“Feth! Do better!” Bonin snarled. He drew his laspistol. It wouldn’t do the job his rifle could, but it might have to do.
Maggs had two clips left. During the ferocious fire-fight, he’d been more economical than the Tanith scout. He kept one for himself and put his back into launching the other up at the gallery. It flew in over the balcony’s edge and disappeared.
Realising their original advantage had been lost, the occupation troopers attempted to rush the Imperials again. Some charged out across the fane floor towards Maggs’ hiding place, firing wildly. Others headed towards the three sets of stairs up to the gallery.
With one clip left each, Bonin and Maggs met them. Bonin swung up over the balcony lip and decimated the figures charging Maggs’ position. Simultaneously, Maggs lit up and fired at the hostiles heading for the stairwells. In ten seconds of sustained firing, they laid out thirty of the enemy.
Then they were out. They fell back into cover, and dropped their empty rifles in favour of pistols and straight silver. The fight had entered its final, most brutal stage.
During the melee, Bonin had seen something from the vantage of the gallery as he’d fired down. Something that was more important than his life.
He cued his micro-bead. The enemy was creeping forward, ready to smother the pair of them with their numbers. He had seconds left.
“Bonin to Gaunt. Bonin to Gaunt. Urgent. Respond. Respond.”
VIII
Reception was poor. Bonin thought he heard Gaunt’s voice replying, but it was hard to tell in the midst of all that crackle. He started to send his message anyway.
The enemy troopers rushed the gallery. They came up one set of stairs to begin with. Later, Bonin could not explain how their first few shots missed him. He could only presume that the enemy’s haste to storm the stair head caused their aim to be rushed. He felt the sucking heat of shots passing his face and began to squeeze off bolts in reply with his laspistol.
Cornered, his efforts were desperate and his aim was no better than that of the soldiers trying to kill him. He hit nothing living, but at least managed to wedge the enemy into the cover of the stair head, seriously restricting their field of fire. That was fine… until troops started to emerge from the other staircases.
There was a sudden and unexpected halt in the attack. Firing ceased. The only sounds were the throb of the street fight raging in the town outside, and the slithering bump of the troops inside the fane moving about. Bonin waited. He heard boots crunching on broken glass and boards creaking. His mind envisaged the enemy quietly manoeuvring into place to spring one final, sudden death trap.
Nothing happened.
“Wes?” Bonin voxed a whisper.
“I hear you.”
“Still alive down there?”
“Less alive than I was when we started,” Maggs replied, his breathing short and laboured over the link, “but, yeah.”
“What’s happening?”
“Dunno. I think… I think they just fell back. I think they broke off and made an exit from the building.”
“All of them?”
“I think so. I don’t really want to stick my head up to find out.”
That was a sentiment Bonin could sympathise with. Slowly, very slowly, and very quietly, he crawled forwards under the sheltering lip of stonework until he had reached the edge of the gallery. With a muttered prayer to the God-Emperor for protection, Bonin slowly raised his head and peered down.
The temple, already in great disrepair when they first arrived, had been shot to pieces. The stone walls and pillars were chipped, flecked and scorched in a million places, and the wooden seating banks had been pulverised into lacy, punctured shells. The bodies of the occupation troopers they had killed in the frantic gun battle littered the floor, the tumbled-down seating and the main aisle all the way back to the front doors. Discharge smoke hung like mist in the profaned air.
There was no sign of anything alive.
Bonin was about to call to Maggs when the handles of the temple doors rattled and the doors opened. Bonin dropped down again, pistol raised.
Dark figures with steadied rifles melted in through the doorway. Bonin knew that style at once.
“Straight silver!” he called out.
“Who’s there? Mach?” a voice answered.
“Major?”
Flanked by half a dozen Ghosts, Rawne stepped out of the shadows and looked up at the gallery.
“I think we scared them off,” he remarked. “You boys finished making a mess in here?”
Bonin stood up and holstered his pistol. “See to Maggs. He’s down behind the altar. I think he’s hit.”
