“We got some hostile contact,” Chiria said.
“Where?” asked a dry voice from behind them.
Chiria looked around. Larkin limped into the base chamber towards them, accompanied by Raess, Nessa Bourah and Jessi Banda. All four of them had their long-las sniper weapons hefted over their shoulders. The marksmen had been touring the house, sniffing for decent vantage points or, better still, targets.
“Under the power room,” Chiria said.
Larkin took his long-las off his shoulder and armed it. He glanced at his fellow marksmen. “Let’s go shoot something, shall we?”
His fellow marksmen nodded.
Larkin glanced over at Curth. For a fleeting moment, she looked up from her bloody work and noticed his stare. Hlaine Larkin had believed that his precious sniper rifle had been lost forever during the grim trials of the Gereon mission. But the previous year, he’d been part of the extraction team that had finally rescued Curth from the Gereon Untill. To his amazement and delight, he had discovered that she had been keeping his beloved long-las safe for him all the while, in the hope of his eventual return.
Larkin gave her a brief nod that said he was about to make her thoughtful custody of the antique piece worthwhile.
Footsteps clattered down the staircase from above. Gaunt, followed by Rawne, Criid and a bunch of Criid’s P Company, hurtled down into the base chamber, taking the steps two at a time.
“Report!” Gaunt commanded.
Dorden nodded down at the sprawled body of Shoggy Domor. “We’ve been hit,” he said.
Gaunt stared at Domor’s spread-eagled form. He could actually see the man’s heart, beating like a red leather pump as Dorden and Curth worked on him.
“Will he live?” he asked.
“You better fething believe it,” replied Curth. “Suture gun. Now, Chayker!”
Gaunt took a deep breath. “Someone tell me exactly what’s happened.”
“Hostile contact in the workshops under the power room, sir,” Chiria said, stepping forwards. “Major Baskevyl is on site.”
“Show us! Go!” ordered Gaunt. Rawne, Criid, and Criid’s men were already moving.
Gaunt hesitated and looked back at Curth. She’d never really regained the body mass she’d lost during her stay on Gereon. She was stick-thin frail, and her cheek bones stood out.
“Are you all right?” Gaunt asked.
“I’m not the one who was shot,” she told him, acidly, too busy to look up.
Gaunt paused, nodded, and then turned to run after Rawne and Criid.
III
Chiria led the way. Her hands were stained with her company officer’s blood.
“The power room,” she repeated. “Come on!”
“Wait! Wait!” Larkin shouted.
They all came to a halt, silent, listening.
“What?” asked Gaunt.
“Larks?” Rawne pressed.
Larkin shook his head, holding up a finger for silence.
Then they heard it: the distant crack-ping of las-fire.
“That’s not the power room,” said Larkin. “That’s coming from somewhere above us.”
IV
The long, drafty hallway had seemed empty.
It ran as far as the eye could see: a broad, brown-panelled passageway, its roof interrupted by the domes of fortification cloches spaced at regular intervals.
The E Company fire-team was high up in the house, right under the spine of the mountain ridge, where the wind wheezed along cold, dormant hallways. Each cloche turret they came to was a dome of dead iron. The intricate manual winders on the walls were seized with grit and age. No amount of effort could induce them to turn and open the shutters overhead.
The fire-team had paused under each cloche dome in turn, gazing up at the jammed shutters, playing their lamps around, exchanging dead-end suggestions.
Meryn had inspected every set of winders they came to carefully. “They have to open,” he announced at length. “These winders are designed to open the shutters, so shooters can get up on the fething fire-step and aim out.” He leant on a brass handle that stolidly refused to budge. “Feth it! Why won’t they turn?”
“Because they’re jammed,” said Fargher, Meryn’s adjutant. It wasn’t the brightest observation Fargher had ever made, but it matched his average. It would be the last idle suggestion he’d ever offer.
“Thank you, Mister Brains,” Meryn replied. “I can see that. Why the feth would anyone build a fort this way, in this dust?”
He glanced back at the team. One of his troopers had muttered something.
