“Sarge! Sarge!” They all heard Seena sing out.
“What?” replied Haller, looking up from a maintenance vent he had been buried to his shoulders in.
Seena was up on the gallery, watching the upper doorway.
“We’ve got company.” Her voice was sweetly sing-song.
What it meant was anything but.
“Come on! Come on!” Corbec was yelling, standing up and waving his arms despite the enemy crossfire splashing all around. The Ghosts in his squad, along with Bray’s troops, dashed back through the hatchway, a rain of fire dropping around them.
Irvinn stumbled, and Corbec dragged him through the hatch by the scruff of his neck. “Is the shield down, chief?” he babbled. “Not yet, son.”
“But Commissar Gaunt said it would be! He said it would be!”
“I know.”
“If the shield isn’t down, we’re backing ourselves into a trap, chief, we—”
Corbec cuffed the young trooper around the side of the head. “Gaunt’ll come through. That’s what he does. He’ll come through and we’ll live! Now get in there and take your position!”
Irvinn scrambled on.
Corbec looked back in time to see two more Ghosts fall on their way to the hatch. One was Widden, whose body was struck so hard by .50 fire it was deformed completely. The other was Muril. She was hit and thrown in a cartwheel that ended with her lying on her face.
“No!” Corbec roared.
“Colm! Wait!” Sergeant Bray yelled.
“Get them back in, Bray, get them back in!” Corbec howled, running out from the hatchway towards Muril. Las-fire ripped up the deck around him, filling the air with a fog of atomised tiles.
Somehow, he reached Muril. He rolled her over. Her face was white with dust and dotted with blood that soaked into the dust like ink into clean blotting paper. Her eyelids flickered.
“Come on, girl! We’re going!” he shouted. “C-colonel—”
He looked her over, and saw the wound in her upper thigh. Bad, but survivable. He hoisted her onto his shoulders.
One of his legs gave way suddenly and they both fell over into the dust, kicking up a serene cloud of white mist.
Everything seemed to slow down. Everything seemed to go quiet.
Corbec saw the enemy las-rounds swirling through the dust in what seemed like slow motion; crackling barbs of red light, eddying wakes behind them in the dust; the oozingly slow on-off flashes of explosions; the strobe of tracers; the drops of bright red blood falling from Muril onto the floor, making soft craters in the dust.
He lifted her up again, and ran, but it was hard work. His leg didn’t want to move.
There was a sudden pain in his back, and then another really biting lance of agony through his left shin.
He toppled in through the hatchway, into Bray’s arms. Merrt and Bewl ran forward, mouths open, managing to catch Muril before she hit the ground.
“Medic! Medic!” Bray was yelling.
Corbec realised he couldn’t move. Everything felt strangely warm and soft. He lay on his back, looking at the panelled roof.
It seemed to slide up and away from him. The last thing he heard was Bray still screaming for a medic.
Viktor Hark fired his plasma pistol into the knots of foe around the doorway. The combined squads of Rawne, Daur and Meryn were spread out and dropping back through the dead park. There was nothing behind them except shield-blocked hatches.
They’d given up valuable ground on Gaunt’s orders. There had been nothing in return.
Hark fired again. They were going to be killed. One by one, with the shield at their backs.
Sergeant Agun Soric, hero of Vervunhive, sat back against the wall. The wound in his chest was sucking badly, and bloody foam was bubbling around the seared entry hole. Slowly, he raised his lasgun in one hand, but the weight of it was too much.
Men in red with metal grotesques were prowling forward towards him through the smoke.
Sergeant Theiss knelt beside him, coming out of nowhere. He fired at the enemy, forcing them into cover.
“Pull him up!” Soric heard Theiss yell.
Soric felt himself being lifted. Doyl and Mallor were under him, and Lanasa had his feet.
Theiss, with Kazel, Venar and Mtane, laid down backing fire.
“Are we through?” gurgled Soric. “The shield…?”
“No,” said Doyl.
“Well…” said Soric, his eyes fading. “It’s been a good run, while it lasted…”
“Soric!” Doyl yelled. “Soric!”
