[Gaunt's Ghosts 11] - Only in Death

When she’d gone, Baskevyl stayed a moment longer, staring down at Domor.

  He turned away.

  “Major?” a small, dry voice said.

  Baskevyl looked back. Domor’s eyes were open, half open, at least.

  “Hey, Shoggy, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I thought it was you.” Domor’s voice was very thin and quiet, and his respiration made an awful, hissing sound, like a snake.

  Baskevyl pulled up a rickety wooden chair and sat down beside the bed.

  “How are things going?” Domor asked, his breath hissing in and out like old, dry, punctured bellows scratching and pumping. Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  “We’re all right. Still here.”

  “They won’t tell me anything. They keep telling me not to worry.” Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  “Well, they’re right about that. We’ll be out of here soon. Trust me.”

  “Is that what Gaunt reckons?” Domor whispered. Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  Baskevyl bit his lip. “Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s what the commander reckons.”

  Domor closed his eyes for a moment and smiled. Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  “Shoggy?”

  Domor opened his eyes.

  “Yes, major?” Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  “You feel up to looking at something for me?”

  Domor made a slight, flinching movement that might have been a shrug. “Like what?”

  Baskevyl pulled the black-bound book out of his jacket and opened it. He thumbed through he pages to the ones he’d marked.

  “What’s that?” Domor asked. Hiss-rasp. Hiss-rasp.

  “You’re the closest thing we have to an engineer, Shoggy, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then tell me, please,” said Baskevyl, holding the book open so Domor could see. “What do you make of this?”

  VII

  The microbead clicked. “Airborne inbound. Two minutes,” Beltayn’s voice said over the link. In the doorway of the second gate, Varaine glanced at Meryn.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  Meryn nodded. He looked back in through the open hatch. “E Company, get set!” he called. Behind him, Dalin relayed the order down the line.

  Meryn looked down the gulley. The day was still clear and open, the sky blue and bright. Down at the end of the gulley, Meryn could see Preed and Caober, the scouts on watch.

  “This is Meryn,” he said. “Are we good?”

  “Anytime you like,” Caober voxed back.

  “E Company, go!” Meryn called. The Ghosts under his command began to flow out of the hatch and move down the gulley, jogging to their designated places. They huddled in along the west side of the ditch, some of them scrambling up the scree bank to take up firing positions, belly down.

  Meryn shook Varaine’s hand and hurried to join them.

  “E Company is set,” Varaine voxed. He turned and looked back in through the hatch opening. “L Company, stand ready. Commissar?”

  Hark moved forwards and stepped out into the daylight. He was limping on his crutch, a heavy kit bag slung over his shoulder. Criid followed him, then Berenson, Twenzet, Klydo and Swathe, all bearing heavy kit bags of their own. There was no dust, but everyone was wearing brass goggles.

  Hark looked at Varaine.

  “Any time now, commissar,” Varaine said.

  “See you at Elikon, captain,” Hark replied, with a thin smile.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vox-dick. “Here she comes,” Caober called.

  They heard the throaty howl of engines a second later. A lone Valkyrie shot into view over the cliffs of the pass, skimming low. Hark could see that its side doors were already slung open. It made no turn or preliminary pass around the site the way the water drop transports had done five days before. It had locked coordinates and it wasn’t messing around. Hark could almost taste the pilot’s desire not to stay on station any longer than necessary.

  Halfway down the gulley bottom, a magnetic beacon was set up and began sending out its signal.

  The Valkyrie droned in and began to bank around in a hover.

  The cliffs facing the house across the dust bowl lit up. Most of it was small-arms fire, but there were rockets too. A storm of gunfire began to spit into the sky.

  “They’ve seen it,” said Varaine.

  “Of course they have,” Hark replied.

  The Valkyrie dropped lower, turbines squalling. Even at a distance, they could all hear the loose shots spanking and twanging off its hull and booms.

  “Feth!” said Varaine.

  Hark opened his link. “Rawne, perhaps—”

  “Already there,” Rawne replied. The Ghosts in the southern casemates and overlooks of the house opened fire, blasting out heavy cover in the direction of the cliffs. Hark heard hot shots and .50’s rattling away.

