[Gaunt's Ghosts 05] - The Guns of Tanith

  He had avoided them. He had stayed away. No one had ever found out the truth, except for Surgeon Curth, in whom he had confided.

  It was better that way. It freed him.

  Freed him to fight and die and serve the Emperor.

  Kolea ran on into a rain of fire. He was a big man who had served a long time in the mines of Verghast. Grim, largely humourless, powerful. He should have formed a huge target, but somehow the enemy fire missed him. Shots ripped the air around him, cast sparks from the pillars, blew stone chips from the floor.

  He lived.

  He thought about diving for cover, but he was so nearly there it didn’t seem to matter.

  Kolea came on the enemy position from the side, leapt over the horseshoe of sandbags and shot the two cannon gunners down.

  A third lunged at him from the left and Kolea’s bayonet tip punched through his forehead with a crack.

  These brutes were Blood Pact. They wore old but well maintained suits of armour-plated canvas dyed a dark red, drapes of ammo-belts and munition pouches secured on black nylon webbing, and crimson steel bowl helmets with sneering, hook-nosed blast-visors. Chaos insignia glinted on their sleeves and chests.

  More Blood Pact troops rushed out at Kolea, assuming they had been stormed by force. Their red-tunicked forms twisted away as Varl ran forward, firing his lasgun on auto, yelling the names of his sisters, his father, his mother and his homestead farm.

  Raflon, Nour and Brostin were right behind him. Ration made a stupendously good shot that burst the skull of a Blood Pact trooper who was turning out of cover from behind a doorpost.

  Then Brostin washed the hallway beyond with a bright belch of promethium flame. Something exploded. Two Blood Pact troopers staggered into the main hall, their red uniforms ablaze, the armour plating falling out of the burning canvas of their sleeves.

  Wordlessly, Varl and Kolea heaved the enemy autocannon around on its tripod and blitzed down into the corridor beyond: Varl firing, his hands clamped to the yoke, Kolea feeding the belts from the use-bruised panniers.

  The big old cannon had huge power. Varl knew that. A minute before he’d been running into it.

  Heavy support fire blasted from their left. Bragg was alongside them now, firing his autocannon from the hip, his feeder Caill fighting to keep up the supply of fresh drum mags.

  “On! In!” Kolea barked. Nour and Bragg, Caill, Raflon, Hwlan, Brostin and Brehenden, Vril and Mkvan, a dozen more, ran past them into the inner hall, covering and firing.

  Varl threw the emptied cannon aside and looked at Kolea.

  “You’re mad, Gol.”

  “Mad? War’s mad. We broke them, didn’t we?”

  “You broke them. You’re mad. Crazy. Insane.”

  “Whatever.”

  They picked up their lasguns and moved on after the point men. “When I tell Gaunt what you did—” Varl began.

  “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  Kolea looked round, and Varl could see his eyes, dark and serious behind the misted plates of his gas-hood. “Just don’t.”

  “We rope out. Now,” said Domor. Drop 2K lurched again as cannon fire struck it.

  “Rope out?” Sergeant Haller returned, horrified.

  “Just shut up and do it or we’re dead.”

  “Onto the dome?”

  “Yes, onto the dome!”

  “But we’ve missed the DZ! We should—”

  “Should what?” snapped Domor, turning to stare at Haller. “Abort? Take your chances with that if you like, Verghast I don’t think so—”

  “Air speed’s dropping!” Milo cut in.

  “Thrusters are failing. I can’t get lift!” the pilot called back from the cockpit.

  “Go!” said Domor. Haller was at one hatch, Bonin and Nehn at the other. The burning drop was wallowing over the dome, in darkness now, the curve of the dome eclipsing the flare of the main fight. They couldn’t see a thing. They might as well be over the edge of the dome for all they could tell. The night was awash of black with no solid edges.

  “We have to—” Domor said.

  It seemed to Commander Bree Jagdea that the fight was happening a long way away, on another planet. Flares and flashes lit up the night sky to her right, but they were a long, long way away.

  She lay on the curved metal surface of one of Cirenholm’s habitat domes, the secondary one she guessed. It was cold and the crossing night wind bit deep. Her arm and several ribs were broken from the ejected landing. Her flight suit was torn.

