[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

  Personally, Milo hated the fact that he was seen as a lucky charm.

  “Sir?”

  “I want you to find some of the locals, priests especially, and learn from them how they wish these bodies to be treated. I want it done according to their custom, Brin.”

  Milo nodded and saluted. “I’ll see to it sir.”

  Gaunt turned away. Beyond the majestic Universitariat and the clustering roofs of the Doctrinopolis rose the Citadel, a vast white marble palace capping a high rock plateau. Pater Sin, the unholy intelligence behind the heretic army that had taken the Doctrinopolis, the commanding presence behind the entire enemy forces on this world, was up there somewhere. The Citadel was the primary objective, but getting to it was proving to be a slow, bloody effort for the Imperial forces as they claimed their way through the Doctrinopolis street by street.

  Gaunt called up his vox-officer, Raglon, and ordered him to patch links with the second and third fronts. Raglon had just reached Colonel Farris, commander of the Brevian Centennials at the sharp end of the third front pushing in through the north of the city, when they heard fresh firing from the Universitariat. Rawne’s unit had engaged the enemy again.

  Four kilometres east, in the narrow streets of the quarter known as Old Town, the Tanith second front was locked in hard. Old Town was a warren of maze-like streets that wound between high, teetering dwellings linking small commercial yards and larger market places. A large number of Infardi, driven out of the defences on the holy river by the initial push of the Imperial armour, had gone to ground here.

  It was bitter stuff, house to house, dwelling to dwelling, street to street. But the Tanith Ghosts, masters of stealth, excelled at street fighting.

  Colonel Colm Corbec, the Ghost’s second-in-command, was a massive, genial, shaggy brute beloved of his men. His good humour and rousing passion drove them forward; his fortitude and power inspired them. He held command by dint of sheer charisma, perhaps even more than Gaunt did, certainly more than Major Rawne, the regiment’s cynical, ruthlessly efficient third officer.

  Right now, Corbec couldn’t use any of that charismatic leadership. Pinned by sustained las-fire behind a street corner drinking trough, he was cursing freely. The microbead intercom system worn by all Guardsmen was being blocked and distorted by the high buildings all around.

  “Two! This is two! Respond, any troop units!” Corbec barked, fumbling with his rubber-sheathed earpiece. “Come on! Come on!”

  A drizzle of las-blasts rocked the old sandstone water-tub, scattering chips of stone. Corbec ducked again.

  “Two! This is two! Come on!”

  Corbec had his head buried against the base of the water-tub. He could smell damp stone. He saw, in sharp focus, tiny spiders clinging to filmy cones of web in the tub’s bas-relief carvings, inches from his eyes.

  He felt the warm stone shudder against his cheek as las-rounds hit the other side.

  His microbead gurgled something, but the broken transmission was drowned by the noise of a tin ladle and two earthenware jugs falling off the edge of the trough.

  “Say again! Say again!”

  “—chief, we—”

  “Again! This is two! Say again!”

  “—to the west, we—”

  Corbec growled a colourful oath and tore out his earpiece. He sneaked a look around the edge of the tub and threw himself back.

  A single lasround whipped past, exploding against the wall behind him. It would have taken his head off if he hadn’t moved.

  Corbec rolled back onto his arse, his back against the tub, and checked his lasrifle. The curved magazine of the wooden-stocked weapon was two-thirds dry, so he pulled it out and snapped in a fresh one. The right-hand thigh pocket of his body armour was heavy with half-used dips. He always changed up to full-load when there was a chance. The half-spent were there at hand for dug-in resistance. He’d known more than one trooper who’d died when his cell had drained out in the middle of a firelight, when there was no time to reload.

  There was a burst of firing ahead of him. Corbec spun, and noted the change in tone. The dull snap of the Infardi weapons was intermingled with the higher, piercing reports of Imperial guns.

  He lifted his head above the edge of the tub. When he didn’t get it shot off, he rolled up onto his feet and ran down the narrow alleyway.

  There was fighting ahead. He leapt over the body of an Infardi sprawled in a doorway. The curving street was narrow and the dwellings on either side were tall. He hurried between hard shadow and patches of sunlight.