  So much ammo getting wasted.

  The enemy shooting reduced slightly as the suppressing fire from the gunboxes forced them to take cover. The house continued to unload on the cliffs.

  The Valkyrie corrected, nose down and circled in, its downwash lifting torrents of dust from the gulley area. Its jets began to scream as it came to a dead stop hover and its landing claws slid out. Wailing like the Jago wind, it came down and settled in the gulley. Varaine winced. The Valkyrie’s stubby wingtips seemed about to brush the scree slopes on either side. The gulley had looked big until someone parked a Valkyrie in it.

  “Go, go, go!” Varaine yelled.

  Hark, Criid and the others set off towards the waiting Valkyrie, lugging the kit bags. The cargo officer, his head dwarfed by the helmet/goggles/headphones combo he was wearing, pulled the team in through the side hatch, one by one, taking the heavy bags from them.

  “Hark’s in,” Varaine voxed.

  “Good. They’re coming,” Meryn voxed back.

  Despite the fusillades raining down from the casemates, squadrons of Blood Pact troops were streaming out of the cliffs across the dust bowl, heading for the gate and the more distant gulley.

  “Feth!” Meryn voxed. “There are thousands of them!”

  “Hold your fire until it counts,” Varaine voxed back, signalling his own company to get ready.

  “I know what to do.” Meryn’s vox-reply was petulant.

  The cargo officer waved to Varaine. Varaine waved back. Ducking inside, the cargo officer made a hasty urgent signal to the pilot.

  The Valkyrie, with a bellow of underthrust, hopped up out of the gulley, kicking back a deluge of jet wash and dust. It cleared the gulley line and began to turn. Enemy fire pinged and clicked off its fuselage.

  It rose higher, banking hard to make its exit turn around the steep battlements of Hinzerhaus.

  Down in the dust bowl, a host of enemy warriors was rushing forwards, like insects spilling from a nest, most of them charging for the gulley. Fire from the house was dropping dozens of them, but still they came.

  “Locks off,” Meryn voxed. “Here we fething well go.”

  Varaine looked up. A new, heavier note was vibrating the air. The Destrier appeared, slightly off target, rushing down the throat of the pass with its burners blazing.

  “K862, K862, inbound,” they heard the pilot vox.

  “Hello, K862. Good to see you again,” Beltayn called over the link.

  “Wish I could say the same,” replied the pilot of the heavy transport, his voice clipped by the transmission chop.

  The Valkyrie was climbing and turning out, haloes of white fire surrounding its jet vents as it hunted for lift and speed. Below it, the Destrier galloped in, slower, louder and more ponderous. The mass of Blood Pact warriors crossing the open field was firing up at it wildly. The big lifter took several solid hits and thousands of light clips.

  It lowered itself, correcting its flight path, its engine roar growing louder the slower and lower it got. It looked huge. Its shadow covered the entire gulley floor.

  “Feth, that’s never going to fit!” Varaine gasped. He knew he had to trust tha
t it would. He looked back in through the hatch. “Come on, you cheerful bastards!” he bellowed over the jet noise. “Get ready to move in and unload this bloody thing!” The men began to file out, heads down in the punishing downwash.

  “Down in five,” the pilot voxed. “Stand by. Three, two, one—”

  A surface-to-air rocket struck it in the belly and blew the Destrier’s ribcage open in a searing ball of white flame.

  “Oh, shit!” Varaine yelled. “Back! Back! Get back inside!”

  His men started to turn. They started to run. Varaine was running.

  The Destrier quivered and bucked, flames and smoke streaming back out of its belly. It began to turn, trying to rise, to abort. Its engines flared deafeningly. Then it fell.

  It fell with a sickening doomsday crunch. It hit the western side of the gulley in a vast spray of scree, crushing and killing over a dozen of Meryn’s men. Still moving, sliding and slewing, it made a long, tortured metallic shriek as it tore out its underside along the rocks and dipped into the gulley.

  “Oh shit. We’re dead,” Varaine heard the pilot whisper on the link.

