“That problem being a failure to obey direct orders?” Kowle asked, rising to his feet amid more cheers.
Gaunt nodded. “Chain of command must be observed at all times. Any who break it must do so knowing they risk the highest penalty. Without such order and control, this war will be lost. I trust Vervun Primary will respect this philosophy from now on.”
“So all who transgress must be punished?” Kowle asked.
He wants his transfer badly, Gaunt thought. He’s supporting me every step of the way.
“Of course. Without the threat of sanction, insubordination will continue.”
“Then you will support the punishment of General Grizmund?” asked Vice Marshal Anko.
“What?”
“General Grizmund — who broke orders this day and began his own deployment of the Narmenian armour?” Now the Narmenian staff booed and heckled.
Gaunt faltered. “I… I was not aware of this. It must have been a mistake. General Grizmund has my complete confidence and—”
“So, one rule for the locals, another for the Guard?” sneered Anko.
“I didn’t say that. I—”
“General Grizmund defied direct orders from House Command and redeployed his tanks through noble house territory. Forgetting the collateral damage he caused, is not his action worthy of the most severe censure?” Tarrian of the VPHC looked across at Gaunt. “That was the philosophy you were advocating, wasn’t it?”
Gaunt looked away from the hooded eyes of the VPHC commandant and found Kowle’s face in the throng. Kowle smiled back at him, unblinking, soulless.
He knew. He had known about Grizmund even before they had reached the chamber. He had manoeuvred Gaunt right into this trap.
Gaunt realised in an instant he had underestimated Kowle’s ambition. The man was after more than a simple transfer off Verghast. He was after glory and command.
“Well, colonel-commissar? What do we do with Grizmund?” asked Anko.
Gaunt stepped away from the lectern and strode down the hall to the exit, yells and cat-calls showering over him.
Outside, he grabbed one of the Vervun Elite minding the door by the brocade and slammed him into the wall.
“Grizmund! Where is he?”
“In the s-stockade, sir! Level S-sub-40!”
Gaunt released him and strode away.
The rousing hymns of the great choirs shivered the air around him. Their sentiments sounded all too hollow.
The sunrise was an hour away.
A file of Ghosts moved up from trucks parked on the eastern hab expressway and entered the manufactory depots that backed on to the Spoil.
Thirty men, the cream of the Tanith scout cadre. The Vervun troops occupying the location, soldiers of the so-called Spoilers unit, greeted them in the undercroft of an ore barn. The air was thick with rock-dust and the light was poor, issuing from a few hooded lamps nailed to the wall.
“Gak” Ormon, the major in command of the Spoilers, saluted as Mkoll led his men in. He was a big, bulky man with bloodshot eyes and a flamer-burned throat.
“I understand you have good snipers and stealthers,” Ormon said to Mkoll as he walked over to a chart table with him.
Mkoll nodded. He surveyed the chart. The Spoil, a vast heap of slag, was a real vulnerability for Vervunhive. They knew as much, otherwise they wouldn’t have formed a dedicated defence force, but the battle of the day before had decimated the Spoiler unit.
“General Sturm has acknowledged the Tanith ability in such endeavours. We’re here to support you.”
“Gak” Ormon’s great bulk was clad in the blue greatcoat and spiked helmet of the Vervun Primary. He looked down at the wiry off-worlder with his faded black fatigues and curious piebald cape. He was not impressed.
All of the Spoilers present, including Ormon, carried long-barrelled autoguns with scopes dedicated to sniping. Their faces were striped with bars of black camo-paint. Several had fresh wounds bound tightly.
Sergeant Mkoll called up his men so they could all study the chart. The Ghosts grouped around the table, making comments, pointing.
“Why don’t you just give them orders?” Ormon asked disdainfully.
“Because I want them to know the situation and understand the terrain. How can they defend an area effectively otherwise? Don’t you do the same?”
Ormon said nothing.
Mkoll broke his men into work-teams and sent them away in different directions, though not before checking they had set their micro-beads to the same channel.
