“How did you know my name?”
“You told me.”
“My forename. Hlaine. I don’t use that anymore. How did you know?”
“I know everything.”
He laughed. Loud and hard, his thin chest shaking as he stripped open his pack. “Feth take you! I’m no deserter!”
“Tell me why.”
“See this?” Larkin slid his sniper rifle from the sling across the back of his pack. He held it up and freed the firing mechanism with a deft twist of his hand.
“A gun.”
“A lasgun. Workhorse of the Guard. Solid, dependable, tough. You can knock it, drop it, club with it, submerge it and it just keeps on going.”
The Angel took a step forward, looking at the gun he held out to her. “It’s not standard. Not a standard M-G pattern. Where’s the integral optics, the charge-setting slide? That barrel: it’s too long, too thin. And that flash suppressed.”
Larkin grinned and reached into his pack. “It’s the sniper variant. Same body, but stripped down. I did some of the work myself. I took out the integral optics because I use this.” He held up a bulky tube to show her for a moment, then slotted it into a bracket on the side of the gun case. He flipped covers off both ends of the tube and the device spread a faint red glow ahead of the gun.
“Night spotter. My own. I tooled the bracket to fit. I used to use it to spot for larisel in the woods back home.”
“Larisel?”
“Small rodents with a fine pelt. Made a good income hunting them before the founding.”
He slid his hands down the gun and tapped the barrel. “XC 52/3 strengthened barrel. Longer, and thinner than the standard. Good for about twenty shots.” He kicked the pack at his feet, which clinked. “I always carry two or three spares. They twist and pull out. You can switch them in about a minute if you know what you’re doing.”
“Why the strengthened barrel?”
“Increased range for a start, tighter accuracy, and because I use these…” Larkin pulled a powerpack from his kit and slammed it into place. “We call them ‘hotshots’. Overpowered energy clips, liquid metal batteries juiced to the limit. Bigger hits but fewer. Perfect for marksman work. And that’s why there’s no charge setting slider on my piece. One size fits all.”
“The stock is made of wood.”
“Nalwood, Tanith grown. Hike what I know.”
“And that long flash suppressed.”
“I’m a sniper, Angel. I don’t want to be seen.”
“Are you a sniper, Hlaine Larkin? I was sure you were a deserter.” The gloomy voice echoed around the chapel.
Larkin turned away from her, expecting a bolt round in the back of the head. His own head was clear, clearer than it had been in months.
“Think what you like. I’ll tell you what I know.”
He crossed to the arched doorway of the chapel and settled down in a crouch, the lasgun resting on a finial of stonework. It afforded him a wide view down onto the half-ruined canal on the upper level of the great aqueduct.
Larkin settled himself, shook out his neck, flexed his arms. He took a sight through the eyepiece of his scope.
“My company’s primary mission was to take Nokad. He’s a charismatic. He leads by personality and that means he stays at the fore. This aqueduct has been recognised by both sides as the primary weakness of Bucephalon. We’ve attacked it. Hard.
“Nokad will want to defend it just as hard. And that means inspiring his troops along the length of it. And that, in turn, means he’ll be here in person.”
“And if he’s not?” asked the Angel.
“Then I’m just another nameless wooden marker in the cemetery.” He was no longer looking at her, no longer caring about her terrible presence. She could be holding that boltgun to his temple for all he cared.
“You trust that scope to make the shot?” she whispered.
“I calibrated it myself. And yes, I trust the scope. Funny thing, but whatever goes on around me, whatever madness…”—and at that Larkin dared a glance round at the hovering presence at his shoulder—“I always see the truth through my scope. It shows me the world as it really is. Truth, not what my fethed up mind tells me is there.”
A long pause.
“Maybe I should look through the scope at you some time?” he ventured.
“Haven’t you got a job to do, Hlaine?”
“Yes. My job.” He turned back to the scope and shut his eyes.
“Your eyes are closed. What are you doing?”