  No power in the galaxy could have arrested the Destrier’s death slide. One straining engine blew out, vomiting smoke and sparks into the air. It came on like a steamroller, like a battering ram, crushing and destroying everything in its path in a lethal blizzard of flying rock and splintering metal, eighty tonnes of steel moving at nearly forty kilometres a second. Scree winnowed out behind it in a gigantic, dirty, clattering wake, tonnes of loose stones torn up and flung out in a fan.

  “Get inside! Get inside!” Varaine yelled to his men.

  He turned.

  The ploughing bulk of the Destrier crushed him to pulp. A second later, the huge, burning mass rammed headlong into the second gate. Metal tore.

  Fuel lines broke. Stanchions snapped. The nose of the bulk lifter crumpled, and mashed the cockpit section to oblivion.

  The transport gave one last shudder and finally stopped moving.

  Then the munition payload it was carrying detonated.

  VIII

  Rawne took a step back from the casemate slot as if he’d been slapped. He lowered his scope from his wide eyes. He didn’t need a scope to see the immense mushroom cloud of fire rushing up out of the gulley. They’d all felt the thump. It had shaken the stone walls and lintels of the house.

  “Oh holy throne,” he whispered.

  The enemy host down below let out a huge, exultant roar. It began to rain. The raindrops were stones and micro-debris streaming down out of the dry sky.

  By Rawne’s side, Kolea shook his head in disbelief.

  “We were so close,” he said.

  “Feth!” Rawne roared, and threw his scope against the casemate wall in rage. “Feth! Feth! Feth!”

  He looked at Kolea, his eyes wild and bright.

  “It can’t end like this,” Kolea told him.

  “It won’t,” Rawne growled. “It fething well won’t. I won’t allow it!”

  Kolea paused, hesitating. “We could—” he began.

  “We fight on with what we have,” Rawne said, cutting Kolea off. “We fight on with what we have left, and then we keep fighting with fists and blades. We kill every fething one of them we can, and we hold this damn place until we’re all dead!”

  Kolea nodded. “That’s basically what I was going to say” he replied.

  “Spread the word, Gol,” said Rawne, snatching up his lasrifle. “Spread the fething word. Make sure everyone understands. No quarter, no retreat, no surrender.” One last fight. That’s what Corbec had told him. One last fight.

  Kolea nodded again.

  “And get Daur’s company down to whatever’s left of the second gate,” Rawne added. “If that’s been blown wide, the bastards will be inside before we know it.”

  Kolea turned to go. Around them, the house was chattering with defensive gunfire and the sounds of squads running to their positions. Men were shouting. Some were moaning in loud dismay, having just seen their last chance go up in a ball of fire.

  “What about—” Kolea said.

  “What about what?” Rawne asked.

  “The men left outside? Meryn’s company?”

  Rawne looked away. “The Emperor protects,” he said.

  IX

  For one, disturbing moment, he couldn’t remember his own name. His lungs were full of smoke and his mouth was full of dust. He woke up with a violent lurch, and coughed out blood and dusty grey phlegm.

  Sounds rushed in at him as the ringing in his ears faded.

  From nearby came the noise of crackling flames and the cries of wounded men. From further off came a swelling roar of animal howling.

  Dalin got up. The north end of the gulley had become a crater, littered with burning shreds of debris and machine parts. There was no longer any sign of the gate. The destruction of the Destrier had blown a giant scar into the ground, and scorched the exposed rock pitch-black. Thick smoke plumed off the heart of the conflagration and made a kilometre-high column in the sky. Dalin coughed, his throat tightening at the stench of fyceline fumes and burnt propellants.

  The transport’s death slide had scored a deep furrow across and down the gulley. Sheared off hunks of fuselage and hull casing dotted the gouge, along with mangled bodies.

  The transport had killed dozens of Meryn’s company on its way in. Dozens more had been killed or crippled by the blast. Those Ghosts that, like Dalin, had been fortunate enough to survive were getting to their feet, stumbling around dazed, calling out, or trying to dress the wounds of the many casualties.

  Fortunate. That didn’t really seem to be the right word. Dalin picked up his rifle and struggled up to the top of the scree slope. He could see the enemy force through the smoke. Despite the heavy fire striking down at it from the house emplacements, the Blood Pact warhost was still rushing the gulley. They had faltered slightly at the blast, but now they gathered again, surging forwards, screaming.

