The battle in the ammunition corridor had taken seven minutes to conclude in the Ghosts’ favour. Squaring off against a Shadik battalion of slightly greater size, Gaunt’s infiltration group had lost five men — four Ghosts and one of Golke’s Bande Sezari troopers. But their superior weaponry and, in Gaunt’s opinion, far superior battlecraft had left nearly thirty Shadik troopers dead. Broken, the rest had fallen back.
Undoubtedly, the Shadik commanders knew they had intruders now. Despite the open invitation to the siege guns’ location offered by the corridor, Gaunt and Mkoll had pulled the mission team off east into a muddy, trackless wasteland beyond.
The area was lightless and cold, rambling with old lines of wire and jumbles of wreckage. Weeds and thorny scrub grew in dumps and thickets, sprouting around the split rockcrete of old pill boxes and between the axles of rusted trucks. This was an old battlefield, years old, that the war had passed over and left behind. Now it was just dead ground in the hinterland of the Republican line.
The Ghosts advanced silently through the dark terrain, heading north, towards the titanic blasts of the guns. They kept the ammunition corridor just in sight to their left, and moved parallel to its course.
There would be troops out searching for them. Gaunt was sure of that. Even with the huge offensive going on, drawing on Shadik manpower, the enemy commanders would not allow a suspected infiltration so close to their super-guns to go unchecked.
On three occasions, the Ghosts dropped down into cover when the scouts alerted them to Shadik patrols in the corridor. Gaunt didn’t need another stand-up fight at this stage. Better to hide and wait and move on once the jeopardy had passed.
The night sky was amber, tinged by the vast doughnut of smoke drifting out from the guns. On occasions, they glimpsed the moon, an orange semi-circle dancing in and out of the bars of cloudy exhaust.
Nearly three hours after they had first emerged from the mill tunnel, they came up to a ridge that overlooked the guns.
The monsters.
It was physically hard to observe them directly. For the last forty minutes the Imperials had been trudging through a wasteland made spectral by the almighty flashes going off beyond the black horizon. They had almost become acclimatised to the noise and the light and the trembling soil.
But looking on the guns was virtually impossible. The flashes seared eyesight, leaving idiot repeats glowing on the back of the eyelids. The Shockwaves came like slaps. The discharge blasts felt like they were exploding eardrums. Beltayn reported that the pulse shock had killed all vox-links.
Lying on his side on the earth near the top of the ridge, with the men spread out below him, Gaunt pondered his next move. He felt frustration gnawing at him. They’d got so close, against all expectations except his own, and now they couldn’t go the last distance.
It was like one of the myths he’d read as a child in the scholam progenium. Monsters so ghastly that the very breath or sight of them blinded men and turned them to stone.
He adjusted his data-slate and took a compass bearing. At least now he had accomplished something. The precise location of the siege guns was known to them. Without other options to hand, their imperative now was to get that information back to GSC. And that meant physically, with the vox dead.
Gaunt turned to Mkoll and the sergeants and used Verghast scratch-company sign language to communicate his intention to pull back and break out. Halfway through, a chillingly eerie thing happened. Darkness and silence fell.
It wasn’t complete silence. The distant, frenzied commotion of the offensive was now audible, and it wasn’t true darkness either because of the ambient background firelight.
But the guns had stopped firing.
Gaunt crawled back to the top of the ridge. What he had only vaguely glimpsed before was now laid out below him. The monster guns, each one set on a huge rail cart, their massive barrels, the size of manufactory chimneys, elevated to the sky. There were seven of them, just like Bonin had insisted. Smoke lay thick like ground fog around them, blurring their shapes and distorting the bare white glow of the chemical lanterns strung up around the area. Gaunt saw figures moving around, gun-crew dwarfed by the huge railway cannons. Electric hoists and flatbed loading carts, which had been occupied serving shells into the automatic arming mechanisms, were now busy clearing unused shells and propellant-mix cartridges clear of the firing site. Some laden carts were being attached to a greasy shunting engine that began puffing them away down the ammunition corridor.