  He came up behind three Ghosts, firing from cover across a market yard. One was a big man he recognised at once, even from the back.

  “Kolea!”

  Sergeant Gol Kolea was an ex-miner who’d fought through the Vervunhive war as a part of the “scratch company” resistance. No one, not even the most war-weary and cynical Tanith, had anything but respect for the man and his selfless determination. The Verghastites practically worshipped him. He was a driven, quiet giant, almost the size of Corbec himself.

  The colonel slid into cover beside him. “What’s new, sarge?” Corbec grinned over the roar of weaponsfire.

  “Nothing,” replied Kolea. Corbec liked the man immensely, but he had to admit the ex-miner had no sense of humour. In the months since the new recruits had joined the Ghosts, Corbec hadn’t managed to engage Kolea at all in small talk or personal chat, and he was pretty sure none of the others had managed it either. But then the battle for Vervunhive had taken his wife and children, so Corbec imagined Kolea didn’t have much to laugh or chat about anymore.

  Kolea pointed out over the crates of rotting produce they were using as cover.

  “We’re tight in here. They hold the buildings over the market and west down that street.”

  As if to prove this, a flurry of hard-round and laser fire spattered down across their position.

  “Feth,” sighed Corbec. “That place over there is crawling with them.”

  “I think it’s the merchant guild hall. They’re up on the fourth floor in serious numbers.”

  Corbec rubbed his whiskers. “So we can’t go over. What’s to the sides?”

  “I tried that, sir.” It was Corporal Meryn, one of the other Ghosts crouched in the cover. “Sneaked off left to find a side alley.”

  “Result?”

  “Almost got my arse shot off.”

  “Thanks for trying,” Corbec nodded.

  Chuckling, Meryn turned back to his spot-shooting.

  Corbec crawled along the cover, passing the third Ghost, Wheln, and ducked under a metal handcart used by the market’s produce workers. He looked the market yard up and down. On his side of it, Kolea, Meryn and Wheln had the alley end covered, and three further squads of Ghosts had taken firing positions in the lower storeys of the commercial premises to either side. Through a blown-out window, he could see Sergeant Bray and several others.

  Opposing them, a salient of Infardi troops was dug into the whole streetblock. Corbec studied the area well, and took in other details besides. He had always held that brains won wars faster than bombs. Then again, he also believed that when it really came down to it, fighting your balls off never hurt.

  You’re a complex man, Sergeant Varl had once told him. He’d been taking the piss of course, and they’d both been off their heads on sacra. The memory made Colm Corbec smile.

  Head down, Corbec sprinted to the neighbouring building, a potter’s shop. Shattered porcelain and china fragments littered the ground inside and out. He paused near a shell hole in the side wall and called.

  “Hey, inside! It’s Corbec! I’m coming in so don’t hose me with las!”

  He swung inside.

  In the old shop, troopers Rilke, Yael and Leyr were dug in, firing through the lowered window shutters. The shutters were holed in what seemed to Corbec to be a million places and just as many individual beams of light shafted in through them, catching the haze of smoke that lifted through the dark shop’s air. br />
  “Having fun, boys?” Corbec asked. They muttered various comments about the wanton proclivities of his mother and several other of his female relatives.

  “Good to hear you’re keeping your spirits up,” he replied. He began stamping on the pottery-covered floor.

  “What the sacred feth are you doing, chief?” asked Yael. He was a youngster, no more than twenty-two, with a youngster’s insubordinate cheek. Corbec liked that spirit a lot.

  “Using my head, sonny,” smiled Corbec, pointing to his size eighteen field boot as he stomped it again.

  Corbec raked away some china spoil and dragged up a floor-hatch by the metal yoke.

  “Cellar,” he announced. The trio groaned.

  He let the hatch slam down and crawled up to the window with them.

  “Think about it my brave Tanith studs. Take a look out there.”

  They did, peering though the shredded shutter-slats.

  “The market’s raised… a raised podium. See there by that pile of drums? Gotta be a hatch. My money’s on a warren of produce cellars under this whole market… and probably under that guild hall too.”