Ormon joined Mkoll as the sergeant led his group of MkVenner, Domor, Larkin and Rilke up shattered internal stairways to the third storey overlooking the slag heap. Nine Spoilers were stationed at the shattered windows up here, using scopes to watch the sleek slopes of the Spoil.
The Ghosts took position amongst them.
Larkin and Rilke, both armed with sniper-variant lasguns, set themselves up carefully. Rilke used a length of pipe to disguise the end of his gun as it protruded from the wall. Larkin covered his own gun down to the muzzle under loose sacks.
Domor took Mkoll’s scope, set it up on a tripod stand in the shadow of a window and linked his mechanical eyes to the sight. He could now see further and clearer than anyone in the fortification.
Ormon was about to ask Mkoll a question when he realised he and the Ghost called MkVenner had vanished.
Mkoll and MkVenner moved invisibly down the Spoil slope, their capes spread over them. The coal-like ore-refuse was wet and slimy underfoot. They were outside the protection of the Shield and the night rain fell around them, making puddles amongst the rock waste.
They raised their scopes. Beyond the Spoil, two kilometres away, they saw the open, flat land and the blasted habs beyond. The heavy rain was creating standing water on the flat soil and the water was rippling like dimpled tin with the rainfall. Visibility was down and cloud cover was descending.
There was a sound. MkVenner armed his lasgun and Mkoll crawled forward.
It was singing. Chanting. From out in the enemy positions, via loudhailers and speakers, a foul hymn of Chaos was ringing out to answer the triumph hymns of the hive.
It grew louder.
Mkoll and MkVenner shuddered.
In the ore-works behind them, Ormon felt his bladder vice and hurried away.
At his position, Larkin tensed. He was weary from the day’s nerve-shredding battle and had only been sent in with Mkoll’s men because of his skills as a sniper.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the face, the face of the Zoican.
Now, from below, down the length of the Spoil, he could hear them.
The Zoican filth were singing a name over and over, in a canon repeat.
Heritor Asphodel… Heritor Asphodel…
ELEVEN
THE HERITOR
“Kill us! Kill us all! In the name of Terra, before he—”
—Transcript of last broadcast from Ryxus V,
the first “inherited” world
Level Sub-40 was almost a kilometre underground, deep in the foundation structure of the Main Spine. An armoured lift cage with grilled sides transported Gaunt down the last three hundred metres, lowering him into an underworld of dark, damp stone, stale air and caged sodium lamps.
He entered an underground concourse where ground water dripped from the pipework roof onto the concrete floor and rusting chains dangled over piles of mildewed refuse. Along one side was a row of wooden posts with shackle-loops at wrist height. The wall behind the posts was stippled with bullet pocks and darkly stained.
Gaunt approached an adamantine shutter marked with yellow chevrons. Rockcrete bunkers stood on either side of the shutter, blank except for letterbox slits set high up.
As he moved forward, automatic spotlights mounted above the hatch snapped on and bathed him with blue-white light.
“Identify!” a voice crackled out of a vox-relay.
“Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt,” Gaunt replied curtly, reel
ing off his serial number afterwards.
“Your business?”
“lust open the shutter.”
There was a brief pause, then the great metal hatch screeched open. Gaunt stepped through and found himself facing a second shutter. The one behind him slammed shut before the inner one would open.
Inside the stockade, a caged walkway led down into a dispatch area with an open-sided shower stall and low tables for searching through personal effects. The sodium lamps gave the foetid, recirculated air a frosty hue.
Guards moved out of side bunkers to meet him. They were all VPHC troopers dressed in black shirts, black, peaked caps, graphite-grey breeches and black boots. Each one wore orange arm-bands and wide, black, leather belts with riot-batons and cuffs dangling from them. Three carried pump-action shotguns.
“Grizmund,” Gaunt told them briefly. He allowed himself to be frisked and handed over his bolt pistol. Two of the guards then led him through a series of cage doors with remotely activated electric locks, down the austere, red-washed hallways of the cell-block. There was an astringent ammonia stink of open drains, with a mouldering aftertaste of deep rock and soil. Every sound rang out and echoed.
