

He brought his shield up like a pavise, and fended off the rain of barbs. The other Space Marines did the same.

Sar Af noted the context of the impacts, the shrapnel marks and cuts, analysing instantly.

‘Flechette rounds,’ he said.

They sourced the origination, post-human eyes hunting the dark for muzzle flash, up in the chamber roof, up the dense framework of machinery and gantries.

Movement.

‘Loxatl,’ Eadwine reported. He had clearly glimpsed one of the long, sinuous xenos reptiles. The other Space Marines didn’t reply. They were too busy trying to kill the creatures.

Terek-8-10 adjusted the parameters of his auspex scan to include the xenobiological element.

‘Holy Throne of Terra,’ he breathed.

The loxatl were pouring into the depot chamber via the ceiling vents, squirming down the girder work and vertical struts using their four grasping limbs and their tails, firing the murderous flechette blasters strapped to their bellies.

The auspex already showed sixty-eight of them, and the number was increasing with every passing second.

The assault ships of Strike Alpha followed the Caestus’s headlong rampage into the heart of the Reach. The outer hatch of the reassigned Primary Target had been disintegrated entirely. The Arvus and Falco craft had to close up and enter one or two at a time to avoid the jagged tatters of metal framing the mouth of the eviscerated docking bay.

Decompression had stopped, so the air was free of flying debris. Generator fields had been re-established to seal the bay entrance, and each troop ship juddered as it popped the field edge and entered the contained atmosphere from hard space.

‘Stand by!’ the lead pilot sang out.

The main docking bay was a disaster area. It looked as though a flash flood had sucked through it, washing debris to the mouth in a deep sediment of jetsam. That debris included whole landing ships and shuttle craft. The flash flood had been followed by a fire storm that had left most of the space ablaze.

There was no way to set down.

The Arvus pilots were following the tracer signal from the Caestus. It had punched through into the next chamber.

‘Throne, are we there yet?’ groaned Rerval.

The inner dock was little better. The landers dropped speed again, circling towards the back of the chamber. The Caestus had smashed through into yet a third chamber, but this breach was too small and treacherously sharp for the thin-skinned lighters to risk navigating.

‘Setting down!’ the pilot yelled over the comm.

The first Arvus dropped on its thrust-fans, wing profile adjusting for landing. It landed with a bruising thump on the buckled, debris-littered decking.

The rear hatch dropped. Kolea, his rebreather up over his face, led the first squad out. He carried his lasrifle and a tall oblong boarding shield that looked like the lid of a coffin.

It took him a moment to get his bearings. It had been dark and cramped in the back of the utility lifter. Now it was bright, glaringly bright, and the space around them was vast, a primary scale docking facility. The air was almost freezing cold, but the heat from the various monumental fires scorched his skin. Machines and cargo-handling rigs destroyed by the Caestus’s raid lay in their wake. Other ships were coming in through the smoke-wash and setting down behind Kolea’s lander.

Rerval called out and indicated the source of the Caestus’s tracer signal. Up ahead of them, there was another puncture in the wall, like a giant bullet hole, where the Caestus had gone through into the next compartment. Kolea ran forwards. Underfoot were burning scraps, lumps of debris and splattered organics from the dock personnel mushed by the pressure shock of the Caestus’s strike.

The puncture was big, but the lower lip was four metres off the deck level, and the edges were still glowing red hot. Getting through was going to be entertaining. Kolea looked for a hatch they could force – a blast door, an airgate…

No time. Nothing in sight.

‘Storm it!’ he yelled. ‘Grab some debris for scaling ladders. Move your arses. Living forever is not an option today!’

His squad broke away and gathered up sections of fallen gantry, dragging it over to the puncture. More sections were catching up with them, deposited by the next few landers. Baskevyl was among them. Kolea saw the concern in his eyes through the lenses of his breather mask.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Baskevyl said.

‘The breach?’

‘Screw that, the landing. There’s no space!’

Kolea assessed the options. There were now six lighters on the deck, and space for perhaps three more. The Falcos and longbodies coming in behind would soon be stacking up with no room to land.

‘We have to get the empties up and away,’ Kolea yelled to Baskevyl.

‘Agreed!’

‘Get the message through to the pilots,’ Kolea ordered. ‘They have to make room on the ground once they’ve discharged their complements, and the incomers have to make room in the air to let the outgoing pass through the dock area and get clear.’

‘We can’t keep them on station,’ said Baskevyl.

‘No, we can’t,’ Kolea agreed. ‘Good thing we plan on staying here, huh?’

Baskevyl headed back towards the landing zone. Kolea joined his assault squad at the puncture. Under the supervision of Derin and Caober, sections of smouldering metal wreckage had been dragged up to the wall and hoisted to form makeshift scaling ramps into the puncture.

‘Is it safe?’ asked Kolea.

Derin just laughed.

‘I know,’ replied Kolea. ‘Stupid question.’ He lifted his boarding shield and clambered onto the tubular frame, going up hand and foot. As assault commander, he wasn’t about to let anyone else show him how it was done.

‘Come on!’ he yelled at the men behind him. Most of them seemed particularly keen to help hold the debris steady.

‘You heard the major,’ Commissar Fazekiel yelled, arriving at a run from her transport. ‘Get up that ramp!’

The Ghosts began to swarm up the girders behind Kolea.

Kolea reached the summit, and gazed through the massive tear in the compartment wall. He could see the fires burning in the depot space beyond, feel the backwash heat. He could see the Space Marines across the vast floor. He could see what they were blasting at.

‘Oh, holy gak,’ he said.

‘They’re fething well waving them off!’ Costin exclaimed, his voice sounding dull and stupid inside his rebreather. ‘Look at them. Baskevyl’s just waving them off!’

Meryn looked. He saw what Costin was talking about. E Company had just begun to deploy from their Falcos, and the landing zone was packed about as tightly as anyone would ever want. He could see Major Baskevyl and some of the other company officers signalling empty landers to lift off and clear the debris-strewn deck to make room for more.

That meant if they needed to pull out in a hurry, there wouldn’t be enough transports waiting.

‘Gak, that’s just great,’ snapped Gendler.

‘I know! Fething marvellous, right?’ Costin agreed.

Gendler didn’t reply. Meryn pretended to be too busy shouting at some laggards to get down the ramp.

The truth was, Costin wasn’t their best friend right then and there. Just before load up and launch, he’d come to them, shit-scared about something Rawne had said. The pathetic idiot had just dumped it on them, right in the middle of the pre-combat build up and the stress that brought with it. Costin was a liability. He couldn’t handle a thing, least of all his drink any more. He was paranoid and raving. Best guess was Rawne had somehow sniffed out a trace of the sweet little deal they had been running. If that was true, then it sucked like a chest wound. It didn’t suck quite as much as the assault run they were now in the middle of, but in the long term – provided there was going to be a long term – it could potentially suck even worse. If ‘they’ did know, things could turn very ugly for Meryn and his close confederates.

As ugly as Costin’s face.

What had he done? What had the drunken shithead managed to do? How had he given them away? Loose talk over some sacra? Some dumb slip?

Whatever it was, Meryn was sure of one thing. ‘They’ had Costin. Rawne wouldn’t have gone to Costin if he hadn’t known for sure Costin was in it. Otherwise, it was probably a fishing trip. Costin was probably all they had, because only Costin was stupid enough to give himself away, and even then he wasn’t stupid enough to blow the whole thing.

Rawne was baiting. Rawne was counting on Costin being so panicked he’d do anything he could to save his neck.

And he would. Costin always would.

So if they made it out of the Reach alive, Meryn had some serious damage-control to manage.

The rain of fire from the xenos became torrential. Flechette rounds detonated all around the advancing Space Marines in razorbursts. Eadwine felt ultra-sharp splinters slice off his armour. One actually punctured the ceramite. He felt it dig into the meat of his thigh. The sheer shot rate and penetrative effect of the loxatl blasters would finish them. Even three of the Adeptus Astartes would be brought to their knees, and then their deaths, by such a deluge.

His shield was still up. Sighting down his boltgun, he began to blast up into the roof space, blowing out rigs and gantries. Debris rained down. He saw one writhing reptile body tumble and burst on the deck. Scans now showed close to one hundred and eighty loxatl flooding down into the chamber. Some were racing down the chamber walls to attack from the ground. Eadwine directed the fields of fire of the weapon servitors as they pushed forwards in the face of the onslaught.

A large adult loxatl launched itself off an overhead gantry and dropped onto Holofurnace, dewclaws extended to slash. Holofurnace caught the animal on his shield and smashed it aside. It bounced off the deck, rolling, its blaster harness torn so that flechette ammunition scattered loose. Switching around, Sar Af put a single bolt through the loxatl’s skull before it could rise. Its brain matter splattered across the deck, and its massive, blue-grey trunk and tail went into muscle spasms.

Another leapt. Sar Af blew it in half in the air. A third came down. Holofurnace had clamped his boltgun and drawn his spear off his back. He threw himself forwards to meet the close combat attack, decapitating the third loxatl with his circling spear blade.

‘Ithaka!’ the Iron Snake yelled.

The next loxatl to come at him lost its front limbs at the elbow joints in one fluid slice. The one after that died from an impaling wound. The next, which attacked as Holofurnace was ripping his spear out of his previous kill, had its back broken by a backhand smash of the Iron Snake’s boarding shield.

It was something, but it was only a start. Auspex now showed two hundred and seventy-one xenos contacts in the chamber. There were so many coming down the roof pylons they were pushing the front runners off the hand holds, forcing them to drop, claws out, onto the Space Marines. Sar Af slugged them out of the air with bolt rounds, blowing open skulls and ribcages, severing whip tails, showering the fight zone with meat and viscera. Then two flechette rounds hit his right shoulder guard almost simultaneously and drove him down onto one knee.

Terek-8-10 raised the Caestus into the air behind them, ramps still gaping open. He got the damaged craft up to about eight metres, and swung it in over the heads of the advancing Space Marines. The armoured bulk of the Caestus formed a hefty shield, soaking up the majority of the blaster fire that had been raking the Space Marines and their servitors. In its shadow, Eadwine saw that the deck plates were peppered and grazed by the flechette fire to such an extent they resembled a lunar surface. The deck was also littered with bloody xenos meat and slimy, plum-coloured organs.

Flechette fire raked the Caestus. Loxatl dropped on to it, leaping down onto the hull booms, gripping onto the ragged wings. Some fell. Others clung on. They swarmed over the upper surface. Terek-8-10 retracted the open ramps, but several of them had already slithered inside, like lizards skipping across a rock in the sun. He could hear them skittering and chirring inside the vacated compartments. He could smell the stink of rancid milk and crushed mint that oozed from their flesh and breath. Another animal scrambled up the hull fairing right in front of him, and started firing its blaster point blank at the little armoured window port in front of the pilot’s position. After eight frenetic shots, the armoured glass actually began to craze.

Terek-8-10 switched to manual control and began to swing the Caestus around. The increase in thrust sucked air into the atmospheric intakes, and the loxatl on the fairing was dislodged. It ripped past him, claws squealing on the metal, shrieking an inhuman scream as its tail and one hind leg vanished into the intake.

Terek-8-10 could hear the loxatls already aboard breaking through the compartment hatches under his position. The sickening stink of bad milk grew stronger. He adjusted the ram altitude again, tilting it more steeply, trying to train the magna-melta on the gantries overhead.

He got a decent angle.

‘Cover yourselves,’ he voxed.

Below the ram, the Space Marines backed off, shields raised.

Terek-8-10 had enough power in the heat cannon for three more decent shots. He fired. Part of the overhead girderwork exploded, and droplets of molten metal rained down. The melta blast torched loxatl into blackened, shrivelled shreds that roasted off the gantries like scraps of burning paper.

He fired again. A huge section of the roof gantry, on fire and covered with burning loxatl, fell away, and glanced off the ram on its way to the chamber floor.

The creatures on board were in, right below him. They had torn open the compartment hatches. They fired up into the roof of the stowage bay and razor shrapnel from the flechette rounds burst through the floor of the pilot’s position, shredding Terek-8-10’s legs and groin. He felt the ice-pain of tiny hypervelocity metal shards travelling up through his torso, bursting organs, severing augmetics, and liquidising blood vessels. He felt them in the sacs of his hearts. He felt his lungs collapsing. Blood filled his throat. The loxatl underneath his position, chattering and squealing, kept shooting, blasting shot after shot up into the pilot’s position.

With his last double heartbeat, the pilot-servitor triggered the afterburners.

Kolea’s eyes opened wide. It was one of those sights he would never forget. He’d seen some things in his life as a Guardsman, seen some things before that too. This was a new brand on his memory.

He saw the Space Marines’ boarding ram, the Caestus, damaged and blackened, crawling with loxatl. He saw it tilt, nose up, pointing at the tangled, complex ceiling structure of the depot chamber, a structure that was dripping with xenos. The loxatl were spilling out of the roof space like maggots out of bad meat.

Kolea was at the top of the makeshift scaling ladder, poised on the lip of the puncture hole. His men were behind him, yelling at him to go on, jump down, make way for them. He had to stick out his hand to steady himself. The ragged metal lip of the hole was hot.

‘What can you see?’ Rerval was yelling, from the girder behind him. ‘Major, what can you see?’

He could see the tilted Caestus, engines pulsing, a writhing mass of loxatl across its upper hull, some falling off, tails lashing. He could see the Space Marines and their weapon servitors on the floor of the chamber below, blasting at the grey reptiles as they rushed in from all sides.

He could smell rancid milk and crushed mint.

‘Major?’

Kolea watched as the Caestus shuddered. It fired up at the ceiling vault, bringing down huge chunks of machinery in showers of flame and sparks. Burning loxatl dropped like comets. It fired again. A massive pylon cylinder broke free of its ceiling mount and came crashing down, strung with fracturing gantries and doomed loxatl. The huge structure, streaming smoke and flames, barely missed the Caestus as it fell. It hit the chamber floor so hard that Kolea felt the shockwave shake the girders he was standing on. It almost crushed one of the Space Marines, the towering Silver Guard Eadwine.

Eadwine hurled himself full length to avoid the impact. He landed in the midst of recoiling loxatl, and immediately had to kill them to protect himself. The pylon cylinder toppled after the impact, and fell on its side with a second crash that kicked up sparks and a blizzard of burning scraps. It rolled, burning.

The Caestus was almost overwhelmed. Its afterburners lit. The rockets roared with scorching white heat. Laden with loxatl, the ram accelerated up into the roof.

That’s when the real shockwave came. Kolea felt it in his lungs. He felt it punch his ribcage. He felt it hammer the deck and the compartment walls. He felt it knock his legs away.

The Caestus tore into the vault, triggering a vast fireball that ripped through the ceiling structures, destroying them. Macerated, burning loxatl were hurled in every direction. The expanding fireball, a rolling wave, lapped out across the ceiling of the vault and down the walls. Falling, Kolea felt the heat of it.

Wrecked but essentially still in one piece, the Caestus fell back out of the roof, bringing the ceiling down with it. Energy crackled and sparked like lightning around one of its twisted engine sections. A ramp door tumbled off. The air was full of flames.

The collapsing wreckage hit the chamber floor with a numbing crash.

Kolea hit the floor too. The blast had smacked him off the girder into the depot chamber. He jumped up, dazed, gazing at the devastation ahead of him.

‘Major. Major Kolea. Respond!’ Rerval was yelling over the link.

‘Get in here!’ Kolea yelled back. ‘C Company get in here. Now!’

He raised his weapon and ran forwards. Behind him, Ghosts were leaping in from the rim of the puncture.

Eadwine got up, throwing wreckage aside. A loxatl reared up at him, and he killed it with a headshot.

‘Status!’ he demanded over his helmet link.

‘Alive!’ the voice of Sar Af snapped back, a vox crackle.

Holofurnace didn’t answer, but Eadwine knew that was because the Iron Snake always had something better to do. Eadwine could see him, thirty metres away across the piled and burning rubble, fighting at close quarters with a dozen of the surviving loxatl. Holofurnace’s spear circled and stabbed, killing them one by one, leaving arcs of xenos blood in the air behind it.

According to Eadwine’s visor display, they had lost one of the gun servitors, crushed under the fall. Regrettable, but an acceptable loss. He activated his helmet’s vox-record.

‘Note for posterity,’ he said, turning to despatch another pair of lunging reptiles. ‘The selfless sacrifice and attention to duty of–’

Eadwine paused, shooting out the spine of a leaping loxatl. He couldn’t remember which ancient pilot servitor had been assigned to the Caestus for the mission. It would be on file. He would amend the citation later.

Eadwine clambered forwards. Two flechette rounds punched his shield. He turned and fired a bolt round that detonated a xenos head.

Ahead of him, beyond the strewn wreckage, he saw that the White Scar had made it to the far exit of the depot chamber. Cunning and shrewd, Sar Af was always moving, always looking for a path.

There were loxatl all around the old bastard.

Eadwine ran a couple of steps, and leapt off a pile of steaming scrap metal. Despite the added weight of his revered boarding armour, the bound cleared a significant distance. He landed, leaping again, and came down a short distance behind Sar Af.

As he made this second landing, Eadwine cleared three targets with killshots. Sar Af turned, smacked a loxatl aside with his shield, and stamped on its neck to kill it.

‘You moved ahead,’ said Eadwine. ‘We cannot cover each other if we are too widely spaced.’

‘There are matters to attend to,’ Sar Af relied. ‘They will not wait.’

‘They will wait forever if you are dead,’ replied Eadwine. ‘The creatures defending this site are reacting with surprising speed to our attack.’

‘If your throat is cut,’ said Sar Af, ‘it does not matter how fast you react. We must get on and cut the throat.’

Sometimes, there was no arguing with brothers of the Fifth. Holofurnace, still locked in close combat behind them, seemed determined to methodically kill every single Archenemy in Salvation’s Reach one by one. The White Scar, however, appeared quite content to leave them all standing provided he could cut ahead and decapitate their command structure.

Both were respectable combat ethics. They were entirely incompatible. That was why Eadwine had charge of the mission.

‘We move ahead,’ he said. ‘We stay together.’

Sar Af nodded.

Eadwine activated his helmet link.

‘Strike Alpha lead to Guard formation. Are you deployed?’

‘Confirm, lead.’

‘Who speaks?’

‘Major Kolea, Tanith First.’

‘Where are you, Kolea?’

‘Scaling the breach now, advancing into the depot compartment.’

‘You need to close the gap. We are pressing forwards. Be advised, a high density of loxatl mercenaries are present. Are you familiar with loxatl, major?’

‘Yes, lead. We’re just a few minutes behind you and progressing rapidly.’

‘Very good. Lead out.’

Eadwine and Sar Af turned to the hatchway. The White Scar had just finished two more loxatl. Alien blood spattered his pearl-white plate.

Charges took out the hatch. In a fog of blue smoke, Sar Af and Eadwine advanced, shields raised, bolters propped over the right-angled corners. Holofurnace was closing at their heels.

They moved into a hallway, a main access way. There was blood and wreckage on the floor where personnel had fled the ram strike and sealed the hatch behind them. The structure and age of the walls and ceiling, and the machine components fixed into them, was such that it looked like the corridor had been built from scrap cannibalised from several different starships.

Shots started to snap at them. Holofurnace had joined them, his spear at his shoulder, his bolter back in his fist. They formed a line, three abreast, shields up. A moving wall, resilient and formidable, they advanced, almost filling the corridor from side to side.

The gunfire smacked into their rigidly held shields. It wasn’t xenos fire from some exotic flechette blaster. It was las-shot.

Up ahead, the first human defenders appeared, blasting down the smoky corridor with lasrifles and helguns.

Shields up, the Space Marines walked into it, blasting as they came. The mass reactive rounds streamed away from them and cut the hallway apart. Bodies fell. Wall panels blew out. Parts of the ceiling caved in.

The firefight exchange grew more intense.

The Space Marines didn’t slow down for a second.

The Ghosts of Strike Alpha pushed forwards across the depot through a jumble of burning debris. Zhukova reported that her company had engaged with some loxatl and were in the process of subduing them, though the bulk of the loxatl force had been wiped out by the Space Marine spearhead.

Kolea wondered if there would be more. He wondered what other wretched things lay in wait in the junk habitat.

He heard the heavy .30 crank up and start to fire. Bool and Mkan were getting busy. What the gak had they seen?

‘Hostiles!’ Caober yelled over the link. The scout had pushed forwards to the left-hand edge of the chamber. Kolea hefted his shield up and started to run. The shields had barrel slots cut in the top right-hand corner of their shapes, so the wearer could carry the shield on his left arm and brace the weight of his lasrifle barrel across the slot. Effectively, he could fire from behind cover. Kolea hadn’t used a boarding shield in combat before, but they’d been training hard en route. He still believed they were cumbersome and ineffective.

He was running forwards with five or six other Ghosts, leaping blazing debris. A crippled loxatl flopped out of hiding into their path and ratcheted off two shots with its flechette. Kolea’s shield stopped the first, and the second blew up against the deck. Derin’s shield saved his legs and groin from the deflected splinters of shrapnel. Firing from behind his shield, Kolea slew the loxatl with a burst of shots.

His attitude towards the boarding shields warmed slightly. In the enclosed space of boarding action, the danger of deflection shots was dramatically increased.

More gunfire streaked their way. Kolea saw what Caober had spotted. Sally ports had opened on the far side of the depot chamber: heavy trapdoor hatches concealed along the welded line where the bulkhead wall met the deck. Archenemy troops were clambering out of them, firing as they came. Kolea wasn’t sure if the hatches had been deliberately designed for defensive actions, or if the enemy was making smart use of engineering crawl spaces.

All he was sure of was that they were suddenly taking heavy fire against their left flank.

The enemy troops were big, human males. Their battle dress was not uniform, but it was all the same general mix of richly ornamented armour plate and yellow breeches and coats. Boots, gloves, belts, armour clasps and bindings, along with packs and webbing, were made of a dark, rich leather, polished a caffeine brown like mahogany. The leatherwork, especially the wide and heavy waist belts, was interwoven with purple silk bindings and silver wire stitching. The yellow of the material under the brown leather wargear was hot and acid, like a fusion beam. The warriors had tight, buckle-on metal helmets covered in brown leather that had incorporated visors: narrow, single-lens oblong frames that covered both eyes and emitted a dark blue glow. The buckled chinstraps of the helmets, fashioned from the same dark brown leather as the belts and webbing, were oversized, and designed in the form of life-sized human hands that covered the entire mouth area below the nose.

Kolea knew what he was seeing. Servants of the wretched anarch, whose voice ‘drowns out all others’, demonstrated respect for their master by covering their mouths.

These warriors were Sons of Sek.

EIGHTEEN

THE FIRST CUT

The shrieking of the Hades drill was becoming unbearable. Gaunt felt as if his teeth were about to shatter. The atmosphere in the lateral holdspace was thick with exhaust fumes and the reek of burning metal and oily water. A fine vibration, transmitted through the deck by the drill, was making everything tremble.

He retreated to just outside the hold hatchway so he could hear Beltayn over the vox.

‘Major Baskevyl reports six companies deployed at the primary zone,’ Beltayn said. ‘More coming in, but it’s tight.’

‘Have they kicked the door in and made a lot of noise?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Beltayn.

‘Opposition?’

‘Loxatl. Now Major Kolea reports contact with what he believes are Sons of Sek.’

Gaunt took a deep breath. Loxatl made his skin crawl, but Sons of Sek were something else. The anarch’s rumoured response to Gaur’s Blood Pact. Sworn soldiers, cult devotees of the Ruinous Powers, yet disciplined and organised. Zealot warriors. Gaunt felt a particular type of fear whenever the Archenemy appeared to operate with intent. Their unpredictable insanity was bad enough. But for the Blood Pact, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade would have been prosecuted and done years before.

‘Keep me appraised,’ he said.

He suddenly realised the drill had shut up.

‘We’re through,’ said Mkoll.

Gaunt walked back into the hold. Servitor crews were pulling back the protective baffles. The troop company of Strike Beta was on its feet.

Gaunt waved the lead team forwards. Mkoll, Domor, Larkin and Zered. Each one carried the tools of his trade. They buckled on rebreathers and adjusted lamp packs.

The chief artificer was staring at Gaunt, waiting.

Gaunt took the vox horn from the set operator.

‘This is Strike Beta,’ he said. ‘Be advised, we are beginning insertion. Hull is breached, repeat, hull is breached.’

‘The Emperor protect you,’ Spika’s voice replied over the link.

Gaunt nodded to the chief artificer. The man turned and beckoned urgently with both hands. With a mechanical grumble, the Hades backed into the hold again, treads clattering on the deck. Its retreat unplugged the hole it had bored, a huge tunnel in the hull of the Reach the size of a decent hatchway. The edges of the cut were bright silver metal, whorled and flaked like shredded foil. Approaching, Gaunt could see the cut was under four metres deep. Cold and undisturbed air leaked out towards him from the darkness inside, like the slow bleed of heat from a tomb.

Artificers and servitors were fussing around the hole with tanks of sealant.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The edges will be razor-sharp in places,’ replied the chief artificer, ‘hazardous to touch. We are preparing to seal them with–’

‘No time,’ said Gaunt. ‘We’ll just be careful.’

The artificer’s crew backed off.

Mkoll and Domor led the way, and Gaunt fell in behind them with Larkin. Zered brought up the rear, his flamer lit.

Gaunt drew his bolt pistol. Larkin carried the old solid-round rifle he had been training with. His longlas was in its cover across his back.

Mkoll stepped forwards into the gloom, lasrifle ready. Beside him, Domor adjusted his headphones and extended the sweeper broom of his detector set. Gaunt could hear the sweeper’s little portable auspex ticking like a radiation counter.

They advanced down the cut, through the bored hole, carefully avoiding the razor-sharp sides. The skin of the hulk was dense and thick. Light from the hold winked off the milled and sawn edges of the tunnel.

Beyond lay darkness and silence.

They moved slowly. Even by Mkoll’s wary and calculated standards, they were being cautious. Gaunt’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the gloom.

A greyish half-light was revealed ahead of them, a dusk. They were coming through into a cavity that had the dimensions of a hold space, but none of the regularities. The ceiling sloped down at one end. This wasn’t a space that had been designed, it was a chamber that had been partially crushed into its current shape: the internal compartment of one of the ancient vessels that had fused to form the Reach, deformed by slow gravitational pressure.

The deck was uneven. Panels had popped their rivets and sat like displaced flagstones. Cables, ancient and powerless, hung down from busted roof plates. The air was ominously dry. Gaunt noticed that Zered’s flamer began to suck hard, and the trooper had to adjust the mix rate to compensate for the oxygen-poor atmosphere.

Domor swept steadily to and fro, passing his broom across the walls and low ceiling. Gaunt could see the blue glow of his set’s display screen. The ticking was steady.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘I’m calibrating,’ said Domor. ‘There’s a lot of bounce. So many different densities and intermixed alloys.’

Gaunt didn’t envy Domor’s task. A quick look at the walls and ceiling showed extraordinary levels of gross compaction, with structural fabric and mechanisms crushed along with circuits and energy filaments into scrap filler. Getting any meaningful discrimination through the auspex was going to be a challenge.

‘Steady,’ said Mkoll. They climbed over a fallen beam and ducked around a fractured metal arch, the remains of some giant hatch, which stuck up out of the mangled deck like a broken tooth. Mkoll waited while Domor scanned both, and marked them with yellow chalk as items to be cleared from the route. Beyond the arch, the compartment seam had ruptured open like a scar. The metal looked molten. Through the rupture lay a service-way.

They went through. The service-way was long, and only slightly deformed. It was wide and high enough to drive a cargo-6 along. It had been built for humanoids, but not by any human. Curious designs along the wall sections had been defaced and over-marked by Archenemy sigils.

‘This area’s in use,’ said Mkoll. ‘The dust on the deck shows footprint scuffs. Not recent. I’d say six months, though environmental conditions are so stable, it could be six years.’

‘Or six hundred,’ said Larkin.

‘They come this way often enough. They didn’t like looking at these markings,’ said Domor, nodding at the defaced walls. ‘They scratched them out, changed them.’

‘Or altered them to leave instructions of their own,’ said Gaunt. ‘Like “Keep out”. Check the deck. Wires, anything.’

Mabbon Etogaur had been quite specific about the ways in which the extremities of the Reach were protected. No wards or warp magic, no infernal devices or daemonic mechanisms. Anything like that might be too easily triggered by the sensitive study and development being undertaken at the facility.

At the Reach, the Archenemy was relying on good, old-fashioned mechanical booby traps: mines, explosives, lethal anti-personnel defences.

Domor scanned ahead, adjusted his settings, and then did it again.

‘Nobody breathe,’ he said. ‘I’m getting something now. The deck plates ahead are hollow. Wait… yes, feth. I’ve got cables, active-fluid hydraulics and an electric charge. We’ve got a pressure trigger. The deck’s live.’

Mkoll pulled a scope that matched the one screwed to the top rail of Larkin’s rifle. The chief scout put it to his eye, and Larkin raised his weapon, hunting.

‘Cable wire comes out eight metres down, to the left,’ said Domor.

‘I see it,’ said Mkoll. ‘That look like storage drums to you?’

‘In the alcove?’ asked Larkin, squinting through his rifle scope. ‘Yes, it does.’

‘The sniffer’s getting fyceline and promethium gel,’ said Domor. ‘About a tonne volume.’

‘Throne,’ said Zered, genuinely appalled.

‘Detonator?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Looking for it now,’ said Mkoll, training his scope. He had it set to low light. ‘Got it. I see the trigger pin. The cable’s cleated up the wall along the bulkhead seam. It goes in at the top of the left-hand drum.’

‘Yes, I see it,’ said Larkin, aiming.

Gaunt wondered if they should back off. The target was tiny and the light levels were poor, but eight metres was comfortably within Larkin’s effective range. If the shot failed, and the device detonated, no amount of shelter or cover would save them. A tonne of fyceline compound explosive would create an overpressure blast in the confined environment that would suck through the narrow apertures of the compartments, pulp their internal organs to soup and their bones to jelly, and probably burst the improvised atmosphere seal between the Armaduke and the Reach. Even the rest of Strike Beta, waiting in the later hold, would probably be killed by focused atmospheric concussion.

Hiding in cover when Larks took the shot might make them feel better, but it would have zero practical safety value.

‘Let’s get this done,’ said Gaunt.

Larkin knelt on one knee, settling his position, shaking out his shoulders. He chambered a single saline round, slammed it home, and then took his aim. Mkoll crouched beside him, and activated the passive tagger on his scope, so that the pencil-thin light beam indicated the precise target. As shot caller, Mkoll wanted to make sure he and Larkin were both appreciating and agreeing upon the same exact spot.

‘Got it,’ said Larkin, locking up his scope.

Domor lowered his broom and murmured a silent prayer. Zered hooked his flamer head to his waist belt and, to Gaunt’s amusement, put his hands over his ears.

‘None of you were actually planning on living forever, were you?’ Larkin asked.

He took the shot.

There was a dull, distant boom. It was muffled, but big. It resounded through the thick, deep hull of the Armaduke.

In preparation seventeen, a dingy cargo hold space, Blenner heard it and looked up. Some of the Ghosts around him had also noticed the noise.

‘What the hell was that?’ asked Wilder.

Blenner looked at Ree Parday. She’d been looking pale ever since they’d kitted up earlier in the day.

‘Go ask, would you?’ he asked.

Perday jumped off the wheel arch of the Tauros where she’d been sitting and ran towards the main hatch.

Blenner looked around the chamber. Three companies of the regiment, including the marching band, had been placed as combat reserve under the command of Captain Obel, with Captain Wilder as his second. In full combat gear, they were standing to in the hold space ready to deploy as required. They had eighteen Tauros assault vehicles ready and laden with spare munitions, with further re-stocks prepared on cargo pallets. If the word came, they could deliver munitions by truck down the Armaduke’s main spinal to either of the lateral holds, and even cross into the Reach via the bore holes to support Strikes Beta or Gamma. Alternatively, they could transport the munitions to the main excursion to reload the Arvus lighters and other drop ships if Alpha needed reinforcement or replenishment.

The reserve unit was edgy, mainly because they were the only part of the regiment not directly deployed. Obel was sour – he’d drawn the duty by lot, and he wasn’t happy about it because he’d been hoping to lead J Company in with the Alpha run.

