Gaunt sniggered. “Providing he asks nicely?” he inquired.
“Naturally” Baskevyl said. His chair complained again.
“I seem to remember,” Gaunt said, “I asked you to work hard to welcome the Belladon into our company, Eli.”
“This is me working hard,” said Rawne. You should see me when I’m being a bastard.”
“We’ve all seen that,” scoffed Mkoll. When he moved in his seat, for some reason his chair, as ailing as Baskevyl’s, made no sound at all.
“There is one thing, sir—” Ludd began.
“Not now,” Hark warned.
Ludd shut up and pursed his lips.
“I’ve time on my hands,” Gaunt said. “Let’s hear it.”
Ludd cleared his throat and took a step forward, producing a sheet of paper from his pocket. “There was an incident earlier, sir. On the swelter decks… see, as it says?”
He handed the paper to Gaunt. Gaunt read it quickly.
“Merrt?”
“I dealt with it,” Hark said.
“You dealt with it?”
“Yes, Ibram. It’s old news.”
Gaunt nodded. He handed the paper back to Ludd. “That’s a shame. A man like him. Get any reasons?”
Hark’s eyes were more hooded than ever. “He’s a broken man. Has been since Monthax. Men like that run off the rails.”
“You’ve set him on charges?”
“Yes,” said Hark. “Full stretch. All six weeks. I’m assuming this is still a six-week voyage?”
“As far as I know,” Gaunt said.
“Not wishing to gloat,” muttered Gol Kolea, “but very much wishing to support Baskevyl… may I just say, ho ho, it’s a Tanith that steps out of line?”
“You may,” said Gaunt.
Baskevyl grinned so broadly his chair creaked.
“Funny,” said Rawne. You Verghastites are as funny as the Belladon and they’re, let me tell you, funny.”
Kolea looked sideways at the man on the pew beside him. “You kill me, Eli. You and your sense of humour. You kill me.”
“Oh, for a dark night and the opportunity,” replied Rawne.
There was general laughter. Smiling, Gaunt reached into the pocket of his hanging storm coat and pulled out a box stamped with the seal of the Departmento Medicae.
He set it down in the centre of the table top so they could all see it.
“This is why I called an informal.”
Rawne, Hark and Kolea leaned forward to inspect the object. So did Baskevyl, with a protest from the spells of his chair. Mkoll nodded.
“Anti-ague?” he asked.
“Anti-ague,” Gaunt replied. “Inhibitors. Full shots.”
“Double-dose standard,” Dorden said. “That was my instruction. Double-dose courses for all personnel, starting now.”
“We get ague drench before every planet-drop,” Baskevyl said, looking round at Gaunt with another noise from his chair.
“We do,” Gaunt agreed.
“But not double-dose and not a course,” Dorden said.
“It’s like before Gereon,” Mkoll said, leaning forward and picking up the box to examine it. His chair made not a single sound.
“Gereon?” asked Baskevyl. “Is there a point?”
“Aside from the one on the top of your head?” Rawne asked.
“Yes, there’s a point,” Gaunt said. “When I led a mission team to Gereon, it was full insertion, enemy territory. They dosed us up real good, double shots. They knew we’d need to survive as long as possible on a world lousy with Chaos taint. Now, let’s think, your standard infantryman gets a shot in the arm or buttock every few weeks during transit, and never asks why. I know better. I’m asking.”
“You think?” Kolea began.
“Always,” smiled Gaunt. “I think this means we’re being routed to a liberation effort. We’re going to be deployed against a Chaos-held world. High Command still hasn’t confirmed our destination, but I believe the brass expects us to go in against a hard target.”
“I thought combat policy was to ignore the worlds too tough to break?” Mkoll said.
“I think policy has changed,” said Gaunt. “I think they want us to break the tough worlds we can’t ignore.”
Mkoll sat back and let out a long, plaintive whistle. His chair let out no noise at all.
“What does that mean, practically?” Kolea asked.
“It means double-hard preparation,” Gaunt said. “It means tight drop training, around the clock. It means, if we can, slipping the hint to other regiments, so they can begin the same.”