Rawne gestured two of his men forward.
“I was trying to reach the colonel,” Bonin said. “I believe I’ve found what he was looking for.”
“What?” asked Rawne.
Bonin pointed. “Sir, you’re standing on it.”
The battle of Cantible didn’t so much end as tail off like an unfinished sentence. Three and a half hours after Gaunt had given the “go” command to Mkoll, the fighting was done, and the principal locations within the hilltop town captured.
The enemy was dead or fleeing. Gaunt had heard such abandonments likened to the frantic exit of rats so often in his career it had become a stale cliché, but the sentiment had never seemed more appropriate. In headlong flight, the occupation troopers and some of the excubitors and higher dignitaries threw open the northern gates of the market town and ran off into the decaying countryside. Some literally ran: troopers discarding weapons and armour in an effort to make themselves more fleet. Their bobbing shapes slowly disappeared into the stands of sickly corn and overgrown fields. Some of the more senior enemy personnel attempted flight in vehicles, tracked machines and motor carriages laden with ransacked spoils and valuables.
Gaunt was not in the best of moods. He felt dispirited and dissatisfied. The last few years of his life had been inextricably linked to Gereon, and its redemption mattered to him a great deal. In the preceding weeks, and that very morning before and during the drop, he had been energised by a driving force of satisfaction: at last, at long last, he was going to contribute to the liberation of a world he cared about with particular intensity.
He hadn’t even objected to the low priority site that High Command had selected for his regiment. However, the battle for Cantible—“battle” was itself a laughable term—had been muzzy and half-hearted. The Ghosts had performed commendably, and particular appreciation was owed to the scouts, but it all seemed so oddly colourless. Liberating Cantible was like putting a sick animal out of its misery.
He walked up through the steep heart of the town. A swarthy belt of smoke was rising off the place and smearing along the white moorland sky. He had just ordered the most mobile Dev Hetra machines and two of his companies to pursue and finish the fleeing enemy stragglers beyond the town.
Gaunt tried to pinpoint the source of his unhappiness. The defence of the town had been second-rate, but no commander should regret an easy, low-cost win. His Guardsmen had done a perfect job. According to Rawne, who seldom exaggerated, Bonin and Maggs had been heroes for a brief, shiny moment, facing down superior numbers in the temple, in a stand-off that wouldn’t have shamed any of the battles on the Tanith First’s roll of honour.
But where were the people they had come to save? Where was the relief and the release? Where was the point of liberation if a place, emptied of its sordid, inhuman occupiers, was just empty?
Gaunt had heard great things in the early reports from the main theatres. Colossal war, and the endeavour of the Imperial Guard. Less than half a world away, real battles were being fought against real enemies. Real victories were being won.
Not here. There was only death in Cantible. Literal, messy death and a more general, lingering sense of demise. They had come to save a place that was too far gone to save. Gaunt hoped, prayed, that Cantible was not a representative microcosm of Gereon as a whole.
He w
alked in through idling Hydra carriages and gaggles of relaxing troops, accepting salutes and nodding greetings. There was relief amongst his own, relief of a task less than had been feared, and he had no right to extinguish that. He approached the town’s temple, the site of Maggs and Bonin’s admirable combat. Rawne was waiting for him.
“Find what we need?” he asked.
“Bonin says so,” said Rawne and looked into the shadows of the temple porch. Bonin, hunched over Maggs’ prostrate body with a tending corpsman, saw the look and came over to join them.
“Maggs?” Gaunt asked.
“Shot to the ribs,” Bonin said. “Nasty. He needs to be seen by Dorden.”
“Dorden’s down in the lower town,” Gaunt replied. He looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Ludd!”
The young commissar ran up obediently. “Sir?”
“Can you escort Trooper Maggs down to the field hospital?” Gaunt asked.
Ludd nodded. He went over to Maggs and helped him get to his feet. They hobbled off together.
Gaunt looked back at Bonin. “So?”