“What was that? Was that a comment from you, Trooper Cullwoe?”
“No, sir,” said Dalin, “it was me. I said maybe this place was built before there was any dust to worry about.”
“That’s just daft talk!” sniffed Fargher.
“No, the boy could be right,” said Meryn, gazing wistfully up at the calcified shutter-gears of the cloche above them. “Who in their right mind would construct a fortress with screw-open shutters in a fething dust bowl?”
“We could grease the gears,” suggested Neskon. “I got prom-jelly. That’s nice and greasy.”
Meryn thought about that.
“Maybe—” he began to say.
And just like that, like a conjuror’s trick, the hallway ahead of them wasn’t empty anymore.
Dalin blinked. Time seemed to slow, a phenomenon he’d once heard Commissar Hark call “fight time”. The cold air was suddenly lousy with streaming shots: las-rounds and hard slugs, whizzing around them like a firework display. Swaythe grunted and spilled sideways as he took a round in the arm. Fargher let out a slight, sad sigh as he slammed over onto his back. As the adjutant landed, his limbs juddering, Dalin could see that Fargher’s skull case had been forced out through the back of his shaved scalp in thick, white splinters. There was a black scorch mark on the ghastly, slack flesh of Fargher’s forehead where the demolishing shot had entered.
Dalin started firing back several seconds before Meryn gave the order. Cullwoe joined in. Meryn’s own las was up and blasting. The other six men in the team began to rake too, all save Neskon, who was frantically prepping his flamer.
There was no cover, no cover at all. Shots crisped past them on either side. Cardy smashed over onto his back with a dry cough as a las-round exploded his neck. Seerk squealed as he was hit twice in the stomach. He fell down on his hands and knees, and his shrill noises ceased abruptly as another round blew the top of his head in.
“Holy fething shit!” Meryn was roaring. “Kill them! Kill them! Pour it on!”
They couldn’t even see what they were supposed to be killing. Ahead of them, it was just dark and empty, ominously dark and empty, apart from the glittering gunfire spitting their way.
Dalin Criid crouched down and did as he had been instructed by Driller Kexie in RIP. He chased his aim towards the source of the shots, the muzzle flashes, and squeezed off round after round. Wall panels blew out either side of him. Venklin slowly backed into a wall and slid down it, blood and smoke leaking out of his surprised mouth.
“Stand back! Flames, flames!” Neskon shouted out, pushing forwards, his flamer finally prepped and raised.
“Duck and shield!” Meryn ordered. “Flamer up!”
They dropped their weapons and put their faces in their hands. Neskon’s torch sputtered for a second before it spoke, before it howled.
Brute fire surged out down the hallway in a fierce, licking cone. Dalin was sure he heard screams.
When the fire died back, dripping and sizzling off the scorched wall panels, there was silence.
“Feth…” said Meryn. He looked around. Cardy was dead, so were his adjutant, Fargher, Venklin and Seerk. Swaythe was hurt bad.
“Contact, contact, contact!” Meryn began to stammer frantically into his link. “Hostile, hostile, hallway… where the feth are we? Fargher?”
“He’s a little bit dead, sir,” Cullwoe said.
Dali
n bent down and pulled the bundled schematics out of Fargher’s pocket. The adjutant’s dismantled head lolled unpleasantly as Dalin dragged the papers free.
“Dalin? Come on!” Meryn urged.
Dalin turned the papers over, searching for some kind of sense. “Hallway… upper west sixteen, sir.”
“Upper west sixteen? You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hostile contact, hallway upper west sixteen,” Meryn told his microbead. “Requesting immediate support!”
Meryn looked at the remains of his fire-team. “Support’s coming,” he said.
“What do we do now, sir?” asked Cullwoe, his hands shaking as he reloaded.
Meryn hesitated. His team strength had been pretty much slashed in half in less than fifty seconds. He was blinking fast, and showing a little too much white around his pupils.
Before he could think of something to say, they heard footsteps approaching from behind them and snapped around, weapons braced. The echo of half a dozen sets of boots rang towards them, running fast. They waited. No one came into view.