No one, especially Blenner, was surprised that the band had been grouped into the reserve section. If anything, Wilder was more pissed off than Obel. J Company had pulled an unlucky duty. Wilder’s mob hadn’t even been entered into the lottery. They’d been put in reserve, the assumption being they were only worth deploying in the fight if it was really necessary.

Blenner didn’t care. Waiting to fight was his kind of war, and he had no wish to see the band company trying to prove itself, even though it really wanted to. The results were likely to be messy and ultimately disappointing.

Blenner also wasn’t surprised to see that Gaunt’s boy, Chass, had been placed in reserve. That must have been a damn hard call for Gaunt. He wouldn’t have wanted to be seen to be showing any kind of favour, but how could he throw his son into the line when he was seriously undertrained? That was the card that Gaunt had played in the end, to justify his decision. Felyx was not yet certified at basic. His place had to be in reserve.

Sitting alone at the far end of the hall on the tow-bar of a Tauros, Felyx Chass looked even more unhappy about the arrangements than Wilder. Maddalena lurked nearby.

Perday returned.

‘Something explode?’ asked Blenner brightly.

‘It was the main airgates opening on the excursion deck,’ Perday said. ‘The first of the lighters are returning for restock. They want us to start shipping munitions down for loading.’

Blenner got up.

‘We’ve got a job to do at last,’ he called out. ‘Let’s look lively!’

Larkin’s shot was perfect. The frangible saline round punched clean through the firing mechanism, shattering as it did so and drenching the trigger circuit with a desensitising flood of salt water. It was anticlimactic: a little puff and a spatter of water.

Mkoll and Domor edged forwards across the decking. The rigged plates shifted and there was a click, but the pressure trigger was no longer connected. They approached the stacked drums, Domor sweeping for secondary triggers.

Once he reached the drums, Domor put down his broom, pulled on a pair of leather gloves, and dismantled the shattered trigger mechanism, gingerly sliding the core up out of the socket in the drum top. He tied off all the bare wires, taped them to prevent conduction, sprayed the interior of the socket with inert gel and insulated the internal plugs with petroleum jelly.

‘Safe as it’s going to be,’ he said.

Gaunt nodded. Mkoll marked the drums and the surrounding floor plates with red chalk to indicate a bomb made safe but still dangerous. They moved forwards. All of them had stripped off their clumsy rebreathers, preferring the mineral stink of the Reach’s dry atmosphere.

The service-way broadened. Domor’s scans detected a cavity ahead of them. Gaunt could feel cold air moving against his face.

The service-way ended in a hatch, followed by a brief section of some other corridor that had been brutally severed in some ancient time. Beyond that, the ground dropped away in a deep ravine, a metal chasm lined with compressed junk. A ragged metal bridge with partial handrails crossed the gap.

On the far side, there was a landing space, and then several spurs of corridors or tunnels.

‘Wait,’ said Domor. His auspex clucked every time he swept the bridge.

Mkoll got down and peered.

‘Big charge,’ he reported. ‘Halfway across the span, wired underneath.’

‘You see the trigger?’ asked Larkin.

Mkoll had his scope out. ‘Yes, but it’s a really bad angle. It’s facing away from us. I think it’s hooked to the bridge walkway. Motion detector.’

‘Let me look,’ said Larkin. He’d already reloaded. He got down on his belly at the lip of the chasm, and rolled on his side to squint along the underside of the bridge. He had to take his longlas off and hand the cased weapon to Zered because it was getting in the way.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Lucky I’m so good.’

He started to ready his rifle. He was sprawled in a position that looked both uncomfortable and less than ideal for marksmanship.

‘Let me tag it for you,’ said Mkoll.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Larkin. ‘Just hold onto my legs and stop me rolling, or I’ll fall right off this fething ledge.’

Mkoll knelt down and physically braced Larkin’s body. The marksman had to lie almost flat with his rifle under his chin and a foreshortened grip supporting the barrel. It was the posture of a stage contortionist. Gaunt felt his pulse rate rise again.

The rifle cracked, the sound of the shot echoing oddly down the gulf below them, a small sound in a vast space. Gaunt saw the impact, the spray of glass-like shards from the round casing, the mist of saline droplets.

‘Blew it clean out,’ said Larkin, getting up and ejecting the brass. He was collecting his cases, putting them in his pocket.

Sweeping as he went, Domor edged out across the bridge, checking for secondaries. From the look on his face, the metal structure felt none too secure. Cold air kept breathing up from below in gusts, as if the vast and crushed structure of the Reach were respiring. Each gust of cold air turned their breath to steam.

Domor lay down on his front, reached under the bridge, and disengaged the dangling firing pin. It was wet from the shot. As he brought it up, it slid from his fingers and fell away into the depths.

Everyone realised they were holding their breath.

‘It’s fine,’ said Domor sheepishly. ‘We didn’t need it.’

Reaching down again, he squirted gel into the pin holder and the wiring junctions. Mkoll marked the bridge with red chalk.

They crossed the bridge. It looked precarious, though Gaunt guessed it would probably take a light vehicle. Ahead of them, past some clutter and scrap metal, lay the three spurs. One was another service-way, the second led through into a dank vault that seismic action had split into three different levels. The third turned right and joined a rusted gantry that crossed a sunken chamber full of rotting and long-dead machines.

‘Charges in the roof here,’ said Mkoll, indicating the second service-way.

‘Clear them,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’ll drop back to move the rest in. If we’re getting alternative routes, we need guidance.’

He started to walk back towards the borehole. Larkin began lining up on the third device.

Gaunt used his link to signal to Strike Beta. The first few units met him in the service-way.

The first clearance team to follow them in was led by Criid, with Leyr as scout and shot-caller, Banda as marksman and Mklaek as sweeper. Their flamer was being lugged by Domor’s adjutant Chiria. The second was led by Mktass, with Preed as scout, Raess as shooter and Brennan as sweeper. Sairus came in support with a flamer. Gaunt gave them instructions to proceed, and to link with Mkoll’s squad before dividing to open up the alternate access points. He underlined the need for caution, discipline and constant vigilance.

They listened carefully, and then moved up.

Sergeant Ewler appeared next, leading in the first of the combat troops from A and K Companies. Ezra was with them, and so was Kolding, carrying a medicae pack. Curth, as acting chief medicae, had insisted on riding with the Strike Alpha deployment, where the highest casualty rate was anticipated.

Behind them came the Suicide Kings.

Rawne had allowed Mabbon to lose everything but the manacles. The foot shackles had gone. Around the pheguth, Varl, Bonin, Brostin and the others stood ready.

‘How far have you got?’ asked Rawne.

‘Not far, and three devices disarmed already,’ replied Gaunt.

‘That’s good,’ said Mabbon.

They looked at him.

‘It’s what I would have expected,’ he explained, ‘so it suggests things haven’t changed much since I was last here. Also, it suggests that they’re relying on unmanned defences for these layers of the Reach.’

Gaunt nodded. This had been Mabbon’s assertion all along. The main Archenemy strengths guarding Salvation’s Reach were positioned around the primary docking areas and facilities. Subsidiary levels of the colossal structure, most of them unused, and many of them uncharted, had been mined and booby-trapped then left as unpatrolled deadzones. The Archenemy expected any significant attack to come from the front, which was why Gaunt had sent Strike Alpha in to knock on the main door and attract as much attention as possible.

The Archenemy did not particularly anticipate anyone having the patience, discipline, skill or technique to cut through the hull of the Reach and attempt an insertion through the mined levels. Even with the requisite levels of skill and discipline, such an undertaking would still be doomed to failure.

Unless you also had inside information. Unless you had reasonably accurate experiential data that told you where to cut, where to insert, and what to expect when you did.

Unless you had an etogaur of the Sons of Sek.

‘Let’s move forwards,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show me the way you’d take.’

They headed back in, overtaking the waiting troop advance and crossing the bridge. Mkoll’s squad had begun to clear a significant distance along the second service-way, neutralising three more devices in the time it had taken Gaunt to backtrack and lead the rest in. Criid’s team had begun to disarm bombs in the split vault. Mktass’s team was crossing the corroded gantry into the chamber full of dead machinery.

‘I think your man Mkoll has the best idea,’ said Mabbon.

‘He usually does,’ Gaunt replied. ‘It’s a gift.’

He turned to Rawne.

‘We’ll follow Mkoll’s team, but the other two routes may be viable. Let’s divide the troop force here and spread out.’

‘Maximising our chances?’ Rawne asked.

‘Minimising our losses,’ Gaunt replied.

‘Strike Beta is deployed,’ said Beltayn over the vox. ‘Full strength inside the Reach structure, though moving slowly.’

‘Understood,’ said Daur. He was pacing in frustration. The drill was taking forever to make the second cut.

‘Can’t they increase the rate?’ he asked Major Pasha.

She shook her head.

‘They say it would burn out the cutters,’ she replied.

‘It’s burning out my patience.’

She laughed, but there was a serious look on her face.

‘Please try to stabilise your mood, captain,’ she said. ‘Once we’re inside, we’re going to be moving through an environment loaded with improvised explosive devices, most on trembler or pressure switches. Patience is going to be our greatest virtue.’

‘I know, I understand,’ Daur replied. ‘But if we don’t cut in soon, we will be badly behind schedule. If Strike Beta reaches an impasse or hits opposition, and we’re not advancing as an alternative, then this mission is going to be a failure.’

‘Sometimes missions are failures,’ said Pasha. ‘That’s the nature of war.’

‘Forgive me, no,’ said Daur. ‘I mean no disrespect, and I understand a decent officer needs to keep a philosophical perspective on such matters. But you haven’t served with Gaunt before. You need to appreciate what he expects.’

Major Pasha frowned and nodded.

‘I also believe,’ said Daur, ‘that when a mission is this critical, it can’t be a failure.’

Nearby, behind the baffles and bombarded by the hideous screech and rattle of the working drill, Merrt rubbed at his neck.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Maggs.

‘It’s… gn… gn… gn… wearing off,’ said Merrt.

He’d shot the numbing agent into his jawline when the drill started up, so he’d be ready to take a shot the moment they were through. But the drill had been cutting for almost forty minutes, and the numbness was ebbing away.

‘You got another?’ asked Raglon.

‘A couple. Three I gn… gn… gn… think.’

‘Don’t waste them,’ said Maggs.

There was a sudden bang from behind them.

‘What the–?’ asked Merrt.

‘I think we’re through,’ Nessa mouthed.

‘You sure?’ asked Questa.

‘We’re through. We’re through!’ Hark called, ushering the strikeforce back to position. ‘Ready, now. First team up and ready!’

Major Petrushkevskaya was to lead the first clearance team. Her days in the scratch company had taught her plenty about booby traps and bomb disposal. Nessa, Zel, Marakof and Raglon moved up with her. Raglon had the sweeper broom ticking ready. Nessa checked her antique rifle. Marakof, one of the new Verghastite scouts, took a deep breath and winked at Major Pasha. They’d served together on the Zoican War and knew how one another worked. Zel was another influx Verghastite, hand-picked by Pasha. He jogged over to join them, his flamer lit.

‘Steady and wait,’ Pasha told her clearance squad. The artificer crews were removing the baffles and protective screens while the drill team prepared to disengage the drill.

‘Hurry it up,’ cried Daur. ‘Places, please! Major Pasha, you’re up first. Pollo, you’ll follow them in when I give the word. Then Haller, your team. I repeat, clearance teams first! Commissar Hark, if you please. I know we’re all eager, but get the troop elements back out of the way. We need room to move!’

Hark barked some orders and herded the waiting troop sections back. Haller traded knuckle slaps with the members of his squad.

Daur turned to look at the drill.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ he asked Pasha.

‘The artificer there says the cutting teeth have bitten in, caught on something,’ she said. ‘They’re just freeing it.’

The drill was attempting to retract from the deep socket it had bored. Something had snagged the cutting head. The engine was revving hard, coughing up puffs of sooty smoke. The operator was engaging the cutting head for quick screaming bursts, forward and reverse, trying to tear free so that the insertion could begin.

‘Oh, come on!’ Daur cried in exasperation.

Whatever flaw or imperfection, whatever ultra-hard seam of adamantium or ceramite in the hullskin had been snagging the drill-head, it finally and abruptly gave way. The Hades lurched backwards violently, its cutting head squealing across the inner surface of the borehole. The operator had just shifted the rotation into reverse again.

The brutal release threw the drill operator off his station onto the deck. Racing, the power-cutters scythed sideways into the rim of the borehole and sheared away a large chunk of hyperdense metal, which it shredded into razor-fine fibres and slivers and ejected backwards into lateral hold thirty-nine.

The flying metal shards blew back with the penetrative force of a dozen loxatl flechette blasters. There were no longer any protective baffles around the cutting site.

One flying shard decapitated an artificer. Another two tore clean through the torso of a servitor. Other whizzing scraps struck the deck and the roof.

The rest ripped into the clearance teams waiting to go in.

NINETEEN

BLEED

‘Oh, Holy Throne,’ Daur gasped. ‘Medic!’

Bodies littered the deck of lateral thirty-nine. Torn and bloody, they were strewn about like discarded dolls. The deck was spattered with blood as though canisters of scarlet paint had been indiscriminately spilled.

Mohr ran forwards.

‘You’re cut,’ he said.

‘What?’ Daur reached up and felt blood on his face. A shard had sliced his temple above the eye. Another had gone through Mohr’s sleeve. His left hand was soaked in blood that was running out from under his cuff.

‘Oh, gak, what a fething mess,’ Daur stammered.

Lesp was the medic assigned to Gamma. He was already struggling to cope with the volume of simultaneous injuries, yelling for help from troopers in Gamma who had corpsman training or any first aid skills. Soldiers were setting down their weapons to run forwards and assist. Others looked on at the devastation, aghast. Blood spray from the injuries had dappled the faces of many of them. One unlucky lasman in the front row, a new influx man called Gorgi, had been killed outright by a fragment between the eyes.

All three clearance teams were decimated. Some were alive and struggling to get up, dazed. Others lay still, apparently dead. All of them were soaked in blood.

‘Strike Gamma, Strike Gamma!’ Daur yelled, grabbing the vox from Mohr. ‘We have multiple injuries in lateral thirty-nine. Multiple injuries!’

‘Say again, captain,’ Beltayn responded. ‘Are you under fire? Are you reporting hostile contact?’

‘Negative! Drill accident. Multiple laceration casualties. We need medics from the ship’s infirmaries here now!’

‘Captain, can you proceed?’

‘Assessing now. Stand by.’

Daur gazed around in horror. Major Pasha’s team, the primary, had been slashed to pieces. Lesp was trying to staunch injuries to Pasha’s throat and face while the corpsman Fayner applied compression to wounds in Nessa’s upper arms and legs. Both women were bleeding profusely. Raglon was curled in a ball, gasping and choking, yet barely had a scratch on him. A razor-sharp filament had gone through his torso, puncturing a lung. Zel and Marakof were dead. Marakof’s head had been sliced in half diagonally, from the left corner of his jaw to his right temple, like some immaculate biological sample. The missing piece of his head lay a few metres behind him, internal side down on the deck, so it looked like a small part of someone surfacing out of a pool. Zel’s torso was shredded and his left arm detached. Daur stepped forwards, numb, and killed the feed of Zel’s fallen flamer.

The second team, Pollo’s, was as bad. Pollo had suffered a huge scalp wound that was bleeding copiously, as well as significant wounds to his arms. Bright red blood beaded his dark skin. Questa, the marksman, had taken lacerations to his hands and thighs. A needle sliver of metal the length of a man’s forearm impaled his hip. Maggs was whining in rage and frustration, clutching a bloody stomach wound. Pollo’s sweeper man, Burone, had been cut in two through the waist. Nitorri, his flame trooper, was also dead, so covered in blood it was impossible to tell which of his wounds had proved lethal.

The third team, Haller’s, was covered in the blood of the first two. Haller was looking down at his battledress, astonished at the gore spattering him, amazed that none of it seemed to belong to him. Merrt had taken a scratch, but had rushed to Nessa’s aid. Vahgner, the scout, was virtually unmarked. His mouth was open as if he couldn’t find anything adequate to say. Vadim put down his sweeper broom to help Raglon, but immediately fell over. A flying shard had cut his Achilles tendon. Belloc, a usually cheerful new influx Vervunhiver, was ashen as he tried to unbuckle his flamer unit so he could assist.

‘Leave that on,’ Vadim hissed.

‘What?’ Belloc replied.

‘He’s right,’ said Daur. ‘Team three’s got to move in first. Haller? Haller!’

Haller jumped.

‘What? Yes,’ he said, blinking.

‘The door’s open,’ Daur said, glancing at Pasha. Despite her miserable wounds, she managed to nod. ‘We’ve got to move in before this prong of the assault collapses completely. We have to proceed. Haller?’

‘Yes, all right,’ said Haller, trying to regain his wits, incapacitated by shock. ‘But… but Vadim’s out. I’ve got no sweeper man.’

Daur breathed deeply to control his panic response. ‘I need a replacement sweeper here. A volunteer. Right now!’

Most of the Strike Gamma force had come forwards to help the injured. Those that couldn’t actually help were just looking on in dismay. They glanced at each other dumbly.

‘That’s an order,’ Hark yelled, moving in beside Daur. A flying filament had nicked his cheek, like a nasty shaving cut. ‘The Emperor expects! Captain Daur needs a sweeper. Come on!’

‘A good one,’ Daur added. He could see the problem already. Gamma and Beta had selected the six best sweepers under Raglon and Domor. There were other Ghosts who understood basic operation, but the most skilful operators in the lateral hold, and the best trained, were the ones lying dead or hurt on the deck in front of him.

‘I can do it,’ said Maggs, wincing.

‘Shut up and wait for the medics,’ Daur snapped.

‘I’ll do it,’ growled Hark. ‘I know how they work.’

Haller coughed. He wiped specks of someone else’s blood off his pale skin.

‘No, it has to be me,’ he said. ‘I was the first reserve on the training list.’

Daur nodded. Haller was right. When they’d been making the selections for the clearance teams, Haller would have been made a sweeper if he hadn’t worked so hard for a team command.

‘You’re right’ Daur said. ‘Take Noa’s kit. Check it works. I’ll lead you in.’

He turned to Hark.

‘You and Spetnin have acting command here, Hark. See if you can assemble a functioning second clearance, and send them in. Then bring the troops in if I signal.’

Hark nodded.

‘And for Throne’s sake get more medics.’

‘I will,’ said Hark.

‘Come on, Ghosts, move!’ Daur said.

He turned and walked towards the bore hole. Merrt followed, with Vahgner and Haller. Belloc buckled his flamer tank and went after them. Vadim’s auspex set had been damaged, so Haller had taken Raglon’s instead. Daur heard Haller quietly promising Raglon he’d look after his precious kit and bring it back, though Raglon was probably too far gone with pain and disorientation to hear him.

Daur reached the bore hole. He glanced up at the ragged tear around the rim, the silver split of metal that had just compromised Strike Gamma’s effectiveness, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.

He activated his lamp pack.

Holofurnace waded into the Sons of Sek. He had harnessed his boltgun and, with spear and shield, was laying waste to them. Body parts and fragments of severed weapons flew out from his spinning blade.

Shields up, Sar Af and Eadwine continued the advance into the withering enemy fire. Firing over their shields, they were trying to break the Sons holding the next hatchway section. Their boarding shields quaked and shook under the deluge of fire. Most of the surface decoration, markings and the purity seals had been seared off.

Eadwine reloaded. He issued quick vox commands that brought the gun servitors in at their flank.

‘Rush them?’ he suggested to the White Scar.

‘While the Snake is holding our left flank? Why not?’ Sar Af replied.

‘We need weight behind us,’ said Eadwine. ‘The damn Guard are slow. Adequate supporting fire would allow us to push ahead.’

‘They will get here in their own sweet time,’ replied Sar Af.

‘Their own sweet time is not good enough,’ said Eadwine.

Kolea was pinned behind a processor unit, enduring some of the worst crossfire he had ever known. It whined and streaked around him, slamming off the metal casing of the unit, puncturing and buckling it. Two Ghosts had already died trying to cross the open depot floor to join him. The Sons of Sek were intent on containing the invasion force in the outer compartments that the Caestus had penetrated. They were positioning to block them, shut them out, and then drive them back into the hard vacuum. Kolea had several company strengths behind him, but none was in any kind of position to advance and deliver firepower.

As for the Space Marines, they had plunged ahead regardless. Kolea was physically unable to render them any support. Indomitable as they were, the Space Marines would soon be cut off, surrounded and ultimately overwhelmed. They were the spearhead of the weapon, the tip of the sword. It didn’t matter how sharp it was, a sword still needed a strong arm behind it.

Kolea had no doubt the Space Marines would pile body on body before they finally fell.

But in the end, they would still die.

Electromagnetic distortion from the torrential gunfire, especially the hellguns and plasma weapons fielded by the Sons, was chopping all vox exchanges. Kolea could barely coordinate with the other squad and company leaders. He’d lost sight of Rerval during a particularly fierce barrage, and he hadn’t got a reply from Eadwine or the other Space Marines for twenty minutes.

The focus of the enemy fire shifted away from him, like a rainstorm passing overhead. He looked to his left, across the burning litter and destruction of the ravaged depot space, and saw Ferdy Kolosim’s company being driven back into cover behind a row of huge steel bunkers. They left their dead on the deck behind them.

‘Kolea!’ his vox crackled.

‘Go!’ Kolea responded.

The vox burbled something else indistinct. He looked to his right in time to see a couple of shoulder-launched rockets whoosh up from the Guard lines into the upper part of the depot chamber. They blew out a row of generator pumps and hurled the bodies of several Sons into the air. Heavy, clacking fire, some of tracer rounds, zipped from .30s and .50s. Baskevyl’s company, D, was attempting to push forwards from the hangar space. They hadn’t come through the hole the ram had punched. They’d forced the internal hatches and surged through under the cover of gantries and service walkways.

The Archenemy line taking D Company’s fire withered slightly and tried to retrain. Kolea saw Baskevyl get up and lead a rush towards some heavy manufactory engines that stood in a row across the centre of the depot’s decking.

Plasma fire streaked into them immediately. Kolea winced, head down, as he saw three or four Ghosts cut down. Then some rockets fell too, screeching down out of the vault, and the gritty blast wash knocked Kolea back.

The last thing he glimpsed was Baskevyl’s burning body thrown, headless, into the air.

Blinking, dizzy from the concussion, Kolea looked around. Fury was filling him, rage at the losses and the helpless state of their situation. He saw Meryn and some of his force pinned around another row of processors.

‘Move up. Move up!’ he yelled. ‘Into the fethers, captain!’

Meryn didn’t appear to be able to hear him over the roar of the firefight. His men were pinking off shots in a feeble manner, their heads down.

Something snapped.

No longer really thinking rationally, Kolea got up. He hefted up his shield and ran at the Archenemy position, leaping debris and bodies, firing his lasrifle through the shield’s slot.

Somehow, he didn’t die.

Afterwards, he could not account for it. It was a story he would tell, when suitably persuaded and after an amasec or two, for the rest of his life. Kolea was destined to live out a soldier’s life, so that wasn’t a terribly long time, but it was long enough to make that day, that moment, an old story. Others told it in turn, after his death: Kolea, running the line like a madman, shield up, gun blasting. He was yelling something as he went and, depending who was telling the tale, what he yelled varied.

Some said it was the Vervunhive battle cry, others the Founding Oath. Some said he was cursing the names of Daur and Rawne, and everyone else who’d drawn the easy option of the Gamma and Beta insertions.

The truth was he was probably yelling the name of his friend Baskevyl.

It was a wild action, and utterly lacking in discipline, especially given that Kolea was the force commander and should have been setting a measured and sober example to the ranks. Caober said it was exactly the sort of fething idiot stunt Colonel Corbec used to pull.

That was why Caober got up and followed him. Derin did too, and Lyse, Neith and Starck… and Irvin, Bewl, Veddekin, Wersun and Vanette. Ludd, who should have been ready to reprimand Kolea for reckless deportment, got up and charged as well.

‘Men of Tanith!’ Ludd yelled. ‘Straight silver!’

Most of C Company broke and charged after their commanding officer, and so did a decent section of D Company and Kolosim’s H Company. Meryn’s company was mostly pinned, but a chunk of that also broke and sprinted after Kolea. Dalin led these men, bayonet fixed.

Some versions of the story, later ones, insisted that not a single Ghost who took part in that gloriously foolish and improvised charge – Kolea’s Charge – fell or took so much as a scratch. This was not true. Plenty died or were maimed. The Sons of Sek were not so astonished that they forgot to keep shooting. The charge left almost forty dead or injured on the depot floor.

Nevertheless, it hit the Sons like a tidal wave and broke their line. Kolea was first over the barricades. In his mindless haste, he had forgotten even to fix his silver, so he shot the enemy instead, point-blank, smashing with his shield, clubbing with his stock. The men behind him were slightly more composed. They came in with bayonets up, stabbing and spearing the Sons of Sek from behind their pock-marked shields. Some lobbed grenades over the front row into the support groups, blowing yellow uniformed brutes off their feet. A couple of flamers belched spears of liquid fire into the Archenemy ranks. Figures staggered, on fire, like ritual straw doll offerings, shuddered, fell.

Kolea killed eight of the enemy troops before he ran out of strength and dropped to one knee, panting, astonished by the sudden realisation of his own madness and, more, at the fact that he was still alive in spite of it. The charging Ghosts swarmed in around him, fracturing the enemy masses and driving them back along the defence barricade in both directions. Kolea had renegotiated the map of the battlefield and broken the impasse.

‘Are you alive?’ asked Dalin, helping him up.

Kolea nodded.

‘I mean, sir,’ Dalin added.

Kolea laughed.

‘That was madness,’ Dalin said.

‘Yes, well, it runs in the family, so be warned,’ Kolea replied.

Ghosts jostled past, forcing deeper, securing the position and firing on the retreating Sons. Ludd and Kolosim supervised the new deployment, yelling orders.

‘You’re quite insane,’ said Baskevyl, slapping Kolea’s arm. ‘Probably get a bloody medal, though.’

Kolea stared at him.

‘You–’ he began.

‘What?’

‘You were hit. I saw you.’

‘Not me,’ said Baskevyl.

‘The rockets! They came down right in amongst D. I saw you. You–’

Baskevyl grimaced.

‘I lost eight men. Gudler was right beside me. Got his head blown off.’

‘I thought it was you.’

Baskevyl laughed.

‘Damn it, Gol. You charged the Sons of Sek because you thought I was dead?’

‘I was angry.’

‘He probably wants to marry you,’ said Kolosim, running past them.

‘Major Kolea!’ Ludd shouted. ‘We need some orders here.’

Kolea ran over to Ludd, assessing how best to disperse the Ghosts from the new positions that had just taken. Though in hard retreat, the enemy was still laying down heavy fire.

‘We need to find exit points,’ Kolea told Ludd. ‘Drive on through. The Space Marines expect us to support them and we’re lagging badly.’

Ludd nodded.

‘Maybe we can bring up some tread-feathers,’ he suggested, pointing. ‘Punch a hole there and there, by that silo. Then we could advance under shields–’

He broke off. Just ahead of them, Sons of Sek were moving. Their unit discipline had vanished.

‘Feth me!’ Ludd exclaimed. ‘Are they counter-charging us?’

‘No,’ said Kolea. ‘They’re running.’

A whole section of the retreating Archenemy line had broken and scattered towards Kolea’s force. The advancing Ghosts began picking them off, amazed by the sudden opportunity. Explosions drove the Sons forwards into the Tanith field of fire. It was a brief but sustained slaughter.

‘Look!’ Ludd cried.

The White Scar, Sar Af, appeared out of the smoke, driving the breaking Archenemy troopers in front of him. He was blasting with his boltgun, disrupting their unit cohesion and driving their line around so that it buckled and withered under the Ghosts’ fire.

He spotted Kolea.

‘What is keeping you?’ Sar Af bellowed.

‘We were occupied,’ Kolea yelled back.

‘With what?’

‘The usual,’ shouted Kolea.

Sar Af shrugged his huge shoulderplates. He turned and blasted bolt rounds into the weakened enemy positions to his right.

‘Come on if you are coming!’ he yelled. ‘We will not wait any longer. I told Eadwine I would come back to find out if you had a good excuse for not keeping up.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like being dead! Now come on, Emperor curse you!’

The White Scar began to move towards the depot’s main rear hatches. The deck was covered in enemy dead. The hatchway was broken and buckled. Smoke threaded the air in dense, noxious walls.

Kolea turned to the advancing strike force.

‘Double time,’ he yelled. ‘Put your backs into it. We’ve got a battle to win, and I don’t intend to fight it on my own!’

‘Despite evidence to the contrary,’ said Baskevyl.

The deep interior of the Reach was dark and cold. Daur’s team moved through dank chambers and rusting tunnels, edging a few metres at a time, picking a path. Merrt’s rebreather had become a hindrance, and he’d taken it off. Soon afterwards, the others had ditched theirs too. The chilly, metallic air was infinitely preferable to the sweaty, claustrophobic limits of the masks.

Haller was edgy. He was painfully conscious of how much depended on him reading the sweeper’s scope right. He played the broom back and forth with infinite care.

‘Just do it right,’ said Daur. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

Haller nodded to his friend, loosened his collar, and moved on.

Eerie breezes murmured along the ancient, twisting tunnels. The burner of Belloc’s flamer jumped and fluttered. In some places it was so dark that even the twitching light of the flamer cast their shadows up the rotting walls.

‘Wait!’ said Haller suddenly. His scope had started clucking. They held position while he moved the broom. Merrt quietly loaded a saline charge into his old rifle. He’d injected the muscle relaxant into his jaw again, and it was numb, but the second dose made the muscles in his neck and lower back ache.

‘There,’ said Haller, studying the scope while he pointed. ‘Left side, wired along.’

‘Left side, wired along,’ Vahgner repeated, looking through his hand scope and running the passive tagger.

‘Whoa, you’ve overshot,’ warned Haller. ‘There. Behind that bulkhead.’

They got the lamps on it. Twenty metres away, four squat munition boxes were stacked up behind a bulkhead support. Cables ran back under the seam of the deck to pressure plates directly in front of them.

‘One more step would have been bad,’ said Haller.

Daur nodded.

Vahgner was moving the tagger beam around.

‘Look, there,’ he said. Closer to the device, a hair-thin trip line was threaded across the deck at ankle height. If somehow you stepped over the pressure trap, a second surprise awaited you. Vahgner put the tagger back on the firing pin screwed into the top of the boxes.

‘Twenty point one eight metres,’ he said.

Merrt lined up and locked his scope to the tagger Vahgner was supplying. Twenty point one eight metres. A breeze came up in their faces with a slight lift to it. He wanted to swallow, but his jaw and throat were too numb.

He snuggled in, the rifle held firmly but not too tightly. Everything in his life since that moment in the jungle on Monthax, everything had been about this moment, this shot. He felt sick.

‘Good,’ said Daur. ‘Good shot, Rhen.’

Merrt blinked. A wisp of smoke was trailing from his rifle. He’d taken the shot. He’d been in the zone so completely he hadn’t even noticed it.

‘Perfect,’ said Vahgner, checking through his scope. ‘You sheared the firing cap right off.’

Haller moved forwards. The deck plate trigger was dead. He disengaged the tripwire, removed the trigger and sprayed inert gel into the device. Then he marked out warnings in red chalk.

‘Think you can do that again?’ Daur asked Merrt.

Merrt signed an affirmative. He wanted to whoop with satisfied delight, but his jaw was too numb.

‘Let’s make up some time,’ said Daur.

‘Got another one here,’ Haller called out, sweeping the junction ahead of them.

Merrt chambered a fresh round.

‘This should help with the pain a little while we get you to the infirmary,’ Dorden told Nessa. She nodded and tried to smile at him as he gave her the shot. Her multiple cuts were field-dressed. Patches of blood were already showing through the bandages.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Hark said.

Dorden got up from his patient, unsteady for a moment. He looked up at the commissar and gestured to the scene that lay around them in lateral hold thirty-nine.

‘The dead and dying surround us, Viktor, and barely enough medics to cope. How better could I spend my time?’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Hark.

