“Eekuin?”
The man halted, shaking.
Uexkull expertly swung the pistol over in his hand so that the grip was pointing at Eekuin. “Before you start with that, shut Erod up, will you? He’s making a bloody awful noise down there.”
Eekuin took the bolt pistol, cleared his throat, and walked round the table. Erod, his face blue, thrashed on the floor in a pool of blood. He clawed at Eekuin’s ankles. Trying to look dismissive, Eekuin shot him between the eyes. The shot’s impact punched the impaling fork up into the air.
It landed with a clatter. The ghastly gurgling fell silent.
Eekuin handed the weapon back to Uexkull.
“Find me something,” Uexkull told him. “Find me something in the next fifteen minutes, or I’ll be asking after the next in line.”
The Ghosts were settling down to sleep, weary and fed well enough from the stew Beltayn had concocted. Acid rain still belted against the ornithon’s low roof. Curth came over to Gaunt, nursing a cup of caffeine.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Not here,” she said, and drew him away towards the back of the long hutch. Brostin and Feygor chuckled as they observed the game of regicide Criid was playing with Varl. Everyone else was dozing.
“What?” Gaunt asked.
“I checked them all out,” Curth said. “Your lady friend, and her man Acreson… they have parasites embedded in their forearms.”
“You sure?”
“Ibram, they made no effort to conceal them. Throne, they’re filthy, awful things. Bedded deep. Landerson and the others had theirs cut out.”
“Right,” Gaunt said. “Go find Mkoll for me.”
Eekuin strode into the control room and saluted Uexkull. Around them, by lamplight, the ordinals and servitors manned the clanking codifiers and instruments of the command annexe.
“What do you have for me, chief sirdar?” Uexkull asked.
Eekuin held out a data-slate.
“A military patrol has not reported in, lord. It went out this morning, searching farms along the Shedowtonland road. Garrison lists it as missing.”
Uexkull studied the chart. “A full unit? How is that possible? And where’s their damned vehicle gone?”
“Vox log records the unit’s last check was just before midday. They were dismounting to search Parcelson’s agri-plex.”
“Where the Eye is that?”
“Just out of town on the foreroad. I’ve sent another unit to check it out.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there, Eekuin?”
“Lord?”
“You look pleased with yourself.”
Eekuin produced another data-slate. “The unit was using a quad-track, pool serial II/V. A vehicle bearing that mark was passed by the border checkpoint at Baksberg earlier tonight.”
“Baksberg? Location?”
“On the Edrian provincial border, lord.”
Uexkull smiled. The sight of his teeth made Eekuin feel unwell. “Contact Edrian Occupation. Tell them I want a vox-link to their, area commander. Tell them about the mood I’m in, Eekuin. Tell them how I murdered your senior officers without compunction. Tell them I’m inbound. Have the link relayed to my ship. I want a full battalion mobilised and ready at Baksberg by the time I arrive.”
“Yes, lord,” Eekuin replied. As Uexkull marched out of the room, Eekuin sagged a little. He was still alive.
“Get me Edrian Command,” he snapped.
“Colonel-commissar?”
Cirk stepped into the feed store under the low doorway. A single lamp burned. The rain fell outside.
“Hello, Cirk,” Gaunt said, appearing from the shadows.
“What is this?” she asked, her attractive face tilted inquisitively. “I need to sleep. We’ve a long day ahead of us.”
He stepped closer. “The day can wait,” he said. “Sabbatine… may I call you that? Sabbatine, there’s something about you. Something that utterly intrigues me.”
She smiled. “Well, I have felt it too. But this isn’t the time or the place…”
“Why not?” he asked. He was in her face now. Tall, thick-set. Warm. His nose almost touched hers. His hands went around her waist.
“Sabbatine…”
“Really, I… I don’t think this is…”
His strong hand gripped her arm. Twisted. She yelped.
“Gaunt, what?”
“What indeed. What the Throne is this, Cirk? Answer me that?”
He had pulled up her sleeve. The imago, in its dark blister, throbbed against her pale skin.
“You bastard!” she said.