  “My money’s on you getting us all dead by lunchtime,” growled Leyr, a hard-edged, thirty-five year old veteran of the Tanith Magna militia.

  “Have I got you dead yet?” asked Corbec.

  “That’s not the point—”

  “Then shut up and listen. We’ll be here til doomsday unless we break this deadlock. So let’s fight smart. Use the fact this cess-pit of a city is a trazillion years old and full of basements, crypts and catacombs.”

  He keyed his microbead intercom, adjusting the thin wire arm of the mike so it was close to his lips.

  “This is two. You hearing me, six?”

  “Six, two. Yes I am.”

  “Bray, keep your men where they are and give the front of that hall a good seeing to in about… oh, ten minutes. Can you do that?”

  “Six, got it. Firestorm in ten.”

  “Good on you. Two, nine?”

  “Nine, two.” Corbec heard Kolea’s tight voice over the channel.

  “Sarge, I’m in the pottery vendor’s down from you. Leave Meryn and Wheln put and get over here.”

  “Got you.”

  Kolea scrambled in through the shell hole a few seconds later. He found Corbec shining his lamp-pack into the open cellar hatch.

  “You know about tunnels, right?”

  “Mines. I was a miner.”

  “Same difference, it’s all underground. Prep, we’re going down.” He turned to Leyr, Rilke and Yael. “Who’s got a yen for adventure and a satchel full of tube-charges?”

  Again, they groaned.

  “You’re safe, Rilke. I want you popping at those windows.” Rilke was a superb sniper, second only to the regimental marksmanship champion Larkin. He had a long-pattern needle-las. “Give up any tubes you got to these plucky volunteers.”

  Leyr and Yael moved back to the hatch. Each of them, like Corbec and Kolea, wore twenty kilos of matt-black composite body armour over their fatigues and under their camo-cloaks. Most of that weight came from the modular webbing pouches filled with ammo, lamp-packs, sheathed blades, waterproof microbead sets, coiled climbing rope, rolls of surgical tape, ferro-plastic binders, Founding-issue Imperial texts, door-spikes, flashbombs, and all the rest of the standard issue Imperial Guard kit.

  “Gonna be tight,” mused Leyr sourly, looking down into the hole where Kolea’s flashlight played.

  Kolea nodded and pulled off his camo-cloak. “Ditch anything that will get hung up.” Leyr and Yael did so, as did Corbec himself. The cloaks went onto the floor, as did other loose items. All four copies of the Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer hit the cloaks at the same time.

  The men looked at Corbec, almost ashamed.

  “Ahh, it’s all up here,” Corbec said, tapping his temple.

  Sergeant Kolea tamped a spike into the tiled floor and ran the end of his climbing rope through the eye. He dropped the snake of cable down into the hole.

  “Who’s first?” he asked.

  Corbec would have preferred to let Kolea lead, but this was his call and he wanted them to know he trusted it.

  He grabbed the rope, slung his lasrifle over his shoulder, and clambered down into the hole.

  Kolea followed, then Leyr. Yael brought up the rear.

  The cellar shaft was eight metres deep. Almost immediately, Corbec was struggling and sweating. Even though he had ditched a lot of kit, the sheer bulk of his webbing and body armour was confining him and screwing with his centre of balance.

  He landed on a floor in the darkness and switched on his lamp-pack. The air was thick and foetid. He was in a cellar space four metres wide, dripping with ancient fluid and rot. His boots sloshed through semi-solid waste and murk.

  “Oh feth!” spat Leyr as he made the ground.

  There was an arched conduit snaking off towards the underyard. It was less than a metre high and only half a metre wide. With kit and weapons, even stripped down, they had to hunch and edge in sideways, single file. The liquid ooze on the floor sucked up around their boot-tops.

  Corbec attached his lamp-pack to the bayonet fitting under his lasgun’s muzzle. He swung the weapon back and forth as best he could side on, bent over, and led them on into the soupy darkness.

  “Probably wasn’t the best idea in the galaxy to send either of us on this,” said Kolea behind him.

  It was the closest Corbec had ever heard to a joke from the scratch sergeant. Apart from “Try Again” Bragg, he and Kolea were the biggest men in the Tanith First. Neither Leyr and Yael topped out over two metres.