  Her blimp-chute had barely had time to deploy as she had fired up out of the seat of her dead fighter. Smack, the dome had come up to meet her hard.

  And here, she presumed, she would stay until the midnight frosts made her a brittle part of the dome roof decoration.

  When Jagdea saw the drop-ship, it was already on fire and coming in low over the dome towards her, spitting debris and flame, crawling crippled from the main fight.

  She saw the hatches were open, saw figures in the hatches. Men about to rope out.

  They were going long. They were going long, off the edge of the dome, into the Scald.

  She didn’t think. She pulled the toggle on the canister in her chute webbing and popped bright incandescent fire across the dome roof around her.

  “Here!” she screamed, flailing her one good arm, like someone in need of rescue. “Here!”

  In truth, she was the one doing the rescuing.

  “Feth! We just got a DZ!” Bonin yelped.

  “What?” Haller said, pulling at his hood to get a clear view.

  “There, sergeant!” Bonin pointed.

  “Steer us to port! To port!” Domor voxed the pilot.

  Drop 2K yawed left, up and over the side of the secondary dome, a dark hemisphere below it. There was a splash of almost fluorescent light on the surface of the dome, a fizzle of flare just now beginning to sputter away.

  The men roped out. Milo led the squad out of the port, his hook whizzing down the cable until he slammed into the curving roof and tumbled off. Domor was behind him, then Bonin, then Ezlan.

  On the starboard side, Haller came out, followed by Vadim, Reggo and Nirriam.

  The men thumped down onto the roof, scrabbling for handholds, desperate not to slide off into the night. Twenty men down, twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-five.

  The drop’s engines failed. Clinging to the curve of the roofing panels on his belly, Domor heard the pilot scream. He looked back. The drop-ship simply fell out of the air and smashed into the roof, crashing a half-dozen of the roping men under it.

  Then it began to slide.

  THREE

  An awful creaking, screeching sound filled the air, metal on metal. There were still at least twenty men attached to the ropes, their arrestor hook locks biting the loose cables because of the sudden slackening. The men were tangled, and being dragged. Domor, Nehn and Milo struggled up and watched the blazing drop slowly sliding and shrieking away down the curve of the dome, hauling Guardsmen after it. The pilot was still screaming.

  “Cut the ropes! Cut the fething ropes!” Domor yelled.

  Bonin cut the rope with his Tanith blade and fell free. He rolled, and managed to seize hold of an icy roof strut. Eight of Haller’s men sawed their way clear of the snarling ropes too. Ezlan lost his knife, but managed to writhe himself out of his webbing.

  The moment his blade severed it, the drop rope came whipping out of Dremmond’s arrestor hook because it was under too much tension. The blow left him sprawled on the roof with a long, deep slash from the hawser across his collar.

  Six more of Haller’s men and nine more of Domor’s managed to cut themselves free of the straining rope? and ding onto the roofing panels.

  Then the drop went off over the side of the dome under its own massive weight, jerking threads of shrieking men after it.

  Silence.

  Milo got to his feet, unsteady. It was suddenly very dark and cold. The raked roof underfoot was slick with frost. The only light cam
e from the burning tatters of debris outflung across the steeper pitches of the dome, and the sky glow of the battle they had become detached from. Despite the figures struggling up around him, he felt monstrously alone. They were, in effect, castaways on a mountaintop at night.

  “Sound off!” Domor stammered over the vox. One by one, out of order, the survivors reeled off their call-signs. Fifteen of Domor’s squad had survived. Haller had fourteen. The soldiers began to congregate on a flat decking area behind a vox-mast that protruded from the dome like a corroded thorn. Everyone was unsteady on their feet and there were some heart stopping slips.

  Ezlan and Bonin joined the group, carrying an injured female aviator between them. Her name was Jagdea. Her Lightning had been brought down and she’d ejected onto the roof. She’d been the one who’d popped the flare and guided them in.

  Her arm was broken and she was slipping into shock, so she barely heard the mumbled gratitude of the Guardsmen.

  Milo glanced round sharply as he heard a thump. Dremmond, wounded and weighed down by his flamer, had risen only to lose his feet on the ice. He’d gone down hard and was starting to slide, slowly but definitely, down the dome’s curve.