‘No, actually,’ said Dorden. ‘Should I go off somewhere quietly and wait to die so I don’t become an inconvenience, or can I use what little life and skill I’ve got left to help the regiment?’

Hark shook his head. There was triage and field surgery going on all around them. Lesp was fighting to save Raglon’s life. Medicae from Spika’s crew were working on Maggs and Vadim.

‘I was sitting in the infirmary, Viktor,’ said Dorden. ‘I heard the casualty alert. Old habits.’

‘We appreciate your efforts,’ said Hark.

‘Let him work,’ said Zweil. ‘He just annoys the shit out of me when he hasn’t got anything to do.’

The ayatani bent down to whisper last rites to Marakof.

‘When do you go in?’ Dorden asked.

Hark shrugged.

‘We’re running way behind schedule thanks to this mess,’ he replied. ‘Captain Daur’s taken a clearance team in. We’re waiting for him to signal us to follow.’

Hark glanced over at Mohr and Captain Spetnin. Both shook their heads.

Dorden fished in his medical satchel to get some dressings for Major Pasha.

‘Waiting’s the worst part, isn’t it?’ he said.

Hark agreed, but he had a queasy feeling he knew what the old regimental doctor was really talking about.

Merrt took his fourth shot in fifteen minutes. The saline round punched the trigger cap clean out of the suspended tank of explosives. Perfect. Four for four.

Haller moved forwards to make the device safe and mark it up.

‘Major tunnel route opening up ahead,’ said Vahgner.

‘We’ve cleared quite a way,’ said Belloc.

Daur nodded. Maybe they had caught up a little time on Strike Beta after the disastrous start.

‘I’ll signal them to follow up,’ he said. He adjusted his link.

‘Daur to Gamma, Daur to Gamma.’

‘Gamma here, captain,’ Mohr answered.

‘Instruct Hark and Spetnin to start leading the strike inside,’ said Daur. ‘Follow the marked route and go slow.’

‘Understood.’

‘Inform command we are deploying.’

‘Understood.’

Daur looked at the others.

‘Let’s clear a little more of this path, shall we?’ he said.

‘Strike Gamma!’ Spetnin yelled in his thick, Verghastite accent. ‘Get up and get ready to deploy!’

‘We’re going in!’ Hark called out, walking the line as the Ghosts assembled. ‘Squad order. Get ready!’

‘The Emperor go with you,’ Major Pasha croaked to Hark, her throat bandaged. Hark nodded.

‘Come on!’ Spetnin cried.

‘Where are you going?’ Hark asked Dorden.

‘Intending to advance without a medicae?’ asked Dorden.

‘Oh, Throne. Come on, doctor, I haven’t got time for this.’

‘Lesp can’t leave his patient,’ Dorden said quickly. ‘He’s got his hands full. I trained him well, so he’s not about to walk off in the middle of surgery. I’m your only option. And the rulebook states–’

‘Don’t quote regulations at me, doctor,’ said Hark. ‘You’re not strong enough, and you’re not fit enough.’

‘Of course he isn’t!’ snapped Zweil. ‘He’s dying, you pompous arse. Look at him, he’s wasted away. He’s almost see-through, he’s so skin and bone. Let him have this much for feth’s sake.’

‘Father–’ Hark began.

‘Don’t you get it?’ Zweil asked. ‘He doesn’t want to die idle, and he doesn’t want to die on his own.’

‘Show him some respect, father!’ Hark growled.

‘Actually, I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Dorden. ‘That’s all I’m afraid of, Viktor. Dying in bed and thinking there was a little more I could have done.’

Dorden stared at Hark.

Hark found the pale, bright eyes hard to look into.

‘I swore,’ said Dorden, ‘on the Founding Fields at Tanith Magna, to serve the Imperial Guard and the Tanith First for the rest of my days. Are you, an Imperial fething commissar, really going to stand in the way of me performing that sworn duty? Because if you are, that’s one staggering irony.’

‘Get your things,’ said Hark.

Dorden looked at Zweil.

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Zweil. ‘Even stubborn old bastards.’

‘That’s why I never worry about you,’ said Dorden. ‘Look, I’ll… see you later.’

‘Of course you will,’ said the old priest.

‘Medic!’ Kolea yelled.

Curth ran forwards along the line of cover, her head down in an instinctive posture that anyone who spent time on the battlefield quickly learned to adopt. She dropped in beside him. Fairly continuous gunfire ripped over their heads from the Sons of Sek positions in the vault chamber ahead. Crew-served weapons on either side of them rattled out return fire. Flamers roared.

‘Are you hit?’ she asked.

‘Not me,’ Kolea replied. He pointed at Fazekiel beside him. A shot had clipped her shoulder and flecked her face with blood.

‘It’s nothing,’ Fazekiel said.

‘It’s light, but it’s bleeding a lot,’ said Curth, leaning in to dress it. ‘You’re no use to Gol if you’re faint from blood loss.’

‘Exactly what I told her,’ said Kolea, turning back to his scope.

‘Yes, well, from what I hear, you’re hardly demonstrating the most rational behaviour today,’ said Curth. She torn open a gauze pack.

‘You heard about that, did you?’ asked Kolea.

‘It was the most amazing thing I ever saw,’ said Fazekiel, wincing as Curth packed her shoulder. ‘I intend to have him shot for it later.’

‘Are we winning yet?’ asked Curth as she worked.

Kolea shrugged. After the charge had reestablished contact with the Space Marine push, Strike Alpha had made some serious ground, breaking through into a series of vast internal compartments beyond the hangar bay and the engineering depot. These vault chambers were towering spaces like the insides of bulk manufactories. Huge machines filled their cavities. Kolea supposed they had something to do with atmosphere or gravitics.

The Archenemy had fallen back to dig in here. Sons of Sek, some loxatl, along with cult troops and weaponised servitors, held the line across three vault chambers, and harried the determined Imperial assault via the networks of ducts and sally ports. Loxatl were also using the roof spaces and conduits to gain advantageous firing positions.

Kolea’s response was to systematically mine or burn out all ducts and hatches as they advanced, and scour the ceiling vaults and pipework with flamers. It slowed the whole force a little, but it was worth it.

It was costly, however. H Company, under Elam, was busy ferrying munition restocks up through the line from the hangars, where the landers and lighters that had delivered the troops for the assault were returning with cargoes of ammunition, flamer tanks, charges and rockets. Some of the lighters were turning around to make their third run of the day.

Jan Sloman scurried up.

‘The brother-sergeant wants you to know that he and his brethren are about to make another push,’ said Sloman.

‘He could have told me on the link,’ said Kolea.

‘He tried. Distortion’s even worse in here.’

Kolea knew this was true. He’d had to send Rerval back through the depot to keep the vox-link open with the Armaduke and the other strikes. Rerval had seconded a team of runners to keep messages flowing.

‘Did he give any idea how long before this would happen?’ Kolea asked Sloman.

There was a punishing roar of cannon-fire from the left of their position. Kolea knelt up to look behind his shield and saw the three Space Marines striding towards the thickest part of the enemy line. Their gun-servitors came with them, weapon pods blazing. Withering fire rippled along the ranks of the Sons.

‘That answers that question,’ said Kolea. He gathered up his lasrifle.

‘Four! Nine! Twelve! Thirteen! Ready on my left!’ he shouted. ‘Eight! Fifteen! Vanette, your mob too! Get up and get ready! Suppressing fire on my order! Rockets, please! Objective is that processor hub!’

‘You heard the commander!’ Fazekiel cried, getting to her feet and buttoning her coat. ‘The Emperor’s watching you! He’s watching us all. He’s relying on you today so don’t let him down! Numbered squads as ordered. Load and get ready!’

‘For Tanith! For Verghast! And for the fury of Belladon!’ Kolea howled. ‘Into them!’

TWENTY

SALVATION’S REACH

‘Wait,’ whispered Mkoll. ‘Wait.’

‘It was clean,’ Larkin protested, lowering his rifle.

‘Yes,’ Mkoll agreed. He adjusted his tagger beam. ‘You hit the pin, but look.’

The beam from the chief scout’s scope lit up a fat black cable wrapped in tape running down the side of the device Larkin had just crippled.

‘Secondary trigger,’ he said.

‘Feth,’ murmured Larkin.

‘What’s it set to?’ asked Gaunt.

Domor was busy with the auspex.

‘I’m reading some kind of sack under the deck flooring there. To the right. I think it’s a compression bag. Put your weight down and it squeezes air or fluid into the trigger cable. Throne, I almost missed that.’

‘Secondary triggers suggests tighter security,’ said Gaunt.

‘We’re about a kilometre and a half inside,’ said Mkoll. ‘If our friend’s plans and memories are accurate, we’re close.’

Larkin had reloaded.

‘I can sever the cable. The trigger’s partly obscured.’

‘Do it above the trigger,’ said Domor. ‘Even if you only partly snap the line, the pressure will vent backwards out of the breach. Do it under the trigger, and the force of the shot could blow fluid or air up into the trigger anyway.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Larkin, taking aim.

‘It should work,’ said Domor.

‘“Should”?’ said Zered.

‘I like to leave room for circumstantial variability,’ said Domor.

‘Yes? Go feth yourself,’ said Larkin, taking aim.

Mkoll waved Gaunt to one side.

‘Larkin’s getting tired,’ he said quietly. ‘His hands are unsteady.’

‘He’s all right,’ said Gaunt. ‘He was born unsteady.’

The rifle popped. There was a thick slap of water and glass.

‘Aaand we’re still alive,’ said Larkin.

‘He’s taken out eighteen devices so far,’ said Mkoll. ‘The sustained stress is taking its toll.’

‘We all trained for this,’ Gaunt replied.

‘And part of that training and planning involved an agreement to sub out shooters or sweepers if they started to show signs of fatigue.’

‘Sub them out for whom?’ asked Gaunt. ‘You heard what happened to Gamma. Pylar and Curo were the two reserves with lanyards, and they’ve been called in to support Daur.’

‘We’ve got other shooters.’

‘Nobody who’s trained this hard. Nobody this good. That’s why we had so many wash-outs during preparation,’ said Gaunt.

Mkoll marked off the device with red chalk. They began moving up again along the rusty vault. The walls were so corroded they looked like they were dripping in green and white ooze. They’d barely gone forty metres when Domor called in another hidden charge. Larkin began to mark it out.

Gaunt signalled to the main force advancing at a distance behind them to stop and wait.

‘Raess then, or Banda,’ said Mkoll quietly. ‘Get Criid or Mktass to break off and regroup with us.’

‘Raess and Banda have both done a dozen or so shots each,’ said Gaunt. ‘They’re no fresher than Larks. We’re committed and we’re out of options.’

Mkoll sniffed.

‘It’s your call. But I don’t think Larkin’s got more than three or four sound shots left in his finger.’

Mkoll turned to help Larkin line up. Gaunt walked back to the main force.

‘The pheguth says we’re close,’ said Rawne.

‘How close?’ asked Gaunt.

‘He recognises this corrosion. He says two or three chambers on, we’ll reach a hatchway that leads into the complex proper.’

Gaunt looked at the etogaur. Mabbon was flanked by Brostin and Varl. The rest of the S Company detail was nearby. Mabbon had been allowed to make notes on a data-slate. He showed Gaunt his sketched plan.

‘You see?’ said Mabbon. ‘We’re very close. You should get the troops ready.’

Gaunt chewed his lip.

‘How sure are you?’

‘About ninety per cent,’ said Mabbon. ‘This is a vast structure, and my memories are not perfect. But I spent several years here, and everything on this route has looked familiar. It’s been what I expected. No surprises.’

‘Ninety per cent?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Yes.’

‘If Larkin was ninety per cent accurate,’ said Gaunt, ‘we’d all be dead by now.’

‘Then it’s a good thing I’m not the one shooting out the triggers,’ said Mabbon.

There was a pop behind them, another saline round. The world did not dissolve into light and concussion. They had survived another step.

Gaunt waved up the vox.

‘This is Strike Beta, Strike Beta. I want transport ready to follow us in. The route is marked, do not deviate. Wait for my word.’

‘Understood,’ Beltayn replied. ‘I’ll signal Captain Obel.’

Gaunt turned to the long, waiting line of Ghosts that formed his fighting strength.

‘Get ready, straight silver,’ he said. ‘It seems we’re coming up on it.’

The Ghosts fixed their warknives in place.

In the Armaduke’s preparation seven hold space, they were waiting by the Tauros units when the call came through. Obel listened to the vox, nodded a few times, and handed the horn back to his operator.

‘Unload the munitions,’ he ordered. ‘These eight vehicles here. Load them with the empty carry crates. One driver, one spotter in each. Come along!’

Blenner walked over to him.

‘Orders?’

‘Strike Beta’s called in transport. They’re about to get their hands on what we’re looking for.’

Blenner nodded.

‘I’ll lead this, then,’ he said.

Obel frowned.

‘I’ve been waiting all day for a chance to–’ he began.

‘I know you have. But this is just a transport duty. In and out, lugging freight. My kind of job. I’ll use bandsmen who can drive a unit as crew.’

‘I… I would like to voice my objection,’ said Obel.

‘I hear you, I do,’ said Blenner. ‘But I outrank you in this circumstance. Look, Obel, any minute we could get the call to send active fighting reserves to the excursion deck to support Strike Alpha. Combat drop, man. That’s your kind of job. Let me take the band in to drive the cargo. That’s just grunt work. Don’t waste your time with it. Wait here for your chance to do the thing you actual heroes do.’

Obel made to reply, and then stopped.

‘I just paid you a compliment, captain,’ said Blenner.

Obel shook his head and laughed.

‘Good luck, sir,’ he said.

‘Oh, I won’t need that,’ said Blenner.

Blenner walked over to Wilder. His heart was pumping harder than he really liked.

‘Time for work, captain,’ he said.

Wilder looked at him.

‘Really? Another munition restock?’

‘No, something much more stimulating. We’re going in to support Gaunt. Select eight drivers and five spotters.’

‘Five?’ asked Wilder.

‘The others will be you, me and the boy there.’

‘Shit, commissar!’ Wilder hissed. ‘Gaunt’s son? Really?’

‘He needs to do something before his confidence withers and dies entirely,’ said Blenner.

‘Come on now!’ he called to the bandsmen. ‘Let’s look like we know what we’re doing. Perday? You’ll be my driver.’

Felyx approached him.

‘You want me for this?’

‘It’s just a little trip. You’ll enjoy it. Something to do, Meritous.’

‘I’ll ride along,’ said Maddalena.

‘There’s no room, so you can’t. Sorry and all that. I’ll bring him back in one piece. Promise.’

‘No,’ said Maddalena.

‘Yes!’ Felyx exclaimed.

‘You are bound by Imperial Guard law,’ Blenner told her. ‘It was a basic condition of you remaining with this regiment. I know that as a fact. So I have authority and I’m exercising it. Go away. Let the boy do something today so that when it’s all over he can look his father in the face without feeling ashamed.’

Maddalena Darebeloved stared at him. Her jaw was tight.

‘I do not like you, Vaynom Blenner,’ she said.

‘They all say that at first,’ he replied. He stared right back at her. ‘My dear mamzel, if I worried about all the things in this fething galaxy that didn’t like me, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.’

He turned away.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked.

Criid shone her lamp pack into the darkness overhead. Her clearance team had entered a vast cavern that seemed to be a natural formation because time and compression had crumpled the walls and ceiling so much. Micas and alloys glittered and wrinkled like rock. The deck beneath their feet was rusting plates forming a path across oil-stained rockcrete surfacing.

‘Hold up,’ Mklaek called out. He tuned the dial of his sweeper. ‘It’s mined,’ he said. ‘Under the floor plates.’

Banda wiped sweat from her forehead.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘How do I shoot out the trigger, then?’

‘Can we lift the plates up?’ asked Leyr. ‘Disable the mines manually?’

‘That sounds like a gigantically bad idea,’ said Criid.

‘We go around then,’ said Leyr. ‘Off the path, onto the rockcrete.’

Mklaek shook his head.

‘I’m getting nothing at all off the rockcrete. Too dense for a clear return. There could be filament charges or remote triggers that I’m just not picking up.’

Criid breathed deeply.

‘So we find another way,’ said Chiria, easing the weight of her flamer pack. ‘Go back to that last junction, take the other spur.’

Banda put down her rifle and leaned against the cavern wall. She was trying to regulate her stress.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You never mine an area you can’t disarm. That’s a scratch company basic rule.’

‘That’s not always true,’ said Leyr.

Banda shrugged. ‘All right. Maybe not on an open world where you’ve got the luxury of space. Space to go around. Space to detonate from a distance. But not here.’

She looked at Criid.

‘Think about it, Tona,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t wire up a main route like this if they couldn’t unwire it again later. In case they needed to. It stands to reason. They couldn’t set this off safely to clear it. The concussion would blow right through the tunnels.’

Criid thought about it.

‘Which means,’ said Banda, ‘these charges must be defusable. We can lift the plates.’

Mklaek nodded eagerly. ‘Because they won’t have pressure releases,’ he said. ‘They won’t be triggered by weight coming off them. Just weight being applied.’

‘Can you do it?’ asked Criid.

Mklaek nodded again.

‘It’ll make a change from taking pot shots,’ said Banda.

Criid looked at Chiria. ‘Go back to the troop support and get them to back off at least fifty metres,’ she said.

‘That won’t do any good if we set this off,’ Chiria objected.

‘It’ll make me feel better,’ snapped Criid. She looked at Banda and Mkleak.

‘You’re up,’ she said.

They put on gloves and got down on their hands and knees. Mklaek slid the sweeper set alongside him as they crawled along, keeping an eye on the auspex unit.

‘This is the first one,’ he said, halting.

Criid and Leyr stood watching, intent.

Banda drew her warknife and fitted the tip of the blade under the edge of the corroded deck plate.

‘Steady,’ said Mklaek.

‘Really?’ Banda replied. ‘I was just going to flip it up.’

Mklaek got right down so the side of his head was on the ground. The moment the plate lifted, even a finger width or less, he could see under it.

‘Do it,’ he said.

Banda began to lever up the edge of the plate. It was thick and very heavy, and the knife blade was polished so finely the plate looked in danger of slipping off it. She prised the edge of the plate up about two centimetres, and very quickly got three fingers under it before it fell back onto the pressure trigger.

‘Throne alive,’ muttered Leyr to Criid. ‘I can’t bear this.’

Banda swallowed, adjusted her grip, and slid the knife out. Mklaek still had his head pressed to the ground.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He nodded.

She started to lift. It was heavy. She wouldn’t be able to hold it for very long.

‘Stop,’ said Mklaek.

‘What?’ Banda asked. The plate was no more than three centimetres clear on the side she was lifting.

‘Don’t move it any higher,’ said Mklaek.

‘Oh right, just sit here? Holding it?’

‘The underside is wired,’ said Mklaek quietly. ‘It’s got a pull-away wire hooked to the trigger cap. Lift it any higher and it’ll fire.’

‘Now you tell me,’ said Banda.

Raess took a sip of water from his flask. His throat was as dry as Jago. There was a soreness in his right arm that he didn’t like.

‘Fit?’ asked Mktass.

‘I’ll do,’ said Raess. He stoppered his flask, put it away, and got up. ‘Where is it?’

Mktass’s team had advanced into another engine room, a giant, rusting metal box full of rusting metal machines. It was the third in a row that they had slowly picked their way across. Preed speculated that they were all parts of a ship, a shiftship, that had been compacted into the mass of Salvation’s Reach centuries before. It reminded them of the corroding, jury-rigged hulks the greenskins used. Every surface was a drab, flaking autumnal shade of rust.

They were coming out on a gantry halfway up the height of the chamber. The gantry became a metal bridge that stretched out to a hatch on the far side. Support was from metal bars that descended from the ceiling. It was a long way up and a long way down.

Brennan had swept the chamber and located an electrical source on the bridge, halfway along. The central span was wired up to pressure plates under the approach span. A major charge lurked under the bridge, secured in a fuel barrel and lagged with swathes of oilskin sheet.

Raess chambered a round. He had officially lost count of how many shots he’d taken that day.

‘Line me up,’ he told Preed.

The scout took out his scope and put the tagger beam on the trigger mechanism, which stuck out of the bundle under the bridge like a spigot.

‘Got it?’ Preed asked.

‘Yes,’ said Raess, setting his rifle scope.

Mktass waited behind them, with Sairus. Sairus had turned his flame unit right down to the slowest rate. Mktass glanced back to the troop element, waiting a hundred metres back down the corridor. The Belladon sergeant, Gorlander, at the head of the column, shot Mktass a quick nod.

Brennan edged forwards beside the shooting team and swept again. Just his weight and movement on the gantry made it stir and creak.

‘Feth!’ Mktass breathed.

Small scabs of rust fluttered down from the pins supporting the structural bars. Most of them billowed away like dead leaves. Preed gently caught one of the largest before it could land on the wired bridge span. He was pretty sure it would have been too slight to activate the pressure plate, but there was no sense tempting fate.

‘Take your shot, please,’ said Mktass.

Raess lined up.

‘Wait,’ said Brennan. His scope was showing something else. ‘There’s a second charge at the other end of the bridge. It’s wired up to the same pressure pads as the first.’

‘Feth,’ Raess whispered.

‘What do we do?’ asked Preed.

Brennan took a deep breath, thinking.

‘Take out the first as you were,’ he said. ‘Reload fast, take out the second. In between times, pray that the impact of the first shot doesn’t throw the second trigger.’

Raess took out a second saline round and stood it on its brass base beside his knee.

‘Line up both shots in advance,’ he told Preed. ‘We’ll plug both sets of range parameters into our scopes so I can take the shot, load and switch to the second.’

Preed nodded.

Raess’s palms were sweating.

The blast hatch was scarred and coated with dust, but it held power. Mkoll touched the release and raised his weapon as it whirred open.

Silence.

He took a step forwards, weapon still aimed. Bonin and Ezra were by his side, with Brostin just behind them.

Mkoll felt warmth on his face. Heated air, circulating, an atmospheric pump. There were pendant lights in wire cages hanging from the brushed metal ceiling of the hallway. Some were lit. Some were dead.

He stepped through the hatch. The hallway was ribbed. The wall panels, battered old slab-cut metal sheets, had been painted with crude yellow symbols that made him feel uneasy. He could smell foul biological waste, oil and heated metal. He could hear a generator chugging close by, and deeper more faraway sounds of major machines at work. Patches of the floor were scorched as if fires had been lit and left to go out. Piles of discarded junk, unidentifiable fragments of rubber and metal salvage, were heaped in the corners.

Bonin edged down to the first junction. Ezra checked the nearest doors. The metal swing doors opened into little stone cells, like a jail without locks, sleeping quarters, monastically simple and spare. There were dozens of them, and then others above them, accessed by makeshift metal ladders, and others above that; a honeycomb of cells that stretched away into the darkness of the roof space.

They advanced a little further. Gaunt had followed them through, trailed by Rawne and Varl and the pheguth.

Gaunt shot Mabbon a look. The etogaur nodded and pointed ahead.

Gaunt holstered his pistol and drew his sword. He signed for silent approach. The Ghosts slung their rifles over their shoulders and drew their blades.

Two figures emerged from a hatchway up ahead of them. They were soldiers in brown leather webbing and yellow coats. Sons of Sek. They paused to mutter at each other. They turned to head in different directions. Mkoll took one down with his knife, cradling the corpse all the way to the deck. Ezra put a reynbow quarrel through the spine of the other.

Gaunt approached and glanced at the bodies as Bonin checked the hatch the enemy troops had emerged from.

The Sons were big and corded with muscle built from punishing training regimes. They stank of spices and dust. Their uniforms were bleached faded Guard surplus, patched up and dyed yellow. The belts and leatherwork they wore were finely made and polished. Their weapons were freshly stamped lasrifles, probably from some hijacked forge world shipment heading for the front line.

The masks were curious, the helmet chinstraps ornately broadened to cover the mouth with a life-sized simulacrum of a human hand.

Gaunt looked again, more closely. The leather hand had fingernails. It wasn’t a simulacrum. The ornate boots, belts, straps and other leatherwork worn by the Sons was tanned and cured from skinned victims or enemies.

Gaunt got up, and they moved on. The chambers felt like crypts. Wall paint was flaking and only half the light sources worked. There was a litter of junk and signs of scorching everywhere. Somehow, Gaunt had been imagining something more organised, something less like a slum or a derelict hive-hab occupied by vagrants.

All the metal surfaces flaked with rust, scabs of brown and black and yellow. Old wire braziers fluttered with open fires. Wires hung down from the galvanised metal ceiling frame.

They crossed a broad area like an open yard that was piled almost knee-deep with old, worn, faded and discarded rebreather masks. The cracked eye-slits seemed to stare at them. Then there was another bank of monastic cells, climbing like a cliff-face into the mangled junk vault of the chamber. A hatch opened into another hall. The space was filled with huge zinc baths, glass sinks, glass flagons and metal cooking pots. They were placed side by side on the floor, as if they had been arranged to catch drips from a leaking roof. All of the vessels, large or small, were filled to a greater or lesser extent with blood. The stink was terrible. Much of the blood was old, decomposing, clotted with rafts of mould and decay. Some of it seemed fresh.

Beyond that there were more of the monastic cells.

Leading the way, Bonin, Mkoll and Eszrah had silenced two more Sons along with some kind of robed official who was dressed like a hierophant. This creature’s malnourished, pallid form, replete with tattoos, was wrapped in a crude wire-and-metal armature under his robes, a frame that seemed designed either to support him or torture him. The joints had chafed and cut his flesh. The frame reminded Gaunt a little of the wirewolves of Gereon.

Gaunt glanced at Mabbon, quizzical.

A weaponwright, Mabbon wrote on his data-slate. Mabbon had told Gaunt that the weaponwrights were a fraternity of technical adepts who operated the Reach manufactories and had served the malign Heritor, Asphodel. They would now be serving a new Heritor, enabling him to function as Sek’s principal arms provider. Their prowess was likened to the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, though they relied far less on augmetic body modification and far more on esoteric and forbidden lore.

Gaunt nodded. He checked behind him. The troop element was advancing into the active section at their heels. Mkoll had made sure that the bodies of the Ghosts’ kills were dragged out of sight and thrown in the cells.

Mkoll signalled. He and the scouts fanned out.

‘These cells are where the weaponwrights rest and meditate,’ Mabbon whispered to Gaunt. ‘We are remarkably close to one of the main colleges. The colleges of heritence.’

‘The manufactories?’ Gaunt whispered back.

‘Yes, but more like labs,’ said Mabbon.

Mkoll returned.

‘There is a suite of chambers up ahead,’ he reported. ‘An extensive complex. Bad light in there, a weird light. There are people at work, men like the one in the robes. Servitors too, but not like any I’ve seen. There’s stuff there. Benches of it, shelves, alcoves. I saw artefacts, books, charts, data-slates.’

‘That’s the target,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Decide the order of attack. We need this to be discreet.’

‘We’ll never do it silently,’ said Mkoll.

‘Quietly, then, and quickly.’ He looked back at Mabbon. ‘Will there be defences? Things that we can’t handle?’

Mabbon shook his head.

‘Some of the things the weaponwrights craft here are so volatile they have to be kept inert for fear of inter-reaction. The Reach’s principal defence has always been its inaccessibility.’

Gaunt looked over at Mkoll. The chief scout had finished briefing the men. He gave Gaunt the nod.

Gaunt signed execute.

Three prongs moved forwards, fast and quiet. Mkoll led one, Rawne the second and Bonin the third. They ran down a long, paved hallway with towering walls the colour of mud, and under the broken stained glass dome of a large circular chamber that rivalled many temples. The floor was littered with fire-burns and blackened rubbish. This area of the Reach had been deliberately designed and constructed. Compartments and rooms had been cut and dressed with stone, decks had been paved or bound in iron. On the walls, strange murals had been painted: abnormal views that were barely intelligible and curiously disturbing. They seemed to be views of alien landscapes or records of macabre ritual ceremonies. Gaunt felt as if they were invading a cathedral precinct, a cathedral precinct that smelled like a library and a machine shop and a latrine and that had been buried deep underground, lit by the ruddy glow of simmering lava.

The college of heritence was a trio of long, high halls, linked end to end, with a series of side chapels and annexes to either side. Its floor was hammered copper, and its walls were carved ivory inlaid with silver threads and bio-organic mechanisms. Strange objects stood in alcoves or on bench consoles. There were shelves of books and data-slates. Some of them had been chained down or welded shut. A vast and ornately carved bank of wooden pigeonholes along one wall contained millions of hand-numbered scrolls. Larger devices, some partly disassembled, lay in the side bays and machine-shop chambers, shrouded by mirror-glass screens and silk canopies. The copper floor was blanketed with junk and salvage, like a garbage dump.

The Ghosts rushed the area, entering from three sides. A weaponwright, his head braced and held painfully erect in a frame of wire and brass, lifted his gaze from the cogitator he was dismantling at a bench and looked at them. His fingers had been amputated and tools implanted in their place. Machine oil trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Voi shet jadhoj’k?’ he asked, perplexed by the appearance of people he didn’t recognise.

Mkoll put his dagger through the wretch’s heart.

Other weaponwrights nearby, looking up from their study or delicate manufacture, were killed quickly with blades. Others got up, and made to run or cry out. The first shots were fired: quick bursts of las that cut robed figures down. Bonin hit one who fell and overturned his work bench. Delicate wirework creations, glassware and brass instruments crashed onto the copper floor. The acolytes and servitors assisting the weaponwrights were distressing confections of machine skeleton and grafted human meat, fused through an amalgam of augmetics and artificial tissue. The Ghosts shot them too. They died with shrill, squealing cries. Some tried to scurry away or raise the alarm. They fled in every possible direction through the long, bizarre halls of the college.

Strike Beta was thorough.

Several Sons of Sek appeared at the far end of the first hall, disturbed by the cries. Varl killed one, and Cardass clipped and then finished a second before serious gunplay could begin. A third ran for cover and began to return fire. His head vanished in a pink mist.

Larkin had made the shot from the main entry. He hadn’t even had time to take out his longlas and put away his rifle. He had simply slotted a hard round into the old gun’s breech. Forty-three metres, a target moving into partial concealment.

‘Who says I’m tired?’ he muttered.

Inside five minutes, the Ghosts had the college area secure.

‘They will now know we’re here,’ said Mabbon.

‘Of course,’ Gaunt noted.

‘Simply from the cessation of activity and processed data,’ Mabbon added. ‘But with the primary raid going on, I’d say we have half an hour before they properly realise they have a second crisis on their hands.’

‘Let’s get to work,’ said Gaunt. ‘Mkoll, bring the transports up as close as they can come. Bring the empty crates in. Two squads. Rawne, set up a perimeter. Etogaur, tell us what to take, and how it should be correctly handled. The rest of it we burn. Then we get the feth out.’

‘But we do burn it?’ Brostin asked.

Gaunt nodded.

‘Just checking,’ said Brostin.

The eight Tauros vehicles rumbled into lateral sixteen and drove through the bore hole into the Reach.

Inside, the rate was slower. They were following the route that Mkoll had marked out, picking up his chalk marks with their headlamps. The ship’s artificers had moved in after the troops and cleared some areas, but space was still tight in places. Where devices had been secured, the drivers had to use extra care not to snag or disturb the packed explosives.

Blenner rode in the first Tauros. He felt the sweat on his back, smelled cold air and exhaust fumes. It was times like this, he thought to himself, when a bottle of sugar pill placebos just didn’t cut it. Where was that nice medicae Curth when you needed her?

‘Easy, easy,’ he urged Perday. Her hands were clenched on the wheel, her eyes wide with concentration and tension.

Two vehicles back, Felyx held onto the cabin cage with one hand and cradled his lasrifle in the other. The empty carry crates rattled in the back of the vehicle.

He was actually doing something, for the first time in his life. He was engaged in an activity that could lead anywhere, and that his mother couldn’t absolutely control with her power and money.

Now it was happening, he wasn’t sure exactly what he thought of it.

‘My arm’s too big,’ said Mklaek.

‘That’s fantastic,’ Banda replied through gritted teeth. Sweat was beading her face. Her arms were beginning to shake through the strain. ‘I can’t hold this much longer, and I can’t lift it any higher.’

