He signalled his intelligence to Mkoll over the vox link, using only half a dozen code words.
Mkoll ordered the Tanith snipers to address and fire when they had a target. A second later, Ormon delivered the same command to his own men.
Larkin saw movement again, clearly in the foggy, green glow of his scope.
He breathed, squared and fired.
The stinging red pulse whipped down the ore slope and a black-clad figure was thrown up and backwards.
Larkin immediately dipped under the edge of the rubble and took a new position. He was certain his muzzle flash had been discreet, but there was no sense in advertising. He made his new vantage and aimed again, his extended barrel hidden inside a broken drain-gutter.
Lotin, ten metres away, fired. His lasgun made a loud crack and even from where he was, Larkin saw the muzzle flash and cursed.
He heard Lotin complain over the vox-link. He’d missed.
Move, move and re-aim! Larkin willed silently.
Lotin fired again. His whoop of success was quickly cut short by a perfectly aimed las-round from the Spoil below. The Zoicans had been watching for a repeat flash.
Lotin toppled back and slumped into the rubble scree on the floor, his face gone.
So, thought Larkin, they have capable and careful snipers too.
This war just got interesting.
The night was on them now and the moons, two large and cream and one tiny and livid red, climbed slowly into a purple sky. Rain clouds, black and woolly, chased along the eastern skyline. Distant thunder rolled out in the grasslands.
The air was sultry and unseasonable, and at Hass East Fort, Varl was sweating freely into his black fatigues. The discomfort was made worse by the static build-up generated by the vast Shield behind them, fizzing and crackling in the dark, a glowing hemisphere of energy.
The plating of his lasgun and his bionic arm tingled with electricity. Varl yearned for the threatening storm to break over them and clear the stifling air.
There was a brutal flash from the north-east and then an ear-splitting bang, followed by an impact that threw Varl off his feet. Voices were shouting in the night, alarms were ringing and someone was screaming in agony.
The sky lit up again. Explosions were rippling along the entire stretch of Curtain Wall between Ontabi Gate and the Hass.
Varl got up, blinking. There was no sign of shelling. That had been… mines.
He ran down the parapet, yelling into his vox-link as more explosions shook the wall. Detonating mines meant one thing only: the enemy was right on top of them, close enough to set charges.
Men were milling all around, confused. Equally useless barks of vox-traffic answered Varl. Varl grabbed the wall for support as another explosion went off close by, flame slicking upwards in a tight ball inside the Wall.
Inside the Wall?
“They’ve penetrated! They’ve penetrated!” he bellowed, not understanding it but desperate to get the message out. Almost at once, he came under fire. Las-shots flicked the air around him, coming up from the nearest Wall access stair.
Varl returned fire, rallying the Vervun Primary troops nearest to him. Crackling autoguns began to support him. He saw Zoican storm-troops spreading out onto the battlements from the stair access, their ochre armour dulled by dark, tarry stains.
Varl shot down one or two before realising many more were storming the battlement behind him too. How in the name of feth had they got inside?
A huge blast shook him to his knees. An entire section of Hass East collapsed with a roar and brick dust billowed into the sky, underlit by flame. Further detonations sliced through the top of the wall.
Varl saw gun emplacements ripped apart and exploded and he watched as entire sections of wall-defences blew outwards as mines set off ammunition silos and autoloader hoppers.
Like the wrath of a ruthless god, the war had come to Hass East at last.
TWELVE
DARKNESS FALLS
“What is the strongest weapon of mankind? The god-machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus? No! The Astartes Legions? No! The tank? The lasgun? The fist? No to all! Courage and courage alone stands above them all!”
—Macharius, Lord Solar, from his writings
Distant thunder woke Ibram Gaunt from a dreamless sleep.
His bedroom, part of a small suite of rooms disposed to him, adjacent to House Command, was dark except for the dull amber glow of rune sigils on the small codifier by the desk.
He turned on the lamp and slid off the bed where he had lain down only a couple of hours before, fully clothed. Sleep had overtaken him in an instant.
By the light of the lamp, he crossed to the desk, where stacks of ribbon-bound papers and data-slates were piled up. He took a sip of last night’s wine from a glass on a side table.
The thunder came again. Somewhere, deadened by the thick walls, an alarm was ringing.
He activated the call stud of the intercom set into the marble facing of the wall, blankly regarding the great framed portrait over the bare grate opposite. Its thick, time-darkened oils portrayed a pompous-looking man in the Vervun Primary uniform of an older age, bedraggled with braid, one foot raised to rest on a pile of human skulls, a scroll in one hand and a power-sword in the other.