“In here, sir,” Bonin replied. He led Gaunt and Rawne into the devastated fane and they picked their way between the enemy dead until they were standing on the wide mosaic of the aquila.
“It’s been desecrated,” Bonin said. “Just beaten up and dirtied. It was only when I was up there that I saw it.” He pointed to the gallery.
“Saw what?” Gaunt asked.
“The aquila,” said Rawne.
Gaunt looked down at the mosaic. Evil, corrupt hands had gleefully defaced the Imperial bird, paying particular attention, and effort of pick-axe, to the twin heads. However, the left-hand head had been repaired. Long after the torrent of abuse, the left-hand head had been quite carefully repaired and re-cemented, sometimes using stray mosaic chips that hadn’t been components of the original head.
“The head’s been put back together,” Gaunt said.
Bonin nodded. “It’s a signal. It’s pointing.”
“To what?”
“There’s a section of fresh plasterwork on the wall over there,” Rawne said. You follow the way the beak’s pointing, that’s what you come to. We hacked it off.”
Gaunt walked across to the wall. The removed stretch of plaster lay in dusty pieces on the floor. On the exposed wall, they could see six digits, cut there with a tightly narrowed flamer.
“Six eight one nine seven three,” Gaunt read.
“It’s got to be a frequency,” said Rawne.
“Have we tried it?”
“As soon as Beltayn gets here,” Rawne replied.
Gaunt walked back into the open while they waited for his adjutant to arrive. Cirk and Faragut were approaching, strolling up from the lower town like a couple on an afternoon constitutional.
Gaunt was surprised by how pleased he was to see her. For reasons he had never been able to explain, he could not contain Sabbatine Cirk in his mind. She was dangerous and she was untrustworthy, yet he had learned to trust her completely during his first venture on Gereon. She exuded considerable sexual appeal, and that appeal was contaminated by her aura of damage. No one embodied Gereon in his mind more than Cirk. She was a living victim, the planet personified, beautiful, appealing but damaged and abused.
Most of the time, he tried not to think about her. Now, he had to and he allowed himself to. He found he felt great kinship with her. She, and she alone, understood the sense of disillusion he felt.
Cirk had done more than anyone to bring about the liberation of Gereon, more than even Gaunt knew. She had been on the brink of tears since the drop ships had launched—first tears of anticipation, and then tears of dismay.
“Colonel-commissar,” she said smartly as she came up to him.
“Are you all right?”
She glanced at him, quizzically, taken aback by his unusual warmth.
“Yes, I’m fine. A little strung out. I hope you’ve some good news.”
“We may have a link to the resistance. We’re about to try raising them.”
“That’s good. You’ll want me to talk?”
“We’ll need your ciphers,” Gaunt said.
“I should be present,” Faragut said. They both looked at him as if he was an intruder.
“My brief was very specific,” Faragut said, smiling to diffuse the hostility.
“Of course,” said Gaunt, softening, knowing the man couldn’t be blamed for his masters. “Of course.”
“We’re on the same side,” Faragut said sweetly. “I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Am I hurting you?” Ludd asked. They took another shuffling step.
“No,” said Maggs.
“Are you sure?” Ludd cinched his arm up tighter under the scout’s armpits. “You can lean on me more heavily, if you like.”
“I’m fine,” Maggs grunted. They were about ten minutes away from the field hospital and progress was slow.
“Really,” said Ludd. “I could—”
“With respect,” Maggs said, exhaling with pain, “could you talk about something else, son? Walking’s really hard, even with you propping me up. Can’t you take my mind off it?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Ludd reassured, thinking frantically. He ransacked his memory. He had no stories to tell about battles or girls, certainly not any that a heart-breaker and woundmaker like Wes Maggs would be impressed by. He’d once known a man who’d owned a cat, and the funny thing was… no, no that wouldn’t do.
“Merrt,” he said.
“What?”
“Merrt. The Tanith with the fethed-up face. The ex-sniper who—”
“I know who you mean.”