Grizmund and the four officers arrested with him were sharing a large communal holding tank. They still wore their mustard-brown Narmenian uniforms, but caps, belts, laces and all rank pins had been removed.
Grizmund met Gaunt at the cage door. The VPHC guards refused to open it, so they were forced to talk through the bars.
“I’m glad to see you,” Grizmund said. He was pale, and there was a dark look of anger in his eyes. “Get us out of this.”
“Tell me what happened. In your own words,” Gaunt said.
Grizmund paused, then shrugged. “We were ordered to Veyveyr. Thanks to the gross idiocy of House Command organisation, the routes were blocked. I took my column off the roadway and headed on to the gate through an industrial sector. Next thing I knew, the VPHC were heading me off.”
“Did you disobey any direct order?”
“I was ordered to Veyveyr,” the man repeated. “I was told to take Arterial Route GH/7m. When I couldn’t get through, I tried to achieve my primary order to reach the appointed frontline.”
“Did you strike a VPHC officer?”
“Yes. He drew a gun on me first, without provocation.”
Gaunt was quiet for a moment.
“You’d think these bastards didn’t want us to fight for them,” growled Grizmund.
“Their pride is hurt. The inadequacies of their command systems were shown up clearly today. They’re looking for others to blame.”
“Screw them if they try to pin anything on me! This is crazy! Won’t Sturm back you up?”
“Sturm is too busy trying to please both sides. Don’t worry. I won’t let this continue a moment longer than it has to.”
Grizmund nodded. Loud footsteps, unpaced and overlapping, reverberated down the dank cell-block behind them. Gaunt turned to see Commissar Tarrian enter with an escort of VPHC troops.
“Commissar Gaunt. You shouldn’t be here. The Narmenian insubordination is a matter for the VPHC Disciplinary Review. You will not interfere with Verghastian military justice. You will not confer with the prisoners. My men will escort you back to the elevator.”
Gaunt nodded to Grizmund and walked over to the VPHC group, facing Tarrian for a moment. “You are making a mistake both you and your cadre will regret, Tarrian.”
“Is that some kind of threat, Gaunt?”
“You’re a commissar, Tarrian, or at least you’re supposed to be. You must know commissars never issue threats. Only facts.”
Gaunt allowed himself to be marched out of the stockade.
The thirty-third dawn was already on them, with heavy rain falling across the entire hive, the outer habs and the grasslands beyond. Marshal Croe was taking breakfast in his retiring chamber off the war-room when Gaunt entered.
The room was long, gloomy and wood-panelled with gilt-framed oil paintings of past marshals lining the walls. Croe sat at the head of a long, varnished mahogany table, picking at food laid out on a salver as he read through a pile of data-slates. Behind him, the end wall of the room was armoured glass and overlooked the Commercia and Shield Pylon. Backlit by the great window and the grey morning glare, Croe was a dark, brooding shape.
“Commissar.”
Gaunt saluted. “Marshal. The charges against the Narmenian officers must be dropped at once.”
Croe looked up, his noble, white-haired head inclining towards Gaunt like an eagle considering a lamb. “Because?”
“Because they are utterly foolish and counterproductive. Because we need officers of Grizmund’s standing. Because any punishment will send a negative message to the Narmenian units and to all Guard units as a whole: that Vervunhive values the efforts of the off-world forces very little.”
“And what of the other view? You heard it yourself: one rule for Vervun, one for the Guard?”
“We both know that’s not true. Grizmund’s actions are hardly capital in nature, yet the VPHC seems hell-bent on prosecuting them to the extreme. I’m not even sure this so-called ‘insubordination’ was even that. A tribunal would throw it out, but to even get to a tribunal would be damaging. Narmenian and Guard honour would be slighted, and the VPHC would be made to look stupid.” At the last minute, Gaunt managed to prevent himself from saying “even more stupid.”
“Tarrian’s staff is very thorough. They would not undertake a tribunal if they thought it would collapse.”
“I am familiar with such ‘courts’, marshal. However, that will only happen if the VPHC are allowed to run the hearing themselves.”