The first of the Blood Pact hit the vapour mill control chamber along the upper passage.
Seena returned their fire until Ezlan and Nehn joined her. Her gunfire was punctuated with curses about the .30 she should have been firing.
It was a narrow hall, and the three Ghost guns could hold it… unless the enemy brought up something more punishing.
Three minutes after the upper hatch was assaulted, the lower main door guarded by Mkeller came under fire. He saw a grenade slung his way in time to slam the heavy iron hatch shut. The blast shook the door. Haller ran up and helped Mkeller throw the lock bolts on the corners of the hatch.
“That won’t hold them long,” said Mkeller, and as if to prove it, the thump of beating fists and gun-stocks began against the door.
Lwlyn, stationed in the other main floor doorway, suddenly fell back on his backside with a curse. Blood soaked out across his battledress from his left shoulder.
“I’m hit,” he said, then fainted.
Ferocious las-fire ripped in through his hatchway. Two bolts struck Lwlyn’s unconscious form sprawled in the open and made sure he would never wake up.
Guthrie reached the door and yanked it shut as las-fire hammered on the outside.
“If we’re going to do something, we’d better do it now!” Guthrie yelled.
Bonin glanced at Domor. Domor shrugged. The chamber was a mess, with spools of wires draped out of every corner.
“For what it’s worth, soldier,” said Jagdea, sitting down against the wall, “I think you did your best.” She slid her short-bladed survival knife from her boot-top and slit open the cuff of her pressure suit. Bonin saw her tumble two white tablets out of the hollow cuff and tip them into her palm. She raised them to her mouth.
Bonin leapt forward and slapped them aside.
“What the feth are you doing?”
“Get off me!”
“What the feth are you doing?”
“Taking the honourable route out, soldier. We’re dead. Worse than dead. Fighter Command give us those tablets in case we have to ditch behind enemy lines. The Blood Pact don’t take prisoners, you know.”
“You were going to kill yourself?”
“Skinwing venom, concentrated. It’s quite painless, so I’m told.”
Bonin slowly shook his head. Upon the gallery, Seena, Ezlan and Nehn were blasting away.
“Suicide, Commander Jagdea? Isn’t that the coward’s way out?”
“Screw you, soldier. How much clearer do you need it? We’re dead. Dee-ee-ay-dee. I’d rather die without pain than greet the death they’re bringing.”
Bonin dropped down in a crouch in front of her and scooped up the poison pills. He rolled them in his palm.
“Colonel-Commissar Gaunt taught me that death was something to be fought every last step of the way. Not welcomed. Not invited. Death comes when it comes and only a fool would bring it early.”
“Are you calling me a fool, Bonin?”
“I’m only saying that all is not yet lost.”
“Really?”
“Really. It may only be a soldier’s ignorant philosophy, but in the Guard, we keep fighting to the end. If we die, we die. But suicide is never an option.”
Jagdea stared up at him.
“Give me the pills.”
“No.”
“I think I outrank you.”
“I hardly care.” Bonin dropped the tablets onto the floor and crushed them wi
th his heel. “Damn you, Bonin.”
“Yes, commander.”
“Do you really think something’s going to change here? That we might be miraculously rescued?”
“Anything’s possible, as long as you allow for it. My mother told me I was born under a lucky star. That luck’s never left me. There have been times I should have died. At Vervunhive. I can show you the scars.”
“Spare me.” Her voice was thin and frail now.
“I believe in my luck, Jagdea. Tanith luck.”
“Screw you, we’re all dead. Listen to that.”
Bonin heard the furious hammering at the doors, the frantic resistance of the trio on the gallery.
“Maybe. If we are, I promise you won’t suffer.”
“You’ll do me yourself? How gallant.”
Bonin ignored the sarcasm. “Tanith First-and-Only, ma’am. We look after our own.”
On the gallery, Nehn flinched back, winged. Seena saw a Blood Pact trooper charging them… only to fall. In all the worlds, it looked to her like he had been hit in the back of the head by a hot-shot. The assault lapsed.