‘I just can’t get my arm in under the plate far enough to reach the wire,’ said Mklaek. He looked at Criid. There was panic in his eyes.

Criid got down on her knees beside Banda, pulled off her gloves and rolled her left sleeve up. Her arm was more slender than Mklaek’s. She had a better chance than either Leyr or Chiria.

‘What do I do?’ she asked, gently sliding her hand in under the heavy metal plate.

‘Find the wires,’ said Mklaek, ‘without pulling them out. Gently.’ His hands were bunched tightly together, fingers interlocked, as if he was praying all the while he watched her.

‘Go really slowly,’ he implored her.

‘I am going really slowly,’ Criid replied, reaching further.

‘Not too slowly,’ Banda grunted. ‘I can’t do slowly.’

‘Holy feth,’ Leyr said to Chiria.

‘I can’t look,’ said Chiria.

‘I’ve got them. I’ve got wires!’ Criid said. There was no way to reach in and see what she was doing at the same time. She was groping under the metal slab blind.

‘All right,’ said Mklaek, nodding. ‘Trace them up to the slab. Up. Do it really gently. You do not want to pull anything out by accident.’

‘All right,’ said Criid. She bit her lower lip in concentration.

‘Don’t follow the wires back to the firing cap,’ said Mklaek. ‘Go up.’

‘Yes, I understand what “up” means!’ Criid said.

‘Do any of you understand what “quickly” means?’ Banda gasped.

‘I’ve got the wire,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve got it at the top, where it meets the plate.’

‘Is it soldered?’ Mklaek asked.

‘No, it’s wound onto a metal terminal.’

‘All right. Good. So, without pulling it, unwind the wire and detach it.’

Staring at the deck, her arm in the hole, Criid grimaced. ‘That’s easier said than done. I can’t get hold of the end.’

‘When we’re done here,’ murmured Banda, ‘I’ve decided to kill everybody.’

‘If we don’t do this right,’ said Mklaek, ‘that won’t be necessary.’

‘I’ve got it,’ Criid said. ‘I’ve picked the strands loose. Wait. Wait…’

She looked at them.

‘It’s off,’ she said.

‘Are there any other wires?’ Mklaek asked.

‘Oh, what?’ cried Banda.

Criid gingerly felt around.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, there’s– wait. No. No other wires.’

‘Then we lift it off,’ said Mklaek.

Criid drew her arm out. She and Mklaek got their fingers under the plate beside Banda.

‘On three,’ said Criid.

‘Three,’ said Banda.

They lifted.

As it came away, the deck plate exposed a dull grey anti-tank mine buried in soil beneath. A wire trailed from the pressure pin on the top.

They put the plate down on the path beside the hole.

‘I have to make it safe,’ said Mklaek, taking out a pair of pliers and kneeling beside the mine.

‘I do not want to do that again,’ said Criid.

Raess fired. The shot was perfect. The saline charge blew the firing cap assembly out of the device under the bridge span.

But the recoil also made the gantry shiver unpleasantly.

Preed lined the tagger up on the second trigger cap quickly. Raess scooped the waiting round up off the deck beside him and reloaded.

He reset his scope and locked on the point that Preed was tagging. His finger curled around the trigger, ready to squeeze.

Small flakes of rusty metal trickled down from overhead, disturbed by the recoil. Mktass caught one before it landed.

A second, no bigger than a rose petal, landed on the first span of the bridge.

‘Oh f–’ Mktass began.

The pressure switch clicked. The second charge, at the far end of the bridge, blew.

The force of the detonation instantly shredded the entire length of the bridge into rust particles and ignited the first charge. The combined blast lit the chamber like a supernova.

Mktass, Preed, Sairus, Brennan and Raess were simply atomised. Concussive pressure split the chamber walls and forced a titanic shockwave back down the access tunnel. The pressure blast liquidised Sergeant Gorlander and the troop element waiting in the passageway behind them.

The rushing, sucking fireball that squirted up the tunnel incinerated the pulped remains a millisecond later.

TWENTY-ONE

SALVATION LOST

The convoy of Tauros vehicles had reached the inner hatch that led into the occupied section of the Reach. Blenner, Wilder and their team stood guard by the vehicles. Gaunt had sent troops back from the college to collect the carry crates and begin the extraction of sensitive materials.

Wilder was pacing.

‘Calm down,’ Blenner told him, but only because the pacing was making him feel more tense himself. They were exposed, literally right on the doorstep of the enemy holding. The smells of squalid decay and putrefaction coming out of the hatch were horrifying.

He looked at Felyx. The boy was standing by the tail board of his vehicle, watching the dark cavities around them for movement. He was holding his weapon too tightly.

Blenner tried to think of something encouraging to say, but he had used up all his banter on Perday on the ride in.

The bang made them jump. The ground shuddered. Pressure shock popped their ears so hard many of them cried out and dropped their guns.

A second later, they felt the rush of hot wind come at them down the tunnel, and smelled the grit and fyceline.

‘Damnation,’ said Blenner. ‘What just happened?’

Merrt was lining up to take a shot when the ground shook. They all felt it. Pieces of junk trickled down from the roof. The distant boom came a second later and then, like a feverish sigh, the rush of burned air.

The team members looked at each other.

‘Feth,’ said Vahgner.

‘Somebody just got unlucky,’ said Daur.

It was like a grenade going off behind them. A violent tremor ripped through the floor, and a shockwave of noise, heat and pressurised air slammed through the chamber into them. Criid, Banda and Leyr were all knocked over. Somehow Chiria kept her feet.

They all knew what it was. They knew instantly. One of the other clearance teams had set something off. It was close by, too. Who? Mktass’s bunch? Mkoll’s?

It was the noise, the blink of annihilation, that they had been dreading all day, the thing they had been braced for, the thing they had been yearning and willing not to happen.

It hadn’t happened to them. Someone else had got unlucky. It hadn’t happened to them.

But it might as well have done.

Mklaek had been in the process of removing the firing pin from the floor mine they had finally exposed. Keeping his hand as still as possible, he had been lifting the pin he had unscrewed clear of the socket, slowly and cleanly, making sure no extra wires were attached. Criid was rolling her sleeve back down and putting her gloves back on. Banda was trying to flex life into her fingers and arms from holding the deck plate.

He had been a millimetre or so away from lifting it clear when the blastwave hit them.

‘Mklaek?’ Criid cried, getting up.

Mklaek was prone on the deck, belly down, his face over the anti-tank mine. His hand was on the trigger pin, still holding it. The blast had made him touch it against the rim of the socket. He didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare break the contact.

‘Mklaek?’ Criid repeated. She and the others moved towards him.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ he hissed, trying not to move. ‘Don’t come any closer. Run. Get the detachment running.’

‘Feth that!’ said Banda.

‘I’m not kidding!’ Mklaek whispered, his eyes wide. ‘Run, you stupid bastards! Run now. I think this has gone live! I think it’s live and I can’t hold it forever. Run!’

‘No way–’ Criid began.

‘Run!’ Mklaek rasped, almost a wail of desperation.

They looked at each other.

‘We can’t–’ Criid began.

Leyr and Banda grabbed her and bundled her towards the passageway behind them. They started running, Chiria too, labouring with the weight of the flamer tank. The troop detachment saw them coming and needed no encouragement to turn and run as well. They fled down the tunnel, full sprint. Leyr and Banda had to virtually drag Criid.

Mklaek held on for as long as he could. When his fingers finally began to give out, he lifted the pin away from the socket.

Nothing.

‘The Emperor protects,’ he murmured, tears of relief in his eyes.

The tank mine exploded.

They felt the detonation rather than heard it. The copper flooring of the college hall shivered. The lamps rattled and stirred.

Gaunt turned to look at Mkoll, and as he did so they both felt the pressure shift of air passing through the chamber. Gaunt could taste the heat and the dry stink of explosives.

‘That was big,’ he said.

Mkoll didn’t reply. He knew they’d just lost someone. A lot of people, probably. Perhaps that had been the sound of them losing the fight, the mission, and everything they’d come for.

Bonin came in.

‘That came up the tunnels,’ he said. ‘One of the disposal teams made a misstep.’

‘Which one?’ asked Rawne.

Bonin shook his head.

‘If we felt it here–’ said Gaunt.

‘Sir?’

Gaunt turned. With Varl guarding him, Mabbon had gone over to one of the control panels wired into the wall of the college chamber. Behind a dingy glass panel, a strip of stained paper was scrolling through a chart recorder, six claw-like, spring-loaded arms leaving scratchy lines on the graph.

‘It’s a motion recorder,’ said Mabbon. ‘They’re commonplace. The magirs and etogaurs of the facility will have detected it.’

They felt another smaller but definite thump through the ground. The graphing arms recorded a sudden and steep spike.

‘Another one?’ said Gaunt.

‘Available time just reduced considerably,’ said Mabbon. ‘No matter what is happening on the main approach, your enemy will now be sending units to investigate.’

Gaunt strode back to Rawne and Mkoll.

‘Strengthen the perimeter,’ he said. ‘I want to know the moment they arrive.’

Members of the troop detachment were bringing in the first of the empty carry boxes.

‘Let’s get these filled. Quickly,’ said Gaunt. He glanced back at Mabbon.

‘Take everything you can,’ said Mabbon. ‘Papers, books, document cases, tubes, data-slates. Use gloves. Seal the boxes when they’re full.’

‘Don’t sort,’ said Gaunt. ‘In fact, don’t even look at what you’re grabbing. The Inquisition can worry about decoding and understanding it all. We’ve just got to deliver. Pick it up, ship it out, move on to the next box. Anything you’re not sure about, leave it or ask me.’

‘Come on,’ said Domor, clapping his hands. ‘Grab and go.’

Gaunt took an empty box, moved to some dirty metal shelves, and began to take the pamphlets and books off it. He could smell book mould and damp. Some of the page edges had stuck to the metal. He took each handful and packed it into the box, filling it neatly and efficiently, the way his father had taught him to pack a foot locker.

He never imagined he’d be handling this sort of material. It was his imagination, no doubt, but his flesh tingled despite the gloves. What were they disturbing? How were they being contaminated? This stuff had power. This knowledge, this learning, it had a potency of its own. The books, the bindings, the materials used, the very words, dictated through the warp by lisping, gleeful, inhuman voices. Under any other circumstances, they would have been burning the stuff.

He moved to another rack. Scroll cases. The tubes were made of the same nut-brown, glossy leather as the belts and straps of the Sons of Sek. He knew what it was. He kept packing anyway.

The box was full. He closed the lid, secured it with the straps, and turned to hand it off in exchange for a fresh one.

Felyx Chass was offering him the empty box.

‘What are you doing here?’ Gaunt asked, biting back his alarm and managing to keep his voice low.

‘Following orders, sir,’ said Felyx.

‘What orders?’

‘Conveyance transport duty, sir,’ the boy said. His face was pale.

‘Take this crate back to the transports. Load it securely. Come back for another one,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you all right?’

Felyx nodded.

‘In duty we find true fulfilment, sir.’

‘That’s Ravenor,’ said Gaunt.

‘I took the liberty of reading some,’ said Felyx.

Gaunt handed the sealed crate over.

‘Get moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go quickly.’

Felyx hurried towards the exit with the box. Gaunt picked up the empty carton he’d left behind.

‘You look troubled,’ said Mabbon. Gaunt turned. Mabbon had wandered over to him. Varl and the other Suicide Kings were busy packing boxes and watching the outer exits.

‘This is a precarious situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘We prepared for so long, and invested such effort, and now we’re here… I’m not sure it’s worth it. We’re stealing secrets that we don’t want to hear, and laying the blame on another.’

‘I see,’ said Mabbon. ‘I thought you might just be worried about your son.’

Gaunt narrowed his eyes.

‘You leave him alone.’

Mabbon raised his chained wrists.

‘I’m not in a position to do anything to anyone.’

‘How did you know?’

Mabbon’s face was impassive.

‘I hear things. I don’t get much opportunity to do anything except listen. I am not regarded as human, colonel-commissar. People talk around me as though I’m not there. They gossip to pass the time when they guard me. I could tell you all sorts of things about your Ghosts. I choose not to, because it would be impertinent and inappropriate, and I have no desire to damage the fragile relationship between us. On this occasion, I was merely expressing concern for you because I respect you.’

Gaunt was silent. Then he nodded and began packing the second box.

‘I worry that we’re tainting ourselves. Just handling this material, bringing it back to the Armaduke…’

‘That is simple paranoia, sir,’ said Mabbon. ‘Perfectly understandable. As I explained, the material in the college is inert. It is simply data. Oh, some of it is fairly unpleasant – records of abominations, atrocities – but it is not toxic of itself. It can be handled and removed quite safely.’

Gaunt began to put bundles of old data-slates into the box.

‘Would you like me to help?’ asked Mabbon.

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t touch anything.’

Mabbon nodded.

‘There are,’ he said, ‘other areas, crypts and vaults not far from the colleges of heritence, but kept separate, where true evil lurks. They contain artefacts. Devices. Books that need to be weighed down and chained, and which can only be read with surgically adapted eyes. Those are the things you need to avoid. Even the weaponwrights and the servants of the Heritor treat those with care. The warp is in them. But the Imperium is so afraid of the influence of the Ruinous Powers, it chooses to ignore vast amounts of data like this – data that is perfectly sound and reliable – and thus blinds itself to its enemy.’

‘I understand the brief,’ said Gaunt. ‘That’s why I supported the proposal. That’s why I volunteered my regiment. The removal and review of this material will give us insight into enemy operations that most likely will shift the course of the Crusade. If we cripple this facility, we also deprive the Archenemy of a vital resource.’

‘Even those two fine reasons are secondary to our goal,’ replied Mabbon.

‘Sir!’

Gaunt looked around. Sergeant Ewler had found something. Gaunt and Mabbon went over to him. Ewler and two other Ghosts, all of them with half-packed crates, were standing in the doorway of one of the college hall’s annexes, a small circular room lined with wooden shelves. There was a brass display case and analysis console in the centre of the floor.

‘These aren’t books, sir,’ said Ewler. ‘Do we take them too?’

Gaunt looked around the shelves. There were small objects everywhere, individually boxed in wooden frames, or stoppered in specimen flasks, like catalogued museum items: small ikons, pieces of technology, idols, figurines, amulets, strange items of jewellery, ritual athames, wands and beakers, playing cards, samples of powders and compounds, fragments of bone and fossil, pots of liquid. Gaunt saw a few old Imperial medals, a broken aquila, an Inquisitorial rosette, some pieces of augmetic and Imperial tech that he could not identify. He saw items that seemed unmistakably eldar in origin, and the blunt teeth and fetishes of greenskins.

‘Do we take this?’ he asked the prisoner.

‘Take it all if it’s portable,’ said Mabbon. ‘A great deal of the material here comes from salvage efforts in the Reach. The weaponwrights plunder the debris field, harvesting material from a thousand cultures and a billion years. There are several more side chambers like this. Strip them all, along with the written material.’

‘Do it,’ said Gaunt.

Ewler and his men started to clear the shelves.

Mabbon had crossed to the central display stand.

‘Look here,’ he said.

Gaunt went over to him.

Inside the glass-topped case lay eight damaged stone tablets. Each one was about the size of a data-slate, and they had been cut from a heavy, gleaming red rock. All of the tablets were chipped, and one had a significant piece missing. They were covered with inscribed markings, a language that Gaunt had never seen before.

‘These are important,’ said Mabbon. ‘We must take them.’

‘Why?’

‘I remember them being brought in, years ago. They were found at another site. One of the Khan Worlds, I believe. Xenos script, very old. The weaponwrights were very taken with them. They considered them to be important. They described them as the Glyptothek. A library in stone.’

‘Then we’ll take them for Imperial savants to study,’ said Gaunt.

‘Good,’ said Mabbon. ‘Look where they are.’

‘In that case, you mean?’

‘They’re being studied. See? The analysis devices. The transcriber? This alcove was the workplace of a senior weaponwright. A magir hapteka. He was concentrating his studies on this.’

‘Your point?’

‘Think about it. These objects were brought in years ago, and were considered significant then. They’re still under close and detailed examination. They are important.’

Mabbon looked at Gaunt. His eyes were fierce.

‘Your Emperor must be with us today. Your Emperor or your beati. In the act of undertaking this mission, he has led us to a discovery of singular value.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’m not convinced, but we’ll remove them too.’

He nodded to Ewler, who opened the case and packed the stones into his crate one by one. Gaunt watched for a moment, and then went to the analysis console. It was a battered but recognisable Imperial cogitator. Gaunt pulled out his data-slate and connected it to the console’s memory socket. He began to export the console’s archived data. The screen of the slate flickered as information flowed into it.

He’d almost finished when the first shots rang out at the far end of the college precinct. A few single blasts at first, then sustained fire.

Mkoll appeared in the doorway of the annexe.

‘Sons of Sek. Full order, eight companies, moving this way to secure the college,’ he said.

Gaunt drew his bolt pistol.

‘Deny them,’ he said.

Baskevyl lobbed a grenade around the hatch and stood aside.

There was a hard bang and two cult fighters were thrown headlong into the open in a spurt of debris and smoke.

Baskevyl swung back into the doorway and fired his lasrifle into the smoke. He spotted two other cult fighters, dazed and bloody from the grenade, and cut them down before they could react.

On the far side of the hatch was a machine bay and a loading ramp. Baskevyl killed another fighter on his way down, and then came under fire from a fireteam of Sons.

Gansky’s squad was moving up to his left. They covered the fire team with rifle fire and drove them back from behind a row of punctured, dented fuel drums. Baskevyl reached for another grenade, and realised he’d just used his last.

‘Flamer!’ he yelled.

‘Waiting for refill tanks, sir,’ Karsk shouted back.

‘Damn,’ Baskevyl muttered. They’d advanced, hard and fast, behind the Space Marine assault, but the Archenemy forces had native knowledge of the facility’s layout and kept striking at them from the flanks, weaving their way through the complex and cluttered geography of the depots and engineering spaces. The Sons of Sek had laced Salvation’s Reach with sally ports, false walls, blind hatches and artificial dead ends. The junk architecture of the ramshackle site was working to the enemy’s advantage, allowing them to sidestep, double-back and ambush.

It was costing the Tanith First men, and the munition expenditure was immense. Baskevyl didn’t think they’d ever lit off so much firepower in such a short space of time. The lighters had just jockeyed back in with a second ammunition restock.

The Sons fireteam had found new cover and was firing at a steady rate. Baskevyl hoped they didn’t have any grenades, or fresh throwing arms.

A sudden burst of lasfire split the air from above. Baskevyl glanced up to see that Dalin’s squad had found a way up onto a raised gantry. They had an almost unobstructed view of the Sons’ position, and were making best use of it. Nine of the Sons of Sek died where they stood. Two more broke and ran, and Baskevyl’s squad knocked them flat.

In the middle distance, a series of hefty explosions tore across the compartment, knocking down several cargo-lift gantries. Brother-Sergeant Eadwine and his weapon servitors had finally vanquished and destroyed a grotesque and ugly war construct, something that scuttled along on black wire like an arachnid as it fired its belly-slung lascannons. Baskevyl heard some of the Vervunhivers describe it as a ‘woe machine’. It wasn’t the first one they’d seen that day, and the Vervunhivers claimed it was like a small version of the constructs they’d fought during the Zoican War.

Huge flames sprayed up from the dying machine, scorching the compartment roof. Eadwine was already moving on. From his position, Baskevyl could still see the White Scar fighting his way forwards, but he’d lost track of the Iron Snake.

Kolea’s company began moving up alongside him. They’d brought fresh rockets and grenades with them, and at least four re-tanked flamers.

A shout went up. Two more large woe machines had rattled into view, supported by light stalk tanks and a detachment of Sons of Sek. They had come in through a bulk hatch from a derelict hangar and were punching the Ghosts back with the speed of their strike.

Kolea and Baskevyl called their tread-feathers up, and began to advance through the jumbled yards of the machine shop to get a better angle on the deadly constructs. Baskevyl could hear the chugging crack and whicker of their heavy guns. Something was on fire, weeping a curtain of thick, black smoke across the yards. Dalin’s squad switched to dealing with an enemy sniper who was taking potshots over the line of advance.

Kolea and Baskevyl reached an archway, hoping it would give them a good shot at the woe machines, but the sound of heavy gunfire had stopped. There was no sign of the lumbering machines or their support.

‘Where have they gone?’ asked Kolea.

Several runners arrived, bringing reports of a significant fall-away in the enemy resistance. Sons of Sek units had been seen breaking off and retreating.

‘Could they have been pulled back deliberately?’ asked Baskevyl. ‘Redirected?’

Kolea looked at him. He didn’t like where Bask was going.

‘I think it’s possible they’ve just discovered they’ve got a more vital problem to deal with,’ Baskevyl said with a shrug.

‘How would they know that?’ asked Kolea.

‘Sensors? Detectors? Plain bad luck?’ Baskevyl suggested. ‘Maybe Gaunt’s forces have got right inside, and it’s kicked off? We can’t know.’

‘If they know what we’re doing,’ murmured Kolea, ‘they know we’re just the sound and fury. They’ll know what’s really at stake.’

He called to the nearest runner.

‘Get to a vox,’ he said. ‘Signal the Armaduke. Message reads “Enemy may be aware of the secondary strike forces. Strike Beta and Strike Gamma must, repeat, must make ready for serious assault. The enemy knows what the target is.” Got that?’

‘Yes, major.’

‘Then run.’

The Sons of Sek threw themselves at the college of heritence. They came up in squads a dozen strong, armed with lasrifles and hellguns. Officers carried long, curved swords. They advanced out of the maze of inner tunnels and chambers that made up the Reach facility and fired rifle grenades at the doors and windows of the college to unseat the Imperial force. Stained glass exploded in glittering fragments. Fire took hold of ancient benches and shelving. Lamps fluttered and went out.

Under Gaunt’s direction, the Strike Beta detachment used what cover they could: the bulkheads and shelves, the annexes, the heavier metal desks and benches, and set up resistance fire.

Sons officers, yelling in brisk, curt accents, sent howling cult fighters forwards ahead of the battle troops to soak up the fire. The bodies of these poor wretches began to pile up around the outer steps and hatchways of the college precinct. Well back from the fighting line, Mabbon watched grimly.

They were exactly the tactics he would have employed.

‘How much longer?’ Gaunt asked Blenner.

His old friend paused, lugging a carry crate that he was taking back to the transports.

‘How long is an Imperial crusade?’ he replied. ‘We’ve cleared a little over half the rooms. Quite a quantity of stuff. If we gather too much more, we’ll have to send back for more transports.’

‘Keep going for now,’ said Gaunt. ‘Get as much as you can.’

‘Maybe two dozen or so crates before the last Tauros is full,’ said Wilder.

‘Good. Do it,’ said Gaunt.

‘Could we not just leave?’ asked Blenner. ‘Leaving sounds like a wise tactical move.’

‘Like bringing my son here?’ asked Gaunt.

Blenner snorted, and started emptying another case of shelves into a fresh crate.

Gaunt moved forwards, into the part of the college where the fighting had intensified. He passed Kolding, who was patching up three Ghosts caught in the opening gunplay.

He saw Eszrah Ap Niht.

‘Histye,’ Gaunt said. ‘Watch over my son.’

Eszrah nodded, and melted into the shadows.

Gaunt heard ugly animal noises over the heavy gunfire ahead of him. He ducked in beside Varl.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘Feth knows,’ Varl replied, slapping in a fresh cell. ‘They’re bringing things in. Animals. Like packs of dogs on leashes, but–’

‘But what?’

‘I think they made them, sir. I think they sewed these things together, stitched them from parts of different creatures. And humans.’

Mabbon had mentioned a fascination with surgical and genetic experimentation amongst some of the Reach’s weaponwrights.

Something was scratching and pawing at the doors and hatches. Gaunt could hear claws and hooves. He could hear whining voices and throbbing growls. He could hear human mouths making pitiful animal sounds.

Part of a wall blew in. Sons of Sek charged at them through the smoke, scrambling over the rubble, trying to capitalise on the hole they’d made.

Gaunt got up to meet them, scything his power sword around, taking off a head. He blew another Son off his feet with a bolt round, painting the rubble and the ceiling with blood from the detonation. Varl was beside him, shooting point-blank and stabbing with his bayonet. In a second, two more Suicide Kings – Cardass and Nomis – had reached them, firing single shots at selected targets. Gaunt ripped in with his sword, carving a path through the troops to face the officer, a massive brute with a power axe.

‘Drive them back. Plug the hole!’ Gaunt yelled.

Varl was too busy taking headshots to make a sarcastic reply.

Gaunt reached the officer. The axe swept at him, but he blocked it with his sword and levered the Archenemy warrior back a step or two. Gaunt had to duck the next chopping swing. He struck with the sword, ripping open the officer’s left thigh. Then, as the officer lurched forwards in pain at the injury, he tore his torso open with a massive upswing cut.

Twenty metres away, through the smoke, Ezra bundled Meritous Felyx Chass away from the breach. Felyx tried to shake off the firm grip of the mysterious heathen. He could see his father, the fabled People’s Hero, the man he had heard stories about since he was old enough to understand them. He could see him fighting, outnumbered, a determined blur with gleaming sword, spraying the walls with blood, cutting and slicing.

Felyx watched for a second, wide-eyed. He realised that, when all was said and done, there was precious little difference between being a hero of the people of the Imperium and being a ruthless, brutal killing machine. To be the former, one had to accept much of the role of the latter.

‘Come, soule,’ Ezra whispered.

‘I need to help,’ Felyx began, pulling away and trying to get his lasrifle off his shoulder.

Ezra didn’t reply. He picked Felyx up as if he were one of the carry crates ready for removal and strode towards the exit.

Varl switched to full auto, smacking two Sons and two cult fighters back out of the breach. Their bodies fell across the dust-swirled rubble. Cardass tossed a grenade out through the gap that exploded amongst the enemy squads still trying to force their way in. Gaunt joined Varl and Nomis at the top of the rubble, firing out into the smoke and darkness. Bayonet bloody, Rawne joined them.

‘Our options are limited,’ he said. ‘Our position here is narrow, just the hall area. They’re coming at us on three sides. We can’t overlap fire, or lay down anything to protect the right flank.’

‘Those windows?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Too high,’ said Rawne.

‘Get ready to pull out, then,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t think we’ll be staying here much longer.’

‘If we stay much longer, it’ll be permanent,’ said Rawne.

A cry went up outside the college wall. A huge force of Sons bayonet-charged the main hatch, firing as they came. The Ghosts barricading the main door and the side annexes were driven back, heads down. A storm of lasbolts tore through the hatchway and ripped apart benches and consoles. Gaunt saw two Ghosts cut down. He cursed.

Their grip on the college precinct, tenuous to begin with, had slipped entirely. The Sons of Sek were upon them so tightly, there wasn’t even a possibility of disengaging.

Vahgner beckoned them on. The tunnel network Daur’s clearance team had penetrated was a jumbled mix of stonework and rusted metal.

‘Can you hear that?’ asked Vahgner.

They stopped and listened, weapons ready.

‘Gn… gn… gn… fighting,’ said Merrt.

Daur nodded. Through the thickness of stone and compressed void junk ahead, they could hear the sounds of a serious firefight. Salvos of gunfire, lasweapons, grenade bursts.

‘I think someone’s got there first,’ said Haller. He grinned. ‘Should we lend them a hand?’

Daur wiped his mouth, thinking hard. Hark and the troop detachment hadn’t yet caught up with his team. What good could the five of them do, even with a flamer?

Some good, he decided. Maybe just enough. The biggest fight often turned on the smallest margin. They’d go in. Hark couldn’t be that far behind.

Vahgner brought his rifle up. Something was moving ahead of them. Something was skittering in and out of the rubble and junk piles that filled their path. It was getting closer.

The something lurched into view. It bounded towards them, with a long, loping gait. It was a dog, a big hound of some sort, a bloodhound perhaps. Its tan coat was shaved very short, and it wore a thick, spiked collar. It stopped and stared at them.

It sniffed, drool leaking from its loose black lips.

Its coat was not short. It had no coat. Now they saw it properly, they realised it was just bare flesh. There were suture marks around the spine and some of the major muscle groups. It was skeletally canine, but had a human skull, with face attached, had been grafted onto the thick neck.

Its eyes were white and dead. It whined.

Vahgner killed it.

‘What the sacred feth was that?’ he asked Daur.

Vahgner’s blood spattered Daur’s face. The scout fell backwards, dead, his head destroyed by a las round.

Sons of Sek came out of the darkness past the body of their slain creature. There were a dozen of them, firing rifles and pistols.

Haller dropped his sweeper and reached for his rifle. A shot clipped his shoulder and threw him into the wall. Daur returned fire, cutting down two of the attackers with a fierce burst. Merrt fired almost instinctively, crippling a Son with a saline charge he had loaded. A second later, he felt searing pain. A sledgehammer of momentum hit him in the chest and knocked him over.

‘Get back!’ Belloc yelled. ‘Get him back!’

His flamer gouted a spear of flame down the passage, torching one of the Sons. The man lit up and ran, consumed with white flames, into the passageway wall. Belloc fired again, filling the passageway with a hot orange light. A shot blew his throat out in a spray of blood. He staggered backwards and a round went into his chest, another into his hip and a final one into his eye. He fell on his back, his flamer gasping and flaring spurts of untrained fire.

Haller got up, bleeding, firing his laspistol.

‘Get Merrt!’ Daur yelled. ‘Get Merrt! Drag him back!’

Merrt was staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide, his augmetic jaw opening and closing uselessly. His chest was a bloody mess.

‘Get him!’ Daur yelled. He turned to fire again, and las rounds found him too.

TWENTY-TWO

DEPARTURES

‘Ban! Ban!’ Haller yelled, firing wildly. He couldn’t even reach Daur. He could see that his friend had been hit badly. Daur wasn’t moving.

Haller also knew there was no way he was going to hold off a Sons of Sek assault on his own with just a pistol.

The enemy charged him. A piercing plasma weapon beam blew the leading officer apart. Lasfire ripped in, cutting down several of the others. The gunfire was coming from behind Haller. He ducked down. The las and plasma fire streaked over his head, punishing the Sons, driving them back down the tunnel.

Hark appeared, plasma gun in hand. The rest of the Strike Gamma detachment came up after him.

‘Emperor damn it, Haller,’ Hark said, looking in dismay at the fallen men. ‘Decide to start without us, did you?’

‘They just came at us,’ Haller replied.

‘Medic!’ Hark yelled. Dorden came forwards. He groaned sadly at the sight that greeted him, and knelt down to examine Daur and Merrt. Vahgner and Belloc were way past saving.

‘We can hear fighting up ahead,’ Haller told Hark. ‘Captain Daur was pretty sure that Strike Beta has engaged. It sounds like they’re in the thick of it.’

‘We’ll move up to support,’ said Hark. He looked at Dorden. ‘How long, doctor?’

‘Move ahead,’ said Dorden, busy. ‘I’ve got my hands full here.’

‘I’m not leaving you,’ said Hark.

‘Well, I’d also prefer it if you didn’t carry two critically injured men into a fight with you. Let me patch them up. If you can spare Haller, we’ll move them back down the tunnel as soon as they’re stable.’

Hark looked at Haller.

‘All right with you?’

Haller nodded.

‘Get them to safety,’ Hark said. He leaned closer to Haller. ‘All three of them, all right?’ he whispered.

He stepped back.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘You’ve opened the way up for us. Strike Gamma? Ready weapons. Look lively! We’re advancing against hostiles.’

There was a clatter of weapons.

‘Forwards!’ Hark ordered. The troops began to file past. Hark looked back at Haller.

‘Get done here and get back. I’ll see you on the other side.’

‘Good luck, commissar,’ said Haller.

‘The Emperor protects.’

Haller watched as Hark’s force moved out of sight then he clambered over to Dorden.

‘Can we move them?’ he asked.

‘What’s wrong with your shoulder, Haller?’ Dorden asked.

‘It got shot. It’s nothing. Can we move them?’

‘Not yet. Maybe soon.’

‘Can you save them?’

Dorden looked at Haller. In the dim, twitching light cast by Belloc’s fallen flamer, his eyes seemed fathomless. He was exhausted. He couldn’t pretend any more

‘I don’t know, Haller. I can’t even save myself. Merrt’s chest wound is severe. His heart is damaged. Daur is… who am I kidding, Daur’s critical too. An infirmary is their best chance. An infirmary and a better medicae.’

