‘Understood, sir,’ Milo said over the speaker.
Sitting forward astride the powerful nose section, Milo flexed his hands on the handlebar grips and grinned. The speed dropped. A little.
Gaunt ignored the glass Blenner was offering him and flipped open a data-slate map of the city’s street-plan.
Then he thumbed the speaker again. ‘Next left, Milo, then follow the underpass to Zorn Square.’
‘That… that takes us into the cold zones, commissar,’ Milo replied over the link.
‘You have your orders, adjutant,’ Gaunt said simply and snapped off the intercom.
‘This isn’t Guard business at all, is it, old man?’ Blenner said wryly.
‘Don’t ask questions and you won’t have to lie later, Vay. In fact, keep out of sight and pretend you’re not here. I’ll get you back to the bar in an hour or so.’
I hope, Gaunt added under his breath.
RAWNE THREW THE truck around a steep bend. The six chunky wheels slid alarmingly on the wet snow. Behind it, the heavy pursuit vehicles thrashed and slipped.
‘This is the wrong way!’ Rawne said. ‘We’re going deeper into the damn cold zone!’
‘We didn’t have much choice,’ Corbec replied. ‘They’re boxing us in. Didn’t you plan your escape route?’
Rawne said nothing and concentrated on his driving. They were flung around another treacherous turn.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked Corbec at last.
‘Just asking myself the same thing,’ Corbec reflected lightly. ‘Well, truth is, I thought I’d do what any good regimental colonel does for his men on a shore leave rotation after a nightmare tour of duty in a hell-pit like Fortis, and take a trip into the downtown districts to rustle up a little black market drink and the like. The men always appreciate a colonel who looks after them.’
Rawne scowled, fighting the wheel.
‘Then I happened to see you and your sidekick, and I realised that you were doing what any good sneaking low-life weasel would do on shore leave rotation. To wit, scamming some local out of contraband so he can sell it to his comrades. So I thought to myself – I’ll join forces. Rawne’s got exactly what I’m after and without my help, he’ll be dead and floating down the River Cracia by dawn.’
‘Your help?’ Rawne spat. The glass at the rear of the cab shattered suddenly as bullets smacked into it. Both men ducked.
‘Yeah,’ Corbec said, pulling an autopistol out of his coat. ‘I’m a better shot than that feth-wipe Feygor.’
Corbec wound his door window down and leaned out, firing back a quick burst of heavy fire from the speeding truck.
The front screen of one of the black vehicles exploded and it skidded sharply, clipping one of its companions before slamming into a wall and spinning nose to tail, three times before coming to rest in a spray of glass and debris.
‘I rest my case,’ Corbec said.
‘There’s still three of them out there!’ Rawne said.
‘True,’ Corbec said, loading a fresh clip, ‘but, canny chap that I am, I thought of bringing spare ammo.’
GAUNT MADE MILO park the staff-track around the corner from Needleshadow Boulevard. He climbed out into the cold night. ‘Stay here,’ he told Blenner, who waved back jovially from the cabin. ‘And you,’ Gaunt told Milo, who was moving as if to follow him.
‘Are you armed, sir?’ the boy asked.
Gaunt realised he wasn’t. He shook his head.
Milo drew his silver Tanith dagger and passed it to the commissar. ‘You can never be sure,’ he said simply.
Gaunt nodded his thanks and moved off.
The cold zones like this were a grim reminder that society in a vast city like Cracia was deeply stratified. At the heart were the great palace of the Ecclesiarch and the Needle itself. Around that, the city centre and the opulent, wealthy residential areas were patrolled, guarded, heated and screened, safe little microcosms of security and comfort. There, every benefit of Imperial citizenship was enjoyed.
But beyond, the bulk of the city was devoid of such luxuries. League after league of crumbling, decaying city blocks, buildings and tenements a thousand years old, rotted on unlit, unheated, uncared for streets. Crime was rife here, and there were no Arbites. Their control ran out at the inner city limits.
It was a human zoo, an urban wilderness that surrounded civilisation. In some ways it almost reminded Gaunt of the Imperium itself – the opulent, luxurious heart surrounded by a terrible reality it knew precious little about. Or cared to know.