Her micro-bead chirped. “Who’s down there?” It was the Imperial Guard channel. “Twenty-fourteen, come back?” she whispered. “Nine, twenty fourteen. That you, Seena?”
“Sarge?”
“Large as life and twice as ugly, girl.”
“It’s Kolea! It’s Kolea!” Seena sang out to the chamber.
The combined squads of Obel, Kolea and Varl moved in through the upper gallery and joined up with Haller and Domor’s units. It was all very calm, matter of fact. There were a few handshakes and greetings. No whooping, no cheering, nothing to betray the elation they all felt. Nothing to acknowledge the dazzling fortune that had just turned their way.
By then, nearly psychotic levels of Blood Pact opposition were thrashing in at the main ground floor hatchways. Varl sent the flamers to subdue it.
“Of course,” Kolea was saying.
“Really?” asked Haller, who’d been his second in the Vervunhive scratch units.
“You don’t work mines and power plants all your life and not know how the generator flow-systems work.”
Kolea walked over to what seemed like a side console and threw a nondescript lever.
The lights dimmed. The gauges dropped. The thundering pant of the turbines pitched away.
He turned from the console and saw the dumbstruck faces all around.
“What? What?”
The shields went down.
There was an electrical crackle and a sudden, violent rush of air as the shield at the end of the stateroom vanished and pressure equalised.
“Now,” yelled Ibram Gaunt. “Now, now, now! Men of Tanith, Men of Verghast! The tables turn!”
“Show me what the Imperial Guard can do!”
A REAPPRAISAL OF COMBAT POLICY
CIRENHOLM CITY OCCUPATION,
PHANTINE 214 to 222.771, M41
“Cirenholm was taken after seven hours of determined assault. A handsome victory for the Imperial Guard. That’s what the textbooks will say. However, the crucial gains that enabled the victory were achieved not by mass assault, but by the stealthy application of highly trained, highly disciplined individuals who were sensibly trusted with an unusual degree of command autonomy, and who used their polished covert skills to disable the enemy defences more completely than ten thousand slogging infantry units could ever have managed. It’s just a shame we didn’t plan it that way.”
—Antonid Biota, Chief Imperial Tactician, Phantine Theatre
ONE
Swollen plumes of brown fire-smoke drifted up from the south-facing edges of Cirenholm’s trio of domes, and diluted into yellow smog in the hard morning sunlight.
From the upper observation deck of the primary dome, it was difficult to believe Phantine was a toxic world. The bright sun made the high altitude sky powder-blue and, down below the sculptural curves of the domes, great oceans of knotted white cloud spread out as far as the eye could see. Only occasionally was there a dark stain or a ruddy surge of flame visible beneath the clouds as the inferno of the Scald underlit them.
Like a pod of great sea mammals, the drogues were coming in. Eight of them, each a kilometre long from nose-ram to tail fins, coasting along on the morning wind, their taut silver and white skins gleaming. Pairs of tiny, fast moving Lightnings crossed between them, making repeated low passes over the city. Gunships, weapon-mounted variants of the drops that had brought them to Cirenholm, slunk along beside the vast drogues in escort.
It was cold up on the observation deck. The city’s heating systems were still off-line. It was taking a long time to get the vapour mill running back to optimum after the sudden shutdown.
Gaunt pulled his long storm coat tight. Ice crystals were forming on the glass of the observation port, and he wiped them off with a gloved hand. There was something infinitely relaxing about watching the drogues approach. He could just hear the distant chop of their massive prop banks. Every now and then, the glass vibrated as a Lightning burned low overhead.
“Ibram?”
Gaunt turned. Hark had entered the observation gallery, cradling two beakers of steaming caffeine.
“Viktor, thank you,” Gaunt said, taking one.
“Quite a sight,” noted Hark, blowing the steam off his caffeine as he sipped it.
“Indeed.”
A pilot tug had just fluttered out to anchor the nose of the lead drogue and drag it into the hangar decks under the lip of the primary dome. Gaunt watched the letters painted on the drogue’s nose — ZEPHYR — slowly disappear one by one as it passed into the deep shadow under the lip.