  “Get up! Get up!” Dalin yelled at the bewildered troops around him. “Get up and get into position! They’re on us! They’re fething on us!”

  A few men stumbled forwards and dropped on their bellies on the ridge top, aiming their weapons.

  “Come on! Move it!” Dalin yelled. “Form a line! Form a fething line!”

  The first rounds sang over their heads from the charging mass. The remnants of E Company began to pick off shots in reply.

  “Like you mean it!” Dalin bellowed. “You men! Get up here! Find a place! Move your arses!”

  “You heard him!” shouted Caober, running back down the gulley from the southern end. He was shoving men up the slope, kicking some from behind. “Get in a line or die! Shift it!”

  He caught Dalin’s eye. They stared at one another for a second. There was no time—no point—in exchanging tactical suggestions. They both knew there was only one thing to do.

  “Onto the ridge!” Caober yelled at the befuddled men scrambling to obey him. “Onto the ridge! Fire at will!”

  Dalin checked a couple of bodies for signs of life. He managed to rouse Luhan, who had been knocked out by a grazing head wound.

  “Get on the ridge,” Dalin urged him. “Don’t ask questions. Just shoot.”

  Dalin saw Meryn, lying face down near the bottom of the gulley where the blast had thrown him. He leapt down and shook Meryn roughly.

  “Get up! Get up!”

  Meryn stirred and looked blankly up at Dalin.

  “Get up, sir! They’re right on us!”

  Meryn blinked. “Ow,” he said.

  Dalin saw his injury. Half a metre of thin metal tube, a piece of one of the Destrier’s bristling UHF antennae, had impaled Meryn through the meat of his left thigh.

  “Oh, feth,” Meryn whispered, looking down and seeing the wound.

  “I’ll find a corpsman,” Dalin started to say.

  “Forget it. Just get me up. Just get me up there.”

  Dalin hoisted Meryn to his feet.
Meryn swore in pain. Dalin dragged him up the slope, sliding and slithering on the loose scree.

  They reached the ridge line. Heavy fire stung in from the approaching enemy, slicing over their heads or scattering stones at the ridge crest.

  “You woke me up for this?” Meryn groaned.

  They both started to fire. Along the ridge, E Company blazed away with what was left of their ammunition.

  The enemy was a rolling wall of dust with rushing red figures inside it. Banners and standards bobbed like jetsam carried along by a breaker. Weapons flashed and cracked. The Blood Pact was howling a victory chant as it closed on the side of the gulley, even though masked warriors bucked and twisted as E Company’s shots found them. They fell and were trampled, their bodies left behind in the swirling dust.

  “Full auto,” said Meryn.

  “Full auto!” Dalin yelled out to the company.

  “Sttaight silver,” said Meryn.

  “Straight silver!” Dalin shouted at the top of his voice.

  Meryn took aim. “Time to die like men,” he said.

  * * * * *

  X

  “Did you see that?” Hark shouted over the wail of the Valkyrie engines. “Did you see that?”

  “Stay in your seat, sir!” the cargo officer shouted back.

  Hark was fumbling with his restraints. The lifter was banking hard in its climb juddering violently, its turbines screaming. Wind rushed in through the open slide-hatches. The ground far below was brilliant white with glare. Twenzet and the other troopers, strapped in, were glancing around in alarm.

  “That flash!” cried Hark. “That was an explosion! That was the fething transport!”

  “Get back into your seat!” the cargo officer bawled.

  “Hark! Stop it!” Criid shouted. Occupying the seat next to Hark, she fought to keep his hands off the harness release. “Stop it, for feth’s sake!”

  “Sit down, Hark!” Berenson shouted from his seat.

  “That was the bloody transport!” Hark roared back. “They got it! The bastards got the bloody lander!”

  Criid grabbed Hark’s chin with her hand and slammed his head back against the seat rest. “Sit down! There’s nothing you can do!”

  The cargo officer undid his own harness and got up. Gripping an overhead rail, he glanced forwards. They could all hear the pilot’s rapid chatter. The Valkyrie slowly turned until it came level, still bucking and shaking in the rough air.