Light snow, too wet to settle, drifted down. The air was cold and moist.
Gaunt strode down the littered pavement. 1034 Needle-shadow Boulevard was a dark, haunted relic. A single, dim light glowed on the sixth floor.
Gaunt crept in. The foyer smelled of damp carpet and mildew. There were no lights, but he found the stairwell lit by hundreds of candles stuck in assorted bottles. The light was yellow and smoky.
By the time he reached the third floor, he could hear the music. Some kind of old dancehall ballad by the sound of it. The old recording crackled. It sounded like a ghost.
Sixth floor, the top flat. Shattered plaster littered the worn hall carpet. Somewhere in the shadows, vermin squeaked. The music was louder, murmuring from the room he was approaching on an old audio-caster. The apartment door was ajar, and light, brighter than the hall candles, shone out, the violet glow of a self-powered portable field lamp.
His fingers around the hilt of the knife in his greatcoat pocket, Gaunt entered.
Five
THE ROOM WAS bare to the floorboards and the peeling paper. The audio-caster was perched on top of a stack of old books, warbling softly. The lamp was in the corner, casting its spectral violet glow all around the room.
‘Is there anyone here?’ Gaunt asked, surprised at the sound of his own voice.
A shadow moved in an adjoining bathroom.
‘What’s the word?’ it said.
‘What?’
‘I haven’t got time to humour you. The word.’
‘Eagleshard,’ Gaunt said, using the code word he and Fereyd had shared years before on Pashen Nine-Sixty.
The figure seemed to relax. A shabby, elderly man in a dirty civilian suit entered the room so that Gaunt could see him. He was lowering a small, snub-nosed pistol of a type Gaunt wasn’t familiar with.
Gaunt’s heart sank. It wasn’t Fereyd.
‘Who are you?’ Gaunt asked.
The man arched his eyebrows in reply. ‘Names are really quite inappropriate under these circumstances.’
‘If you say so,’ Gaunt said.
The man crossed to the audio-caster and keyed in a new track. Another old-fashioned tune, a jaunty love song full of promises and regrets, started up with a flurry of strings and pipes.
‘I am a facilitator, a courier and also very probably a dead man,’ the stranger told Gaunt. ‘Have you any idea of the scale and depth of this business?’
Gaunt shrugged. ‘No. I’m not even sure what business you refer to. But I trust my old friend, Fereyd. That is enough for me. By his word, I have no illusions as to the seriousness of this matter, but as to the depth, the complexity…’
The man studied him. ‘The Navy’s intelligence network has established a web of spy systems throughout the Sabbat Worlds to watch over the Crusade.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I’m a part of that cobweb. So are you, if you but knew it. The truth we are uncovering is frightening. There is a grievous power struggle underway in the command echelon of this mighty Crusade, my friend.’
Gaunt felt impatience rising in him. He hadn’t come all this way to listen to arch speculation. ‘Why should I care? I’m not part of High Command. Let them squabble and backstab and–’
‘Would you throw it all away? A decade of liberation warfare? All of Warmaster Slaydo’s victories?’
‘No,’ Gaunt admitted darkly.
‘The intrigue threatens everything. How can a Crusa
de force this vast continue when its commanders are at each other’s throats? And if we’re fighting each other, how can we fight the foe?’
‘Why am I here?’ Gaunt cut in flatly.
‘He said you would be cautious.’
‘Who said? Fereyd?’
The man paused, but didn’t reply directly. ‘Two nights ago, associates of mine here in Cracia intercepted a signal sent via an astropath from a scout ship in the Nubila Reach. It was destined for Lord High Militant General Dravere’s Fleet headquarters. Its clearance level was Vermilion.’
Gaunt blinked. Vermilion level.
The man took a small crystal from his coat pocket and held it up so that it winked in the violet light.
‘The data is stored on this crystal. It took the lives of two psykers to capture the signal and transfer it to this. Dravere must not get his hands on it.’
He held it out to Gaunt.
Gaunt shrugged. ‘You’re giving it to me?’
