“Where was I?” Sturm asked, pacing.
The lexigrapher showed him the sheets that spooled out of his printing machine’s clamp.
Sturm read back. “Ah yes. Vervunhive. So close as it was to my barbaric mindlocking… are you getting this, ape?”
Humiliti nodded, typing furiously again.
“So close as it was to my unreasonable, inhuman mindlocking, I find I have difficulty remembering the details. I had overall command, naturally. Gaunt was a makeweight. He had no talent for soldiering. What he had was a talent for mischief. He was a commissar, you see, as I think I have said. Have I said that?”
The lexigrapher read back quickly and then nodded.
“He was a member of the Commisariate, the discipline division. That’s all politics, if you ask me. The man was a self-serving bastard. And the charges? I tell you this, was ever a man so wrongly accused? Desertion? Is it any wonder I hate the Imperium so? All my life, serving the God-Emperor… and then what does he let his minions do to me? Bastards! I was a lord militant general!”
There was a knock on the apartment door.
“Come!” Sturm yelled.
The door opened and one of the Sons of Sek leaned in. “Magir,” he said. The Plenipotentiary awaits your pleasure.”
Sturm put his cap on.
“Let’s go,” he said.
In the ragged slip beyond the approach road, Colonel Noth buckled his helmet in place and looked down the line of waiting men and women.
“On my word,” he whispered into the vox link. Three, two, one… go!”
The Gereon resistance stormed towards the gates of the Lectica Bastion, weapons blazing.
“Gereon resists!” Noth screamed. “Gereon resists!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The charging wave of underground fighters swept like a tidal flood through the checkpoint at the head of the approach road, mowing down the excubitors and the post guards. The troopers in the roadway weapon emplacements didn’t even get a chance to return fire. Rifle grenades swiftly ended their contribution to the occupation of Gereon.
The blizzard of fire from the hundreds of cell fighters was so fierce that the last few transports waiting at the barrier for admission to the bastion rocked as they were riddled with shots. One caught fire.
“Move in! Move in!” Noth yelled above the crackling gunfire. “The walls and the gate!”
Hundreds of rifle grenades pelted the steep curtain wall, drizzling it with explosions. Some lofted high enough to drop cleanly onto the wall top itself and blow out manned batteries. But the massive array of wall defences had now begun to fire back, decimating the crowds of cell fighters approaching the foot of the wall. Steam winches were slowly pulling the vast gates shut.
The heartland cells had pooled their resources and were fielding every last man and every last, precious weapon left in their combined caches. At least a dozen shoulder-launched rocket tubes and twenty portable mortars answered the barrage blazing from the wall-top. The swishing rockets impacted in savage fire-flashes, and one actually blew out a section of the battlement. Chunks of stonework and pieces of body rained down the flank of the curtain wall.
But if the main gate closed, nothing else counted. Running forward, Noth looked around desperately. Las-shots lanced the air around him. A cell fighter just ahead of him buckled and fell. Another was blown off his feet by a cannon shell.
Noth saw the truck. Just another supply transport heading up the road to the bastion. Except it wasn’t.
Gaining speed, it swerved around the shot-up vehicles at the checkpoint, splintered through the barrier, and rattled up the last stretch of road towards the still-closing gates.
From the top of the wall, the Bastion Guard raked it with fire, blowing out the cab windows, puncturing the bodywork, destroying a rear wheel. But it was still going. Noth saw the driver hurl himself out of the cab.
The transport rammed into the gates with a terrible wrench of metal. The winches continued to close the gates, but the mangled transport was now wedged between them. Its metal hull and chassis twisted out of shape as the massive gates closed tighter, but then the steam winches began to struggle and falter.
What’s taking so long, Noth thought? What’s taking so—
Nearly a tonne of fyceline-putty explosives—the entire combined supplies of the heartland cells—at last went off in the transport’s freight bay.
There was a pink haze, bright enough to hurt, and when the hammer blow of sound and shock came a second later, it was so hard it knocked Colonel Noth and many of the cell fighters onto the ground. Some of the underground attackers too close to the truck vaporised with it.