“Sir?”
“What’s going on?”
“Reports of a raid at Ontabi Gate. We’re waiting for confirmation.”
“Appraise me swiftly. I have men at Hass East.”
“Of course, sir. There is… a visitor for you.”
Gaunt checked the clock. It was nearly two in the morning. “Who?”
“He bears the Imperial seal and says you requested him.”
Gaunt sighed and said, “Allow him in.”
The suite’s outer door slid open and Gaunt went into the sitting room to meet his visitor, activating the wall lamps.
A gnarled, elderly man in long, purple robes shuffled in, peering at Gaunt through thick-lensed spectacles. His hair, where it protruded from under his high-crested, red, felt cap, was grey and unruly, and he leaned on an ebony cane. Behind him came a tall, pale young man in grey cleric’s coat, laden down with old tomes and sheaves of paper.
“Commissar… Gaunt?” the old man wheezed, studying the officer before him.
“Colonel-commissar, actually. You are?”
“Advocate Cornelius Pater of the Administratum Judiciary. Your request for legal assistance was received this night and Intendant Banefail directed me to attend you with all urgency.”
“I thank the intendant for his alacrity and you for your time.”
The advocate nodded and wheezed his way over to a leather couch, leaving his assistant in the doorway, swaying under the weight of the manuscripts and volumes he carried.
“Set them down on the table,” Gaunt told him. “You are?”
The man seemed wary of speaking.
“My clerk, Bwelt,” Pater answered for him. “He will not speak. He is training for junior advocacy and must perforce learn the protocols of question and address. Besides, he knows nothing.”
“How do we undertake this?” Gaunt asked the advocate.
Pater cleared his throat. “You will review the matter for my benefit — excluding no detail — you will show me any pertinent transcripts and you will furnish me with a glass of fortified wine.”
Gaunt glanced round at Bwelt. “There’s a bottle on the side table in the bedroom. Fetch him a glass.”
Pater refused to speak further until the crystal glass was in his withered hand and the first sip in his mouth. The cane lay across his lap.
Gaunt began. “An Imperial Guard General — Grizmund of the Narmenian Armour — and four of his staff officers are charged with insubordination. They’re being held in the VPHC stockade, pending prosecution by a VPHC court. The charges are spurious. I want them freed and back to duty immediately. I think the matter founders on a formality — the VPHC cannot prosecute Imperial Guard personnel. If there is a crime to
answer, it is an Imperial Commissariat matter. I am the highest representative of that authority on Verghast.”
Pater adjusted his spectacles and studied the data-slate Gaunt handed him.
“Hmm… clear-cut enough, I suppose. You’re citing Imperial Commissariat Edict 4368b. The VPHC won’t like it. Tarrian, in particular, will hate you for it.”
“There’s no love lost between us.”
“Bwelt? What is it? You gurn like a fool or a man with chronic gas.”
“It’s 4378b, Advocate. The edict is 4378b.” Bwelt’s voice was almost a whisper.
“Just so,” Pater said, brushing off the correction and returning his gaze to the slate. “It may come to court. Tarrian has a miserable record of dragging cases through all the due processes, even if he is bound to lose. To him, there’s some satisfaction in prolonging the agony.”
“I want it thrown out before then. We can’t be without Grizmund any longer. In the next few days, Vervunhive’s future may depend upon skilled armour.”
Tricky. But the edict is well-precedented. A brief hearing, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, and we should be able to pull the rug out from under the VPHC Pater looked up at Gaunt. “I’ll derive satisfaction from that. The VPHC have deemed themselves above Imperial Law for many years. It’s been nigh on impossible to practise clean law in the hive. With your prestige involved, we can win.”
“Good. At least we know the VPHC can’t act before then. However they argue it, they know an Imperial Commissar must be present for a tribunal to be conducted.”
“Indeed. Even if they press for a court of their own, we can stall them as long as you refuse to participate. Then — Bwelt? Again, you screw up your face! What now?”
Bwelt paused and seemed to choose every word with great care. “The… tribunal is in session now, advocate. You told me to collate all information relating to this case before we came here and that fact was diarised in the judiciary case-roll.”
“What?”