The footsteps seemed to go right past them and fade.
“What the feth?” Neskon muttered.
“Below us,” whispered Dalin. “It must have been below us, on a lower level.”
Meryn nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Below us. That’s what it was.”
Neskon held up a grimy paw. “Listen.”
More footsteps, further away, came and went.
“That was right above us that time,” said Cullwoe.
“Yeah, except there isn’t anything above us,” Dalin replied quietly.
“Meryn?” a voice said. They all jumped in their skins like idiots. Captain Obel was standing right behind them, at the head of a support fire-team whose approaching footsteps hadn’t echoed or carried at all. Obel and his seven troopers had just marched up behind them without any of Meryn’s men noticing.
“Where the feth did you come from?” Meryn snapped.
Obel glanced over his shoulder uncertainly, as if suspecting a trick question. The open hallway behind them was long, and visibly empty.
“We came in support,” he said.
Obel glanced at the chewed up walls and the bodies of the fallen Ghosts with unsentimental efficiency. “You decide to start the war without us, Meryn?” he asked. “What the hell happened?”
Meryn jerked his head in the direction of the hallway ahead. “They happened,” he remarked acidly.
“Let’s take a look,” Obel decided. Obel made swift, deft gestures of instruction with his free hand. Advance, wary. He left one of his men to look after Swaythe and dress his wound. The rest of them moved forwards, with Meryn and Obel at the front.
The hallway was as empty as it had been before. A sliver of wind sang in through some half-closed shutter. It moaned softly. Dust kicked and eddied along the bare floor. They could see a tidemark of burn residue on the walls and roof where Neskon’s flamer had left its lasting impression.
“They fired on you?” Obel asked.
“Feth, yes,” Meryn answered.
“And you fired back, right?” asked Obel, keeping his voice low.
“Of course we did!” Meryn replied. “Then where are the bodies?” asked Obel.
Day eight. Sunrise at four plus thirty-two, first light shows white out. Hit hard in two locations last night. Four men dead, two wounded, one critical.
Enemy unseen during both attacks. They ar ein are in here with us.
Regiment on full alert condition. Defensive sectioning of Objective has begun. G. has ordered some spurs and outer tunnel/hallways closed off and barricades erected. Deep sense of unease. Like waiting for a storm to break.
G. has sent sign al to Elikon requesting water supplies and reinforcement.
Have bided time touring main positions to kep keep morale up. Uphill battle. We may see desertions before long.
Since when did Ghosts get haunted?
—Field journal, V.H. fifth month, 778.
SIX
Shooting at Shadows
I
Gaunt took the message wafer Beltayn handed to him, read it quickly, and gave it back. He continued on his way across the base chamber to the corridor spur that led to the lesser hall.
The base chamber was bustling. Ludd, Daur and Kolosim were coordinating fresh troop deployments to the outer hallway wings. Men were trailing up out of the empty side chambers that had been designated as billets. They were dead-eyed from too little sleep and too little water. Gaunt nodded to a few as he went by Many were lugging wooden boards and wall panels liberated from unused rooms to help bulk up barricades in the outer wings. Other details were trudging in from the gatehouse, hefting musette bags and sacking they had shovelled full of dust as makeshift sandbags. The bagging details were dusted white from head to foot, and the stack of sandbags they were building on the lower deck area resembled the loading bay of a flour mill.
The senior officers were waiting for him in the lesser hall. It was a dark, hollow room, the sagging ceiling panels supported by six large, timber posts. Something had once been bolted to the floor in the centre of the room, but there was no longer any way of telling what it might have been.
Rawne had carried in a table the night before, so they’d have somewhere to hold briefings, but the table had already gone, requisitioned for a barricade somewhere. The officers stood around in an awkward huddle.
Gaunt noted them: Rawne, Hark, Kolea, Mkoll, Baskevyl, Kamori and Theiss. All the other officers had duties that demanded they be elsewhere. This would have to do. Gaunt trusted the attending group to feed the business of the meeting back to the other officers of the regiment.