“Oh, please,” he snapped, pulling her arm around so the lamplight caught it. “Why don’t you explain—”
Her punch caught him by surprise. Base of the neck. Nerve point. As he folded, he cursed himself for being so stupid. His knees hit the straw. Wrenching free, she kicked him for good measure, right in the ear.
“Feth!” he snarled, hurt.
“And that’s about all I’ll let you get away with,” said Mkvenner, sliding out of the shadows.
She whipped round to face him. He was holding a two-metre length of slender-gauge fence post, a ready-made quarter-staff. One end smacked round and knocked the autopistol away even as she drew it. The other end winded her and, as she doubled over, the staff dropped down over her shoulders and pinned her arms.
“Thanks, Ven,” Gaunt said, getting back on his feet. “Obviously, in future, I won’t want you to constrain my dates like this.”
Ven laughed.
“You have an imago,” Gaunt said to Cirk. She spat at him, wrestled tight by Mkvenner’s horizontal staff.
“You bastard! I thought we had a degree of trust!”
“We did. We have. But I want that explained.”
“This?” she said, looking down at the grub in her arm.
“Yes, Cirk,” Gaunt replied, pulling one of his bolt pistols out of its chest holster and cocking it. “I’m a commissar, first and foremost. The next words you speak had better be fething good.”
“This imago is consented for day and night, you idiot. I’d have been a fool to let it be removed. How the hell do you think the resistance remains active? We need to use everything we have to beat their glyfs and their scanners. You think I like having this thing eating into my arm? You bastard! I can’t get you into Edrian without this. I can’t get you anywhere! It’s all about consent! Some of us have them removed if they’re restrictive, but Acreson and me, we have full clearance.”
She stopped. “Acreson. What have you done to him?”
“Nothing, yet,” Gaunt said.
She looked at him. “We have to work their system, Gaunt. Please believe me. That’s the only reason I haven’t had this thing taken out of me. It’s too useful, Ibram… please.”
Gaunt reholstered his weapon.
“Let her go, Ven,” he said.
Juddering through the torrential rain, the pair of deathships swung in towards Baksberg. In the lead ship, Uexkull readied his weapons. Seated with him, his four warriors did likewise. They’d been through the fires of many war-theatres with him. He knew them, trusted them.
Uexkull latched his autocannon against his shoulder plate and connected the servo feeds.
“Baksberg, coming up now. Four minutes,” the pilot voxed.
Uexkull slammed a sickle mag home in his bolt pistol.
“Prep for exit,” he hissed.
The vox beeped. “Lord, this is Eekuin.”
“Go ahead.”
“The search unit has reported back. They found the entire patrol in a silage pit. All dead. A variety of wounds.”
“Commando tactics, Eekuin?”
“Most certainly, lord.”
“Understood. Uexkull out.” The monster turned to his warriors. “Imperial Guard. Specialists. Damn good at what they do, it would appear. But still, just men. This will be over quickly.”
His warriors growled their agreement.
“Do we have
a location yet?” Uexkull barked.
The pilot came back smartly. “Baksberg checkpoint directs us on a likely target zone, lord. There are a number of abandoned ornithons in the backwoods off the main road here, and activity has been reported at one.”
“Poultry farms?” Uexkull questioned.
“Yes, lord,” the pilot said.
Uexkull smiled. “Consider them plucked.”
ELEVEN
There was no quarter. The first of the deathships, its thrusters whining, dropped low until its hull was brushing through the wood’s wet canopy, and then opened fire with its forward gunpods. The rainy night suddenly lit up with strobing flashes of bright yellow radiance that captured rapid snapshots of the slanting rain like stop-frame playback. Clouds of steam billowed off the gunpod vents as they heated. The hail of heavy fire disintegrated the walls of the main house and threw tiles and broken stone high into the air.
The deathship steadied, and swung around on a low hover above the ornithon’s yard. Its gun pods started up again, pulverising a row of store sheds.