  Corbec smiled. “How did you manage? In the mines?”

  Kolea slid round, passing Corbec in an awkward hunch. “We crawled when the seams dipped. But there are other ways. Watch me.”

  Corbec shone his light onto Kolea so that he and the two Tanith behind him could see. Kolea leaned back against the conduit wall until he was almost in a sitting position. Then he skirted along through the muck, bracing his back against the wall so that the top half of his body could remain upright. His feet ran against the foot of the far wall to prevent him slipping out.

  “Very saucy,” said Corbec in admiration.

  He followed suit, and so did Leyr and Yael. The quartet slid their way down the conduit. Overhead, through the thick stone, they heard heavy fire. The ten minutes were up. Bray had begun his promised firestorm.

  They were behind, too slow.

  The conduit fanned and then opened out into a wide box. The stinking ooze was knee deep. Their flashlights found bas-relief markers of old saints on the walls.

  At least the roof was higher here.

  Straightening up, they headed forward through the tarry fluid. They were directly under the centre of the market yard now, by Corbec’s estimation.

  Another conduit led away towards what he presumed was the guild hall. Now Corbec led the way, double-time, back-crawling down the low conduit as Kolea had taught them.

  They came on a shaft leading up.

  By flashlight, they could see the sides were smooth brick, but the shaft was narrow, no more than a metre square.

  By force of thighs alone, it was possible to edge up the shaft with back braced against one wall and feet against the other. Corbec led again.

  Granting and sweating, he climbed the shaft until his face was a few centimetres from a wooden hatch.

  He looked down at Kolea, Yael and Leyr spidered into the flue below him.

  “Here goes,” he said.

  He pushed the hatch up. It didn’t budge initially, then it slumped open. Light shone down. Corbec waited for gunfire but none came. He shuffled up the last of the shaft, shoulderblade by shoulderblade, and pushed out into the open.

  He was in the guild hall basement. It was boarded up and empty, and there were several corpses on the floor, drizzled with flies.

  Corbec pulled himself out of the shaft into the room. The others fo
llowed.

  Rising, their legs wet and stinking from the passage, they moved out lasguns ready, lamp-packs extinguished.

  The percussive throb of las-fire rolled from the floor above.

  Yael checked the corpses. “Infardi scum,” he told the colonel. “Left to die.”

  “Let’s help their pals join them,” Corbec smiled.

  The four took the brick stairs in the basement corner as a pack, guns ready. A battered wooden door stood between them and the first floor.

  His foot braced against the door, Corbec looked back at the three Ghosts clustered behind him.

  “What do you say? A day for heroes?”

  All three nodded. He kicked in the door.

  TWO

  SERVANTS OF THE SLAIN

  “Let the sky welcome you, for therein dwells the Emperor and his saints.”

  —Saint Sabbat, proverbs

  Brin Milo, his lasgun slung muzzle-down over his shoulder, made his way against the press of traffic approaching the square from the south. Detachments of Tanith and light mechanised support from the Eighth Pardus Armoured were pouring into the Universitariat district from the fighting zones to the south-west moving in to support the commissar’s push. Milo ducked into doorways as troop carriers and Hydra batteries grumbled past and slid sideways to pass platoons marching four abreast.

  Friends and comrades called greetings to him as they moved by, a few breaking step to quiz him on the front ahead. Most of them were caked in pink dust and sweating, but morale was generally high. Fighting had been intense during the last fortnight but the Imperial forces had made great gains.

  “Hey, Brinny-boy! What lies in store?” Sergeant Varl called, the squad of men with him slowing into a huddle that blocked the street.

  “Light stuff, the commissar’s opened it up. The Universitariat is thick with them though, I think. Rawne’s gone in.”

  Varl nodded, but questions from some of his men were drowned by an air horn.

  “Come on, move aside!” yelled a Pardus officer, rising up in the open cab of his Salamander command vehicle. A line of flamer tanks and tubby siege gun platforms was bottling up behind him. More horns sounded and the coughing motors raised pink dust in the air of the narrow street.