‘You’re the best doctor w–’

Dorden shook his head.

‘Hush, Haller. I can barely walk. My hands are weak and clumsy. I am so tired and addled with pain-suppressing drugs I forget basic techniques. The ridiculous sentiment and affection of men like Gaunt and Hark has allowed me to continue serving long past my competence. I shouldn’t be here, Haller. Hark should have seconded a medic from the ship’s crew. He was humouring the last wishes of an old, dying fool.’

‘That’s not true,’ Haller replied.

‘Trust me, Haller. I forced my way into this because I wanted to matter one last time. I’m an old man and I should have known better–’

‘Stuff it. You know what you’re doing. All the while you’ve been spilling out that self-pity, you’ve been working. You know what you’re doing. Tell me what I can do. Compression or something. Let’s get them fixed and get them out. Now.’

‘We’re not going to hold them off much longer!’ Mkoll yelled, firing out of the college’s main hatchway.

‘I can see that,’ Gaunt replied, loading another clip of ammunition into his pistol.

Rawne appeared beside them, standing against the corner of the wall, firing his rifle. Las rounds whined past them or blew chrome punctures in the rusted metal.

‘This turned out so well,’ he murmured.

‘If we can break their onslaught, just for a few minutes, we can pull out,’ Gaunt said.

‘Have you seen how many of them there are outside?’ Rawne retorted. ‘It’s like the whole fething habitat is trying to kill us!’

‘Rawne’s right,’ said Mkoll. ‘If we’re going to break off, some of us have to stay here to cover the rest.’

‘No,’ said Gaunt.

‘Last ditch,’ Mkoll said.

‘Suicide Kings,’ said Rawne.

‘No. To both of you,’ snapped Gaunt.

‘Then this mission is going to fail,’ said Rawne.

The Sons of Sek threw themselves at the college precinct with renewed fury. They had brought up rockets, and heavier, crew-served guns. Gaunt tried to assess numbers through the smoke. Everything was about to end, and very rapidly.

‘Remember Tanith!’ a voice boomed across the concourse outside the college hatchway. Gaunt watched in disbelief as concentrated small-arms fire smacked into the Sons’ deployment from the right. Despite their superior numbers, the Sons seemed wrong-footed by the counter-assault. Half of their advance positions were suddenly exposed to the side.

‘It’s Strike Gamma!’ Varl yelled.

‘Daur?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I don’t see him,’ said Domor. ‘I see Commissar Hark. They’re coming out of the vents down there.’

‘Keep firing!’ Gaunt yelled. ‘Use this! Hit them hard while they’re reeling.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Rawne.

Gaunt scrambled back from the hatchway. He looked at Blenner and Wilder.

‘The last of the transports are loaded,’ said Wilder. ‘Everything we can carry.’

‘Get moving. Get back to the ship. We’ll follow on foot.’

Wilder nodded. He and Blenner turned.

‘Signal the Armaduke,’ Gaunt called to Blenner. ‘Begin withdrawal now.’

‘Understood,’ said Blenner.

Dalin came running through the debris field to the spot where Kolea and Fazekiel were in cover.

‘We’re ready for the next advance,’ said Kolea. He pointed. ‘Through those hatches there, into the yards on the far side, and–’

‘No, sir,’ said Dalin. He handed Kolea a slip of paper. ‘Just received by Rerval. We’ve been given the order to disengage and pull out.’

Kolea studied the piece of paper. He handed it to Fazekiel.

‘It’s authentic,’ said the commissar.

‘All right,’ said Kolea. ‘Contact all section and company leaders. The order is disengage and fall back. Systematic, just like we trained. Fall back by unit, covering fire. No unnecessary risks. No one rushing for the transports. Any charges, explosives, grenades left, use them to good effect. Bring the place down behind you if you can.’

Dalin and Fazekiel nodded.

‘Get the order spread quickly,’ said Kolea.

Baskevyl fired a couple of shots at some cult fighters dug in ahead of his position.

‘We’ve got the word, Bask,’ Kolosim yelled. ‘Pull back!’

‘Because we have to or because we’re done?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Let’s hope it’s the latter,’ yelled Kolosim.

‘Time to go,’ said Gendler.

Meryn tipped his head back and blew out a deep breath.

‘You sure?’ asked Costin.

Gendler ignored him.

‘You sure?’ asked Meryn.

‘Word just got passed up the line,’ said Gendler. ‘We’re out of this shit-fix.’

‘Suits me,’ said Meryn. In the last half an hour, the enemy strength had depleted a little. Things weren’t as hellish as they had been right after the drop, but they were still pretty bad. A steady stream of fire was coming their way, and Kolea had ordered his company to take a particularly inaccessible storage area.

Meryn could smell sour milk and crushed mint. He had no intention of taking any storage area. E Company had sat down on their arses and dug in for the last ten minutes, claiming to be waiting for restock before following the order to assault.

‘Let’s go then,’ Meryn said. ‘E Company, out now! Fast! Head for the transports. Move your scrawny arses!’

‘Orders said something about systematic retreat and covering fire,’ said Gendler. He looked at Meryn. They both snorted with laughter.

Costin tried to join in too, faking a laugh.

‘Shut the feth up,’ said Meryn.

They began to back off, scrambling over the smouldering wreckage and heaped debris in the direction of the hangar bays and the drop site.

Merrt could walk, very slowly, with Dorden supporting him and using the autorifle as a walking stick. His skin was sallow from blood loss. Each step he took was a massive effort. Daur was still unconscious; Haller was obliged to carry him. Every ten metres or so, Haller put his friend down to rest his arms.

‘Maybe we should wait for Hark’s squad to come back this way and help us,’ said Dorden.

‘What if they don’t?’ asked Haller through gritted teeth. ‘You heard that fighting. Like the West Wall at Vervunhive.’

‘You’re right, you’re right,’ said Dorden. He was behind Haller, so Haller couldn’t see how sick he was or how badly he was faltering. Already tired and wrung out, the effort of supporting Merrt was sapping the last dregs of Dorden’s strength.

Merrt was ailing too. He slumped against the passage wall, dropping his rifle. Dorden tried to help him slide down to the ground without further damaging himself. Blood welled up over the lip of his augmetic jaw.

‘Gn… gn… gn… can’t do it,’ Merrt whispered.

‘You can,’ said Dorden. ‘You can, Rhen.’

Merrt shook his head.

‘Get him up, doc!’ Haller urged.

‘He needs a moment to rest,’ Dorden replied. So do I, he added, under his breath.

Haller cursed and put Daur down again. He sat down, rubbing his arms.

‘How much further, do you think?’ he asked. They’d already passed half-a-dozen of the devices that Merrt and Haller had disarmed and marked up with red chalk.

‘Not far,’ said Dorden. He gave himself a shot in the thigh that no one could see, a huge and desperate hit of pain-killers.

‘Too far,’ Merrt whispered, sitting with his back to the wall, his eyes closed. ‘Tell me the gn… gn… gn… truth, doc. I’m done, aren’t I? I’m bleeding inside. My heart… It feels like I’m gn… gn… gn… torn up.’

‘You’re fine,’ said Dorden. He couldn’t avoid Haller’s eyes. Haller could see Dorden was lying. The old medicae no longer had the strength to fake a confident bedside manner.

‘Leave me here,’ said Merrt. ‘You’ll be gn… gn… gn… a lot faster without me.’

‘We’re not leaving you,’ said Haller.

‘No, we’re not,’ Dorden agreed. He looked at Merrt. More blood was seeping through the dressings on his chest. Slowly, painfully, Dorden got up and crossed to Haller.

‘You go on,’ he said quietly.

‘No, doc.’

‘Yes. I’ll follow on with Merrt when I’ve got my breath back. Please, Haller. Get Daur back to the ship.’

‘I’m not leaving anyone behind,’ Haller insisted, frowning.

‘Haller, Ban’s your friend. Your good friend. You’ve known him for years, since before the Ghosts. He’s got a brand-new wife waiting for him. Sweet, sweet girl. She needs you to bring Ban back to her. Decent surgery on the ship will save his life. Do you understand what I’m saying, Haller?’

‘I’ll carry you,’ said Haller. There were tears in his eyes.

‘All of us?’ Dorden smiled. ‘Daur can’t walk. Neither can Merrt. And I can’t carry Merrt. I can barely get up, Haller. Go on. Do this for me, Haller. Pick Ban up and carry him home.’

‘What about you?’ asked Haller.

‘I’ll follow you, with Merrt. As soon as we’ve both pulled ourselves together and had a little rest. All right?’

There was a noise in the tunnel behind them. Something moved, dislodging debris.

‘It’s Commissar Hark! He’s moving this way!’ Haller cried, starting up.

Merrt had opened his eyes.

‘It’s not Hark,’ he said. He reached out for the rifle that had fallen on the ground beside him. His hand was unsteady. It took him a long time to grasp it.

‘Haller,’ said Dorden. ‘You’ve got to go now.’

‘The transports are all away!’ Domor shouted to Gaunt.

Gaunt nodded.

‘Get ready to follow them out,’ he yelled back. He looked at Mkoll and Rawne. ‘We need to pour everything we’ve got left at that line there. Give Hark a chance to get his men into the college so we can exit.’

‘That’s going to be tight,’ murmured Rawne. ‘Can’t we just leave them here? I’ve really grown to dislike the commissar.’

‘That’s a lie,’ said Gaunt.

Rawne shrugged.

‘You’re right. I didn’t like him to begin with.’

‘Where the hell is that gunfire coming from?’ asked Bonin.

They turned to look. A second layer of weapons fire was ripping into the Sons of Sek. It was coming from an entirely different angle, meshing with the efforts of Gaunt’s force and Hark’s detachment like an interference pattern.

‘It’s Criid!’ Varl yelled. He whooped.

‘Feth me,’ said Rawne. ‘There really is an Emperor.’

Criid’s strikeforce, smaller in size than Hark’s but still packing a punch, was storming out of air shafts and tunnels on the far side of the concourse. Chiria’s flamer was roasting the Sons of Sek out of position, and Hark’s front-line shooters were making the most of the pickings. In less than five minutes of intense gunfire, the three prongs of the Imperial position had driven the Archenemy units back into a distant line.

‘They won’t hold there for long,’ said Mkoll. ‘They’ll take reinforcements and–’

‘Long enough,’ said Gaunt. ‘Let’s move. Signal Criid and Hark to get their forces in here.’

Criid’s mob was the first inside the shot-up, ruined college hall. They were dirty from their trek and many were carrying minor injuries.

‘What happened to you?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Tank mine,’ said Criid. ‘Lost a few. It wasn’t pleasant. But there was an up side. The blast cleared the path for us. Opened up those old airshafts that brought us here. We followed the sounds of a desperate last stand.’

‘Your timing, as usual, is impeccable, Criid,’ said Gaunt. ‘Get moving. Domor, show them the way out of here. Double time, Ghosts. Come on!’

Hark and his force began spilling in through the front hatches.

‘What the hell is this place?’ Hark asked, looking around.

‘You can read the report later,’ said Gaunt. ‘Move your men out that way. Follow Criid. Fast as you can, Viktor.’

The Ghosts force was exiting fast. The scouts held the front hatches, taking steady shots to discourage the Sons from making another push. Gun teams were breaking down crew-served weapons and carrying them away. At a signal from Gaunt, Domor started to wire up the satchel charges every member of Strike Beta had brought with them.

‘Burn the rest,’ Gaunt told Brostin.

Brostin smiled. ‘You’re too good to me, sir,’ he said.

Brostin turned his torch on the annexes first. Flames licked up, lighting the college halls. Paint flaked away like dried skin or dead leaves. Objects caught in the fire popped and cracked and burst. Gaunt watched the flames for a while, basking in the heat. The fire was purifying. It marked an end, a baptism, a re-entry into the war. Most of all, it seemed to mark an accomplishment that he hoped would be truly significant.

The effort of making it happen had come with a price for his Ghosts, a price he had not yet counted.

He turned to find Mabbon Etogaur watching the flames.

‘We’ve done what we can,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope it’s sufficient.’

Mabbon nodded.

‘Shipmaster Spika will have been broadcasting the prepared transmissions for the last half an hour. He will continue to do so as we leave the system. They were all prepared according to the codes and language you supplied. When the benighted anarch comes to pick over the ruins of what we leave here, and when he plays back the transmissions captured during the attack, it will appear that his facility was raided by the Blood Pact, and that his treasures were confiscated to prevent him overreaching himself.’

‘You have lit a fuse,’ said Mabbon. ‘The Gaur. The anarch. Neither one will stand for the accusations that will follow this raid.’

‘If we have gone part-way to engineering a divisive internecine war between the Sanguinary Lords, I believe we have expended worthwhile effort.’

Gaunt looked at Mabbon.

‘It’s time to leave.’

Mabbon looked puzzled.

‘Really?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

‘I thought–’ Mabbon began.

‘What?’

‘I presumed you would leave me here. Leave me to burn. I presumed I had served my purpose.’

‘I’ll decide when your duty ends,’ said Gaunt.

Mabbon nodded.

‘Major Rawne!’ Gaunt yelled. ‘Have your Suicide Kings escort the prisoner back to the ship. Mkoll! Prepare to break off. It’s time to leave. Brostin! I think that’s quite enough.’

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Ludd. ‘We’re falling back to the lifters. The order’s been given!’

The Space Marines turned to look at him. Their ancient armour was covered in dents and scratches, and they were drenched in blood that was not their own. Holofurnace had lost his shield. Sar Af was taking shots at another depot structure while the others stripped usable ammunition from the last of the operational weapon-servitors to fall.

‘This is the next target,’ said Eadwine. ‘The assault will continue. Go to your ship.’

‘Major Kolea sent me to find your personally,’ said Ludd. ‘The order to withdraw has been given by the operation commander.’

‘We do not take orders from the Imperial Guard,’ said Sar Af.

‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Ludd. ‘But we have to jump to yours.’

‘I believe you have just described an abiding principle of the Imperium,’ said Sar Af.

‘The order is to withdraw,’ said Ludd. ‘Please follow it.’

They turned their backs on him.

‘What? That’s it? You’re just going to carry on? Are we supposed to wait for you?’

‘Leave us,’ said Eadwine, without looking around. ‘We expected this. Our commanders expected this when they sanctioned our collaboration in this effort. The Guard may leave when it wishes. We will keep going until this place is obliterated.’

‘Really? And then what?’ asked Ludd.

‘If we have survived to that point, we will endure in the debris field until such time as a vessel detects our signal.’

‘That could be years,’ said Ludd.

‘We are more patient than you,’ said Eadwine.

‘Go,’ said Sar Af.

‘I won’t,’ said Ludd. ‘I am an officer of the Commissariat, responsible for discipline and correction. We don’t want this place obliterated. That’s the whole point. We want there to be traces left behind. We want to leave clues. We want the enemy to know. If you keep going, you will undo and undermine the entire purpose of this endeavour. You will be breaking orders and the authority of the Imperium. You will be in breach of duty and your sacred trust, and–’

‘Silence,’ said Holofurnace. He looked at his brothers. The blood of his enemies trickled down the dented gold fittings of his helm.

‘The boy has a point,’ he said. ‘The logic is solid. To continue would be counter-productive.’

The other two nodded. All three turned and walked away, their massive boots crunching over the scattered debris.

Side by side, they began to trudge back towards the distant hangar bays.

Sar Af turned and looked back at Ludd.

‘Hurry up, now,’ he said.

The landers were coming in as fast as they could. The problems of space that had affected the original drop remained. Only a few at a time could set down, and most had to ditch their payloads of munitions once they had. They had all been making a restock run when the orders changed.

Baskevyl and Kolea were supervising the dust-off, getting as many lasmen into each Arvus and Falco as they could.

Kolea saw Dalin.

‘Where’s Meryn?’ he asked. ‘Where’s the rest of E Company?’

‘They’re coming,’ said Dalin.

‘From the looks of it, Meryn pulled back too fast,’ said Baskevyl, checking the tactical display on Rerval’s vox-caster. ‘He’s let enemy units get in behind him. They’re coming out of the depot under enemy fire. Not the neatest extraction I’ve ever seen.’

‘Meryn’s not the neatest soldier,’ said Kolea.

Kolea looked at the chart.

‘If we force open these hatches, his mob can get out and clear without having to come through the breach.’

‘Makes sense. Let’s go.’

‘Keep the pull-out moving, Bask,’ said Kolea. ‘I’ll do it.’

Kolea took a squad with him back to the edge of the engineering depot where the Caestus had finally come to rest. Last groups of F and H companies were making a solid and dignified withdrawal through the huge ram-wound in the depot doors.

Kolea’s squad could hear the gunfire beyond the doors. The whine of las-shot and the thump of flechette blasters. Meryn’s company had got themselves into trouble all right.

‘Come on!’ Kolea yelled. ‘This way!’

He led his unit down to the passenger hatches set in the far corner of the depot’s vast vehicular shutter. It took a few moments to locate the lock mechanism and cut through it with a plasma torch.

Kolea opened the hatch.

‘Meryn. Meryn! Fix on my signal and move this way!’ he voxed. ‘We’ve got an exit for you. Come on!’

‘Read that, Kolea. Nice work.’

Meryn’s troops quickly appeared, running across the littered floor of the depot towards the hatch. Some were turning and firing from the hip as they ran. Enemy fire chased them.

Kolea’s squad laid down a little covering fire and then pulled back as Meryn’s men started to reach the doorway.

‘Get through. Go on!’ Meryn yelled. His men dashed through the hatch in twos and threes. Weapon fire spattered off the shutter. Meryn stayed outside to see his men through. He yelled through the hatch to Kolea.

‘Get them up to the landing zone. I’ll get the last ones out!’

Kolea nodded and headed off.

‘Come on!’ Meryn bellowed at the stragglers. ‘This is not a good place to be!’

He fired off a few shots. Some Sons of Sek had appeared in the distance, and he could smell mint and milk again.

Gendler reached him, unfit, red-faced and out of breath.

‘Here come the last of us,’ he panted.

Meryn took a look. The last four or five. Eklan. Mkgain. Fozol. Rozzi. Costin.

Meryn wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

‘No, Didi,’ he said. ‘You know what. I think we’re all here.’

They stepped through the hatch.

‘Captain!’ Eklan yelled, the closest of them, running as fast as he could to reach the door.

‘What are you doing?’ Costin yelled. ‘Where the feth are you going?’

‘You’re right,’ said Gendler to Meryn. ‘I don’t see anyone left unaccounted for.’

Meryn and Gendler shut the hatch and slid the manual bolt across.

The last few members of E Company reached the hatch and began to hammer their fists against it.

‘What are you doing?’ Costin wailed. ‘What the feth are you doing? Open the hatch. Open it! Open the hatch, you bastards!’

On Meryn’s side of the door, the banging fists made the faintest of sounds.

Costin staggered back from the unyielding hatch. He was so scared he threw up. Eklan and the others were caught in a blind and disbelieving panic.

‘You bastards. You bastards!’ Costin screamed at the door, his fists balled at his sides.

He turned slowly. The loxatl had reached them. He heard their alien chir and chatter. He smelled their milk and mint, and threw up again. Rozzi howled in terror. Eklan fired at the xenos monsters.

The reptiles were closing in from all sides, chattering, slipping across the deck. Their dewclaws were extended.

They had no need to waste blaster shot on these kills.

Costin began a scream that he never finished.

The Sons of Sek were getting closer. Merrt could hear them approaching along the tunnel.

‘Gn… gn… gn… get behind me, doc,’ he murmured.

Dorden took a long time to reply.

‘Don’t be daft, Rhen,’ he said, his voice as thin as upper atmosphere. ‘Get up. You can walk. Get after Haller. Leave me.’

‘I can tell when you’re lying, doc,’ said Merrt. ‘Be truthful now. This gn… gn… gn… wound I’ve got here. It’s not one you come through, is it?’

Dorden looked at him. He shook his head.

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Then I’m gn… gn… gn… gonna stay here with you, aren’t I?’ Merrt said. He reached out with a bloody hand and turned Dorden’s head to look into the old doctor’s eyes.

‘It’s all right. I know you can’t tell, but I’m smiling,’ Merrt said.

The first of the Sons had appeared. Their lamps bobbed as they came closer. There were dozens of them.

Merrt took the saline round out of the old rifle, and chambered a hard round instead. He pushed Dorden back against the wall behind him and sat up, aiming his rifle at the approaching enemy soldiers.

‘You’ve only got one shot, Rhen,’ murmured Dorden.

‘I gn… gn… gn… know,’ said Merrt. Blood dripped over his metal lip. ‘And I’ve used up the last of those gn… gn… gn… muscle injectors too. Can’t shoot for shit now.’

‘Just make sure it counts,’ said Dorden. He was clutching a loop of votive beads Zweil had given him.

Merrt took aim. The Sons brought their weapons up.

‘Hey!’ Merrt yelled, snuggling the rifle in. ‘Hey, you bastards! You know what? I used to be a gn… gn… gn… great marksman. I had a fething lanyard. Not any more, though. These days, I aim at something, I miss it every time! You understand? I’m not a very gn… gn… gn… good shot!’

Merrt fired. The round passed through the Sons of Sek fireteam without hitting a single one of them. Nor did it strike the firing pin of the massive barrel charge twenty metres behind them. It missed the pin socket by the distance of a middle finger, and punched into the side of the barrel just above the red chalk marks Haller had made when they disarmed it earlier.

The hard round punctured the metal shell of the container.

There was a spark.

TWENTY-THREE

OUT OF REACH

Shipmaster Spika nodded the instruction to execute to his steersmen. With a grinding shudder, the Highness Ser Armaduke pulled away from the mangled skin of Salvation’s Reach. All the lighters and landing ships were aboard, and the hatches of the lateral holds had been shut. The ship’s departure broke the atmospheric seals around the boreholes cut by the Hades drills. Explosive decompression ripped up through the lower and uncharted cavities of the Reach, voiding vacuums and collapsing compartments like eggshells.

Parts of the vast structure were already on fire where massive explosions had torn through them, the blasts of carefully laid satchel charges, or of ditched munition loads ignited by departing landing ships.

Some of the damage was the result of booby-trap devices in the lower depths spontaneously detonating.

Tiny cavities in the Reach glowed from within like the heat inside a coal. Explosions and firestorms continued to rumble through the habitat for several days.

Shields up, the Armaduke powered away from the target zone, plotting a hard acceleration line through the dense junk fields towards the nearest viable Mandeville Point. It continued to broadcast the streams of chatter, accusation and insult in Blood Pact battle code until the moment it translated.

Two hundred thousand kilometres behind it, cloaked and hidden in the debris field of the Reach, the monstrous and night-black daemon ship watched the Armaduke depart. It listened to the vox-chatter the Imperial ship had scattered in its wake.

It lit its weapons and its drives and sped forwards, tracking its prey.

As it moved, it whispered its name, a sonic crackle like a hushed curse.

Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex!

‘I will do everything I can,’ Curth said. ‘The prognosis is good. Haller brought him into the infirmary in decent time.’

Elodie nodded.

‘Thank you,’ she said. The beds of the infirmary chamber were full. There were so many injured personnel that some of the crew infirmary facilities had been co-opted by the Ghosts too.

Only one bed concerned Elodie. She sat down at the side of Daur’s cot and held his hand. He was very pale against the old, poor quality bedding. He did not stir.

‘With rest and good care, he will recover,’ said Curth. She was exhausted and empty inside, but she stayed with Elodie until the woman seemed calmer.

Curth went back into the medicae offices. Dorden’s desk was as he had left it, his instruments laid out the way he liked. Lesp had done that, as he did every morning. The familiarity of the work area was almost unbearable.

She sat down in the chair that had been Dorden’s since they had boarded for the mission. On the desk, in an old, worn frame, was a faded pict of a young man and his pretty young wife. She was pregnant. He was a newly qualified county doctor. Behind the smiling couple, sunlight shone through a stand of handsome nalwood trees.

Curth wiped her eyes.

The door opened. Blenner came in. He shut the door behind him and looked down at her.

‘I don’t know what to do now,’ she said.

‘Then we’ll have to think of something,’ he replied.

‘The silly old feth,’ she said. ‘He was never going to die in bed, was he? In bed, being cared for, where he belonged.’

‘I don’t think that’s where he actually belonged, do you?’ said Blenner. He plonked a bottle of sacra and two small glasses on the desk, opened the bottle and poured shots.

He handed one to her and took the other himself.

‘I’m no good at this,’ she said.

‘At drinking?’ he asked. ‘By the Throne, lady, the other night that certainly wasn’t true.’

‘At saying goodbye,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he nodded. He raised his glass.

‘To the best of us, who leave us too early,’ he said, ‘and to the worst, who outstay their welcome.’

‘You look sad,’ said Felyx.

Gaunt did not reply. Slowly, carefully, he cleaned and oiled the blade of his power sword.

‘I thought we… won. We won, didn’t we?’ asked Felyx.

‘The mission was accomplished,’ Gaunt said quietly. ‘There is every decent prospect that we achieved something of lasting value.’

‘Then why do you look sad?’ asked Felyx.

‘I lost men. A lot of men. They gave their lives to become Ghosts. That’s always painful for a commander to bear, even in victory. And some of them… one especially… was very dear to me.’

Gaunt looked at Felyx. Gaunt’s quarters were quiet. Maddalena was sitting in the outer room, reading. She appeared to be studying Gaunt’s copy of The Spheres of Longing. Gaunt watched her turn a page.

‘There’s a reason you like her,’ said Felyx.

‘I’m sure there is,’ said Gaunt.

‘The most valuable lifeguards of House Chass receive very sophisticated body modification. Maddalena’s face and voice, they were designed to resemble my mother’s. The similarity was supposed to reassure and comfort me. I imagine it has an effect on you too.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘Is that the sword of Heironymo Sondar?’ Felyx asked.

‘It is. Would you like me to tell you how I came to own it?’

Felyx shook his head.

‘I saw you use it today,’ he said. ‘That’s all I need to know.’

Rawne checked that Mabbon’s shackles were in place and locked to the deck pin. He took one last look at the prisoner and moved to the cell door.

‘A good day’s work, pheguth,’ he said and closed the hatch.

By the light of the single lamp he was permitted, Mabbon sat back in his chair and allowed the tension to slip out of his muscles.

For the first time in a long while, he smiled.

In dress uniform, with the power sword strapped to his hip, Gaunt walked onto the excursion deck. The place was silent. The ranks drew up to attention. The regimental retinue looked on, wordless and still. Outside, warp space scratched against the hull, but inside there was a solemn hush.

The band, in full ceremonial finery, stood ready to play the memorial march of the Imperium.

Gaunt got up onto the podium. Zweil stood there already, ready to conduct the formal service. The ayatani looked old and tired and sad.

Gaunt had a list in his pocket, but he didn’t need it as a prompt. He knew it by heart. He looked down at the regiment and at the three Space Marines ranked at the front, side by side and impassive. They had returned their battered boarding plate to the storage caskets and donned the power armour they had been wearing when he first met them. Silver, Snake and Scar.

‘We gather to commemorate the end of this undertaking,’ said Gaunt in a strong, clear voice, ‘and to acknowledge the contributions and sacrifices made. At my discretion, a number of decorations have been recommended. Some of them are awarded posthumously.’

He took off his cap and began to announce the list of names. The Ghosts bowed their heads. Holofurnace raised his spear up straight in a salute to the fallen.

High above, looking down from its perch on a cargo gantry, the psyber eagle listened to the roll of honour.

A perfect aquila, it spread its wings.

Special thanks to
Ead Brown, Richard Dugher, Nik Vincent,
Nichola Loftus, and Bruce and Michelle Euans.

FAMILY

THE HIGHNESS SER ARMADUKE,
SIX DAYS OUT FROM SALVATION’S REACH, 782.M41
(THE 27TH YEAR OF THE SABBAT WORLDS CRUSADE)

I

Earlier that day, in the old ship’s canteen, they’d had a conversation.

Gol Kolea and Dalin Criid, father and son.

A father and a son who had been estranged and then brought back together by the fluid circumstances of war, and who seldom liked to acknowledge their blood connection.

The hellweather fight for Salvation’s Reach was just six days behind everyone, fresh in the regimental thoughts, fresh as the healing wounds and the grieving memories. The Ghosts were bedded down again, locked into shipboard trudge routines, enduring the span of another long-haul passage to wherever their next home would be.

Nowhere pleasant, that was Gol’s guess. No one had told them, not Gaunt, not Hark, not Fazekiel. There had been talk of a resupply stop at some depot, because munitions were fething low, but no one had announced their final destination.

Nowhere pleasant; it never was. That was Guard life. One storm to the next, with weeks of tedium in between. Hurry up and wait. Wait, then hurry up.

Gol had filled the containers in his mess tray with slab and bean slop from the dispensary, and then looked for a seat. He caught Dalin’s eye, saw the boy gesture. There was a space next to him.

Next to his son. The one he had thought dead for so very long. The fight they had waged at the Reach had been bitter and costly, but it had been nothing compared to Vervunhive. Bedded down with the scratch companies, facing the Zoican hordes every hour of every day, knowing your family were dead–

Until it turned out some of them weren’t.

Gol sat. He was a big man. Even though there was a spare seat, Baskevyl and Luffrey had to scrunch up to accommodate him.

‘How’s the food?’ Gol asked Dalin.

‘Wet, sir,’ Dalin smiled.

‘Don’t “sir” me, Dal,’ said Gol, twiddling his fork and looking for a promising target on the tray in front of him.

‘You’re a major, major,’ said Dalin.

Gol shrugged.

‘All right. I thought you were doing that “son to father” thing.’

Dalin forked up some beans.

‘We’ve never really done that,’ he said. ‘Had a chance to, I mean. I’m not being funny. Not blaming. I mean, we just… our relationship is–’

‘I get it.’

‘All right. Good.’

‘How are you, Dal?’ asked Kolea.

‘Pretty good, all things considered. The Reach. That was a feth-storm.’

‘It was a victory.’

‘I know,’ said Dalin. ‘But the people we lost… Merrt. And the Doc. And–’

Kolea put his fork down.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Dalin.

‘This food is terrible,’ said Gol.

‘I’m sort of getting used to it,’ said Dalin, chewing. ‘I mean, it is shit, but we’ve been on this hulk so long, it almost feels like home.’

‘Won’t be home for long,’ said Kolea.

‘No, I suppose… No.’

‘It feel like home to you, Dal?’

‘I don’t know what home’s supposed to feel like, so I suppose it does, sir.’

Gol looked at him.

‘Gol,’ said Kolea. ‘You can call me Gol when we’re not in the line or on parade.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Dalin.

‘Yeah,’ said Gol. ‘My pa made me call him Gyn. Said he wanted me to know his name, not his function. Or something.’

‘Your pa was called Gyn?’ asked Dalin.

Gol Kolea sighed.

‘You didn’t know your grandpa’s name? So much you don’t know.’

‘You should tell me some time,’ Dalin said. He paused. ‘You should tell me some time, Gol,’ he corrected.

Gol nodded. He resumed eating. He stopped again after a few moments.

‘This stuff really is shit,’ he said.

Dalin moved beans around his tray.

‘Tona–’

‘What?’ asked Gol.

‘Tona, she’s cooking tonight,’ said Dalin. ‘She can proper cook, too. Family meal. Why don’t you come along?’

‘Ah, I don’t think–’ Gol shrugged.

‘Why don’t you?’ asked Dalin.

‘Tona and I, we have an understanding,’ said Gol. ‘I stay out of it. She’s your family now, and she won that right.’

‘Caff was my family, too, and he’s gone,’ said Dalin. ‘We’re all family, aren’t we? Us Ghosts? All of us. Hey-hey! Major Kolea’s coming for supper. Where’s the harm in that? I’ll have a word with mum–’

‘Mum? You call her mum?’

‘Yeah? Why?’ asked Dalin.

‘No reason you wouldn’t,’ said Gol. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll have a word with Tona,’ said Dalin. ‘She’ll be fine about it. Decent food, all right? A nice conversation. Yoncy will love to see her Uncle Gol.’

‘I’m not going to step back into something I was better off staying out of,’ said Gol.

Dalin looked down at his food, disappointed.