The other ship dropped in low on the approach track and opened its hatches. Uexkull was first out, splashing along the muddy lane in the dark. Augmetic sensors embedded in his collar-plate and the side of his cranium automatically selected low light scoping. Nictating filters slid over his eyes. The world resolved into a ruddy blur, the crimson wash of cold areas graduating to the palest pink tells of heat sources. The muzzle flash cones of the hovering deathship up ahead read as searing white blinks that overlapped as their after-images gently faded.
Uexkull reached the edge of the yard, his squad at his heels. He heard the first hand-weapon discharge: bolter rounds whipping like small comets through the night to his left as Czelgur began firing on the rear of the main dwelling. Uexkull’s enhanced aural sensors heard the bat-squeak pain of a human voice behind the furious noise of the guns and the lifter jets. Guttural vox interplay chattered back and forth between the monstrous Chaos Space Marines.
“Main dwelling secure,” Gurgoy voxed. “Three kills.”
“Stores cleared. Another two dead here,” Virag reported.
A grenade detonated, filling the edge of Uexkull’s vision with a bolus of light. More bat-squeaks, and a single, lingering wail of agony. The downwash of the hovering deathship spattered liquid mud across him, and he felt the delicious sizzle of the acid rain on his flesh. He smashed through the loose plank wall of the nearest hatching battery. Something scrambled in the shadows to his right, but he saw only heat and cold. His cannon slammed into life, licking out a sizzling flash, the recoil smacking it back against the locking harness in his upper body armour. Something made of meat and bone atomised. Another heat spot, right ahead, moved against the cold-streaming fuzz of the rainwater drizzling in through the roof. Uexkull fired his bolt pistol and saw a human-shaped pink outline crash over onto the floor. He strode forward, smelling blood now over the birdlime, the acid and the driven smoke.
Nezera burst into view to his left, shredding chain-link mesh aside with his powered claw, his bolt weapon barking into the depths of the battery as he broke his way inside.
“Go left!” Uexkull grunted. He took another few steps and then paused as a burst of small-arms fire—small calibre solid rounds—was stopped harmlessly by his carapace armour. Tracking round, he unloaded his cannon again, ripping down part of the hutch roof. He saw the shooter’s shape on his optics briefly, spinning away, torn, just before the roof collapsed on it.
More pathetic gunfire came his way. Resistance at last, though hardly the sport he’d been looking forward to.
Bonin pointed. There wasn’t much to see—just a distant flashing that delineated trees against the encompassing night. But the sounds were enough, carried through the rain. The dull thwack of heavy cannons. The whistle of lift-jets.
“Feth,” Gaunt murmured. “How far?”
“No more than two kilometres,” the scout replied.
Gaunt hurried back into the battery. “Up now! Everyone! We’re moving now!”
The party began to stir from sleep, cold and numb.
“Come on! By the Emperor! Now!”
The Ghosts needed no further urging. Cirk also leapt to her feet and shook her fighters into shape. Lefivre woke up screaming, and Cirk clamped her hand over his mouth, trying to get him to remember where he was.
“The quad?” Varl asked Gaunt as he ran up.
“No, we can’t risk starting it. On foot, out the back. Mkoll! Get those lamps off! Ven! Find us an exit path. Consult Cirk!”
Mkoll and Beltayn gathered up the lamps and killed their glow.
“Sound off!” snapped Rawne, shouldering his pack.
He got a curt reply from everyone except Larkin.
“Lead them out,” Gaunt said to Rawne. “Double-time it. I’ll find him.”
Larkin was curled up in a straw-filled roosting pen. He’d slept on through the fuss. Gaunt shook him.
“Larks! Come on!”
Larkin’s face was a pale, thin shape in the gloom.
“Is it time, Try?” he whispered.
“Come on, Larkin!”
“What’s it like being dead?”
Gaunt slapped the sniper across the face. “Larkin! Wake up! We’re in trouble.”
Larkin roused with a start and moaned quietly as he realised his surroundings.
“Get your kit. Don’t leave anything. Come on, Larks, I need you to be sharp.”
“Feth this,” Larkin whimpered. “I was dreaming I was dead and now I wake up and find things are much worse.”