“The day Hark and I busted him on the swelter decks. Dragged his backside out of trouble. You were there. I saw you in that dive.”
“I was there.”
“Coincidence?”
“No, Ludd.”
“Want to tell me about that?”
Maggs groaned. “Sit. I need to sit,” he said, clutching his bandaged ribs. Ludd helped him over to the doorstep of a derelict hab. Maggs sat down.
“We should get to the field hospital,” Ludd said. He was edgy. He’d never done well at first aid drills and he was worried that Maggs might start toppling over with a swollen blue tongue. Or worse.
“Just give me a moment to catch my breath,” Maggs said, leaning back against the scorched doorpost. “I’ll be fine for another walk once I’ve caught my breath.”
Ludd nodded and waited. “So, Merrt?” he asked.
Maggs was leaning back, fingering his blood-heavy bandages. “Merrt. Right. We look after our own, you know.”
“What?”
“First-and-Only. It might surprise you to hear that, given that I’m Belladon and fresh into the mix, but it’s true. When a bunch of soldiers come together and bond—I mean, really bond—they stick tight. The Tanith were lucky to find us Belladon, and we were lucky to find them. I’m not going mushy but shit, we make a good pack. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
Maggs nodded. “Leftovers, dregs, remnants. Tanith, Verghast, Belladon. The bits they couldn’t kill. Mix us together, we come from the same place and we stick like glue.”
“That’s good to hear,” Ludd said.
Maggs leaned forwards and sighed. “Merrt. We knew he was in trouble. Gambling. In well over his head. Varl noticed it first, and he got us together. Drew us in. Told us we needed to look out for Merrt. Well, we couldn’t clear his debt. Even clubbing up, we didn’t have anything like the cash. So—and this was Bask’s idea—we drew lots to follow him and keep an eye on him. If he got into shit, one of us would be there to bail him out. We drew up a rota. That night on the swelter decks, it was my turn. I knew something dark was about to happen, and I was going to move when you showed up.”
“What would you have done?” Ludd asked.
“Something stupid, probably” Maggs replied. “Something that would have got me up on charges, even got m
e a ten-ninety, but I would have done it. It’s that sticking together thing, you see? If we don’t stick up for one another, if we don’t stick our necks out for one another, what’s the point? I mean… what’s the fething point? Merrt’s one of us, and us is all that counts.”
Ludd nodded.
“What’s up?” Maggs asked. “You look far away all of a sudden.”
“I was just thinking,” Ludd said. “I was just thinking if I could bottle the regimental spirit you just expressed, I’d be the best commissar in the history of the Guard.”
Maggs grinned, and then his smile slowly faded. “I hadn’t thought of Merrt until just now. Shit. I wonder where he is. That poor ugly bastard.”
FACE-TO-FACE
I
Everywhere, the dead were smiling at him.
Firestorms had scorched through the district of streets and small squares, and left the crisped shells of habs behind. The sky was low and black, and lay like night. Heat radiated from the stones and the rubble, and there was a powerful chemical stink of the burned, the oxidised and the transmuted. Many fires were still burning.
Dalin Criid could feel the warmth of nearby flames against his face, and feel his own sweat trickle through the dirt of his face like tears. He didn’t move. He just stood for a while in the jumping shadows of the ruined street, and stared into the flames.
Fire had reduced all of the corpses in the area to scrubby black things made of twigs. They were barely human, barely humanoid, just scorched stumps of driftwood. The only things the fire could not reduce were the eyes and the teeth. Indeed, it magnified both. All eyes became huge, staring sockets of darkness, at once mournful and hating. With the flesh burned away, all teeth became wide, white smiles, part amused, part clenched in pain. From the ground, from doorways, from windows, and from heaps of rubble spoil, they smiled and stared at him as he went past, sometimes several side by side, all smiling at the same joke.
There was something about their smiles. They were rueful, as if so taken aback by the suddenness and ferocity of their demise that there was nothing they could do except put a brave face on it and chuckle. Look what happened to me in the end, eh? Oh well, what can you do…