  “Feth! Oh feth!” he burbled. His gloved hands scrabbled at the slippery metal and plasteel, frantic for purchase. “Oh feth me!”

  Milo moved. Dremmond had already slid right past two troopers either too stunned to move or too aware of their own tenuous footing. Dremmond’s dangling arrestor hook and promethium tanks were squealing over the roof metal.

  Milo slithered down towards him. He heard several voices yell at him. His feet went out and he landed on his backside, sliding down himself now. Unable to stop, he banged into Dremmond, who clutched at him, and they slid together. Faster. Faster.

  The lip of the roof looked hideously close. Milo could see the burnt score marks where the weight of the drop-ship had gone over just moments before.

  They jerked to a halt. Breathing hard, Milo realised his las-gun strap had fouled a rusty rivet standing proud of the plating. Dremmond clung to him. The canvas strap began to stretch and fray.

  Something heavy bounced down the frosty roof beside them. It was a length of salvaged drop-rope, playing out from the darkness above.

  “Grab it!” Milo heard a voice call from above. He got his hands around it. Looking up, he saw a trooper edging hand over hand down the rope towards them. It was the Verghastite, Vadim. A huddle of shadows further up the slope showed where Bonin, Haller, Domor and several of the others were anchoring the other end of the rope under the vox-mast.

  Vadim reached them.

  “Like this, like this,” he said, showing them how to coil the rope around their palms so that it wouldn’t work loose. “You all right?”

  “Yes,” said Milo.

  “Hang on.”

  To Milo’s incredulity, Vadim continued on down the rope past them, making for the very edge of the roof lip. The air-exchanger on the back of his rebreather hood puffed clouds of steam and ice crystals out as he exerted himself.

  Vadim reached the lip, wound the trailing end of the rope around his ankle like an aerialist, and then rolled onto his belly, so that he was hanging out over the abyss headfirst.

  “What the feth is he doing?” Dremmond stuttered.

  Milo shook his head — a futile response for a man in a gas-hood — but he was lost for words. They could only hold on and watch.

  Vadim moved again, rolling upright and freeing his ankle only to lash the rope end around his waist, using his arrestor hook as a double lock. Then he reached into his webbing and dug out a roll of cable, a metal reinforced climbing line much narrower in gauge than the drop rope, a standard issue part of every Guardsman’s kit He fiddled with it a moment, securing it to the lifeline the men above were holding out and then swung back over the side.

  “Taking the weight you hear me, sergeant?” Vadim suddenly voxed.

  “Understood,” voxed Haller.

  “Make sure you’re gakking well anchored,” Vadim said.

  “We’re tied back to a goddamn mast here.”

  “Good. Then smooth, hard pulls. Count off three between and do them together or we’ll all end up down there somewhere.”

  “Got it.”

  “Go.”

  The main rope jerked. Slowly, Milo realised they were sliding up the dome again, a few centimetres at a time. He clung on and felt Dremmond’s hands tighten on him.

  “Come on!” Vadim urged from below.

  It seemed to take an age. Milo felt numb. Then hands were reaching for him and dragging him and Dremmond up amongst the cluster of bodies around the mast where the rope was tied off.

  When he looked back down at Vadim, Milo was astonished to see he wasn’t alone. He was dragging two more figures with him. Milo immediately added his own strength to the steady, regular heaves.

  Vadim had found Seena and Arilla, the two Verghastite women from Haller’s squad who crewed the autocannon. They’d been dragged off the dome by the drop-ship, but their section of rope had parted and snagged around a vent under the lip. They’d been left hanging in space. Vadim had heard their desperate calls on his way down to Milo and Dremmond.

  The Ghosts pulled the trio to comparative safety. Vadim lay flat for a moment, exhausted. Fayner, the one surviving field medic, checked the girls over and then packed Dremmond’s ugly wound, the exposed areas of which were beginning to blister.

  The Ghosts began to light lamp packs and check over their weapons and equipment. Haller and Domor were consulting pocket compass and viewers, looking up the massive swell of the dome. Domor called Bonin over. He was one of the best scouts in the regiment, one of Mkoll’s chosen.