‘You won’t be,’ he said. ‘You’d be very welcome.’

‘Well, I’ll come then,’ said Gol.

Dalin looked up, smiling.

‘Mum serves up at fifth bell, sharp,’ he said.

‘Check with her, for gak’s sake,’ Kolea said, ‘and let me know if I’m not welcome. I’ll understand.’

Dalin nodded. ‘You will be,’ he said.

Gol sighed.

‘Dal?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Does Yoncy know?’

‘She was too young. I didn’t even know my grandpa’s name till just then. You’re her Uncle Gol.’

Dalin got up.

‘Gonna police my tray,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at fifth.’

‘Unless you tell me otherwise. And for feth’s sake tell me otherwise.’

Dalin nodded and walked away.

‘Couldn’t help overhearing that,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Really?’ asked Gol.

‘Well, you’re practically sitting in my lap,’ Bask smiled.

Gol smiled back and shook his head.

‘Go have supper with your son, Kolea,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He’d like that. If you want my advice.’

‘I really don’t,’ replied Gol Kolea.

II

Fifth bell. There was a distant thrum of the old ship’s engines, labouring, propelling them through the empyrean. The hab bays smelled of stale, recycled air and disinfectant. They smelled like armpit.

Kolea hesitated, then knocked on the compartment door.

Tona Criid opened the hatch and looked out at him. Kolea suddenly smelled the cooking. It made his mouth water.

‘Hello, Gol,’ she said. ‘Dal said you were coming.’

‘If it’s not an imposition.’

‘Are you a fething idiot? Come in.’

The cabin was warm and steamy. Criid was wearing combat-issue trousers and a white tee-shirt.

‘Larks and Varl, they both come here all the time,’ she said. ‘Rerval too. And Shoggy. It’s ridiculous that you don’t. And regularly, too. You should see them, Gol. You should be in their lives, at least a little.’

‘Food smells good,’ Gol said.

‘I’ve got actual ground meat, and actual legumes. Plus actual spices. Scared them all up from the Navy mess. To be fair, Gaunt put a word in. The Navy eats better than we do.’

‘Gaunt put a word in?’ asked Gol.

‘He takes an interest in morale.’

‘I’ve got this,’ said Gol, producing a bottle of amasec.

‘Oh, good boy,’ Tona smiled.

‘Stole it from the Navy wardroom.’

‘Even better.’

She was a handsome woman, tall and lean, with short hair. She had been a ganger on Verghast, and had somehow managed to save and look after Gol’s kids during the siege. The siege had killed Gol’s wife, Livy, and occupied Gol’s entire attention. He had believed he had lost his whole family in the murder-war until, by odd chance, he had discovered that his children had not just been rescued, they had actually been adopted as part of the Ghost entourage.

A child ran into the room, zooming a doll. She was small, pretty, oddly intent, her hair in pigtails.

Yoncy.

‘Hello, Yoncy,’ said Gol.

‘Hello to you, Uncle Gol. Are you coming for supper?’

‘I am.’

She laughed, and screamed out of the room again.

‘She… she seems very small for her age,’ Gol said.

‘I feed her well enough,’ said Criid, stirring something in a pot.

‘I wasn’t saying you didn’t,’ said Gol.

‘All right.’

‘Dalin is a grown man now,’ Gol said. ‘Yoncy’s only a few years behind him, but he seems like a child.’

‘“He”?’

‘What?’ said Gol.

‘You said “he”,’ said Tona, confused.

Gol paused.

‘Did I?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I misspoke,’ said Gol. ‘She seems like a child still.’

‘That happens with girls,’ Criid replied. ‘They seem young… then a sudden growth spurt. Six months from now, you mark my words, she’s going to be a nightmare. The young troopers will be dying at her feet. I’ll be fending them off with a crew-served weapon. Every mother’s nightmare.’

‘Tona?’

‘Yeah?’ she replied.

‘I think we’ve all seen enough nightmares in our years together to know what a real one looks like,’ said Gol.

She nodded, shrugging. ‘That’s the fething truth,’ she replied.

‘That said,’ Gol smiled, ‘I’ll be right beside you with an axe-rake.’

She laughed.

‘Tona?’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I’ll never be able to properly thank you for what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘Saving my children. Looking after them.’

‘Don’t, Gol.’ Tona put the wooden spoon down and looked away.

‘I mean it.’

‘Gol–’

‘That’s why I stay apart,’ Gol said. ‘I was no father to them. Ever. I worked long hours, then the war came… You did all this, Tona. You built this, despite the circumstances. You know I need to stay away so as not to spoil everything you’ve done.’

‘Eat with us, once in a while,’ said Tona. ‘Be present. It doesn’t have to be like this for you. And they will benefit. After all, Dalin knows who you are.’

‘Dal’s a grown man,’ said Gol.

‘Yoncy will be grown, too, very soon,’ she replied.

‘I just wanted you to know that I appreciate everything. More than I can say.’

He hugged her. It was involuntary.

‘Uncle Gol? Are you mum’s boyfriend?’ asked Yoncy from behind them.

The embrace broke quickly.

‘I’m not,’ he said.

‘Of course he’s not,’ laughed Tona, turning back to the stove.

III

They were a third of the way down the amasec. Gol had just taken second helpings of the stew.

‘Swear to feth,’ he said. ‘This is the best food I’ve eaten in years.’

‘Told you,’ said Dalin.

‘It’s ’ummy,’ said Yoncy.

‘So I hear Gaunt has put you on companion duty with Meritous,’ Gol said to Dalin.

Dalin nodded.

‘That’s a career advancement,’ said Tona.

‘Just doing my job,’ Dalin smiled.

‘Watching over Gaunt’s son?’ asked Gol. ‘There’s an advantage there. You should exploit it.’

‘Just doing my job,’ repeated Dalin.

‘You like him, though?’ asked Tona.

‘He’s all right.’

‘Opportunities don’t come often,’ Gol said, forking up another mouthful. ‘Use every chance you get. Be visible. Be conspicuous. Be vital. Felyx Meritous Chass is going to be a big noise in the Guard one day. Bloodline. Father and son. Use that to your advantage. Rising officers remember those who help them on the way up.’

‘Father and son, bloodline,’ Dalin nodded. ‘All right then.’

Gol put his fork down.

‘Sorry, Dal,’ he said. ‘I… That was feth-dumb of me. I see the irony.’

‘No, it was good advice,’ Dalin smiled back, ‘for everyone to take.’

Gol returned the smile.

‘I stand corrected,’ he said.

‘Here, here,’ said Tona quietly. She picked up her glass.

‘To bloodlines,’ she toasted. ‘To the fething bloody Guard and the family it makes for us.’

Dalin, Tona and Gol clinked glasses.

‘Bloodlines,’ said Dalin.

‘Family,’ said Tona.

‘May the Guard guard them all,’ said Gol.

They knocked the drink back. Yoncy watched them, then picked up her water glass, mimicked Tona’s toasting gesture, and guzzled a mouthful.

‘May the Guard guard them all,’ she declared, sing-song.

Tona smiled. Gol poured more amasec.

‘Yon?’ Dalin said, looking over at her. ‘Where’s the medal I gave you? The badge of the Sabbat Beati? You always wear it.’

‘It got lost,’ Yoncy said. ‘When the nasty man attacked me. It got torn off. I never found it.’

‘Oh,’ said Dalin. ‘I’ll get you a new one.’

‘I don’t want a new one.’

‘No?’

‘It used to hurt me,’ said Yoncy, eating.

Dalin frowned at Tona.

Tona touched her fingertips to the hollow of her throat.

‘Yoncy sometimes got a rash,’ she said, ‘from the metal. Contact eczema, Dorden called it–’

She went quiet. Gol and Dalin looked down at their plates. The casual mention of the old medicae’s name had reminded them of a loss none of them were yet used to. Yoncy kept eating, oblivious.

‘Contact eczema,’ Dalin said, anxious to break the silence. ‘Well, we can’t have that. I’ll find you something else, Yon. Something else to watch over you and keep you safe.’

Yoncy paused and studied her food.

‘I have everyone to watch over me and keep me safe,’ she said, earnestly. ‘I realised that when I lost the medal. It’s like I woke up and remembered who I was.’

‘What, honey?’ asked Tona, frowning.

‘Like in the morning?’ said Yoncy. ‘When you wake up and remember who you are and where you are? Like that.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Gol.

‘I’m a ghost, aren’t I?’ the girl asked, looking at him. ‘We’re all ghosts, aren’t we?’

Gol nodded.

‘Can I have seconds, mum?’ Yoncy asked. Her darting mind didn’t seem to stay on a subject for very long. ‘Can I, mum? I like the stew.’

‘Haven’t you had enough?’ smiled Tona.

‘I’m not full,’ Yoncy said. ‘I’m growing!’

Tona grinned at Gol and went off to fetch the pot from the stove.

Yoncy had gravy around her mouth. She tapped her spoon, then looked back at Gol.

‘Uncle Gol?’ she said.

‘Yes, Yoncy?’

‘Are you my dad?’

Gol looked at Dalin, who, with some effort, didn’t react. Tona turned from the stove with a fierce stare.

‘Why would you ask me that, Yoncy?’ Gol asked. He had a tight feeling in his chest.

‘Because people say you are,’ said Yoncy.

‘What people?’ asked Tona, coming forward and dishing out a ladle of food onto Yoncy’s plate.

‘The ghosts,’ said Yoncy. ‘The ghosts I hear around me. They say it all the time. Are you? Are you, Gol?’

Gol Kolea took a breath.

‘No, Yoncy,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’

She suddenly slithered off her seat and ran out of the room.

‘I forgot!’ she cried.

‘Yoncy! You wanted seconds!’ Tona called after her.

‘I will eat them all up! Just wait!’ Yoncy called back.

She returned to the table with a crumpled sheet of paper and handed it to Gol.

‘I made this,’ she said. ‘I made this picture for you.’

Gol took the paper and looked at it. Yoncy resumed eating, with great resolve.

The picture had been done in coloured chalk. There were spiky things, several figures, and two sickle shapes in what Gol presumed was the sky. There was something else too, a triangle and a furious, heartfelt black squiggle inside it. The squiggle had been ground into the paper, and it was clear that the chalk stick had broken several times during the rendering. There was something filthy and malicious about it, as if the child had been trying to punish the paper.

‘Are these trees?’ Gol asked, pointing.

‘Muhm,’ agreed Yoncy, eating, mouth full.

‘Who’s this?’ asked Gol, pointing to the figures.

‘That’s you, silly. You and Uncle Rerval and Uncle Bask and Uncle Luffrey.’

‘What about this?’ Gol asked, indicating the sickle shapes.

Yoncy shrugged, too busy eating.

‘And this?’ Gol asked, pointing to the squiggle.

Yoncy pushed her plate away. It was empty.

‘I didn’t mean to draw that. I tried to scribble it out. I didn’t want it in the picture.’

‘What was it, Yon?’ asked Tona.

‘I was going to draw more trees, but I picked up black instead of green by accident, and it made a bad shadow shape, and I didn’t like it so I scribbled it out.’

Yoncy shrugged. ‘Did I spoil the picture, Uncle Gol?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Gol. ‘It’s a great picture.’

Dalin reached over and pointed to the squiggle.

‘How can a shadow be bad?’ Dalin asked.

‘It’s just a drawing,’ Yoncy replied, as if that were obvious.

‘Yes, but bad how?’ Dalin asked again.

She wiggled her hands and picked up her dolly.

‘A bit like a monster,’ she replied.

She leaned over on her seat and pointed at the drawing in Gol’s hands.

‘See? Look? You’re killing it. Those jaggy lines? Per-chew chew chew chew chew! You’re shooting it with your gun. Per-chew chew! I used yellow chalk.’

‘Is it dead now?’ Gol asked.

‘Silly Gol! It wasn’t ever alive. It’s just a drawing. I thought you’d like it. I drew it for you.’

‘I… I love it,’ he said.

IV

Tona put Yoncy to bed. She and Gol and Dalin sat up for a while afterwards, drinking the amasec.

‘She’s very creative,’ said Gol.

‘Always has been. Always drawing,’ said Dalin.

‘I ought to go,’ Gol said, rising.

‘There’s still amasec,’ said Tona.

‘I ought to go.’

‘You ought to come back again soon, too,’ said Tona.

‘The food was great,’ said Gol.

‘Hey,’ Tona said. She held out the drawing. ‘Don’t forget this. She’ll be cross if she finds out you left it behind. She drew it for you.’

Gol took the drawing. He folded it up and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

It stayed there until the day he died.

‘Goodnight,’ he said.

‘Goodnight,’ said Tona.

‘Goodnight, Gol,’ Dalin smiled.

Gol closed the door behind him. He was about ten steps down the companionway when the tears came.

They weren’t necessarily bad tears.

YOU NEVER KNOW

THE HIGHNESS SER ARMADUKE,
NINE DAYS OUT FROM SALVATION’S REACH, 782.M41
(THE 27TH YEAR OF THE SABBAT WORLDS CRUSADE)

‘Where are we?’ asked Mabbon Etogaur.

Sergeant Varl waited until the cell’s heavy, armoured shutter had finally closed behind him, then glanced around the tiny cell, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his lips pursed.

‘I can’t be sure,’ Varl replied, ‘but I think it’s the brig.’

‘Oh, Sergeant Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘I had almost forgotten your rapier wit.’

Varl grinned. He slung his lasrifle across his back, then gestured with both hands, palms up, fingers flapping.

‘Up, pheguth,’ he ordered. ‘You know the drill.’

Mabbon sighed. He put his book down on the bare cot, and slowly rose to his feet from the metal stool. He raised his arms. Shackles clinked, dangling from his wrists. The chains around his ankles were secured to the deck by a steel floor-pin.

Varl reached forward to start the search. He hesitated at the last minute.

‘Play nice, all right?’ he told the prisoner.

‘Don’t I always?’

Varl started searching. Pockets, hems, seams, cuffs. He was meticulous. He was practiced. He’d done it many times before.

‘Really, sergeant?’ said Mabbon patiently, arms wide. ‘Do you think, in the six hours since that cell door last opened and this pantomime last occurred, that I have somehow managed to obtain and conceal a weapon?’

‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘You might have finally worked a splinter of metal off the deck plates. Or forced a screw out of the bed-frame and cunningly sharpened it.’

‘Oh, I wish I’d thought of either of those things,’ said Mabbon, looking up at the ceiling as Varl worked.

Varl started checking the manacles and the ankle hobbles.

‘Or picked the lock of my shackles?’ Mabbon added.

‘You never know.’

Varl moved behind him.

‘You might have dismantled the bed and the stool,’ Varl said, ‘and ingeniously fashioned them into a lasweapon.’

Something akin to a smile passed across Mabbon’s scarred face.

‘You really overestimate my abilities, sergeant,’ he said.

‘Well, that was an exaggeration for illustrative purposes,’ replied Varl.

Varl came back round to face him.

‘Open,’ said Varl.

Mabbon opened his mouth. Varl peered in. Then he slid his index finger inside.

‘No closey-closey,’ Varl said. Mabbon said nothing. Varl ran his finger around Mabbon’s gums, around his cheeks, and under his tongue.

When he was done, Varl removed his finger. Mabbon closed his mouth. Varl moved to the side, and scrutinised Mabbon’s ear.

‘No autocannon concealed in there?’ Mabbon asked.

‘Ha ha,’ said Varl. ‘Oh, wait.’

‘What?’ asked Mabbon.

‘I think I see light shining in through the other ear,’ said Varl. Mabbon did not react to the quip.

Varl stepped back.

‘All right. Sit.’

Mabbon sat. Varl began to sweep the room.

‘This really isn’t necessary,’ said Mabbon.

‘You know the drill. Standing order. A search every six hours.’

‘I know the drill,’ said Mabbon. ‘I have remarked on its pointlessness before.’

‘Yet, as you can see, we are still going to do it,’ replied Varl, busy.

‘And I am still going to remark,’ said Mabbon sadly. ‘I have reached a point at which I am prepared to both criticise and mock the practice.’

Varl was checking the cot.

‘Look, you know fething well,’ said Varl, ‘it’s not really shards of metal or sharpened spoons we’re worried about. You could get up to all sorts in here when you’re unsupervised.’

‘All sorts of what?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Badness,’ said Varl, gesturing vaguely. ‘Crazy Archenemy badness. Ritual shit. I’ve seen shit in my days, mister, and I know what’s possible. You could summon something.’

‘Summon something?’

‘Yeah,’ said Varl. ‘We could open the hatch and find you’ve conjured up some daemon-spawn of arsebag to sick on us.’

‘I am a soldier, Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘An officer. I have commanded hosts of men. I am not, however, a warlock.’

‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘We’ve only got your word for that.’

He picked up the book Mabbon had been reading and leafed through the pages. Then he shook it to see if anything would fall out. Nothing did.

Varl studied the spine.

‘The Spheres of Longing?’ he read.

‘It’s an intriguing read.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Varl.

‘I’m improving my mind. I am trying to learn the mindset of the Imperium. To… understand and remember its ways.’

‘What do you mean, “understand and remember”?’ Varl asked.

‘To better assist you,’ said Mabbon.

Varl paused.

‘When you were a man–’ Varl began.

‘I am still a man,’ Mabbon said.

‘Not so much. When you were a man, why did you… I mean, how… How does a man become what you are?’

‘The blood claimed me,’ said Mabbon.

‘The blood?’ asked Varl.

‘Sergeant, for all the “stuff” you claim to have seen, I assuredly know that you have no grasp of what life is like in the Sanguinary Worlds. I was Astra Militarum once, just like you. Then the Archon took me, and the blood claimed me, and I became an officer in his Pact.’

‘Then the Sons. You change sides a lot, don’t you?’ asked Varl.

‘Every chance I get,’ replied Mabbon. ‘Every effort I make is to reclaim my humanity. To purge the blood. To make amends. To become again the person I once was. That is why I read. I am gradually remembering what it is to be a human of the Imperium.’

‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’

‘You never know,’ said the etogaur.

Varl pulled a face.

‘You know the real reason this search drill is pointless?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Surprise me.’

‘It’s pointless,’ said Mabbon, ‘because if I wanted to escape, I would have done so by now. And I could have done. You do not have to search me, because I want to be here. I am willingly assisting the Imperium, because it is the only thing I have left in my life that means anything. I will not destroy that one last, fragile thing by doing something stupid or disruptive.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Varl. He took out a pack of lho-sticks, lit one and, after a pause, offered the pack to Mabbon.

Mabbon shook his head.

‘Whatever happens,’ said Varl, exhaling smoke, ‘I mean, whatever you do, you know things aren’t going to end well, right? Things are not going to end well for you at all.’

‘Things are not going to end well for anybody,’ replied Mabbon.

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Apart from some small measure of redemption,’ said Mabbon, ‘death is the only thing I have to look forward to.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Varl abruptly. He stepped forward, studying the wall.

‘What’s what?’

‘These scratches here. These marks. Did you do that?’

Mabbon hesitated.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘With what?’ asked Varl, sharp.

Mabbon raised the heavy cuff of his manacles.

‘Why?’

‘I make a scar on the wall every time I am searched,’ said Mabbon. ‘You search me every six hours, thus I have some measure of the passage of time.’

‘What good is that?’ asked Varl.

‘I am no man,’ said Mabbon. ‘I am no thing. I have no liberty. No self-determination. No comfort. No knowledge of where I am or what I am any more. But I can at least know when.’

‘This is just a tally, then?’ Varl asked, touching the row of scratches.

‘Just a tally.’

‘Not the fethed-up markings for some ritual?’ asked Varl, looking at him sharply.

‘No, they are not the fethed-up markings of some ritual,’ said Mabbon.

‘I’ll have to tell Rawne,’ said Varl.

‘I understand,’ the etogaur replied.

‘He’ll probably–’

‘Move me to another cell and have a servitor grind the wall-plate smooth again. I understand.’

Varl nodded.

‘Sorry,’ Varl said.

‘Thank you,’ said Mabbon.

‘For what?’

‘Sorry is the most human thing anyone has said to me in a very long time,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

Varl stared at him for a moment.

Then he turned to the shutter and banged on it.

‘Open two!’ he yelled. ‘I’m coming out!’

The shutter began to grind open. Varl looked back at the seated etogaur.

‘It’s 0417, day 18, 782. Just ask me. Just ask.’

‘And you’ll tell me?’

‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘See you in six hours. You’ll still be here, right?’

‘You never know,’ replied Mabbon Etogaur.

GHOSTS AND BAD SHADOWS

AIGOR 991, TWENTY-ONE DAYS OUT
FROM SALVATION’S REACH, 782.M41
(THE 27TH YEAR OF THE SABBAT WORLDS CRUSADE)

I

For the second time that day, they were making a hole in the forests.

The first hole had been made just before dawn. The Highness Ser Armaduke, once a proud Tempest-class frigate, now an old workhorse saved from the breaker’s yard for one last, suicidal run, had dropped out of the warp six hours earlier. The ship had limped into a low orbit above Aigor 991, and hung there for a while, nose down, while the Officer of Detection mapped the northern landmass, compared the geophysical profile to Battlefleet charts, and then plotted the target resolution. As the first rays of the rising sun began to hardlight the warship’s battered starboard side, the Armaduke fired its principal batteries at the surface.

The strike – from the Armaduke’s perspective just a brief flash of light on the nightside below – annihilated six acres of rainforest, and left a smoking patch of earth that was geologically stable and operationally close enough to the destination. Then the Armaduke launched six drop-ships: four long-pattern Arvus landers, and two Falco boats.

Aigor 991, a small, uninhabited world, was almost entirely swathed in dense rainforest across the northern continent. The forestation grew very rapidly, so any sections cleared or burned back did not stay clear for long. Aigor 991 had last been visited by a Battlefleet supply tender twenty-one months earlier. No sign of that mission’s landing clearance remained.

In the pale, rising light, the six landers had thundered in over the forest canopy and made landfall on the steaming, scorched turf the Armaduke had opened for them.

II

Through the trees, Gol Kolea could hear the rasp of flamers and the whicker of industrial blades. He could smell hot smoke, which had an acid bite to it, and a reek of sap so sharp that it smelled like disinfectant.

He turned, eyeing the dense forest around him. Slivers of sunlight, slender as las-beams, speared down through the canopy. Everything else was a deep emerald gloom. He was standing in shadow.

The shadow of trees. Gol didn’t know much about trees, as he had not been closely acquainted with them in the rockcrete halls of Vervunhive. Ironic that he, a Verghastite, and Baskevyl, a Belladon, had been chosen to head up the surface detail; any Tanith would have loved it. Maybe that’s why Gaunt had made the selection. Probably didn’t want some Tanith officer getting all misty-eyed and nostalgic about forests instead of keeping his mind on the job.

‘We’re in the right zone?’ he asked Fapes, Baskevyl’s adjutant.

‘Yes, sir,’ Fapes replied. ‘And that’s the third time you’ve asked.’

‘We’re here for a resupply,’ Gol snapped back. ‘Promethium and munitions. Seeing as we’ve precious little of either, it would be a feth-fool waste to use up tanks of prom clearing the wrong zone.’

‘Definitely would, sir,’ Fapes replied. He raised his auspex and squinted. ‘I’ve got a hard bounce off stone in there, and the coordinates are matched and confirmed. It’s the silo.’

Remote Depot Aigor 991. Secret. Hidden. An emergency cache that the Navy kept stocked and supplied to provide for out-haul missions beyond the range of secure Navy bases and planetary yards.

The mission profile was twofold. Burn off a landing strip from orbit, and then, from there, move in to manually clear the silo location proper with flamers and servitor teams. It was too dicey to try to clear the silo location directly from orbit: a slight miscalculation could risk vaporising the cache, even given the surgical precision of Shipmaster Spika’s gunnery officers. Once the silo was opened up, freight landers could come in and start loading.

‘This is the zone, right?’ asked Major Baskevyl, approaching them through the green shadows.

‘He just asked that,’ said Fapes.

‘I just asked that,’ said Kolea.

‘Because it would be a feth-fool waste of prom if we were clearing in the wrong place,’ said Baskevyl.

‘A point already well noted,’ said Fapes.

They had six platoons between them, essentially composed of three from Kolea’s C Company, and three from Baskevyl’s D. The rest of the surface team was made up of worker servitors from the ship’s engineering and cargo divisions, plus a few Battlefleet officers as supervisors.

A squad of men from one of Baskevyl’s platoons struggled past through the undergrowth, carrying fresh promethium tanks up from the landing strip. A Navy officer, impeccable in his dark blue uniform with its silver brocade, walked with them. He was carrying precisely nothing at all, probably because he had urgent dabbing-his-brow-with-a-silk-handkerchief and smoking-a-lho-stick duties to perform. Kolea didn’t know the man’s name.

‘Guard gets to do all the hard work,’ said Baskevyl.

‘That, my friend, is the entire story of the galaxy,’ replied Gol.

‘At least we get to breathe some fresh air,’ Baskevyl shrugged.

‘This is fresh?’ asked Kolea, wrinkling his nose.

‘Well, not now we’re torching the place, no,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Still, better than ship air. That’s like living in an armpit.’

‘Or a sock that someone’s still wearing,’ said Fapes. They gazed at him.

‘I’ll carry on with the… checking things, sirs,’ Fapes said.

Bask’s micro-bead beeped. He exchanged a few words, then looked back at Kolea.

‘Maggs says he’s found the silo,’ he said.

‘Let’s go take a look,’ said Kolea.

III

They walked through the trees together. The occasional spears of sunlight made the green shadow all the more oppressive. Insects hummed. There had been birdsong earlier, but the roar of the flamers and the chatter of blades had sent them bursting from the canopy in startled flocks.

‘It has two moons,’ said Baskevyl.

‘What does?’

‘Aigor 991. Two moons.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Kolea.

‘Because I read the briefing packet.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you didn’t read the briefing packet?’

‘I read the bits that Hark highlighted,’ said Kolea. ‘It was forty gakking pages long. I don’t need to know about annual rainfall, highest elevation and the lesser-spotted wood-gargler.’

‘The real reason is you can’t read long words, isn’t it, Gol?’

Kolea glared at him, then saw Baskevyl’s grin.

‘Funny man,’ said Gol.

‘So, anyway, it has two moons–’

‘Why? Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you can’t read.’

‘Bask–’ Gol growled.

‘Because we’re getting a day out, that’s why,’ replied Baskevyl, ‘and I want you to enjoy the sights and natural wonders of the world, and I want to be able to explain them to you in painstaking detail.’

‘Couldn’t you just club me to death with a log?’

‘Two moons. I want you to appreciate the sights.’

Kolea halted and stared up at the sky. Baskevyl did the same. All they could see were soaring tree trunks, coils of creepers, and a sea of green leaves, all locked in shadow.

‘Sights?’ Kolea said. ‘It’s not going to really fething matter if there are two moons, is it?’

IV

The stink of smoke and promethium grew stronger. Kolea felt the wet of sap vapour in the air.

The work teams had cleared a decent stretch. Kolea saw Lyse and Zered moving into the dense undergrowth, hosing curls of yellow flame from their burner units. The noise of other flamers roared from nearby. Servitors hacked into foliage with whirring cutting blades or raked away cut or burned greenery.

Kolea’s adjutant Rerval was waiting for them at the edge of the clearance area, with Luffrey, the sergeant in charge of Baskevyl’s second platoon, and Caober, Kolea’s chief scout.

Rerval flipped out a data-slate, slapped it to stabilise the flickering screen, and then scrolled open a schematic. In the shadow, the screen underlit his face.

‘Definitely the right zone, sirs,’ he said.

‘Fapes will be delighted,’ said Kolea.

‘Beg pardon, major?’ asked Rerval.

‘Go on,’ said Kolea with a ‘never mind’ gesture.

‘The silo is here,’ said Luffrey, leaning in to point to the slate. ‘Large structure. Out front is a broad rockcrete apron, the landing platform. That’s what we’re clearing now.’

‘Estimates?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Providing we don’t hit any snags,’ said Caober, ‘and the tanks don’t run out, I think we’ll have it open by nightfall.’

‘You’ll get to see the moons after all,’ Baskevyl said to Kolea.

‘Moons?’ asked Luffrey.

‘There are two–’ began Baskevyl.

‘Don’t get him started again,’ warned Kolea. He looked at Caober. ‘Let’s get a look at this silo.’

‘Maggs is waiting for you,’ said Caober.

‘Luff,’ said Baskevyl, ‘lead us over. Caober, go find the senior Navy man and bring him to join us at the silo. He’s got the access codes.’

‘Which one is the senior Navy man?’ asked Caober.

‘Tall,’ said Kolea. ‘Dark blue tunic, silver brocade, walks like he’s got an RPG lodged in his rectum.’

‘Pretty much describes them all,’ said Caober.

‘Well, he probably isn’t doing very much except standing around,’ said Kolea.

‘Still much of a muchness,’ said Caober.

‘Then use your improbably acute Tanith scouting skills and locate him,’ said Kolea.

‘On it,’ said Caober.

V

Led by Luffrey and Rerval, Kolea and Baskevyl headed into the clearance area. They passed Lyse, kneeling to connect up a fresh promethium tank, her goggles pushed up onto her sweaty forehead.

‘How are you doing?’ asked Kolea.

‘It’s fething hot,’ said Lyse. ‘Hot and wet and nasty.’

‘Good to see morale at a high,’ said Kolea.

‘And the shadows–’ began Lyse.

‘The what?’

‘The shadows, sir,’ she said, snap-fitting the last hose and rising to her feet. ‘The shadows here are really dense.’

‘Dense?’

‘I don’t know. It’s creepy here, isn’t it?’

‘It’s verdant,’ said Baskevyl.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Lyse.

‘It’s lush and green and beautiful,’ said Baskevyl, ‘and the shadows are just part of its dark, primordial grace. Also, it has two moons.’

‘The feth?’ asked Lyse, blankly.

‘You got that from the briefing packet, didn’t you?’ Kolea said to Baskevyl.

‘No indeed,’ said Baskevyl. ‘As a man unafraid of long words, I composed it myself, in order to reassure Trooper Lyse here that this isn’t the kind of death hole we usually end up with as a working environment.’

‘To be truthful, it didn’t really work,’ said Lyse. ‘And now I think you’re creepy as well.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Kolea told her. ‘Major Baskevyl will be dead by nightfall. By my hand. With a log. Carry on with your work.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The quartet moved on as Lyse started burning again. They passed two hacking servitors, then reached the lip of the stone apron Luffrey had mentioned. It rose about two metres above the forest floor, and the ancient rockcrete was scabbed with lichen, as well as scorch marks from flamers.

Kolea wondered how long the place had stood, and which long-dead Navy architect had commissioned it. The Navy had been building remote depots and supply drops for thousands of years. They were like ancient reliquaries. Like tombs.

Now I’m creeping myself out, Kolea thought.

They hauled themselves up onto the apron. Baskevyl, first up, reached out a hand to haul his friend Kolea. More flamer teams were working up there, led by Neskon, Dremmond and Lubba, brought in from other companies because of their fire expertise. Kolea raised a hand to Neskon, and the flame-trooper nodded back as he hosed liquid flame into the undergrowth. They had cleared part of the apron, and Kolea could already see some of the chevron markings on the platform emerging.

Caober’s estimate had been generous, though. There was a lot to clear. They would be working into the night, until morning perhaps, as the vegetation was so thick.

Now they were standing in a cleared patch, with hard sunlight falling on them, it made the shadows of the forests and undergrowth seem darker. Creepy, just like Lyse had suggested. Bad shadows. Where had he heard that phrase? Bad shadows. Too dark. Too dense. The air was bright, the sun was strong, and the sky was pale blue, but where the forests stood, the shadows were as thick as Old Night.

‘Hey, Gol,’ said Baskevyl. He pointed up at the soft, blue sky. ‘I told you.’

Two moons, vague as smudges of white chalk dust, one larger than the other, were just visible in the daylight sky, faint as ghosts.

‘I imagine you’re feeling terribly pleased with yourself right now,’ said Kolea.

‘It’s a moment I’m going to cherish,’ said Baskevyl grinning. ‘Me and my old pal, under the ghost moons, contemplating the natural glories of the universe.’

Kolea sighed.

‘Do they have names?’ he asked.

‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘The two moons? Do they have names?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Does it matter?’