“I can do that,” said Hark. “I know the commissars in the Kolstec and the Binars. We can spread the word.”
“Do you understand the meaning of the word ‘subtle’, Viktor?” Gaunt asked.
“It’s my middle name,” Hark smiled. Viktor bloody subtle Hark.”
“Bear it in mind,” Gaunt replied. “I don’t want to be accused of starting a scare. There’s something else.”
He looked round at his adjutant. “Bel? Course correction added in, how many hostile-held worlds are there approximately six standard weeks transit rimward of Ancreon Sextus?”
“Two, sir,” replied Beltayn.
“Their names?”
“Lodius, sir. And Gereon.”
Gaunt looked back at his senior staff. “I fancy, gentlemen, we might be heading back to Gereon. For the liberation they never thought we’d bother to bring.”
“Gereon resists,” Rawne muttered.
“Let’s hope so,” said Gaunt. “Well, that’s it. Carry on and be ready. Anything else?”
“I have a question,” Baskevyl said. “When I move, my chair creaks, but when Mkoll does, there’s no sound. What the frig is that about?”
“Scout training,” Mkoll chuckled, getting to his feet and patting Baskevyl on the arm.
The meeting broke up.
“I hear your son’s started basic,” Dorden said to Kolea.
“What? Yes. Yes, he has.”
“That’s good. He’ll do well, I think.”
“I hope so.”
“A father and son in the ranks again,” Dorden mused. “That’s wonderful. Like a new start.”
“I’m not so much his father, doc,” Kolea said. “His blood father, yes. But then there’s Caff. Two fathers and one son, you might say.”
Dorden nodded.
“Dah!” said Kolea suddenly. “Gak it, that was clumsy of me. I’m sorry, doc.”
“For what?” asked Dorden.
Once there had been a father and son in the Tanith ranks. Dorden, and his son Mikal. Mikal had been killed during the defence of Vervunhive.
“I didn’t think…” Kolea began.
Dorden shook his head. “My son died on Verghast. Coincidentally, that’s where your son joined our ranks. Now he’s training to be a Ghost. A son lost and a son gained. One father bereft, one… sorry, two fathers made proud. I think there’s a certain completeness to that, don’t you, Gol? A certain symmetry?”
“I hope so,” said Kolea.
“One thing,” Dorden added. “Gol, in the Emperor’s name, look after him.”
The seniors had gone. Gaunt sat at the table in one of the terribly creaking chairs, reviewing order papers. Beltayn brought him a cup of caffeine.
“Anything else, sir?” Beltayn asked.
“No, that’ll be all, Bel. Thanks.”
Beltayn left. Gaunt worked his way through the papers.
“Geryun?” asked a voice.
Gaunt looked up from his work. Eszrah stood in the doorway.
“Iss…” he said slowly, mangling his words. “Iss ite true, soule?”
“That we’re going to Gereon?” Gaunt replied. “I’m not sure, Niht. But I think so. You were listening in? Of course you were.”
“Geryun, itte persist longe, foereffer,” Eszrah said.
“Yes,” said Gaunt. That’s what I’ve always believed.”
VIII
&nb
sp; Another day-cycle, another slog, another step along Glory Road, another RIP drill. Eight days since the start of RIP, and something different that morning.
“New body” said driller Kexie. “New body. And you are, apart from shit-on-my-toecap ugly?”
“Merrt.”
Kexie looked the newcomer up and down and began the long and ritualistic process of bagging him out in front of the detail. Nothing was taboo. Kexie spent a particularly long time likening Merrt’s face to a number of things, a bilge hatch, a grox’s rectum, and so on.
Dalin tried not to look or listen. He stared at a fixed point far away on the opposite wall of the Basement, and waited for reps to begin.
“Hey, Holy! One of yours, isn’t he?” Fourbox whispered.
“What?”
“Tanith?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s in for P?” Fourbox probed. “What he do?”
“I dunno.”
“I mean, what he do to his face?”
“Got shot,” whispered Dalin. He didn’t know much about Merrt’s story. Merrt was a loner and didn’t mix much. For as long as Dalin could remember, Merrt’s face had looked like a bilge hatch.