“Signal from Elikon,” Gaunt began without preamble. “We’re promised a water drop in the next twenty hours. We’ll get specifics nearer the time.”
“What about additional strengths?” asked Theiss.
Gaunt sniffed. “Nothing confirmed. The signal was terse. I think things may have got hotter up the line. Beltayn’s hearing a lot of combat traffic, some serious armour duels in the main zone. Elikon requires us to make a full threat assessment before they consider releasing any reinforcements our way.”
“That could take days,” said Rawne, “weeks, even. Don’t they understand we can’t even see what we’re fighting?”
“I’ve got a direct vox to vox with Van Voytz scheduled for this afternoon,” Gaunt replied. “I will attempt to explain the situation to him at that time.”
“I’ll talk to him, if you like,” Rawne murmured.
Several of the officers laughed quietly.
“I want to make things better,” said Gaunt, “not worse. How’s Domor?”
“Stable,” Baskevyl replied.
“And Swaythe?”
“Broken limb, some tissue damage, but he’s all right.”
“How’s your arm?”
Baskevyl’s arm had been patched, but he’d refused a sling. “It’s nothing.”
“So, any sign of the force strength that surprised Meryn’s team?” Gaunt asked.
“Not a trace,” replied Kolea. “Meryn’s lads must have hit something, the response they put up, but there’s no sign, not even blood stains where bodies were dragged out. I took a team right along upper sixteen personally. If it wasn’t for the fact they got cut to ribbons, I’d have said they were shooting at shadows.”
“Where does upper west sixteen end?” Gaunt asked.
“It just ends in a box casemate,” said Kolea, “about half a kilometre further on from the attack site.”
“Any access on that stretch?” asked Kamori.
“Two ladder wells and a staircase down to lower sixteen, and a ramp down to lower fourteen,” Kolea replied. “But both spurs had men stationed on them when Meryn’s team was hit. Any hostiles fleeing in either direction would have been picked up.”
“They’re moving in the walls, then,” said Baskevyl with solemn certainty. “False panels, tunnels.”
“Not any w
e can find,” said Mkoll. “And we’ve looked. That was the first notion that occurred to me after your scrape in the power room, Bask. But my scouts simply can’t find any false panels or sally ports anywhere in Hinzerhaus.”
“You’d better look again,” Gaunt told him.
There was a pause. It seemed unthinkable for Gaunt to question his chief scout’s work. Mkoll, however, nodded. If there weren’t any secret access points, the only alternative was something Gaunt had ordered them not to speak about.
“What about the power room?” Gaunt asked.
“Criid’s ready for you to take a look,” Hark said.
II
P Company had spent several hours barricading the workshop end of the power room. They’d stacked up double lines of sandbags and planking, one to cover the door into the workshops, the other to protect the power hub kettle. Two support weapons, crew-served .30s on blunt iron tripods, watched the doorway.
The Ghosts on duty saluted as Gaunt, Mkoll, Kolea and Baskevyl entered the power room.
“Criid?” Gaunt asked.
One of the men pointed towards the workshop door. “In there, sir.”
Baskevyl led the way with a sense of trepidation. He didn’t trust the walls any more, none of them. He kept waiting to hear the scratching, slithering sound again. The little run of workshops was cold, a draught running through them. Another manned barricade had been set up in the third shop along, facing the arch into the fourth and final chamber. Criid and some of her men were waiting for them there.
Baskevyl stiffened. For a second, all he could see was the blizzard of shots popping through the wall panel at him and Domor. Then the other image came again, the ghastly, glistening snake of the daemon-worm, sliding across dry rocks in the dark.
“You all right?” Kolea asked.
“Yeah,” said Baskevyl.
The shot-up wall panels had been crowbarred away, exposing a black socket in the rock wall behind. The hole was about the size of a door hatch, and cold air gusted out of it. Sandbags had been piled up to half block it. The hole didn’t seem to have been dug or cut. It appeared to be a naturally eroded void in the mountain rock.