‘A sight so beautiful, one should know the names.’

Bask paused.

‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘He really is,’ said Rerval, sniggering.

‘I really fething am,’ growled Kolea. ‘Now let’s get on with the job.’

VI

They moved across the cleared part of the apron and back into the overgrowth. It was like stepping behind a curtain, from a lit room into a lightless one. Bad shadows surrounded them again. They seemed darker than before, deep green and black like the abyssal depths of an ocean, but Kolea reminded himself their eyes had become accustomed to light out in the cleared space.

‘This way,’ said Rerval, and immediately tripped over a creeper root. He picked himself up, and had to slap the data-slate a few times to get it to relight.

‘Classy,’ said Luffrey.

‘This thing,’ said Rerval, brandishing the data-slate, ‘works even better when it’s been pushed up someone’s arse sideways.’

‘Classier,’ laughed Luffrey.

Kolea ignored the banter. Luff and Rerval were good friends. They often sparred like this.

‘Give yourself a moment,’ said Baskevyl quietly. ‘Let your eyes get used to the darkness again. Just a moment, and then no more falling down like an idiot.’

They paused.

‘See? Better, right?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Sure,’ said Kolea, but he didn’t think it was. The shadows seemed just as dark as before.

Bad shadows. Who had said that?

Kolea pulled out a lamp pack and switched it on. The lance of white light illuminated tree boles and snaking creepers as he played it around.

‘Come on,’ he said.

They crunched and clambered through the undergrowth. After a few minutes, they came upon the rusted skeleton of a Valkyrie gunship, entombed in a tangle of branches and leafy suckers.

‘How long’s that been here?’ Luffrey wondered.

‘Can’t be since the last supply drop,’ said Rerval. ‘It looks ancient.’

‘We’ll need to clear it, too,’ said Kolea. He looked at Baskevyl. ‘You think the servitors can move it?’

Bask shook his head.

‘I’ll vox up and have some heavies transported down,’ offered Rerval.

‘Yeah, do that,’ said Kolea.

Rerval pulled the vox-caster pack off his back, set it down, and began to nurse it to life.

‘Armaduke, Armaduke, this is the surface team, copy?’

Static buzzed.

Rerval repeated his call.

‘Nothing,’ he said, looking up at Kolea.

Kolea moved his lamp beam so as not to blind his adjutant.

‘This happens,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Yeah, all the time,’ said Kolea.

‘No, here,’ said Bask. ‘It was in the briefing packet. Vox-links can be disrupted from time to time by atmospheric magnetics.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Kolea. ‘The two moons?’

‘Uhm, yes, actually,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Yet they were so beautiful,’ Kolea snapped caustically. He looked at Rerval.

‘Try again in a few minutes,’ he told the adjutant.

‘Sir.’

Rerval rose and reslung the ’caster.

VII

‘You took your time,’ said Wes Maggs.

‘It was dark, and some of us fell over,’ said Kolea.

‘By some of us, he means Rerval,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Hey, Wes.’

Wes Maggs was the lead scout of D Company. He was also a rare example of a non-Tanith making the scout grade. He was crouched, gun flat across his thighs, his back against an ancient rockcrete wall. He rose, threw the majors a casual salute, and looked at Rerval.

‘You fell down?’

‘There was a creeper-related incident,’ said Rerval.

‘Try the vox again,’ Kolea told Rerval.

‘This is the silo?’ Baskevyl asked Maggs.

Maggs looked up into the dense darkness.

‘Pretty much. Right place, right ref. Big place, though you can’t see much of it.’

Kolea approached the rockcrete wall and placed a hand on it. It was wet with moss and lichen.

‘It slopes,’ he said.

‘Schematics say the depot is underground,’ said Maggs. ‘The cap, this part, is a pyramid.’

Like an ancient tomb, Kolea thought.

‘What’s up?’ Baskevyl asked him.

‘Nothing.’

‘Your face just then.’

Kolea drew Baskevyl to one side.

‘I’ll be honest, Braden,’ Kolea whispered. ‘I don’t like this, not one bit. There’s something about this place. Like Lyse said. It’s creepy.’

‘It’s just a depot, Gol.’

‘I know, I know, but the whole thing… the shadows… the trees… It’s just hitting all my alarm buttons.’

‘I thought you were a bit jumpy,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Sorry. I can’t explain it. Something…’

Baskevyl placed a reassuring hand on his friend’s massive shoulder.

‘I’ll tell you what it is, shall I?’ said Baskevyl.

‘Yeah, please do.’

‘Salvation’s Reach.’

‘What?’ asked Kolea.

‘We just went through fething hell.’

‘We’ve been through worse. I’ve been through worse,’ whispered Kolea.

‘The last time is always the worst,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘It’s the freshest. At the fething Reach, we lost friends. We lost good men. You’re still all wound up. You’re still on… what is it that Hark calls it?’

‘Fight time,’ said Kolea.

‘Yeah, right, fight time. You’re expecting the worst, and this isn’t it. You’re wound up tight.’

‘Maybe. And you’re not?’ asked Kolea.

‘Of course. I just don’t let it show like you do.’

‘Because you’re a professional soldier and I’m some scratch company lout?’ asked Kolea.

Baskevyl paused. He withdrew his hand.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Because I’m Braden Baskevyl and you’re Gol Kolea and we do things differently, according to our characters.’

Kolea nodded.

‘Yeah, sorry. That was terrible of me. Sorry, Braden. I… Sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Baskevyl.

‘It’s not,’ said Kolea. ‘That was out of line. I’m sorry. I just want you to know… There’s something about this place that has been freaking me out since we arrived. And it’s not just the fact we’re only three weeks out of combat.’

Baskevyl shrugged.

‘I know,’ said Baskevyl. ‘I felt it too, the moment I got here. I was trying to ignore it. It’s the shadows. Under the trees. The shadows are just… bad shadows. Like–’

‘What did you say?’ asked Kolea.

‘When?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘Just then. You said “bad shadows”.’

‘So?’

‘Where did you hear that, Bask?’

‘I didn’t hear it anywhere. I just said it. With words.’

Kolea looked away.

‘What’s the matter?’ Baskevyl asked him.

Kolea unslung his rifle.

‘Bad shadows. I don’t know why, but that phrase means something. I wish I could remember why.’

VIII

‘Vox?’ Baskevyl asked.

Rerval shook his head. He’d been trying for five minutes.

‘Keep the cans on, Rerval,’ Baskevyl advised. ‘You might hear something.’

Rerval nodded, and hooked the headphones back over his ears. He gathered up the vox set.

‘Let’s get working,’ said Kolea. ‘Let’s find the access point.’

‘What?’ asked Rerval, too loudly, headphones on.

Maggs dumb-signed him, Verghast style.

‘All right. The entrance,’ Rerval said, consulting the data-slate. He slapped it a few times. ‘Eighteen metres that way.’

He pointed.

‘Let’s move,’ said Kolea.

‘What?’ asked Rerval. ‘No, you’re all right,’ he added. ‘I see what you’re doing.’

IX

Maggs had brought a machete. It was probably a meat cleaver from the Armaduke’s cook rooms, but it served as a machete. He hacked back the vines and creepers that blocked their route along the wall. It was ridiculously dark. The shadows were upon them like a weight.

In the distance, Kolea could hear the rush of flamers. He kept his weapon tight and ready.

‘What was that you said?’ asked Rerval from behind him. Kolea turned. His adjutant was pulling off his headphones.

‘You get a contact?’ Kolea asked.

‘No, no. You said something.’

‘No one said anything,’ said Luffrey.

‘You said “eagle stones”. One of you did,’ Rerval said.

‘What the gak are “eagle stones”?’ asked Maggs.

‘No one said anything,’ said Kolea.

‘But I heard it, sir,’ said Rerval.

‘Just keep moving,’ Baskevyl advised.

They continued. There was no sound except the squelch of their boots in the muck, the hack and chop of Maggs’s blade, and their panting. It was hot. They were all sweating hard.

‘All right, stop fething me about,’ said Rerval suddenly.

They looked back at him.

‘What?’ asked Luffrey.

‘Someone said it again. Just then,’ said Rerval. ‘“Eagle stones. I want the eagle stones. Bring them to me.”’

‘You heard that?’ asked Kolea.

‘Like a whisper, sir,’ nodded Rerval.

‘Honestly?’

‘Swear by the Throne.’

Kolea looked back at the others.

‘A joke’s a joke, but that’s enough,’ he said. ‘Tell me, right now, which one of you is pissing this boy about?’

In the green-black gloom, they all shook their heads.

‘Then I’m going to abort this mission immediately,’ said Kolea.

‘Shit!’ said Baskevyl. ‘Gol, we can’t do that! After the Reach, we’re down to twenty per cent munitions and fifteen per cent promethium! We need this resupply.’

‘Yeah,’ said Gol, ‘but more than that, we need to stay alive. Something’s here. Bad shadows, Bask. Bad fething shadows.’

‘Come on, Gol,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Another few metres and we’ll be at the door. By nightfall, we’ll have the apron cleared. We need this.’

‘No. I’m calling it,’ Kolea said firmly.

‘Gol,’ said Baskevyl, ‘if we don’t make this resupply, we’ll be down to the dregs the next fight that comes along. Las-packs. Bolter shells. Promethium. Feth, we need them.’

Kolea looked at his friend’s shadowed face.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Keep going. I want to know where Caober is with that fething Navy man. Rerval? Cans on. Keep hailing the ship.’

‘Sir.’

‘If I find out any of you is playing tricks,’ Kolea warned the rest of them, ‘know this. I have a log. With Baskevyl’s name on it. But names can easily be changed.’

X

‘And behold,’ announced Maggs, wiping sap off his blade. ‘The front door.’

It was a huge cargo hatch, double-overlocked and festooned with creepers and vines. It lay at an angle, recessed into the pyramid’s slope, as if attempting to bathe in a sun it would never see for long.

There was a crunch. Kolea turned hard, gun at his hip, ready to fire. Maggs was a microsecond behind him.

‘Easy, easy!’ Caober called. ‘Feth, you’re jumpy.’

‘Shit,’ murmured Kolea, lowering his rifle.

Caober approached. There was a Navy officer with him. The man was clearly not used to doing anything except standing on a steel bridge shouting orders and sipping amasec. Each step he took was a gingerly attempt to avoid getting filth on his shiny boots. He had an augmetic monocle implant. His hair was silver, and oiled back. He wore a dark blue uniform with silver brocade. He walked stiffly, upright. Like he had a concealed warhead up his back passage, Gol thought.

‘This is–’ Caober began.

‘I am Senior Fedrush Arskil, Master of Materiel for the Highness Ser Armaduke,’ the man said.

‘Arskil?’ whispered Luffrey. ‘That’s a joke just waiting to happen, isn’t it?’

‘Stow that, Luff,’ Baskevyl hissed.

‘Who is in charge here, I wonder?’ Arskil enquired, leaning forward, his monocle whirring to focus.

‘I am,’ said Kolea and Baskevyl at the same time.

‘He is,’ Baskevyl added, looking at Gol. ‘He is.’

‘Your ruffian here,’ said Arskil, indicating Caober with a dismissive gesture, ‘led me through these vile woods in the belief there was something to inspect.’

‘Sorry about the vile woods and the ruffian, sir,’ said Kolea. ‘We have located the access hatch. Do you have the codes?’

‘Naturally,’ said Arskil, producing a sleek data-slate.

‘I’m not a ruffian,’ Caober observed quietly.

‘We will revisit that issue when we haven’t got people around,’ Kolea told him. ‘You hear anything coming in?’

‘Like what?’ Caober asked.

‘Dunno. Voices?’

‘I did not, sir,’ Caober replied.

‘Hatch codes as requested,’ Arskil said, handing the data-slate to Kolea.

‘Thank you, sir. One thing. That eye of yours…’

‘I lost my eye in the last Battle of Khulan,’ Arskil declared, as though everyone was interested. ‘Shrapnel from the desk of the Master of Artifice as it exploded. He died, poor soul. I mourn him still. Warp torpedo through three decks, just beneath the bridge of my ship. Took out the entire deck plating of the bridge and–’

‘Terrible, sir, terrible,’ said Kolea. ‘But that eye? The augmetic? It can see in the dark?’

‘Why of course, young man. I have worn it since Khulan and it has never failed me.’

‘Tell me then,’ Kolea asked, gently turning the Navy officer to look out into the undergrowth. ‘Do you see anything?’

‘Such as what, good fellow?’ asked Arskil.

‘I don’t know. Anything?’

‘Trees. A great deal of them’ said Arskil. ‘Creepers, vine. The heat-swell of your flamer units, in the distance. Woods from here to the rim of the apron, eighty-nine metres away. Fifty-one metres that way, I see the ruined chassis of a Valkyrie gunship.’

‘Well spotted. Nothing else?’

‘No, my good man,’ Arskil replied.

‘Nothing at all?’ Kolea pressed.

‘No, nothing. Why do you ask me so repeatedly? It’s just shadows out there. Bad shadows, mark you, but still.’

‘Bad shadows?’ Baskevyl asked, seizing on the phrase. ‘Why would you call them that?’

Arskil looked surprised. ‘Serious and unusual levels of light depletion. It quite foxes my augmetic. Sometimes the old eye can get a little stiff.’

Bask looked at Kolea.

‘Open the hatch, sir,’ Kolea said to the Navy man.

‘Ah, can’t you do it, my good man?’ Arskil replied. ‘I gave you the slate. I don’t want to get my gloves dirty.’

XI

Gol raised the slate and studied the access codes. He slunked back the heavy metal weather-cover of the hatch controls, exposing the keypad.

‘Weapons set,’ he told his team. They all stood ready.

‘Why are you Astra Militarum devils so wary?’ Arskil asked.

‘Because we’ve danced this dance before, more than once,’ Caober replied. ‘Besides, we’re ruffians.’

Kolea began to punch the code into the old, worn keypad. A yellow light glowed, and then turned green. The massive hatch opened, ripping root tendrils and creepers aside.

A sigh breathed. Ancient air. Stale air.

Kolea turned suddenly.

‘I heard it that time,’ he stated. ‘“Bring them to me.” Someone distinctly said “Bring them to me.” Which one of you was it?’

Rerval, Caober, Maggs, Luffrey and Baskevyl looked at one other.

‘Nobody said anything, Gol,’ Bask replied.

‘You really are quite agitated, sir,’ remarked Arskil. ‘I wonder why you–’

His head came off.

One moment it was attached to his body, the next it was spinning away into the shadows, slack-mouthed, trailing a corkscrew spray of blood.

Arskil’s severed neck vented arterial spray. His headless body sank to one knee, as if he were about to be decorated or promoted, and then fell over. Copious amounts of blood darkened his dark blue tunic and stained his brocade.

‘Wait,’ said Rerval, almost baffled. ‘His head just came clean off. How the feth did that happen?’

Kolea and Maggs were already firing, loosing wild shots into the trees. Baskevyl, Luffrey and Caober swiftly followed suit. Rerval found his weapon and started shooting too.

‘There’s something in the trees!’ Maggs yelled.

‘There’s something in the fething shadows!’ Kolea yelled back.

‘Keep shooting!’ Bask cried.

‘At what?’ Kolea shouted.

The air was full of sap and shot-torn leaves. Vines burst and snapped. Creepers spurted juice.

‘What’s happening?’ Rerval yelled, firing on full auto.

Bad shadows, Kolea thought, bad shadows.

Something uncurled from the darkness to his left. A squiggle of malicious blackness.

It looked like–

Gol Kolea remembered. He remembered. The memory stabbed into his head like a warknife.

Tona’s cabin. Dinner. Just a precious few nights before.

Yoncy. His baby girl Yoncy.

A drawing. He still had it in his pocket. It had shown an anguished, heartfelt black squiggle of chalk made by his child’s hand. The squiggle had been ground into the paper. The chalk stick Yoncy had used had broken several times during the furious effort. There had been something desperate about the marks, as if the child had been trying to destroy the paper and erase an image so terrible that she hadn’t wanted it to take form.

‘I was going to draw more trees,’ Yoncy had explained, ‘but I picked up black instead of green by accident, and it made a bad shadow shape, and I didn’t like it so I scribbled it out.’

He could hear her saying it.

Bad shadow.

Bad shadow.

Kolea pump-ejected a spent clip and slammed home a fresh one. He kept firing at the bad shadow.

The picture had been done in coloured chalk. There had been spiky things, several figures, and two sickle shapes in what Gol had presumed was the sky. The sickle shapes had made no sense at the time. Now they did. Two moons. Two crescent ghost moons, just as he had seen them with Baskevyl. There had been something else, too, a triangle. A pyramid. The depot pyramid.

‘Are these trees?’ Gol had asked, pointing.

‘Yeah,’ Yoncy had agreed, eating her stew with relish.

There were trees every fething where around him.

‘Who’s this?’ Gol had asked, pointing to the figures.

‘That’s you, silly. You and Uncle Rerval and Uncle Bask and Uncle Luffrey.’

They were all present. All of them.

‘How can a shadow be bad?’ Kolea’s son Dalin had asked, at the table.

Yoncy had wiggled her hands and picked up her dolly.

‘A bit like a monster.’

She had leaned over on her seat and pointed at the drawing in Gol’s hands.

‘See? Look? You’re killing it. Those jaggy lines? Per-chew chew chew chew chew! You’re shooting it with your gun. Per-chew chew! I used yellow chalk.’

That might as well be all I have, Gol thought, and switched to full auto.

Beside him, Luffrey shuddered and dropped, eviscerated by a blade of shadow. Coils of pink, wet intestines squirted out of his belly onto the black mulch like paste from a tube.

‘Holy Feth!’ Gol cried.

His voice made no sound. He couldn’t hear himself.

The world had fallen silent. It had been muted.

It had frozen, hushed, in shadow.

In the sudden silence, Gol Kolea felt cold breath against his cheek.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘What are you?’

‘I am here,’ a voice replied. Each word sounded like a slow scrape of chalk on paper.

A black shadow prowled around him in the darkness, angular, impossible, anti-geometric.

‘What are you?’ Gol repeated, frantically.

‘I,’ the black shadow whispered, ‘am the Voice of Sek.’ Again, the awful dry scrape of broken chalk. The thing’s voice was impossibly loud, but Gol was sure only he could hear it.

‘Bring me the eagle stones,’ scraped the shadow, at his side and yet far away at the same time, ‘or your child will perish.’

‘You bastard!’ Gol snarled. ‘Leave her alone!’

Something scratched in the darkness. A chuckle. A scribbled shadow circled him.

‘You think you can have your damaged mind healed by the touch of a weakling Imperial saint,’ the shadow scratched, ‘and not become, by the same process, a conduit for daemons?’

‘Get out of my head!’

‘Bring them to me!’ the voice dry-scraped.

‘I don’t know what you want from me!’ Gol declared. He could smell chalk dust.

‘You will, Gol Kolea. You will come to understand. Do it, or the bad shadow will fall upon you once more. I will fall upon you and your offspring.’

In the darkness, a black mouth open and smiled.

‘You bastard!’ Kolea yelled, and resumed firing.

XII

They had blown the undergrowth to pieces with their gunfire. Sap dripped from broken and torn shoots.

‘Cease fire,’ Kolea said.

They were all spent anyway.

‘What just happened?’ Baskevyl asked, looking at the two corpses tangled on the ground. One was gutted, the other had no head.

‘Luff!’ Rerval cried, falling to his knees beside his friend’s body. ‘Oh no! Oh fething feth! No!’

‘Abort this mission,’ said Kolea. ‘Abort it right now.’

XIII

The old lamps set into the walls of the Highness Ser Armaduke’s stark debrief room hummed and fizzled, their shades yellowed with age.

Ibram Gaunt scrolled through the data-slate again, and then set it down.

‘So, you aborted the mission, major?’ he asked.

‘I did, sir,’ Kolea replied, standing to attention in front of the metal table.

‘Do you consider that a prudent command choice, major?’ asked Commissar Hark, sitting at Gaunt’s left.

‘I do, sir,’ Gol replied. ‘It should have been routine, but two deaths. A thing–’

‘You describe it as a daemon, sir,’ said Shipmaster Spika, sitting at Gaunt’s right.

‘I know no other word for what I saw and sensed and felt, shipmaster,’ Gol replied. ‘It spoke. It killed. It had no form except shadow. We shot at it, with multiple barrages. It did not die.’

Silence. Gol felt he should add more.

‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘I appreciate with full concern our lack of munitions. I really do. We stand in a bit of a fix without resupply. Do not suppose for a moment that I would have aborted lightly. But in all good conscience, I could not continue. Lives were taken, and I supposed that more lives would have been taken if I had tried to continue.’

‘That is reasonable,’ said Hark.

‘One of yours, one of mine,’ Gaunt said to Spika. The shipmaster nodded.

‘Sir,’ Gol said to Spika. ‘If I could have in any way protected your man, I would have. It was so sudden. It came upon us so suddenly. Also, if I may say, I aborted because I did not dare risk bringing it back aboard with us.’

‘This thing,’ said Gaunt, ‘it said it was the Voice of Sek?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And it wanted something from you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It wanted… what was it? Eagle stones?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What are they?’ asked Hark.

‘I have no idea, Commissar Hark, sir,’ said Gol Kolea.

‘Do we have any data on that?’ Gaunt asked Hark. ‘Eagle stones?’

‘Nothing, Ibram.’

‘Major Kolea,’ said Gaunt, ‘is there anything you’ve left out or omitted from your report?’

Gol paused. Of course there is, he thought. The fact that it knew my name, and that I had children. The fact that everything matched Yoncy’s drawing. The fact that it called me a conduit for daemons. How can I tell you that? How can I tell you those things and not have you execute me where I stand? I cannot speak of them, because if I am dead, executed for heresy, who will protect my children? Or will you just execute them, too, or hand them to the Black Ships? Who will know enough to protect the Ghosts? I will deny this darkness, this shadow. I am strong. I am Gol Kolea. The Saint herself has touched me and blessed me. I will protect my family and the regiment from this. It will be my personal, private duty, and I will not fail.

‘No, sirs,’ Gol said.

Gaunt glanced at Hark. Hark nodded. Then Gaunt looked at Spika, who shook his head.

Gaunt looked up at Kolea.

‘Despite the parlous state of our operational supply levels,’ he said, ‘we support your decision. Given the circumstances, it was right to abort. Major Baskevyl has vouched for you, and we take that seriously. We also respect your command choices on the ground. No charges will be pending.’

‘Thank you, sirs,’ Kolea said.

‘You made the best decision, Gol,’ said Hark, ‘under terrible circumstances. We’re backing you. There will be no mark on your service record.’

‘I am gratified by your support, sirs,’ said Kolea.

‘Shipmaster?’ said Gaunt, turning to Spika. ‘Supply depot Aigor 991 is no longer viable. Have your gunnery officers annihilate the site, and process that information through Battlefleet channels.’

‘I will,’ said Spika.

‘Full batteries,’ Gaunt advised. ‘Burn that site.’

‘I’ll raze the whole damned landmass, sir,’ Spika replied. ‘For my man Arskil, if nothing else.’

‘He was a good man, shipmaster,’ Kolea said.

Spika paused. ‘Really? I always thought he was a bit of a pompous fool.’

‘I was just being respectful,’ said Gol.

‘And I should too, major,’ Spika said, rising. ‘The man’s dead. He was crew. I shouldn’t bad-mouth him.’

‘He died well, in the service of the God-Emperor,’ said Gol.

‘Did he?’ asked Spika.

‘No,’ sighed Gol. ‘He didn’t.’

‘He was slain by darkness,’ sighed Spika. ‘Pompous fool or not, he didn’t deserve that.’

‘Nobody deserves that,’ said Kolea.

‘Dismissed, major,’ said Hark.

Gol Kolea made the sign of the aquila, turned smartly, and left the cabin.

XIV

He was halfway down the companionway outside when he heard Gaunt call his name. Gol stopped and turned. Gaunt approached him.

‘Gol?’

‘Sir?’

‘Are you all right?’

‘It was a bad situation, sir,’ Gol said.

Gaunt put a hand on Gol’s shoulder. It was reassuring, but oddly uncomfortable. Gaunt seldom showed connection like this.

‘Gol,’ said Gaunt quietly. ‘Gol, we’ve been together for an age now. Since Vervunhive. I think you’re… You’re the most foursquare and dependable officer I have in my command.’

‘Sir–’

‘I mean it, Gol,’ said Gaunt. ‘I am blessed with fine company officers. Bask. Daur. Kolosim. Obel. Sloman. Elam. Shoggy. Rags. Theiss. Arcuda… Rawne.’

‘Even him, sir?’

Gaunt smiled.

‘Of course, even him,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘But you,’ said Gaunt, ‘you are the rock. The core. The foundation. You have, in a way, filled the void Corbec left. You are rooted. You are true. I depend on you more than I depend on any other company commander.’

‘I am honoured that you say that, sir,’ said Kolea.

‘So if you need me,’ said Gaunt, ‘if you want to talk to me, off the record. If there’s anything, anything at all, I need you to know that you can come to me with it.’

‘I appreciate your words, sir, very much,’ said Kolea.

‘Good,’ said Gaunt. ‘Gol, is there anything else about the circumstances of Aigor 991 that you want to tell me about? Man to man, not subordinate to commander? Just two men talking? Two friends?’

Gol Kolea thought about the drawing in his pocket. He wanted to take it out, unfold it, and show it to Gaunt, whom he loved and admired above all other men.

But the consequences. The consequences. To those he loved most. The inevitable outcome. The inevitable Imperial outcome.

‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your frankness, but no, sir.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Sir,’ said Kolea. ‘May I enquire… where are we headed next?’

‘Urdesh,’ replied Gaunt. ‘The forge world.’

‘Urdesh,’ Kolea echoed. ‘Well, I look forward to serving you there, sir.’

Gaunt patted him on the arm, and nodded.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

Gaunt turned and walked away.

Gol began walking towards the troop billets, his head down, a weight upon him that he wasn’t sure would ever lift. He had a battle ahead of him, and the battle wasn’t Urdesh.

In the patchy ghost light of the companionway’s glow-globes, he cast a bad shadow behind him.

KILLBOX

It was coming for him. It was coming to finish him.

‘You do not stand a chance,’ the warrior had told him. ‘I mean, you are skilled. For a human. But in this, you do not stand a chance in hell.’

The warrior had laughed to punctuate this statement. It wasn’t a very human laugh, and it wasn’t pleasant to hear.

Mkoll didn’t take kindly to being told what his chances were. He listened to orders, he accepted tactical advice, but when it came to outcome assessments, he tended to switch off. He’d been a scout and a soldier for a long time. That fact alone demonstrated his ability to beat the odds. A soldier who had survived for a decent career had either been lucky, or had learned how to look risk right in the eyes and spit in its face.

If Mkoll had listened – if he’d ever listened – to outcome assessments and risk evaluation, the back-of-the-briefing-packet crap that the Tactical Division always supplied, then he would have been dead long ago. At Fortis Binary, at Vervunhive, at Cirenholm, on Gereon… feth, right at the start on Tanith. He certainly would never have made it through the shit-storm of Salvation’s Reach. Outcome assessments sapped the will and they punctured confidence. They told you, matter of fact, in the pale blue type that chattered out of the Tactical Division’s cogitators, that you were going to fail. Sometimes they even told you when, where and how badly you were going to fail.

That kind of crap cut a man’s heart out before he’d even begun. If a soldier went into a fight believing he was going to lose because some rear echelon expert fether had told him so, then he was already dead.

So Mkoll never listened. He never read that part of the packet. He zoned out when the Tactical Division adjuncts stood up in briefings and began to drone on.

There was always a chance.

There was a long chamber behind Engine House Two – some kind of machine shop – which he’d labelled ‘Killbox one’. There were two routes from there to a relay room aft. He’d named that relay room ‘Killbox two’. Below that, a ladder-well led down two deck levels to a venting station: a large, ducted compartment with an oddly sloping roof. The venting station was ‘Killbox three’. Near to that, along a transit tunnel, was a slender walk-bridge spanning the chasm of the ship’s main heat sink, a canyon of machined steel cliffs that dropped away so far that you couldn’t see the bottom. The walk-bridge, that was ‘Last Fething Chance.’

Mkoll hadn’t made a map. Not a paper one anybody could see, at least. The map was in his head. They’d been on the Highness Ser Armaduke for weeks, first for the long haul out to Salvation’s Reach, and now for the slow drag back to Imperial territory. The bloody raid was three weeks behind them. To stay fit, to stay sharp, Mkoll had taken to patrolling the massive old warship, measuring it out, learning its nooks and crannies.

Where possible, he did that with every location he found himself stationed in. He made time to learn the lie of the land, to know it front and back, to navigate it in his mind, and in his sleep, and with his eyes closed. He found out every secret place, every hidden corner, every rat-run, every air-shaft, every crawlway, every concealed hatch. That kind of information could keep you alive, no matter your chances.

The Armaduke was a strange place. Mkoll had come to know it better than any other ship he’d ever made shift on. The populated areas of the crew decks and company spaces were busy, well-lit and relatively clean. To most souls aboard, those areas were the whole ship. That was where people lived and worked.

But the populated areas were just a small fraction of the ship’s mass, like the peak of a sea-mount rising above sea level. The dark bulk lay beneath. Vast areas of machine space, engine housing, vent systems and vacant compartments. There were bilges, junk stores, decommissioned chambers, abandoned holds… rusty, decaying sections that had been closed down following damage, or places that simply hadn’t been visited in centuries. Mkoll estimated that four-fifths of the ship were ‘subdeck’ like that: gloomy, backstage hull-spaces visited only by servitors, the odd maintenance sweep and people who got lost.

During his patrols, Mkoll had seen a lot down there. The furnace-heat of the main Engine Rooms, where the air swirled with sparks and soot. The water-load reservoirs where the air smelled of stagnant filth, where there was a constant sound of dripping. The waste plants. The chambers where the massive Ogryn stokers crashed after their long shifts, dark caverns of dirty bedding and sweat-stink where they drank and played dice and snored. He’d sat amongst them in the firelight, like a child visiting the ritual lair of giants, and they hadn’t even known he was there.

He’d seen the machine shop chambers where the servitors gathered in silent clusters, and hummed binaric pulses to each other as spider-servitors crawled over them, repairing their manipulators and servicing perished joint-seals. Those chambers smelled of oil and ozone, and made his throat dry. He’d entered holds that hadn’t been opened in a lifetime, and found crates of forgotten supplies: boxes of perishables that had become caskets of dust where it was impossible to tell what they had once contained, or rooms filled with stacks of self-heating meal cans, the faded labels stencilled with Munitorum issue dates that were three centuries old.

Edible still. He’d found that out too.

He’d found a compartment on what had once been a berth deck that had belonged to a senior officer at some point in the ship’s past. It had been closed off, but the contents remained. A bed, a desk, some books, dress uniforms hanging on a rail, a framed pict of a long-dead family, all thickly layered in dust. He hadn’t stayed there long. He had felt like he was intruding.

Patiently, he had learned the Armaduke’s inner secrets. Every corner, every by-way.

There was always a chance.

Mkoll knew it was coming for him when he heard the tins.

There would be no warning that the game had begun in earnest, so he had set some for himself. Simple motion alarms made of mono-filament wire stretched taut across thresholds and hatchways, and tied off to rusty, battered mess tins he had rescued from one of the low-deck junk heaps.

He was in Sub Three Six. He’d just done a twenty kilometre run around the upper circuit of holds, stow-spaces and reservoir bays. Long routes on shift transport had taught him that you had to keep fit, or you’d end up arriving at the next fight zone flabby from ship rations, and with muscle tone lost to shipboard grav levels.

He heard the tins, distant. A clatter. He paused, took a sip of water from the flask in his hand, then tied up his kit and pulled his jacket back on. All the while he listened for more noise, knowing there would be none.

He assessed direction. The clatter of tins had seemed to come from his left, but he knew the way sound travelled in Sub Three Six. It was more likely an acoustic bounce, and therefore had actually come from his right. Mkoll’s painstaking close reading of the ship had grown to include all the thousands of different sounds it made, the creaks and groans and throbs and ambient hums, and the ways sound travelled in every location.

The right. Probably the alarm line he’d tied at Sub Three Eight.

It would be closing fast. It would be coming for him.