“Why d’you think they’ve stopped?” whispered Golke.
“They’ve been firing all night,” Gaunt replied. “I imagine there comes a point when the barrels get so hot, you have to let them cool. God-Emperor! Now we’ve found them, what do we do?”
Golke shrugged. Even dormant, the massive guns and their riveted steel cars looked invincible. Oil and condensation dripped from their huge shock-absorber pylons and clung in glittering droplets to the taut wires of the warping winches. The shells alone were taller than a man.
The Ghosts had proved their bravery, tenacity and ability to Golke without doubt, but what could they, with lasrifles or even tube-charges, do against such juggernauts?
“I don’t think there’s much chance of us spiking them,” Mkoll said to Gaunt, as if reading Golke’s thoughts. “I reckon I could feth up a field gun or a howitzer fairly permanently, but I wouldn’t know where to begin with one of these. Let alone seven.”
“What about the munitions?” Domor suggested.
Gaunt thought about it. None of them were demolitions experts. Domor’s landmine skills were as close as that got. Although a big explosion was the basic result he was looking for, he didn’t want to go fiddling around with the shells or the cartridges.
They didn’t even know what mixes and forces the Shadik were using, or what type of explosives or propellants. They might get a big explosion all right but one that incinerated them and left the guns standing. Besides, the Shadik were shipping the spare munitions away even as they watched. They knew the risks.
“I think we have to cut our losses,” said Gaunt. “Getting these co-ordinates back to the GSC is going to be a job in itself, and I think we’re going to have to settle for being content with that.”
“If we can’t screw with the guns themselves,” said Dorden suddenly, “why don’t we screw up their use?”
“What, doctor?”
“Their mobility. They’re too big for us to deal with, so we use their size against them. You fancy moving one of those without rails?”
Gaunt chuckled to himself. Obvious, elegant, simple. The Republic had constructed a major system of wide-gauge tracks along their front line, connected with service lines, sidings and ammunition corridors, so that the siege guns could be shunted from one firing position to the next. At locations like the one they overlooked, the double line fanned out into reinforced spurs so that the guns could sit alongside each other. But that main double line was their only way of moving.
“What are we carrying in the way of tube-charges?” Gaunt asked Mkoll.
“Enough to blow the main line here and on the far side for a good distance.”
“They’ll repair them,” said Golke.
“Of course, but how long will that take, sir?” asked Gaunt. “A day? Two days? Besides, struggling back with this location setting will be a pointless effort if by the time we’ve got an airstrike or an armour push lined up the guns have been moved again. I don’t think we’ve got a choice, realistically. We have to blow the line. If we take out the ammo corridor too, they won’t even be able to fire the guns let alone shift them until the repairs are done.”
Golke nodded. “How do we do this?” he asked.
They broke into four groups roughly along platoon lines. Mkoll’s unit would move up, skirting the firing site, and wire the track sections north of the guns. Gaunt allowed him ten minutes’ head start to get into position. Domor’s squad went east, to rig the ammunition corridor’s line. Arcuda?
??s dropped back west and right of the ridge to set their charges along the southern stretch. Gaunt stayed with Criid’s platoon and the elements of Raglon’s on the ridge, ready to provide fire support if things woke up.
Ideally, the blasts should happen pretty much simultaneously. Co-ordination was hard without the vox. Gaunt had them synchronise their timepieces. The deadline was at 04.00 hours. Charges should be laid by then. At 04.00, each team leader would fire a red starshell to signal readiness, then Gaunt would fire a white shell to order detonation. If any reds hadn’t fired by that time, then Gaunt would wait two minutes. After that, it was white flare anyway and pull out. They agreed a rendezvous back in the deadlands.
“Remember,” Gaunt told them, “if it comes to a choice between sticking to the deadline and blowing the tracks, blow the tracks. We can always improvise if we have to. The Emperor protects, so serve him well.”