But vast chunks of the bastion’s main gates were atomised too.
Wretched, eye-watering smoke billowed all around and the air was full of streaking gunfire. Noth got up.
“Into the gates! Go! Into the gates!” he yelled. “Gereon resists! Gereon resists!”
The first explosions backlit the curtain wall like sheet lightning. Then a huge blast spewed flame and debris high into the night air in the direction of the main gate.
On the inner courtyard, the assembled masses froze and turned. The band stopped playing. There was a sudden, general consternation, voices rising, ordered ranks breaking up. Everyone could hear that the bastion’s defence batteries had opened up.
Desolane ran forward. The Plenipotentiary’s life-wards were already hurrying him back towards the safety of his flyer. Behind them, there was mounting uproar from the assembled worthies.
“Troops to the curtain wall!” Desolane ordered. “Now! Excubitors, get the ordinals back into the bastion! Get them to safety!”
Men rushed around the life-ward in all directions. Desolane seized a sirdar of the Bastion Guard.
“Assemble your detail,” the life-ward told him. “General Sturm is on his way down. Intercept him and escort him back to the safety of his quarters. I will be there shortly.”
“Hear that?” Bonin whispered. Mkoll nodded. Even through the massive stone fabric of the bastion, the shudder of explosions was distinct.
“The attack’s started,” Landerson said, and made the sign of the aquila. Part of him, his fervent patriotism, wished he was out there, fighting alongside the resistance. But Gaunt had selected him for this greater honour.
“Are we set?” Mkoll asked.
“Almost,” said Varl. He was working carefully to attach a shaped charge low on the wall of the hallway. Criid and Brostin were covering one end of the corridor, Beltayn and Bonin the other. Under Mkoll’s command, this half of the team had split from Gaunt’s. Their job was to sow confusion and cause as much damage as possible. Colonel Noth had reserved one box of fyceline-putty charges from the giant payload that had gone on the transport, and Varl now carried it in a canvas satchel. Thirty charges, plus detonator pins. Mkoll’s team had descended through the fortress as Gaunt’s had headed upwards, laying charges at strategic intervals. The satchel was a third empty already.
Varl pressed a det pin into the soft putty. “Done,” he said. The pins were set on a ten-minute delay. In another five minutes, the first of the charges would start going off.
“Move!” Mkoll ordered. The squad headed down the hall and reached another stairwell. Bonin pulled them all back into cover as a platoon of Occupation troopers clattered past down the staircase. Alarm bells were ringing. The noise of warfare from outside was getting louder.
The Ghosts entered the stairwell as soon as the troopers had disappeared, and silently descended another two floors.
“Here,” Mkoll said to Varl, pointing at a section of wall. Varl got to work as the others stood guard.
“Footsteps,” Bonin warned. “From above.”
“Varl?” Mkoll asked.
“I’m right in the middle of it!”
“Feth!” Mkoll growled. He pointed at Bonin and Criid and gestured up the stairs.
The pair let their lasrifles swing and drew their suppressed autopistols. Bonin led
the way. Criid could hear the footsteps too, now. Boots, several pairs, running.
Criid and Bonin braced their weapons.
Six bastion troopers hurried down around the wide stair-turn. Criid and Bonin thumped rapid shots into them. The enemy troopers went over like skittles. Criid had to side-step as one body somersaulted past her down the stairs.
Five were dead outright. The sixth, fallen and wounded, managed to get his hands on his autorifle before Bonin shot him cleanly between the eyes.
But the man’s spasming fingers clawed the trigger and the autorifle blurted out a burst of automatic fire.
Criid and Bonin glanced at each other. Both had ducked and neither had even been scratched. The burst had nailed a long line of craters up the curved wall of the staircase. Smoke drifted.
In the confines of the stairwell, the gunfire had been deafeningly loud.
From above them, they heard shouts.
Sturm came to such an abrupt halt that the Sons of Sek who had been in walking step went several paces past him. Humiliti nearly waddled into Sturm’s legs.