  “What are we going to do?” Nehn asked Milo.

  “Find a way in?” Milo shrugged.

  “How?” growled Lillo, one of the veteran Vervunhive troopers from Haller’s squad.

  Bonin heard him and looked round. He held up a flimsy fold of paper.

  “The Emperor has blessed us. Or rather, Gaunt has. I have a map.”

  There was no one there.

  Zhyte peered out of cover, but the corridor ahead, a wide access way, was empty. Singis voxed in a confirmation from the far side.

  Zhyte edged forward. The Urdeshi main force had been on the ground in the primary dome for almost an hour now and they’d advanced barely three hundred metres from the DZ itself. True, they were inside the dome. But it had taken time and men. They’d lost so many to the enemy nightfighters on the run into the DZ, and then so many, many more in the brutal fight to storm the hatchways.

  Now, it seemed as if the enemy had simply given up and vanished.

  Zhyte crawled on his knees and elbows over to Singis, who was logging the situation on a data-slate as his vox-officer Gerrishon whispered information from the other units.

  “Let me see,” Zhyte said, taking the slate anyway. His number two, Shenko, was still held fast in a hard fight along the promenade. Zhyte could hear the ragged fighting and weapon discharge from outside. Three forces, including his own, had penetrated the dome proper through main hatchways, meeting fierce resistance from squads of the Blood Pact scum, nightmarish in their red battledress and snarling, hook-nosed masks. There were status reports from Gaunt’s mob at the secondary DZ and Fazalur’s at the tertiary, and it seemed they had ground to a halt too, but Zhyte didn’t much care. This was his baby. The primary dome was the main objective, and the Seventh Urdeshi had been given that honour. It was a matter of pride. They would take this blasted place.

  But it had all gone so quiet. Ten minutes before, these access halls had been the scene of ferocious, almost hand-to hand-killing. The corpses and the battle damage all around testified to that.

  And then, the Blood Part had simply melted away.

  “They may have fallen back. Perhaps to better defensive positions deeper in the dome,” Singis suggested.

  Zhyte nodded but he didn’t honestly give a little pebble crap for that idea. If the
Blood Pact had wanted to hold them off, they’d been in a position to do it from the beginning. The Urdeshi had managed a few tricks, forced a few advantages, but it was nothing much. The enemy defence had been superb, and viable. It made no sense for them to have abandoned it for better positions. Singis was talking out of his arse.

  Zhyte tossed the slate back to his adjutant. Though it hurt his pride to think it, this had been a disaster all round. His entire force might by now be impact-splats down in the Scald levels if it hadn’t been for the Phantine Lightnings that had driven the enemy nightfighters off. Not that he’d ever admit it to that sour bitch aviator Jagdea. Thanks to the air support, he’d got a good proportion of his men down. He’d lost hundreds rather than thousands.

  And now this. Like his storm-troops were being toyed with.

  He yanked the vox-mic from Gerrishon.

  “Belthini? Rhintlemann? You hearing me?” The officers commanding the other two intruder forces voxed back affirmatives immediately.

  “I don’t know what the good crap is going on, but I’m not going to roll about here all night. Three minute count, on my mark from now. We’re going to push ahead. Stir ’em up at least.”

  They confirmed the order. Enough of this creeping around, Zhyte thought exchanging his weapon’s clip for a fresh one. He had a pack satisfyingly full of fresh ones.

  “Go left,” he told Singis. “Take groups three and four. Six and two advance with me. First port of call is that main hatch there. I want it secure and I want the support weapons up smart to set up along that colonnade.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “While we’re at it… Kadakedenz?”

  The recon-officer crouching to Singis’ left looked up.

  “Sir?”

  “Hand pick six men and push in through that side hatch. They could be lying in wait, hoping to enfilade us.”

  “Enfilade us, sir?”

  “Shoot us sideways in the arse, Kadakedenz!”

  “I don’t think that’s what enfilade means, sir. Not technically—”

  “I don’t know what ‘shut the crap up you sag-arsed tosser’ means, Kadakedenz. Not technically. But I’m going to say that too. Can you whip up a side team and skidaddle it sideways to support my move, or are you too busy making inadvertent crap-streaks in your britches?”