Mkoll put on his camo-cloak, picked up his las-rifle, and began to move. He ran without making a sound, each bootfall expertly placed, knowing when to duck under low pipes or step over trunking.

‘Killbox one’ was out, for the time being at least. He didn’t want to double-back and run into what was hunting him. He took a service tunnel to starboard, crossed an empty transit hall and–

He pulled up, stepped back out into the long transit hall, and listened. The fore-aft transits provided great acoustics. He screened out the pulsing rumble of the drive rooms and waited. That creak. Just there, at the edge of hearing. A heavy weight shifting on the loose deck plates of Sub Three Seven?

Whatever was coming after him had speed – more speed than he could hope to muster. Inhuman speed. But that speed came with a price, especially given the mass involved. It was inhumanly quiet, but it simply couldn’t be as quiet as him.

Mkoll continued on. He left the transit hall, followed the slow incline of a service tunnel down to Sub Eight, and then took the narrow corridor left in a loop to ‘Last Fething Chance’. Ceiling lights above him swayed slowly on their chains, nudged by the vibration of the ship; the constant, bucking push-pull of the Warp.

He heard another creak, and froze. No, not a footfall this time. Just the fabric of the Armaduke flexing under stress somewhere.

He reached the walk-bridge. The canyon of the heat sink dropped away below him and rose above him into the roof of the hull. A warm breeze was coming from the lightless depths, murmuring in the chasm.

Mkoll strapped his rifle across his back, and pulled himself up onto the narrow rail of the slender footbridge. Like an acrobat at a carnival show, he walked the rail, heel to toe, arms outstretched, until he reached the middle of the arc. There, he lowered into a crouch, gripping the rail on either side of his feet with both hands.

Acoustics in the transit hallway were good. In the canyon of the heat sink, they were miraculous, like a gift sent by the Saint herself. Sounds moved along the canyon from all parts of the ship. He could even hear the faint chatter of cogitators on the secondary bridge far above him. The heat sink conducted vibration too, and he could feel that through his palms on the rail.

He sorted the sounds carefully; the sounds and the tiny shudders of the rail.

It was definitely to his left now. On the port side of the ship. One or perhaps two decks up, less than two hundred metres away, closing fast.

Coming for him. Coming to finish him.

It probably had a heat-lock already, or was reading his scent. No visual yet, though. No line-of-sight.

Mkoll had about sixty seconds if it played it stealthy, or less than thirty if it decided to be brazen.

He slid down from the rail onto the walk-bridge, and crossed it to the far side. There, he activated the shutter release and closed the hatch to the bridge, but stayed on the bridge side of it.

He swung back over the rail and climbed down, until he was clinging to the underside of the walk-bridge. He didn’t look down. He was veiled in the shadow of the bridge’s underside, clinging to the greasy pneumatic struts with his hands and heels.

He heard something above him.

It was on the bridge. It had arrived from the same direction he had come. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel each silent but immense footstep as its mass made the narrow walk-bridge tremble.

No sound. It was making no sound. It had tracked him, by heat and scent, to the chasm. Now it had his scent more keenly, leading across the bridge to the closed hatch.

The warm breeze gusting up from the heat sink far below was masking his body temperature.

He hung on. He felt like he was starting to steam and broil. Sweat began to trickle down his spine. His hands were damp on the warm, oily struts. Much more sweat, and his scent track would become fresh and obvious.

Much more heat, and his hands would slip off the struts.

It moved directly over him. He heard the faint clink of a metal heel on bridge decking. It paused.

He stopped breathing.

Seconds ticked by. He gently tilted his head to the right. Light from overhead was casting a vague shadow of the bridge against the canyon wall below. It was enough to see the dark bulk on the bridge above him. A huge shadow, powerful and relentless.

It moved again, down to the far end, to the closed hatch.

He heard the shutter open and close.

Had it fallen for his trick? Had it thought he had gone through the hatch and closed it after him?

No. It was far, far smarter than that.

It was still on the bridge. He could feel it. It had done what he had done. It had made a show of opening and closing the shutter as if it had gone through it, but it had remained behind.

Waiting.

We can both wait, Mkoll thought.

He hung, silently. Moments passed. He had to breathe again, but he did so as gently and slowly as he could.

Was it still there, or was his mind playing dirty tricks on him?

He waited.

He felt the walk-bridge wobble slightly as it shifted its weight. Yes, it was still there, waiting, just like him.

A minute. Another minute. Two more.

There was a sigh. The shutter opening. It closed again.

Now it had gone.

Mkoll let out a long, slow breath through lips curled in an ‘o’. He started to move, crawling back along the underside of the walk-bridge. His arms and legs were beginning to tire, and he placed each new hand- or toe-hold with deliberate care.

He reached the far end, the end he had started from. Slowly, he crawled out from under the bridge, and clambered back over the rail.

There was no one there. He had to double-check. It was frighteningly clever and calculating. There had been every chance he would come out of the shadows and find it waiting there, smiling down at him.

The walk-bridge was empty.

Mkoll went back the way he had come, but diverted off towards a through-deck ladder that took him up into a stowage space and then into ‘Killbox three’. The venting station. Steam billowed from the grilles in the floor, and verdigris caked the oddly sloping ceiling. It was a well-lit space, but there was no point taking out the light rigs.

It could see in the dark. Close up, it could hear his heartbeat and the pulse of the blood in his veins.

Mkoll was hunting the way he had learned to hunt back in the forests of Tanith. You stalked the prey, but ultimately you let the prey come to you, on your terms. That was the key part. You made the terrain yours, you used yourself as a lure, and you brought the prey into an area you could control. The killboxes. Any one of them would do. The killboxes or ‘Last Fething Chance’. Mkoll had chosen four areas that he felt gave him good access and egress, areas he could use to his advantage. If he could draw it into any one of them, he could finish the business.

He’d rigged up a small hide at the end of Killbox three a few days before, just some flakboard and a spare camo-cloak, screened off by a cluster of pipework. He was about to take up position when he heard a rattle of mess tins.

Something wasn’t right.

The mono-filament wire had been tripped somewhere to his left, causing the tins to rattle. He was sure about the direction, but that meant that somehow, it had managed to circle around him. How had it done that? How had it moved so far and so fast without him being aware of it? It had re-crossed the heat sink trench and encircled him, moving in from entirely the wrong direction.

Mkoll knew at once that he couldn’t control Killbox three any more. The hide was pointing in the wrong direction.

He knew he had to reconsider quickly. It had tripped more tins, which meant it was moving fast, putting speed above caution. It knew where he was, and it was coming for him with eager confidence.

He hurried to the end of the venting station and entered the ladder-well, clambering up into the relay room he’d designated Killbox two. There were two points of concealment there, one in a parts locker on the right-hand wall, the other further down to the left behind a workbench. As he stood there deciding which one gave him the best options, he heard something move in the venting station below him. It wasn’t loud, just a slight impact of metal on metal, but he separated it easily from the ambient noise of the ship around him. It was below him, less than ten metres. It was moving even faster than he had estimated.

He wasn’t sure if he’d have enough time to get into either of the concealment positions fast enough. He needed to keep it at arm’s length, keep it at bay for as long as possible to give himself maximum edge.

He needed a distraction. Killbox one was going to be the best option, and he had to buy a little time. He scooped up a couple of washers from the grubby workbench and, as he headed for the exit tunnel that led to Killbox one, he turned and tossed them underhand into the ladder-well.

He heard them rattle and ping as they bounced down the shaft. He heard more movement as something moved to investigate.

Then he exited fast, drawing on all the stealth skills he had accumulated in his long career. He left Killbox two making less sound than a couple of washers falling down a ladder well.

Killbox one, the machine shop, was a large and gloomy space with heavy deck plates. Unlike the other zones he had ear-marked, it had too many access points, but that drawback was more than compensated for by the shape and space of the room. Besides, Mkoll knew which direction the threat was coming from, so only the hatch access to the relay room mattered. He’d pre-constructed a hide in this Killbox too, but there were two other concealment points, and he chose one with a raised angle that had the best line of sight on the hatch.

He hauled himself into position, and lined up his rifle. No time to spare, no time to waste fussing. Just line up and be ready.

He waited. He waited, his finger resting beside the trigger.

Silence.

There was no sign of movement.

It couldn’t have lost his scent. Even with the distraction, it had been so close on his heels.

Mkoll froze.

It was in the machine shop. It was right there with him in Killbox one.

But it had come from the opposite direction. Instead of emerging from the hatch that he was sighted on, it had entered the room from the hatch behind him.

He had no idea how it had done that. He had no idea how it had looped around to circle him. He started to pick apart his mental map of the ship to try to figure out how it could have got the drop on him. Maybe a hatch or inspection tube he’d missed. Maybe a–

He shook the ideas away. They were just distractions. It didn’t matter how it had got around him. All that mattered was that it had. All that mattered was that it was right here, right now.

Mkoll didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. He waited, the hairs on his neck rising. It was so close. It prowled forward, the mass of it a shadow in the gloom. He heard the faint hum of auto-systems and targetters. It was hunting for him. It was going to locate him in another second or two.

But it was in his cross-hairs.

‘Bang,’ said Mkoll.

The Space Marine froze, and then slowly turned its bulk around. Sar Af, the White Scar, narrowed his inhuman eyes and saw Mkoll hunched amongst the overhead pipework, rifle aimed. Mkoll’s las-rifle was set to full auto. No matter how fast Sar Af moved, it wouldn’t be faster than the stream of las-shots aimed at his unprotected head.

Sar Af smiled.

‘Clever little man,’ he said.

Mkoll nodded back, his aim not wavering.

‘Game to me,’ he said.

Sar Af lowered his boltgun.

‘The Tanith Ghosts,’ he said, ‘they come with a good reputation. Especially for covert action. Good… by human standards. But you have proved something today. It has been an education, sergeant, taking this challenge with you. I would venture to say I have never met a human as cunning as you.’

‘I’ll take that, sir,’ said Mkoll.

‘I assume you prepared? Walked the ground? Chose your locations?’

‘Yes.’

Sar Af nodded.

‘Wise and diligent,’ he said. ‘The only way you could hope to even the odds. We of the Adeptus Astartes always prepare too. Prepare for the worst. We prepare for an enemy to be better than us, to have some edge, and adjust accordingly. That is why the Adeptus Astartes always win.’

Mkoll allowed himself a small smile.

‘Except this time, sir,’ he suggested.

‘Mmm,’ replied Sar Af, as though amused by something.

Mkoll felt a chill creep up his spine. His attention had been fixed on the White Scar. He realised there was something behind him.

He turned. Holofurnace of the Iron Snakes stood in the doorway, his boltgun trained on Mkoll. Eadwine of the Silver Guard, weapon ready and fixed, slowly emerged from the cover of a lateral hatch.

All three Space Marines had their weapons on him.

Mkoll slowly lowered his aim.

‘I asked my battle-brothers to shadow us as we played our game,’ said Sar Af.

‘Is that really sporting?’ asked Mkoll. ‘A fair contest?’

Eadwine snorted.

‘Not at all, sergeant,’ said Sar Af, ‘but then when is war ever sporting? This contest was never fair to begin with. War is about victory. That is all that matters. And that is why the Adeptus Astartes prevails. When the odds stack against us, we revise the rules and change the odds.’

Mkoll shrugged. He dropped down from the pipework onto the deck in front of the towering Sar Af.

‘Well then, sir,’ Mkoll said, ‘I will admit defeat. I’ll cherish the fact that, according to the original rules of this contest, I bested you. Me, a lone human. But I will concede that I don’t stand a chance against all three of you. If this had been real, you would have ended me.’

‘You did well, Mkoll,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Savour the fact that you got the drop on our finest hunter.’

Mkoll nodded.

‘Except I did more than that,’ he said. He looked down at the deck beneath them. The three Space Marines slowly looked down too.

‘I knew from the start I didn’t really stand a chance against Brother Sar Af,’ said Mkoll. ‘Not a fething chance in hell, even if I out-stealthed him and lured him into a killbox. So I set a trap, just to be sure. And look at that. My trap has caught three Space Marines.’

The deck of the machine shop was rigged. The three Space Marines could see the soft packs of explosives wedged under the deck plates they were standing on, the detonators wired and set.

‘Boom,’ said Mkoll.

Eadwine and Holofurnace stared at Mkoll in disbelief.

‘But… but if you trigger this trap,’ said Eadwine, ‘you will perish with us.’

‘Of course I will,’ said Mkoll casually. ‘But that’s why the poor bloody Guard always win. We’re expendable. One trooper for three over-powered, post-human adversaries? That’s a victory.’

There was a moment of silence, then Sar Af began to laugh. It was a loud, long and delighted laugh.

‘Well played, sergeant,’ he said. ‘He has us, brothers. He has us cold.’

Holofurnace hissed a curse. Eadwine nodded, his face grim.

‘I will concede stalemate,’ Eadwine said.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mkoll. ‘I appreciate the opportunity to test myself against you.’

He knelt down, and began to rip the packets of explosives from the edges of the deck plate.

‘Throne!’ exclaimed Holofurnace. ‘Be careful with those!’

‘These?’ asked Mkoll, holding up one of the packs. ‘They’re just bags of powdered caffeine mix.’

Sar Af began to laugh all over again.

‘That’s the other thing about the Guard,’ said Mkoll. ‘We bluff like bastards too.’

About the Author

Dan Abnett has written over fifty novels, including The Warmaster, the latest instalment in the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series. He has also written the Ravenor and Eisenhorn books, the most recent of which is The Magos. For the Horus Heresy, he is the author of Horus Rising, Legion, The Unremembered Empire, Know No Fear and Prospero Burns, the last two of which were both New York Times bestsellers. He also scripted Macragge’s Honour, the first Horus Heresy graphic novel, as well as numerous audio dramas and short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer universes. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.

An extract from The Warmaster.

They had so very nearly got away with it. Got away with it and survived to tell the tale.

So very nearly.

Hell and back. That’s how someone had described the Salvation’s Reach mission. It sounded like the sort of thing Larkin or Varl would say.

Hell and back. They’d gone into hell and come out on the other side, and not for the first time. But after everything they had endured, it seemed as though they weren’t going to make it home after all.

Four weeks out from the Rimworld Marginals, and the target rock known as Salvation’s Reach, the doughty old warship Highness Ser Armaduke had begun to limp.

‘How far are we from the intended destination?’ Ibram Gaunt asked the Armaduke’s shipmaster.

Spika, leaning back thoughtfully in his worn command seat, shrugged his shoulders.

‘The estimate is another fifteen days,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t like the look of the immaterium. Bad patterns ahead. I think we’ll be riding out a proper storm before nightfall, shiptime.’

‘And that could slow us down?’ asked Gaunt.

‘By a margin of weeks, if we’re unlucky,’ said Spika.

‘Still, you’re saying the storm isn’t the real problem?’ Gaunt pressed.

‘No,’ said Spika. He held up a finger for quiet. ‘You hear that?’

Gaunt listened, and heard many sounds: the chatter and chime of the multiple cogitators ranked around the warship’s bridge; the asthmatic wheeze of the air-circulation system and environmental pumps; the hum of the through-deck power hubs charging the strategium display; the deranged murmuring from the navigator’s socket; the voxed back-chatter from the crew; footsteps on the deck plates; the deep, deep rumble of the warp drives behind everything else.

During the course of the Salvation’s Reach mission, he had begun to learn the multifarious ambient running noises of the Armaduke, but not enough to become an expert.

‘Not really,’ he admitted.

‘Not really?’ asked Spika. ‘No?’ The shipmaster sounded disappointed. Though the life and the lifetime expectations of a Navy man were, quite literally, worlds away from those of a Guard officer, the two men had bonded during the mission tour, and had both gained insight into operational worlds quite alien from their own. They were not friends, but there was a measure of something that, nurtured, might one day resemble friendship. Clemensaw Spika seemed rather let down that Gaunt had grasped less shipboard nuance than he had expected.

‘It’s quite distinct,’ Spika said, sadly. ‘Number two drive. There’s an arrhythmia in its generative pulse. The modulation is out of step. There. There. There. There.’

Like an orchestral conductor, he beat his finger to a pattern. It was a pattern that Ibram Gaunt did not have the experience of practice to discern.

It was Gaunt’s turn to shrug.

Spika adjusted the brass levers on his armrests, and swept his command seat around. The entire chair, a metal-framed throne of worn leather with banks of control surfaces and levers set into each arm, sat upon a gilded carriage that connected it to a complex gimbal-jointed lifting arm. At a touch, Spika could hoist himself above the entire bridge, incline to share the point of view of any of the bridge stations below, or even raise himself up into the bridge dome to study hololithic star-map projections.

This more gentle adjustment merely turned the seat so he could dismount and lead Gaunt across the bridge to the bank of stations occupied by the Master of Artifice and his key functionaries.

‘Output display, all engines,’ Spika requested.

‘Output display, all, aye,’ the Master of Artifice answered. His hands – busy bionic spiders that dripped spots of oil and were attached to wrists made of rotator struts and looped cables jutting from the fine double-buttoned cuffs of his duty uniform – played across the main haptic panel of his console. Each finger-touch caused a separate and distinct electronic note, creating a little musical flurry like an atonal arpeggio. The Master of Artifice was not blind, for Gaunt could see the ochre-and-gold receptors in his enhanced pupils expanding and contracting his irises, but his attitude was that of a sightless pianist. He was not looking at what he was doing. His picture of the universe and the ship, which were, after all, the same thing, was being fed to him in a constantly updated flow through aural implants, and through data-trunks that ran up his neck like bulging arteries and entered the base of his skull through dermal sockets.

A hololithic display sprang up above the man’s station. Side by side, in three dimensions, the rising and falling graph lines of the Armaduke’s engines were arranged for comparison. Gaunt’s limited expertise was not found wanting now.

‘I see,’ Gaunt said. ‘Clearly a problem.’

‘Clearly,’ replied Spika. ‘Number two drive is operating at least thirty-five per cent below standard efficiency.’

‘The yield is declining by the hour, shipmaster,’ the Master of Artifice said.

‘Are you examining it?’ asked Gaunt.

‘It’s hard to examine a warp drive when it’s active,’ replied Spika. ‘But, yes. Nothing conclusive yet. I believe this down-rate is the result of damage we sustained during the fight at Tavis Sun on the outward journey. Even a micro-impact or spalling on the inner liner might, over time, develop into this, especially given the demands we’ve made on principal artifice.’

‘So this could be an old wound only now showing up?’ asked Gaunt.

Spika nodded.

‘The Master of Artifice,’ he said, ‘prefers the theory that it is micro-particle damage taken during our approach to Salvation’s Reach – ingested debris. This theory has some merit. The Reach was a particularly dense field.’

‘What’s the prognosis?’ asked Gaunt.

‘If we can effect repair, we’re fine. If we can’t, and the output continues to decline in this manner, we may be forced to exit the warp, and perhaps divert to a closer harbour.’

Gaunt frowned. They’d travelled non-stop since departing the Reach, except for one scheduled resupply halt at a secure depot, Aigor 991, a week earlier. It had not gone to plan. Resupply was urgently needed: the raid had expended a vast quantity of their munitions and perishable supplies, but they’d been obliged to abort and press on without restocking. Gaunt was reluctant to make another detour. He wanted to reach their destination as fast as possible.

‘Worst case?’ he asked.

‘Worst case?’ Spika replied. ‘There are many kinds of worst case. The most obvious would be that the drive fails suddenly and we are thrown out of the warp. Thrown out of the warp… if we’re lucky.’

‘Is there anything,’ Gaunt asked the shipmaster, ‘which suggests to you that luck follows the occupants of this vessel around on any permanent or regular basis?’

‘My dear colonel-commissar,’ Spika replied, ‘I’ve lived in this accursed galaxy long enough to believe that there’s no such thing as luck at all.’

Gaunt didn’t reply.

Spika walked back to his command seat and resumed his station.

‘I will begin running assessment variables through astronavigation to see if there are any viable retranslation points,’ he said. ‘I intend to give this condition twelve hours grace. Twelve hours to correct itself or to be repaired. After that, I will be effecting the neatest possible real space translation in the hope of finding a safe haven or fleet support.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘I take it this is all for my information?’ he asked.

‘Colonel-commissar,’ said the shipmaster, ‘if we are forced to terminate this voyage prematurely, or if the drive fails, it is more than likely we will find ourselves adrift in hostile space. There will, very probably, be no safe haven or fleet support. It is likely we will have to protect ourselves.’

He adjusted some armrest levers, and rotated his seat up into the navigation dome and the eternal glow of the star maps.

‘I am telling you this,’ he called down over his shoulder, ‘so that you can ready your Ghosts.’

Gaunt walked aft from the warship’s bridge, ignoring the salute of the Navy armsmen. He clattered down two companionway staircases and entered Port Primary, one of the ship’s main communication corridors. There was a general bustle to and fro; servitors and crew, and the occasional Tanith First trooper who threw him a salute.

The sounds and the smells of the ship were all around him. Warp stress was pulling at the Armaduke’s frame, and deck plates creaked. Wall panels groaned. Ice had formed in some places, glazing the walls, and unexpected hotspots trembled their haze in others. Blast shutters, which stood at twenty-metre intervals along Port Primary, ready to slam shut and compartmentalise the long thoroughfare in the event of a hull breach or decompression, rattled in their frames, temporarily malformed by the tensions of the warp.

If it’s visibly doing that to the metal structure of the ship, thought Gaunt, what’s it doing to our bodies? Our cellular structures? Our minds? Our souls?

He exited Port Primary and entered the tighter network of halls, companionways and tunnel ducts that linked the habitation levels and cargo spaces. Ceilings were lower, and the corridors were more densely lined with cabling and exterior-mounted switching boxes and circuitry. It was in these levels, less-well lit and claustrophobic, that the ancient ship felt more like a hive. An underground hive.

The light strings, glow-globes and wall lamps flickered at what seemed like a too infrequent rate, as if power was intermittent or struggling to reach the extremities of the ship. Bad odours gusted like halitosis from the air-circ vents: the rank stink of oil and grease, of sump water, of stagnant hydraulics, of refuse and badly draining sanitation systems, of stale cooking, of unwashed flesh, of grilles overheating because they were clogged with lint and soot and dust.

The Armaduke should have been scrapped long ago. It had been spared from the breaker’s yards to perform the Salvation’s Reach run, with little expectation it would be seen again.

Gaunt knew how it felt.

The mission had been a success – an astonishing success, in fact, given the odds. As had happened so often before, Gaunt took little satisfaction from that, because of the cost. The cost was too great, every time.

Gaunt passed the door of one of the mess halls, and saw Viktor Hark sitting alone at one of the long, shabby tables, nursing a cup of caffeine. A cold smell of boiled cabbage and root veg lingered in the hall. The room was too brightly lit. From the back, Gaunt could hear servitors prepping food for the next meal rotation.

‘Viktor?’

Hark started to rise.

‘Easy,’ Gaunt told him. ‘Briefing. In thirty minutes. Can you scare up the company officers and particulars for me?’

Hark nodded.

‘Everyone?’

‘Just those you can find. Don’t pull people off duties. This is informal for now, but I want to get the word out.’

‘The word?’

‘Could be trouble ahead.’

Hark got to his feet and plonked his cup on the cart for empties and dirties.

‘Ibram,’ he said, ‘there’s always trouble ahead.’

They met in the wardroom. Hark had rounded up Ludd, Fazekiel, Mkoll, Larkin, Baskevyl, Kolea and most of the company commanders. The notable absences were Blenner, Rawne, Meryn, and Daur and Major Pasha, both of whom were still in the infirmary. Captain Nico Spetnin was standing in for Pasha, and Adjutant Mohr and Sergeant Venar for Daur.

‘No Criid?’ Gaunt asked Hark as he came in and the officers rose.

‘Criid?’ Hark replied. ‘Tona’s not company or particular level.’

Gaunt hesitated. His mind had been all over the place since–

He’d forgotten he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not even Criid.

‘All right, as you were,’ he said, with a gesture to ‘easy’ themselves that they all recognised.

‘Something awry, sir?’ Baskevyl asked, pre-empting the standard comment of Gaunt’s adjutant.

Beltayn, sitting up front, data-slate in hand ready to take notes, rolled his eyes at the trickle of laughter.

‘Yeah, Bask,’ Gaunt replied. They settled down quickly.

Gaunt took off his cap and unbuttoned his coat. The air got close in the wardroom when you packed it with bodies.

‘It may be nothing,’ he told them, ‘but we need to come to secondary order as of right now.’

‘Secondary order?’ Kolosim repeated.

‘Combat ready?’ asked Kolea.

Gaunt nodded.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘We’re only four weeks out of that shitstorm…’ Obel murmured.

Gaunt looked at him. The intensity of Gaunt’s unblinking augmetic stare pinned Obel to his seat.

‘Sir, I didn’t mean–’ he began.

Gaunt often forgot how hard his new eyes could be. He hadn’t meant to discomfort an officer as loyal and dependable as Obel.

‘I know, Lunny,’ Gaunt said. ‘We’re all still licking our wounds. And I’m aware of our piss-poor supply levels. But the war works to its own schedule, not ours. I need the First to come to secondary order in the next twelve hours.’

There was a general groan.

‘Any specifics you can give us, sir?’ asked Bask.

‘Shipmaster Spika informs me that the Armaduke is experiencing drive issues. It might not bring us home. If we fall short or explosively de-translate, I want the fighting companies ready for protection duties.’

‘Shipboard? Counter-boarding?’ asked Kolea, his voice a growl.

‘Anything, Gol,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Just make sure your squads are ready to deal with any kind of contact. Anything they might reasonably be expected to counter.’

Kolea nodded.

‘And make it generally known to all that in the event of action, munition conservation is essential.’

The officers took note.

‘Ludd?’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes, sir?’ Commissar Ludd answered.

‘See to it that our friends are informed,’ Gaunt told the company’s youngest commissar.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ludd.

‘Hark?’

‘Yes, sir?’ Hark replied.

‘I’ll leave it to you to bring Rawne and B Company up to speed.’

Hark nodded.

‘Well,’ said Gaunt, ‘that’s all. Thanks for your attention. Get to it.’

On the way out, he caught Baskevyl’s arm.

‘If you see Criid, send her my way will you?’

‘Of course,’ Bask said.

Gaunt wandered back to his stateroom along Lower Spinal Sixty. He had a stop to make along the way.

He paused to look into one of the company decks, the hold spaces of the ship that served as accommodation for the retinue. This was home for the souls that had signed the accompany bond to travel with the regiment: the wives, the children, the families, and the tinkers and traders that made up the Tanith First’s vital support network. Salvation’s Reach had been a perilous venture, but every one of the regiment’s extended family had signed the bond to come along. They had decided they would rather risk their lives and die with the Ghosts than stay behind on Menazoid Sigma and perhaps never catch up with them again.

Gaunt thought that showed more courage and faith than any soldier had. Guard life was made better by the constant strength of family, but it was a hard existence. He’d had to consider carefully before approving the issue of the bond.

He watched the children play, the women work, the lines of washing drifting overhead from the chamber’s rafters. Their faith had seen them safely past the dangers of the Reach, but there were always new dangers. The implications of the drive problem troubled him, and the aborted resupply on Aigor 991 played on his mind. Major Kolea had encountered some form of the Ruinous Powers that seemed to be hunting for them. It had claimed to be the voice of Anarch Sek, and it had demanded the return of something called ‘the eagle stones’. It had murdered several members of the landing party. Gol Kolea had done well to abort the resupply, but Gaunt had a lingering feeling that Gol hadn’t told him everything about the encounter. Perhaps it had just been the terror of the experience that had made Gol seem unforthcoming.

No one had a solid idea what ‘the eagle stones’ might be, but if Sek’s power had touched them at Aigor 991, then the Archenemy was closer on their heels than Gaunt liked to imagine. Against the odds, they had survived the Reach mission. Was an unforeseen and greater threat lying in wait for them all? Could he safeguard the families a second time? It was not the dispassionate concern of a commander. Gaunt had always been alone, but now he had family aboard too. His son…

He shook the thought off. One problem at a time.

Ayatani Zwiel was up on a bench, preaching the love of the God-Emperor to the family congregation. The old chaplain saw Gaunt in the doorway, and paused his sermon, climbing down from his perch with the aid of steadying hands.

‘You look grim, Ibram,’ he said as he hobbled up to face Gaunt.

‘You noticed, ayatani.’

Zwiel shrugged.

‘No, you always look grim. I was making a general observation. Why? Is there new trouble to keep us awake at night?’

Gaunt glanced aside to make sure no one could overhear.

‘There’s a drive fault,’ he said. ‘It may be nothing, but if we are forced to break shift to deal with it… Well, it could cause alarm and distress among the retinue. As a favour to me, stay here and keep watch. If the worst happens, try to calm fears. They’ll listen to you. Tell them we’ll be safe soon and that there’s no reason to panic.’

Zwiel nodded. Since the loss at Salvation’s Reach, his spirits had been lower. The old firecracker spark had grown dimmer.

‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll get them singing hymns. Hymns are good. And warm too, on a cold night.’

‘Do you mean hymns?’

‘Possibly not,’ Zwiel replied, thinking about it.

Something cannoned into Gaunt’s legs.

‘Papa Gaunt! Papa Gaunt!’

Gaunt looked down. It was Yoncy, Tona Criid’s little girl. She clutched his knees and grinned up at him.

‘Hello, Yoncy,’ Gaunt said. He scooped her up in his arms, and she gleefully took off his cap and put it on. She was so small and light.

‘I’m Papa Gaunt!’ she declared fiercely to Zwiel, glaring out from under the brim of the oversized cap. She threw a stern salute.

‘Well, young lady,’ said Zwiel, ‘what you’ve just done is an abuse of uniform code, and Papa Gaunt will have you shot for it.’

‘He will not!’ Yoncy cried, defiantly.

‘Not this time,’ said Gaunt.

One of the women hurried over.

‘There you are, child,’ she exclaimed. ‘I wondered where you’d run off to!’

She took Yoncy out of Gaunt’s arms.

‘I’m ever so sorry she bothered you, sir,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to be watching her.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Gaunt. ‘She was no bother.’

‘Papa Gaunt’s going to shoot me, Juniper!’ Yoncy laughed.

‘Is he now?’ the woman said.

‘Papa Zwiel said so,’ Yoncy told her.

‘I’m really not,’ Gaunt told the woman.

‘Uniform infraction,’ said Zwiel, mock stern, and scooped the cap off the child’s head. ‘A firing squad at the very least!’

‘I think we can let this one go with a reprimand,’ said Gaunt as Zwiel handed him his cap.

‘You best consider yourself lucky this time, child,’ Juniper said to the girl in her arms. She did a clumsy little bow and hurried off. Yoncy waved to them as she was carried away.

‘She calls everyone “papa”,’ Zwiel said. ‘It used to be “uncle”, but now “papa” is the favourite.’

‘A legacy of her curious upbringing, I suppose,’ said Gaunt. ‘She seems happy enough.’

‘Does she…’ Zwiel began. ‘Does she seem small to you?’

‘Small?’

‘I was thinking it the other day,’ said the chaplain. ‘Just a child in pigtails, as she’s always been. But Dalin is a grown man now, and there can’t be too many years between them. She acts very young too.’

‘Is that a defence, do you think?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Her life has never been safe. Maybe she plays on her childlike qualities to make sure we protect her.’

‘You think it’s an act?’

‘Not a conscious one, no. But while she’s an innocent child, everyone is her father or her uncle or her aunt. It’s how she copes. How she feels safe.’

‘Well, I imagine she’ll sprout soon enough. Girls develop later. Overnight, she’ll be a petulant teenager.’

‘And we will protect her just the same,’ said Gaunt. He reset his cap.

‘Our children always need our protection,’ said Zwiel, ‘no matter how much they grow up. How is your offspring?’

‘I’m still coming to terms with the fact,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have to go, father. I’ll keep you advised.’

‘And I’ll stand ready,’ said Zwiel.

A Black Library Publication

Blood Pact first published in 2009.
Salvation’s Reach first published in 2011.
Family first published in 2014.
You Never Know first published in 2014.
Ghosts and Bad Shadows first published in 2014.
Killbox first published in 2017.
First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Anna Lakisova.

The Victory: Part One © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. The Victory: Part One, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-887-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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