“What is that?” Sturm asked.
“Sir?”
“Can’t you hear it, man? That’s gunfire. Detonations.” Sturm threw open the door of a nearby apartment, and strode over towards the narrow windows that looked out over the inner yard. The apartment was unlit and not in use. By the time Sturm reached the window, the amber glow from outside lit his features.
“The bastion is being assaulted,” he murmured in astonishment. There is a great fire at the gate, and other explosions…”
He swallowed hard. The sight was kindling other recollections now. Feelings. The apprehension of battle, the rush of adrenaline.
The Sons looked at each other.
“We should take you back to your quarters, sir,” one said. “You will be safe there.”
Sturm nodded. “That would be for the best, I think. Until the situation is under control.”
They went back out into the corridor and turned around the way they had come. Both of the Sons unslung their weapons and carried them ready.
Humiliti sighed, turned about face, and hobbled after them again.
On the sixteenth floor, far removed from the conflict outside, Gaunt’s squad stole down an almost silent hallway towards the door of a stateroom. Gaunt led the way, one bolt pistol drawn, flanked by Mkvenner, who carried an autorifle the resistance had given him.
Behind them came Eszrah ap Niht, his reynbow aimed, alongside Ana Curth who had drawn her silenced pistol. Further back, the rest of the group—Rawne, Larkin, Feygor and Cirk—covered the hallway back down to the landing.
Gaunt and Mkvenner burst through the door, weapons sweeping from side to side. The lamps were lit, but there was no one around. It was a handsome sitting room, with richly upholstered chairs, a card table and a tall looking-glass. An adjoining door led through to a bedchamber. Garments lay scattered on the floor. Parts of an Occupation force uniform. There was also an elegant brass bath tub, full of used water. Mkvenner touched the side of the tub.
“Cooling. Used not long ago. We’ve missed him.”
“If this was his room at all,” said Gaunt. “Let’s check the rest of the floor.”
* * * * *
Bonin and Quid came bounding back down the stairs.
“We have to go! Now!” Bonin cried. Stray shots were following them down the steps, slapping off the curving wall.
“Move out!” Mkoll ordered.
“Done! Done!” Varl yelped, and gathered up his gear.
The squad scrambled down the next long hallway, a wide, panelled gallery. Mkoll was at the back, waving the others on. They were halfway down when the first bastion troopers appeared in the stair doorway behind them.
Mkoll dropped to one knee and opened fire with his lasrifle. “First and only!” he yelled.
Several of the enemy troopers pitched over, struck by his searing las-bolts. The others began blasting with their rifles.
Criid and Landerson both turned and added their firepower to Mkoll’s. Hard rounds and las-shots chopped up and down the great gallery for a few furious seconds, tearing into the wood panelling and shattering lamps. Landerson felt a bullet graze his left thigh, but he kept firing.
A dull bang shook the floor. Somewhere, the first of Varl’s charges had gone off.
More bastion troopers appeared. The doorway area was littered with dead, but still they surged to get through.
Firing, hugging the gallery walls, Mkoll, Landerson and Criid backed off towards the rest of the squad, who had now made it to the far end of the gallery.
Beltayn was the first to the exit.
“Check it!” Bonin yelled, but the vox-officer had already gone through.
A sizzling shot from a las-lock hit Beltayn square in the back and threw him down on his face.
“Beltayn!” Bonin yelled. He ran forward, firing his las-rifle one-handed as he tried to drag Beltayn back into cover. Troopers and excubitors were pouring up the steps ahead. Mkoll’s squad was trapped.
Gaunt heard the thump of Varl’s second charge come up through the floor from far below. He was about to suggest they might be on the wrong floor, when three figures came round the corner not ten metres away. Two big soldiers, dressed in menacing ochre fatigues, with another man between them.
It was Noches Sturm.
For one nanosecond Sturm’s eyes met Gaunt’s. One fleeting heartbeat of shocking mutual recognition.
Then the soldiers in yellow were shooting.