“It is their purview. Military discipline. It’s Tarrian’s job.”
“I will not allow the VPHC to conduct any hearing.”
Croe put down his fork and stared at Gaunt as if he had just insulted Croe’s own mother. He rose to his feet, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
“You won’t… allow it?”
Gaunt stood his ground. “Imperial Commissariat edict 4378b states that any activity concerning the discipline of Imperial Guardsmen must be conducted by the Imperial Commissariat itself. Not by planetary bodies. It is not Tarrian’s responsibility. It should not be a matter for the VPHC.”
“And you will enforce this ruling?”
“If I have to. I am the ranking Imperial commissar on Verghast.”
“The interpretation of law will be murderous. Any conflicts between Imperial and Planetary rules will be argued over and over. Do not pursue this, Gaunt.”
“I’m afraid I have to, marshal. I am not a stranger to martial hearings. I will personally resource and provide all the legal precedents I need to throw Tarrian, his thugs and his pitiful case to the wolves.”
A Vervun Primary adjutant hurried into the retiring room behind Gaunt.
“Not now!” barked Croe, but the man didn’t withdraw. He held out a data-slate to the fuming marshal.
“You — you need to see this, sir,” he stammered.
Croe snatched the slate out of the man’s hands and read it quickly. What he read arrested his attention, and he went back and re-read slowly, his eyes narrowing.
Croe thrust the slate to Gaunt. “Read it yourself,” he said. “Our observers along the South Curtain have been picking it up since daybreak.”
Gaunt looked through the transcripts recorded by the wall-guards as they scrolled across the glowing screen.
“Heritor Asphodel,” he murmured. He looked round at Croe. “I suggest you release Grizmund now. We’re going to need all the men we can get.”
* * *
Gaunt and Croe left the retiring room together and strode down the short hall into the great control auditorium of House Command. Both the lower level and the wrought-iron upper deck of the place were jostling with activity. Hololithic projections of the warfront glowed upwards into the air from crenellated lens-pits in the floor, and the air throbbed with vox-caster traf
fic, astropaths’ chants and the clack of the cogitator banks.
A gaggle of Munitorum staffers, Vervun Primary aides and technical operators hastened forward around the marshal as he entered, but he waved them all away, crossing to the ironwork upper deck, his boots clanging up the metal steps. Vice Marshal Anko, General Sturm, Commissar Kowle and General Xance of the NorthCol were already assembled by the great chart table. Silent servitors, encrusted with bionics, and poised regimental aides waited behind them. An occasional vox/pict drone bumbled across the command space. Gaunt hung back at the head of the stairs, observing.
“Kowle?” asked Croe, approaching the chart table.
“No confirmation. It is impossible to confirm, lord marshal.”
Croe held up the data-slate. “But this is an accurate transcript of the enemy broadcasts? They’re chanting this at the gates?”
“Since dawn,” replied Sturm. He looked bleary-eyed, and his grey and gold Volpone dress uniform was crumpled, as if he had been roused hurriedly. “And not just chanting.”
He nodded and a servitor opened a vox-channel. A chatter of almost unintelligible noise rolled from the speaker.
“Vox-central has washed the signal clean. The name repeats on all band-widths as a voice pattern and also as machine code, arithmetical sequence and compressed pict-representation.” Sturm fell silent. He reached for a cup of caffeine on the edge of the chart table, his hand trembling.
“A blanket broadcast. They certainly want us to know,” Gaunt said.
Kowle looked round at him. “They want us to be scared,” he said snidely. “Just hours ago, you complimented me on my ability to control information. We can presume the enemy are similarly efficient. This could be propaganda. Demoralising broadcasts. They may simply be using the name as a terror device.”
“Possibly… but we agreed it would take a force of great charisma to turn a hive the size of Ferrozoica. Heritor Asphodel is just such a force. His fate and whereabouts since Balhaut are unknown.”
Anko looked away from Gaunt deliberately and turned to Kowle. “You were on Balhaut, Kowle. What is this creature?”