It was two minutes to four. The sounds of battle were still rolling in from the front line. The cover team left on the ridge waited nervously. They felt vulnerable and alone now there were so few of them.
Beltayn snapped a white signal pellet into his flare pistol and handed it to Gaunt. “Safety’s off, sir,” he said.
“Problem!” Criid hissed urgently. Gaunt looked where she was pointing. A detachment of Shadik troopers was filing out into the siege gun firing area from a trench head to their west. Gaunt counted at least sixty men. Clad in long coats and helmets, their weapons ready and lowered in their hands, they were searching between the gun cars and the loading hoists.
Looking for us. Gaunt thought. Looking for the infiltrators.
“Ready your weapons,” he called down the line. “Wait for my word.”
Some of the Shadik had lanterns. Two had teams of snarling canines.
Gaunt tucked the flare pistol into his pocket and took out his boltgun. Full clip. He drew his power sword and laid it on the earth beside him.
Down the line, the Ghosts in Criid and Raglon’s squads fitted new clips to their Mark III’s and fixed their blades to the barrels, each trooper stabbing the warknife into the ridge soil first to dull its shine.
Golke and the Bande Sezari soldiers got their solid-round weapons ready.
One more minute.
Be on time, all of you, Gaunt willed. Be on time.
Alarm whistles suddenly blew. The enemy detachment abruptly began running, moving in a flood to the east. Gaunt saw muzzle flashes and heard the crack of rifles.
They were heading into the ammunition corridor. Domor’s team had been spotted.
“On them!” Gaunt yelled. “First-and-Only!” The cover team broke from the ridge and came down the slope, guns blazing. The Shadik unit faltered, suddenly under fire from their left. The Ghosts ripped into them.
Gaunt was right in the middle of it. His boltgun howled and blew an enemy infantryman apart. His majestic blade, the power sword of Heironymo Sondar, gifted to him in gratitude by the people of Vervunhive, flickered with blue lightning. Beside him, Beltayn was firing from the shoulder as he ran, thumping bright las-bolts into the greatcoated enemy.
Beyond Beltayn, Criid was urging her Ghosts on, deploying them in right groups even in the melee of an impromptu charge.
I made a good choice in Tona, Gaunt thought.
A second later, a Shadik battlettooper was in his face, lunging with a serrated bayonet. Gaunt deflected with the sword, shearing off the front half of the man’s gun and an arm with it. A bolt-round settled the man right behind him.
Lubba’s flamer roared and lit up the night. Gaunt saw two Shadik lurching away, burning from head to toe. Hwlan, Vulli and Kolea laid in side by side. Kolea seemed to have forgotten how a lasrifle worked. He was scything into the enemy with his bayonet fixed, reaping them down like com stalks, hacking like a miner at an ore-face.
It was a blur of frantic, face-to-face killing. Golke blasted with his revolver until it was empty, and then grabbed up a Shadik submachine-gun that had fallen on the gravel of the track bed.
One of the Bande Sezari men beside him convulsed as rifle rounds tore through him. Golke swung round and cracked away with the compact weapon, knocking three of the enemy troopers off their feet.
“More of them!” Raglon yelled above the din of combat. Gaunt could see another company of Shadik troopers streaming out of the eastern trench-head to reinforce the first. Grenades blared and flashed in the night.
Domor’s squad had been pinned down and then driven off by the first fusillades. They had taken cover around a parked munitions truck about two hundred metres down the corridor.
“Sir!” Beltayn yelled. Gaunt looked up and saw two red starshells fading away. In the frenzy of it all, he’d almost missed the signals from Mkoll and Arcuda.
Two out of three. Good enough. It would have to do.
“Break off and retreat!” he bellowed, and fired the white flare.
As soon as the corpse light of the white signal bloomed above them, a hot yellow burst exploded to the north, and then another, seconds later, to the west.
The cover team, firing behind them as they went, battled up the ridge and back into the darkness of the wasteland. They left the sidings and track beds littered with Shadik dead.