Gaunt drank his hot caffeine gingerly. “What’s the latest?” He’d remained on station with Beltayn for six hours, supervising the comm-traffic, before catching a few, restless hours of sleep in an unaired room off the grand states in secondary. Since he’d risen, he’d tried to stay away from the babbling voxes. He needed calm.
“Some fighting still in the northern sectors. Rawne’s pretty much cleared the last of secondary. Tertiary is clean, and Fazalur’s moving his forces up into primary to bolster the Urdeshi. Heaviest resistance is up in the north block of primary. Some bad stuff, but it’s just a matter of time. We found the citizens, though. Kept in mass pens in the tertiary dome. Fazalur liberated them. We’re beginning rehousing and repopulation.”
Gaunt nodded.
“What?” asked Hark.
“What what?”
Hark smiled. It was a rare expression for him. “That look in your eyes. Sadness.”
“Oh, that. I was just pitying the Urdeshi. They had the worst of it, all told. What’s the count now?”
“Twelve hundred dead, another nine hundred wounded.”
“And us?”
“Twenty-eight dead. Two hundred wounded.”
“How’s Corbec?”
Hark sighed. “It’s not looking good. I’m sorry, Ibram.”
“Why? You didn’t shoot him. What about Agun Soric?”
“They’ve crash resuscitated him twice already. He should have died on the spot, the wound he took.”
“Agun’s a tough old feth. He’ll go when he wants to.”
“Let’s hope it’s not yet, then. I don’t know which we’d miss most.”
Gaunt frowned. “What do you mean?”
Hark shrugged. “Corbec’s the heart of the Tanith First. Everyone loves him. We lose him, it’d be a body blow to all. But Soric is cut from the same doth. He means a lot to the Verghastites. If he dies, I think it’ll knock the stuffing out of the Verghast sections of the regiment. And we don’t want that.”
“They have other leaders: Daur, Kolea.”
“And they’re respected. But not like Soric. He’s their father figure, like the Tanith have Corbec. Kolea could make more of himself, but I don’t think he wants to be a totem. I honestly think Kolea would be happier as a basic trooper.”
“I think so too, sometimes.” Gaunt
watched the next drogue, the Boreas, as it was tugged in under the hangar housing.
“Daur’s a good man too,” Hark continued. “I like him, but he’s… I don’t know. Perky. Eager. The Verghastites don’t like that very much. He’s not grounded like Soric. And the Tanith positively despise him.”
“Daur? They despise Daur?” Gaunt was shocked.
“Some of them,” said Hark, thinking of Rawne. “Most of the Tanith genuinely appreciate the Verghast new blood, but none of them can really shake the notion of intrusion. Intrusion into their regiment. Daur landed authority equal to Major Rawne. To many, he exemplifies the invasion of the First-and-Only by the Vervunhivers.”
“To Rawne, you mean?”
Hark grinned. “Yes, him especially. But not just him. It’s an honour thing. Surely you’ve noticed it?”
Gaunt nodded without replying. He was well aware of the way Hark was testing him. Hark was a loyal man, and had begun to perform his duties as regimental commissar impeccably. But he was always testing boundaries. It pleased Hark to think he was more in tune with the First’s spirit than Gaunt.
“I know we’ve got a good way to go before the Tanith and Verghastite elements of this regiment reach comfortable equilibrium,” said Gaunt after a long pause. “The Tanith men feel proprietorial about the regiment. Even the most broad-minded of them see the Verghastites as outsiders. It’s their name on the standard and the cap badge, after all. And it’s got nothing to do with ability. I don’t think any Tanith would question the fighting spirit of the Vervunhivers. It’s just a matter of… pride. This is and always was the Tanith regiment. The new blood we brought from Verghast is not Tanith blood.”
“And, in reverse, the same goes for the Verghastites,” agreed Hark. “This isn’t their regiment. They’ve got their own insignia, but they’ll never get their name on the standard placard. They feel the resentment of the Tanith… they feel it because it’s real. And they understand it, which makes things worse. They want to make a mark for themselves. I’m actually surprised the divide hasn’t been more… difficult.”