“Shhh! To take a shot, your breathing must be controlled. More than that, your weapon must be pointing naturally at the target.” He opened his eyes again and fiddled with the lasgun as it lay in the lip of stone.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to baffle the barrel against the stone. I need cloth to wrap around it.” He began to pull at his cloak, trying to tear a strip off it. There was a shredding noise behind him. A perfect hand passed him a long strip of glowing white cloth, light and warm to the touch.
“Use this, Hlaine.”
Larkin smiled. He wrapped the silky material around the muzzle of his rifle and then nested it back into the stony over hang. It rested better now, bandaged with angelic satin, neatly snuggled into the turn of the hard buttress.
“Thanks,” he said, resuming his position.
“What are you doing now?”
Larkin flexed, as if fidgeting. “I must have a stable firing position. If the gun wobbles even slightly, the shots can go wild. I need a firm grip, but not too tight. I want it to point naturally at the target. If I have to apply pressure to keep it aimed, then it’s going to miss. See, here’s the trick…” He closed his eyes.
“Take aim and then close your eyes. Open them again. Chances are your aim will have wandered. Realign your body and repeat.”
“How many times?”
“As many as is necessary.” Larkin closed his eyes again, opened them, shuffled, closed his eyes.
“Eventually, when you open your eyes, the gun will be pointing precisely, naturally, exactly where your body falls and directs it.”
“You’re breathing slowly,” said the Angel, a whisper in his ear. “Why?”
Larkin smiled, but ever so slightly as to not disrupt the perfect pattern of his firing position. “Once you’re in position, breathe slow, a regular rhythm. Keep it going, nice and relaxed. When you get the shot, take a couple of deep breaths, pause, breathe out just a tad, and then hold. Then fire. Then breathe out fully.”
“How long will this take?” the Angel asked behind him. “As long as it takes to get a target.”
Nokad the Smiling sang to his brethren as they advanced down the upper canal of the aqueduct. An echelon of things that had been men, now trailing long tattered robes sewn from the hides of those they had defeated. They brandished weapons, slapping them in dull time to the chant. They passed over the butchered and exploded remains of the foe who had assaulted their one weak link that afternoon.
Nokad the Smiling was well over two metres tall, his frame heavy set and powerful. Piercings studded his naked torso and arms: loops, rings, chains and spikes armouring his sheened skin and glittering as brightly as his perfect teeth.
“Make trophies of them!” Nokad grinned as he passed the corpses. Imperial Guard, weak, puny things, draped in dull fatigues and anonymous cloaks. There was fighting ahead, the barking returns of lasguns at close range.
Corbec was in the canal gully with three remaining men and Rawne yelling through the intercom.
“It’s no good! They’ve got it sealed tight! We have to withdraw!”
“Feth you, Rawne! This is the only way! We move in! Bring your men forward!”
“It’s suicide, Corbec, you fool! We’ll all be dead in a moment!”
“Are you deserting me, major? Is that what you’re doing? There’s a price for that!”
“Feth you, you insane moron! You’d have to be utterly mad to go in there!”
> Nokad advanced. His men loved him. They sang together, jubilant as they forced the invaders back.
On the canal lip, Nokad howled his inspirational verses to his men, arms uplifted, chainsword whirring.
There was a crack, a stab of light — and Nokad’s head vanished in a film of blood.
Larkin fell back in the doorway, frothing and convulsing, spasms snapping his body as the brain fever took hold once more.
“Larks? Larks?” Corbec’s voice was soft.
Larkin lay in a foetal ball, messed by his own fluids, in the doorway of the shattered chapel. As he came around he felt his mind was clear, violently clear, like it had been purged with light.
“Colm…”
“You son of a bitch, Larks!” Corbec pulled him upright, unsteady on his legs. Larkin’s lasgun lay on the floor, its barrel broken, burnt and spent.
“You got him! You got him, you old bastard! You smoked him good!”
“I did?”
“Listen to that!” Corbec crowed, pulling Larkin around towards the doorway. There was a cheering and chanting noise rising from below the aqueduct. “They’ve surrendered! We’ve taken Bucephalon! Nokad is fried!”
“Shit…” Larkin sank to his knees.