Gaunt felt a bullet go through his left shoulder. He crashed against the door of a nearby room. Mkvenner had thrown himself at Gaunt, bringing them both down in the partial cover of the doorway to avoid the withering fire from the strange enemy troopers.
Behind Gaunt and Mkvenner, the others scrambled for cover. By the time Rawne had got himself into some kind of firing position, the two warriors in ochre had expertly backed off around the hall-turn, covering Sturm every step of the way.
“Him! It was him!” Gaunt yelled.
“Gaunt? Gaunt? How could… how could he be here?” Sturm was saying. Humiliti didn’t know if he should be recording this, but he did anyway. Guns smoking, the Sons of Sek hustled the general roughly towards the nearest apartment, kicked the door open, and pushed him inside.
“How is this possible?” Sturm demanded. “How is this happening?”
The Sons didn’t reply. Rawne, Mkvenner and Feygor had already appeared around the corridor turn and were firing down the passageway. The Sons slid into hallway doors, using the heavy sills as cover, and replied with quick, calculating bursts that forced the Ghosts back into cover. “How?” Sturm was yelling. “How?”
Gaunt reached the corner, ignoring Curth’s attempt to dress the wound in his shoulder. Shots were zinging past the end of the wall.
“There’s only two of them!” Rawne was yelling.
“There only needs to be,” replied Mkvenner. They’ve got the whole passageway covered. And they’re fething good.”
Gaunt knew that already. Sturm’s bodyguard had reacted with the speed and tenacity of elite force troopers.
“Two or two hundred, we’re taking them now,” Gaunt said.
But suddenly there was gunfire coming from behind him too.
The Bastion Guard detail that Desolane had sent to intercept Sturm had just arrived at the other end of the sixteenth floor. Drawn by the sound of weapons fire, they were rushing down the corridor to engage.
Larkin, Cirk, Eszrah and even Curth had opened fire.
The din of battle echoing from the outer courtyards was immense. It trembled the cold night air and echoed off the surrounding mountains. A large stretch of the curtain wall around the main gate was ablaze, generating an infernal radiance that lit the vast plume of white smoke rising off the gate itself. Inside, between the curtain wall and the inner bulwark, a flickering mass of flashes, bursts and tracer fire stitched the night.
Desolane reached the bulwark. Rese
rves of bastion troops, along with visiting companies, were drawn up behind the inner wall, checking their weapons.
Desolane approached the senior officers. “Report?”
“Somehow, they’ve breached the gates and got into the outer yards,” said one sirdar.
“We’ve sealed the bulwark,” another reported, “but they’re hitting it hard.”
“Numbers? And who are they?” asked Desolane.
“Several hundred. Uncomfirmed reports say it is the resistance,” a senior excubitor stated.
“Of course it is!” snapped Desolane.
“This is an unforgivable outrage,” High Sirdar Brendel announced. “I will of course present his highness the Plenipotentiary with my abject apologies for this miserable failure of security.”
There was a rapid, whistling noise, and a crunch. The officers all flinched. One of Desolane’s ketra blades had cleaved the high sirdar’s head and helmet in two. His corpse fell backwards.
“I’ll save him the bother of accepting them,” Desolane whispered. The life-ward turned to the other seniors. That idiot was mistaken. The security of the bastion, the Plenipotentiary and the pheguth is mine to uphold. Mine alone. You will follow my orders and contain this disgraceful exhibition at once. Where is the etogaur?”
“I’m here, life-ward,” Mabbon stepped into view.
“I need a commander I can trust to crush this uprising immediately. Are the Sons of Sek ready?”
“Eager, life-ward.”
“Command of the field is yours. Sirdars and seniors? You answer to the etogaur.”
There was a hasty chorus of affirmatives. “Prepare to deploy!” Mabbon yelled out. “In the name of the Anarch, whose word drowns out all others! Now!”
“Life-ward?”
Desolane turned. A junior officer was approaching, panting hard.
“What?”
“Reports of explosions, life-ward,” the junior gasped. “From within the bastion.”