Rawne and Mkvenner led the group out through the back yard of the ornithon towards the trees. It was pitch black, and they’d wrapped their camo-capes around themselves against the burning rain. The wet air was caustic and caught at their throats. Criid came close behind, urging Cirk’s men along.
Last out of the ramshackle farm were Gaunt and Larkin. In the distance, the gunfire had stopped.
Czelgur raised a spitting flare in his left paw and by the light of it Uexkull crouched and turned over the nearest body. Bolter fire had mangled it, but not so much that Uexkull couldn’t see the rag clothing and the emaciated, malnourished build. The others were the same.
“Fugitives. Unconsented,” Uexkull muttered, his voice stiff and dry like caked mud cracking. One of the bodies clutched an old vermin-gun, a rusting small calibre weapon. There was no sign of any lasguns.
“Unless standards have dropped, these are not soldiers of the False Emperor,” Uexkull said. Czelgur snorted at his leader’s ironic scorn. “We’ve wasted the night tracking unconsented outlaws.”
Static warbled on the vox-link. “Go,” said Uexkull, rising to his feet. “Auspex is showing a large metallic contact in the woods two point three-one kilometres east of us, lord.”
“Let’s move!” Uexkull shouted.
They were a good way into the acid-bitten woods when they heard the sound of the deathships behind them. The machines circled over the ornithon, playing their stablights over the ruined outbuildings.
“They’ll find the transport,” Varl said.
“No helping that,” Rawne replied.
“Let’s just keep going,” said Gaunt. His skin itched from the rain, and the vapour drifting up from the dissolving leaf mould under their feet was making them all short of breath.
According to Cirk, deeper forest lay to their west, and then something she called the Untill, which didn’t seem to be an option. She directed them north. They were, she insisted, about ten kilometres short of one of the main arterial routes through Edrian Province, and once they hit that they would be close to the outer townships. In one of those, she hoped, they could make contact with the local cell.
“But handling your team north through the province isn’t going to be easy now,” she said. The enemy is likely to be fully alerted. The garrisons will be mobilised. But we’ll have to risk it.”
“Is there an alternative?” asked Mkoll.
“
We could go wide to the east, maybe up through hills. But that’s a long detour. On foot, a month. And that’s without trouble. The search zones will widen if they don’t find us around Edrian.”
Gaunt said nothing. He’d expected trouble from the outset, but this was bad luck. The occupation was tighter than he’d hoped and he doubted the enemy would take long figuring out what they were doing on Gereon.
Unless, he thought, they could manage a little misdirection. But putting that notion into effect would take a little time They had more immediate problems to deal with.
“That’s the missing transport,” Gurgoy said. Uexkull nodded. Clutching an overhead handgrip, he leaned a little further out of the hovering deathship’s open hatch and peered down. The shifting stablights flickered through the rain below, lighting up the abandoned ornithon.
“Life signs?”
“Nothing human, lord,” the pilot voxed.
“Move us north,” Uexkull ordered. “Slow and low.”
“Yes, lord.”
The two gunships began to prowl forward above the woodlands. Uexkull knew there was no point trying to track the insurgents on the ground. The acid rain would have obliterated any traces or spores already. He activated his heat vision again, gazing down at the canopy, hoping to pick up some pale flicker of bodywarmth in the wood. He got nothing but a vague pink fuzz. The acid decomposition had raised the background temperature of the leaves and the woodland floor as it digested the organics. Nothing was reading back. A human could be standing in plain view down there and be invisible against the ambient radiation.
“Where’s the local battalion now?” he asked.
“At the Baksberg checkpoint as per your orders, lord,” the pilot responded. “Another brigade strength force is in transit along the Edrian road.”
“Transmit my orders. The battalion moves into the woods and fans out. Search pattern, northward sweep. The brigade forms a picket along the road way and holds for anything the sweep flushes out.”
“Yes, lord.”
“This will be done in the name of the Anarch, whose word drowns out all others,” Uexkull said. He felt a hint of failure. That was something he did not enjoy, and seldom experienced.