“Someone yapping?” Kexie asked, turning from Merrt suddenly to regard the rest of the detail. “Someone yapping there in the file?” He aimed Saroo at them and panned it along the line, as if the baton could sniff out malfeasance like a sentry dog.
“Some wet-fart scalp exercising his lip, ech?” Kexie wondered. Wise to the driller’s tricks after eight days of RIP, no one made the mistake of saying “No, driller”.
“Let’s start it, then,” Kexie announced, stroking Saroo in a way that suggested the baton was disappointed not to have doled out clouts. “Five laps, triple time! Move!”
Three days later, Kexie took the detail up to the range deck, a converted hold in midships. It was a serious space, and made the Basement seem like a foot locker. They trooped in over grille bridges as the previous mob drained out of the place via lower walkways: a river of shaved scalps and laughter down below. Range officers in flak coats and ear protectors issued them with rifles that had been marked with big, white serial codes.
Off to the left, a combat-certified unit was conducting clearance drills in an area of the range that had been faked up into streets and buildings by the use of cargo crates and conveyance pallets. The unit was maintaining its hard-edge frontline readiness, determined not to let the slow days of a long haul make them slack and dull. RIP could hear their back-and-forth shouts, the corner by corner call and return, the bursts of gunfire.
Kexie yelled this and that. RIP milled about, trying to look useful, checking over their weapons, while the range officers led them up to the shooting line in groups of forty. At the line, in a grubby dugout made of flakboard and tarps, they were each handed a live clip, and began rattling away at tar-paper targets at the far end of the sandbox.
The air became thick with heat exhaust and the cracking sounds of multiple discharge. It was a sound like kindling being split, like a hundred greenstick fractures all together, an uneven, brittle racket that rolled up and down the line of shooters.
A buzzer sounded. The shooters gave up their clips and stepped back to make way for the second batch.
So the rotations went for the whole shift.
Dalin took the gun he was issued with great reverence. He’d fired plenty before. You didn’t grow up in the middle of the Ghosts and not know one end of a las from the other. But he wasn’t in RIP for punishment or retraining, so he hadn’t dropped back out of the ranks for this. He’d never formally been issued with a weapon.
It was a loaner for the afternoon, and Dalin was pretty glad of that. It was old, a scabby mark I with a chipped and flaking khaki paint job, a broken bayonet lug, and a folding skeleton stock that had belonged to another weapon in an earlier life. The range officers kept a cache of weapons like it for drill use: scrap weapons or battlefield flotsam that the Munitorum regarded as unfit for service issue.
He went up to the line when his turn came, and popped home the cell the instructor handed him. The las made a noise like a cane switch, and pulled badly to the left. He compensated. The nearest range officer was walking the row, shouting advice at them in turn, but Dalin blocked that out and heard a voice of his own. Caffran, teaching him to shoot, teaching him the basics of rifle drill and firing discipline in a campsite field on Aexe Cardinal, or out on the obsidae of Herodor, or amongst the nodding windflowers on Ancreon Sextus.
The buzzer rang. Dalin ejected the clip, handed it back to the officer, and withdrew to the assembly area. Behind him, a fresh round of gunfire caught up, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a company snare drum.
“Anyone,” Kexie was yelling, striding through the company, “anyone who scores less than a thirty gets three days of punishment reps.”
There were some groans.
“Anyone got a comment? Ech, address it in writing to me, care of Saroo.”
Dalin went to one side. Now he had some time between shoots, he could take a rag to his weapon. The action was gummed up with dirt and old lube, and that made the trigger pull hard and snatchy. He worked to free it.
“What are you doing, Holy?” Boulder asked, regarding Dalin’s industry with some amusement. Boulder and Lovely and a few of the others were using the lull between shoots to rest their arses on the ground and chat.
“Improving my score,” Dalin replied.
“When you get good, do me a favour,” said Lovely. “Shoot Kexie in the brain.”
“Why wait?” Boulder asked. “Why not do it now?”
“Because,” said Lovely, “the driller’s brain’s so frigging small, you’d have to be a marksman shot to hit it.”