Gaunt checked his bearings by the luminous dial of his compass. They were right on the rendezvous point. “Head count!” he ordered to Beltayn.
Behind them, yellow light flickered the night. The main line was severed both north and south of the gun sidings.
Two minutes passed, and Arcuda’s team emerged out of the gloom. Then Domor’s squad struggled in, breathlessly.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Domor panted. “We were almost set when they hit us. I tried to go back and finish the job, but they had the area bracketed.”
“Don’t worry, Domor. You did your best. We hit the main transit line, that’s the important thing. Those guns aren’t going anywhere.”
“But they’ll still be able to fire with the corridor open to supply them.” Domor looked forlorn with disappointment.
Gaunt gripped him by the shoulders. “You did all right, Shoggy. Really. You did your best, that’s all I ever ask for. We sit tight here now until Mkoll’s mob rejoins us and then we have fun and games getting out of here. All right?”
Domor nodded.
Beltayn reappeared. “We left a few dead behind us, sir, but everyone’s accounted for. Except—”
“Except?”
“Count Golke, sir.”
Shadik troopers were milling around the firing site, and spreading out down the lines, surveying the damage with lanterns. Two huge craters marred the tracks, one on each side of the siege gun emplacement. More troopers, muffled in their heavy, drab coats and trench armour, shambled south down the corridor line, picking over the bodies. One called for an officer as he found the half-laid tube-charges between the sleepers.
Count Golke crouched behind the bogies of the munition cart, barely twenty metres from the nearest enemy soldier. He watched as they grouped around and cut apart the wires connecting the tube-bombs, pulling them off the tracks. The officer waved a hand and barked orders, sending a squad of about ten down to check the cart.
The troopers approached, rifles ready, the lamplight glinting off their helmets and bayonets.
Golke limped round the back end of the cart. It was actually a linked line of three, laden with propellant cartridges, waiting for the next shunting engine to move in and pull it down to the armoured magazines.
Golke climbed up onto the middle cart. It was hard work with his hip. He winced and grunted.
The bullet wound in his chest made it harder still.
He got onto the top, and sat down between the canister hoppers. He smiled. He’d come back into the Pocket, faced his demons, and come through it. Now he was going to his victory too. It was due him.
What he’d failed to achieve as a commander, he would do as a trooper.
The enemy soldiers were around the carts now. He could hear their voices. One ca
lled out. He’d found the trail of Golke’s blood.
Golke heard more voices, and boots clunking on rungs of the cart’s metal side ladder.
Those Shadik voices. The voices of the enemy.
Golke wished the whole war could have been as simple as this.
He coughed, and blood welled out of his mouth and down his chin. A Shadik called out, he’d heard the cough. Golke caught the sound of bolt-actions cranking.
He lifted up the tube-charge. It was the only one he’d been able to tear free from the tangle Domor’s team had wired to the tracks. There’d been no time for more.
He wasn’t sure how it worked, but there was a paper tab on the top that looked like an igniter strip.
He felt footsteps on the body of the track. A Shadik trooper appeared around the side of the right hand hopper and called out as he saw Golke lying there.
The trooper raised his rifle.
“For the Emperor,” Golke said, and tore the det-tape away.
The tube fired. Canisters around ruptured. Propellant cartridges ignited. The blast lit up the valley for a moment. One hundred metres of ammunition corridor and the land around it vanished in a geyser of flame.
SIXTEEN
COMEUPPANCE
“I hate last stands. You never get an opportunity to practise for them.”
—Piet Gutes
The sky was full of stars. They were pink, and vaguely oblong. On the horizon, sheaves of white fireworks danced and burst, like the firecrackers of a victory parade. The air was pulsing with a strange humming sound, like a moaning human voice swimming in and out of hearing. A dark shadow suddenly eclipsed the stars. A big shadow that filled the sky. “Wake up,” said a voice.
He obeyed, moving. The strange sky, with its ghastly, wrong stars, drained away. He smelled cold air and heard the patter of heavy rain close by.