The man pursed his lips. ‘Since my network here on Cracia intercepted this, we’ve been taken apart. Dravere’s own counter-spy network is after us, desperate to retrieve the data. I have no one left to safeguard this. I contacted my off-world superior, and he told me to await a trusted ally. Whoever you are, friend, you are held in high regard. You are trusted. In this secret war, that means a lot.’
Gaunt took the crystal from the man’s trembling fingers. He didn’t quite know what to say. He didn’t want this vile, vital thing anywhere near himself, but he was beginning to realise what might be at stake.
The older man smiled at Gaunt. He began to say something.
The wall behind him exploded in a firestorm of light and vaporising bricks. Two fierce blue beams of las fire punched into the room and sliced the man into three distinct sections before he could move.
Six
GAUNT DIVED FOR cover in the apartment doorway. He drew Milo’s blade, for all the good that would do.
Feet were thundering up the stairs.
From his vantage point at the door he watched as two armoured troopers swung in through the exploded wall. They were big, clad in black, insignia-less combat armour, carrying compact, cut-down lasrifles. Adhesion clamps on their knees and forearms showed how they had scaled the outside walls to blow their way in with a directional limpet mine. They surveyed the room, sweeping their green laser tagger beams. One spotted Gaunt prone in the doorway and opened fire. The blast punched through the doorframe, kicking up splinters and began stitching along the plasterboard wall.
Gaunt dived headlong. He was dead! Dead, unless–
The old man’s pistol lay on the worn carpet under his nose. It must have skittered there when he was cut down. Gaunt grabbed it, thumbed off the safety and rolled over to fire.
The gun was small, but the odd design clearly marked it as an ancient and priceless specialised weapon. It had a kick like a mule and a roar like a Basilisk.
The first shot surprised Gaunt as much as the two stealth troops and it blew a hatch-sized hole in the wall. The second shot exploded one of the attackers.
A little rune on the grip of the pistol had changed from ‘V’ to ‘III’. Gaunt sighed. This thing clearly wasn’t over-blessed with a capacious magazine.
The footfalls on the stairway got louder and three more stealth troopers stumbled up, wafting the candle flames as they ran.
Gaunt dropped to a kneeling pose and blew the head off the first. But the other two opened fire up the well with their lasguns and then the remaining trooper in the apartment behind him began firing too. The cross-blast of three lasguns on rapid-burst tore the top hallway to pieces. Gaunt dropped flat so hard he smashed his hand on the boards and the gun pattered away down the top steps.
After a moment or two, the firing stopped and the attackers began to edge forward to inspect their kill. Dust and smoke drifted in the half-light. Some of the shots had punched up through the floor and carpet a whisker from Gaunt’s nose, leaving smoky, dimpled holes. But Gaunt was intact.
When the trooper from the apartment poked his head round the door, a cubit of hard-flung Tanith silver impaled his skull and dropped him to the floor, jerking and spasming. Gaunt leapt up. A second, two seconds, and he would have the fallen man’s lasgun in his hands, ready to blast down the stairs.
But the other two from below were in line of sight. There was a flash and he realised their green laser taggers had swept over his face and dotted on his heart. There was a quick and frantic burst of lasgun fire and a billow of noxious burning fumes washed up the stairs over Gaunt.
Blenner climbed the stairs into view, carefully stepping over the smouldering bodies, a smoking laspistol in his hand.
‘Got tired of waiting,’ the commissar sighed. ‘Looks like you needed a hand anyway, eh, Bram?’
Seven
THE GREY TRUCK, with its single remaining pursuer, slammed into high gear as it went over the rise in the snowy road, leaving the ground for a stomach-shaking moment.
‘What’s that?’ Rawne said wildly, a moment after they landed again and the thrashing wheels re-engaged the slippery roadway.
‘It’s called a roadblock, I believe,’ Corbec said.
Ahead, the cold zone street was closed by a row of oil-can fires, concrete poles and wire. Several armed shapes were waiting for them.
‘Off the road! Get off the road!’ Corbec bawled. He leaned over and wrenched at the crescent steering wheel.
The truck slewed sideways in the slush and barrelled beetle-nose-first through the sheet-wood doors of an old, apparently abandoned warehouse. There, in the dripping darkness, it grumbled to a halt, its firing note choking away to a dull cough.
‘Now what?’ Rawne hissed.