“And I thought you’d run on us! Honestly! I thought you’d fething deserted!”
“Me?” Larkin said, looking up.
“I shouldn’t have doubted you, should I?” Corbec asked, bear-hugging the wiry little sniper.
“Where’s the angel gone?” Larkin said quietly.
“Angel? There’s no angel here except her!” Corbec pointed to the damaged statue of the angel above the chapel font, a beautiful winged woman knelt in the attitude of prayer. Her perfect hands were clasped. Her head was bowed demurely. The inscription on the plinth rejoiced that she was a symbol of the God-Emperor, a personification of the Golden Throne who had come to the elders of Bucephalon in the first days of the colony and watched over them as they conquered the land.
An old myth. A hunk of stone.
“But—” Larkin started as Corbec dragged him to his feet. “But nothing!” Corbec laughed.
Larkin began to laugh too. He convulsed and gagged with the force of laughter inside him.
Corbec dragged him from the chapel, both laughing still.
The very last thing Larkin saw before Corbec wrenched him away was his fallen lasgun, with the peerless, scorched white cloth still wrapped around the barrel.
A sudden barrage of enemy guns, distant, impatient, came on just before the middle of the night over Monthax, and stippled the belly of the low brown sky with reflected flashes of fire and light. Wet, hollow rumbles barked and growled through the swamps and ground mist like starving hounds. Leagues away, some brutal night-combat was underway.
Gaunt woke instinctively at the sound of the guns and took a walk out of the command shed. The sound was coming from the east and he had a sergeant circle around to check on the sentry lines. The artillery sounded like someone flapping and cracking a large, sweat-damp sheet in the hot, heavy air.
He crossed a gurgling creek via a duck-board bridge and made it into the tree line just as the humidity broke and cold drooling rain began to fall through air suddenly stirred by chill breezes. It was almost a relief, but the rain was sticky and sappy and stung his eyes.
Gaunt found himself on the embanked approach to one of the main sentry towers and pulled himself up the ladder. The towers, set at hundred metre intervals along the main defile, rose some ten metres out of the surface filth. They were fashioned from groups of tree-trunks, shored together and stout buttressed with riveted beams, and supported large flak-board gun-nests mounted on the top.
Up in the dark nest, Trooper Bragg tended a cradle-mounted pair of twinned heavy bolters, drums of shells piled around his huge feet. A flak-board cover kept the rain off and the nest was shrouded by netting.
“Sir!” Bragg saluted, his big face cracking into a broad, embarrassed grin. He was making fortified caffeine over a little burner, his huge paws dwarfing the pot and cup. He tried to hide the flask of sacra behind the stove, but the scent of the liquor was pungent in the close air of the nest.
Gaunt nodded the salute. “I’ll have one myself,” he said. “A stiff one.”
Bragg seemed to relax. He sloshed a generous measure of sacra into a second battered cup and fussed over the boiling pot. Gaunt was amused, as always, by the combination of brutal strength and timidity in this giant of a man. Bragg’s hands were big and strong enough to crush skulls, but he moved almost meekly, as if afraid of his own strength — or afraid of what others might think him capable of.
He handed the commissar a hot cup and Gaunt sat on a pile of shell-drums, gesturing out across the jungle to the east. The nest’s raised vantage point afforded a better view of the distant fighting. Flares and tracers showed above the trees, and as the rain dissipated the mist, there were ruddy ground fires to be seen amid the trunks.
“Someone’s having fun,” he remarked.
Bragg nodded, sipping his own cup. “I make four or maybe five enemy positions, infantry support teams. They’ve advanced and dug in, because the fire-patterns are static, but they’ve found something to shoot at.”
“If they move this way, we’ll need to take action.”
Bragg patted his heavy weapons. “Let ’em come.”
Gaunt grinned. Bragg was a good heavy weapons technician, but his aim had scarcely improved since the Founding. Still, with guns with that sort of cycle rate and that much ammo, he should hit something.
“Oh, while I remember,” Gaunt said, “the western embankments are collapsing again. I told Major Rawne that you’d help the detail re-dig tomorrow. They need some heavy lifting.”