Dalin noticed that Merrt was in their batch. Merrt was the only other scalp apart from Dalin who was tending to his rifle. The older trooper was adjusting the fore- and back-sights, lifting the gun to his shoulder to check between each adjustment.
He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him.
Dalin remembered, now he came to think of it, that Merrt had been a sniper once. A specialist. He should have no problems with this drill, Dalin thought.
At the end of the rotations, Kexie pulled them off the range and stood them in a transit hallway while he called out the score groupings from a data-slate that one of the range officers had handed him. Everyone tensed to hear their name alongside the magic thirty or higher. Thirty was combat standard, the acceptable average grade a man had to make if he wanted to be Guard, like the weight and height and vision requirements.
Either through lack of effort or incompetence, fifteen members of the RIP detail scored under the line, including Boulder. Even he couldn’t raise a “haw haw haw” to that.
Most of the rest got in a band between thirty and thirty-five, with the top five per cent of them hitting fifty and above. Merrt got forty-eight. When Kexie read this out, Merrt seemed to shudder, and he grated some caustic word under his breath.
Kexie peered at Merrt, eyes narrowed, wondering if there was a juicy infringement there to be pounced upon.
“You speak, scalp?”
“No, driller.”
Kexie regarded him for a moment longer, and then carried on with his list. He reached Dalin’s name. Dalin had scored sixty-six, twelve points clear of the best of the rest. There were a few whoops and catcalls when Kexie read the number out, but they quickly simmered down. Kexie went over to Dalin -using that easy, shoulders-back, hip-roll walk he had—and stared him in the face.
“No new body clocks a tally like that.”
Dalin didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing and remained staring straight ahead.
“I said, this is a joke. You hear my voice, wet-fart? What’d you do? Bribe a range officer? Switch some numbers?”
“No, driller.”
“No?”
“No, driller.”
“Then how would you explain this, ech?”
Dalin wanted to say he’d fired a w
eapon before, that he had experience, but the same could be said for every “R” and “P” in the detail. He wanted to say he’d been well-taught, and his teachers were the best.
He wanted to say that it was probably less to do with marksmanship skill and more to do with simple weapon discipline and method, and that most of them would be scoring in the fifties if they simply took the time to check, adjust and listen to their rifle.
But all he found himself saying was, “Luck, driller?”
“No such thing as luck,” Kexie said. “Allow me to prove that particular dictum.”
Kexie cracked Saroo across Dalin’s knees, and then rammed the blunt end of the baton into the small of Dalin’s back as he folded forward and crumpled. Teeth bared, Kexie whaled the stick down into the boy’s ribs, glancing several loud, bony blows off Dalin’s forearm as it came up defensively.
Kexie stepped back, planting his left toe-cap in Dalin’s gut. Dalin, on his side on the deck, grunted and coiled up like a foetus.
“See?” Kexie crowed, loud and laughing. “He got the top tally, but he don’t look all that bloody lucky now, does he?”
No one responded.
“Does he?”
There was a muted answer. Annoyed, Kexie looked back at Dalin and laid in again.
“That ain’t right.”
Kexie stopped and swung about. Merrt, hands at his sides, had stepped out of the pack to face the instructor.
“You what?”
“That… gn… gn… ain’t right,” Merrt repeated, his clumsy jaw misfiring a couple of times over the words.
“What?” There was a high, almost querulous tone of disbelief in Kexie’s voice. He craned his neck forward and cupped a hand around one ear. “Bloody what?”
“You’re too happy with that stick,” Merrt said plainly. “You deal out the licks when someone needs punishment, that’s how it goes, but he don’t deserve it. What kind of fool punishes someone for gn… gn… getting it right?”
“The kind of fool that’s in charge of your entire bloody life,” Kexie announced, and came forward at Merrt. Everyone else shrank back. They knew that mad-eyed look.
“Maybe, but I still say what’s right,” Merrt said. He spread his hands wide, palms open, and tilted his chin back so he was looking at the ceiling. “Come on, whack me. I spoke out of line, I gotta have something coming, but not him. He didn’t do nothing.”