‘Well, there’s you, me and Feygor…’ Corbec began. Already the trooper was beginning to pull himself groggily up in the back. ‘Three of Gaunt’s Ghosts, the best damn fighting regiment in the Guard. We excel at stealth work and look! We’re here in a dark warehouse.’
Corbec readied his automatic. Rawne pulled his laspistol and did the same. He grinned.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
Years later, in the speakeasies and clubs of the Cracian cold zones, the story of the shoot-out at the old Vinchy Warehouse would do the rounds. Thousands of shots were heard, they say, mostly the bass chatter of the autogun sidearms carried by twenty armed men, mob overbaron Vulnor Habshept kal Geel’s feared enforcers, who went in to smoke out the off-world gangsters.
All twenty died. Twenty further shots, some from laspistols, some from a big-bore autogun, were heard. No more, no less.
No one ever saw the off-world gangsters again, or found the truck laden with stolen contraband that had sparked off the whole affair.
THE STAFF-TRACK whipped along down the cold zone street, heading back to the safety of the city core. In the back, Blenner poured another two measures of his expensive brandy. This time, Gaunt took the one offered and knocked it back.
‘You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, Bram. Not if you don’t want to.’
Gaunt sighed. ‘If I had to, would you listen?’
Blenner chuckled. ‘I’m loyal to the Emperor, Gaunt, and doubly loyal to my old friends. What else do you need to know?’
Gaunt smiled and held his glass out as Blenner refilled it.
‘Nothing, I suppose.’
Blenner leaned forward, earnest for the first time in years. ‘Look, Bram… I may seem like an old fogey to you, grown fat on the luxuries of having a damn near perfect regiment… but I haven’t forgotten what the fire feels like. I haven’t forgotten the reason I’m here. You can trust me to hell and back, and I’ll be there for you.’
‘And the Emperor,’ Gaunt reminded him with a grin.
‘And the bloody Emperor,’ Blenner said and they clinked glasses.
‘I say,’ Blenner said a moment later, ‘why is your boy slowing down?’
Milo pulled up, wary. The two tracked vehicles blocking the road ahead had their headlamps
on full beam, but Milo could see they were painted in the colours of the Jantine Patricians. Large, shaven-headed figures armed with batons and entrenching tools were climbing out to meet them.
Gaunt climbed out of the cabin as Milo brought them to a halt. Snow drifted down. He squinted at the men beyond the lights.
‘Brochuss,’ he hissed.
‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ replied Major Brochuss of the Jantine Patricians, stepping forward. He was stripped to his vest and oiled like a prize fighter. The wooden spoke in his hands slapped into a meaty palm.
‘A reckoning, I think,’ he said. ‘You and your scum-boys cheated us of a victory on Fortis. You bastards. Playing at soldiers when the real thing was ready to take the day. You and your pathetic Ghosts should have died on the wire where you belong.’
Gaunt sighed. ‘That’s not the real reason, is it, Brochuss? Oh, you’re still smarting over the stolen glory of Fortis, but that’s not it. After all, why were you so unhappy we won the day back there? It’s the old honour thing, isn’t it? The old debt you and Flense still think has to be paid. You’re fools. There’s no honour in this, in back-street murder out here, in the cold zones, where our bodies won’t be reported for months.’
‘I don’t believe you’re in a position to argue,’ said Brochuss. ‘We of Jant will take our repayment in blood where it presents itself. Here is as good a place as any other.’
‘So you’d act with dishonour, to avenge a slight to honour? Brochuss, you ass – if you could only see the irony! There was no dishonour to begin with. I only corrected what was already at fault. You know where the real fault lies. All I did was expose the cowardice in the Jantine action.’
‘Bram!’ Blenner hissed in Gaunt’s ear. ‘You never were a diplomat! These men want blood! Insulting them isn’t going to help their mood.’
‘I’m dealing with this, Vay,’ Gaunt said archly.
‘No you’re not, I am…’ Blenner pushed Gaunt back and faced the Jantine mob. ‘Major… if it’s a fight you want I won’t disappoint you. A moment? Please?’ Blenner said holding up a finger. He turned to Milo and whispered, ‘Boy, just how fast can you drive this buggy?’