Bragg nodded without question. His great physical strength was an asset to the Ghosts, and was matched by his geniality and willingness to help. He reminded Gaunt of some great blunt weapon, like a club: deadly when delivered properly, but difficult to wield or aim.
Bragg batted a moth away from his face. “Precious little place we’ve found here,” he remarked.
“Monthax is… short on charm,” Gaunt admitted, studying the hulking trooper quizzically. Bragg was a strange man. Gaunt had decided that long ago. He’d never met a human so physically powerful, yet mentally restrained, as if he was somehow afraid of the terrible power he could unleash. Others took it for stupidity and regarded big old Bragg as dumb. But the man patently wasn’t stupid. In his own, quiet, mountainous way, he was the most formidable and dangerous Ghost of all. So preoccupied by his physical power, others always underestimated the mind behind it.
And the mind, Gaunt knew, was the strongest thing of all.
SIX
THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH
Caligula, after the Imperial liberation. Nights as bright as day, lit by the burning hive cities; days as dark as night, choked by the petrochemical smoke. Soot, like fat, black snowflakes, fluttered down everywhere. Even out here, in the deadlands.
Steepled canyons of coral-bright rock. Wisps of fluorescent dust licking the high places and the rims of the calderas. Cracked, dry basins of hard, russet cake-earth. Wide, slumping ridges of glass-sand. And death, bleached and baked white, like bones that had been out in the sun for years.
Eighteen cargo transports, thirty-wheel monsters, coughing blue exhaust from their vertical pipe-stacks, ground down the red-rock pass in low gear. The tractor units at the front of each payload wagon were monsters, armoured cabs of scorched metal rattling on top of a huge engine unit, glaring forward through multiple fog-lamp eyes and grinning fly-flecked smiles of fender bars, radiator grilles and spiked running boards, flanking the massive transports were the outriders, rushing through the dust on track-bikes and in armoured cars.
Palapr Tuvant, transport driver, Caligula born and bred, wrestled with the half-moon wheel of the convoy’s lead freighter and glanced around at his co-driver. Hewn Milloom was looking out of the cab window, occasionally regarding his chronomete
r.
They were both wringing with sweat, entombed by the heat from the roaring engine under their feet. Milloom had dropped the window armour panels and opened the metal vents in the hope of washing them with cool breeze from outside. But the surface temperature out in the deadlands was pushing forty degrees, and they baked. Occasionally, sprays of hot engine oil spurted back from the leaky head gasket and spattered in at them through the forward grille-screen.
Milloom sat back in his ripped leather seat and looked up at the cab’s ceiling hatch. “He’s still up there?”
Tuvant nodded, wrenching the wheel. Both of them were all too used to the juddering, shaking motion of the vehicle. “Probably sticking his head out of the turret like a dog, enjoying the rush of air.”
Milloom chuckled. “Kec, but he’s a dumb-ass, right? Never stood in line for brains.”
Tuvant nodded. “Typical Guard, all muscle and no head. Where the kec were they when the hives fell? Huh? Answer me that?”
“In a troop-ship in transit,” Trooper Bragg answered plainly, his huge bulk clambering down the rungs from the top hatch to join them. He stood at the back of the cab, holding onto a roll-bar for support as the tractor lurched over uneven ground. “Colonel-Commissar Gaunt said we got here as fast as we could.” He smiled sheepishly at the two-man driving team.
“I’m sure he did,” Tuvant murmured.
Bragg edged forward, using handholds to stop himself from falling. “We’re making good time, aren’t we?”
“Brilliant time,” Milloom replied, turning away from the big Ghost. “Calphernia Station will rejoice when we arrive.”
“I’m sure it will,” Bragg smiled, sinking into the bench seat behind the driver’s position. “That’ll be good. When the colonel-commissar ordered me to command this convoy detail, I said to him I will get it through on time, trust me, colonel-commissar. I will. And we are, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are. Right on time,” Tuvant said.
“Good. That’s good. The colonel-commissar will be pleased.”