“Th-they are proceeding… because they have an Imperial commissar present. Commissar Kowle has agreed to represent the Imperial interests and—”
Gaunt’s vicious curse shut Bwelt up and made the old man start. Pulling on his jacket, cap and weapon belt, Gaunt reeled off a colourful and descriptive tirade outlining what he would do to Tarrian, Kowle and the entire VPHC in four-letter words.
“Come with me! Now!” he told the advocate and his trembling clerk, then flew out of the room.
At the eastern edge of the hive, the sky was on fire. From the outer dark of the river bend, enemy shelling had begun to hammer at the damage done to the adamantine Curtain Wall and the ramparts of Mass East Fort by the mines.
Varl stumbled through the firestorm, trying to regroup his men and get them down into the deep-wall bunkers. Zoican assaulters were everywhere. The defenders couldn’t fight this. Varl tried to vox House Command or Tanith control, but the energy flare of the bombardment had scrambled the communication bands.
He got maybe twenty men around him, mostly Ghosts but some Roane and Vervun Primary, and ran them down the tower steps into the bowels of the fort. The stone walls were sweating as the heat of the burning levels above leeched into them. Plaster facings shrivelled and wilted, and the air was oven-hot and hurt the soldiers’ lungs. At one point, a shell-fall punched through the corridor twenty metres behind them and passed on through the opposite wall, slicing stone so it dribbled like heated butter. The superheated air that slammed down the hall from the impart flattened them. They met groups of Zoicans and Varl’s men cut them apart.
Two levels down, they ran into a stream of nearly sixty Vervun Primary and Roane Deepers with Major Rodyin amongst them. Several had bad burns.
“Where’s Willard?” screamed Varl over the klaxons and the explosive hurricane roar.
“Haven’t seen him!” barked Rodyin. One lens of his spectacles was crazed and he had a cut on his cheek.
“We have to get the men down! Down lower!” Varl yelled and the two officers began routing the surviving troops down a back staircase as firestorms billowed down the hallways towards them.
“They mined the Curtain Wall! From inside!” Rodyin bellowed as he and Varl pushed man after man past them onto the stairs.
“I know, feth it! How the hell did they get in?”
Rodyin didn’t answer.
On a section of wall below the mauled fort, Corporal Meryn was leading a straggle of panicking troops to cover. Two squads of Ghosts — Brostin, Ixjgris, Nehn and Mkteeg amongst them — pushed forward past him, but there were twenty or more Vervun Primary soldiers stumbling in their wake. Meryn bawled at them, waving his arms, trying to be heard above the shriek of the shelling and the detonations all around. Flames from the fort were reaching a hundred metres into the sky and billows of soot and burning fabric squalled around them. The heat was overwhelming. Somewhere close, a loader full of ammo had caught fire and heated rounds were firing off wildly, spanking off the stonework and cutting zigzag tracer paths in the air.
A shot hit the Vervun Primary trooper nearest to Meryn and exploded his spiked helmet.
There was a flash and some vast cutting beam drawn up outside the Wall swept over them. Meryn saw it and threw himself flat as the inexorable beam raked the parapet at chest height, vaporising the hurrying line of Vervun troopers in a murderous sequence. They simply vanished in turn, obliterated, leaving nothing but clouds of steam and the occasional smouldering boot behind.
The beam swept right over the prone Tanith Corporal, searing the back of his breeches, jacket and head-hair right off. He winced at the low throb of superficial burns, but he was startled to be alive.
He got to his feet, his black fatigues shredded and falling off his body, and stumbled to the nearest stairhead.
Hundreds of men — Tanith, Roane and Vervun Primary — fled the Wall fortifications and Ontabi Gate and ran for cover in the streets and habs adjacent to the docks. Enemy shelling and beam-fire were punching clean through the Wall and the fort structure now and blasting into the edges of the worker habs. The Shield, ignited above them, mocked the scene. What good was an energy screen when the enemy was blasting through ceramite and adamantium?
Stretches of the habs were engulfed in flame and thousands of hab-dwellers filled the streets in panic, mingling with the fleeing soldiery, choking the access routes and transits in a panicked stampede. Hass East Fort convulsed and collapsed volcanically, the great hatches of Ontabi Gate melting like ice. A breach had been cut in the Curtain Wall of Vervunhive more terrible and more extensive than any damage done so far, even than at the brutalised Veyveyr Railhead.
At Croe Gate, the next main fortification down the Curtain Wall from Hass East, some ten kilometres south of Ontabi, the wall troops and observers watched in incredulous horror as beams of destruction and heavy shelling punished the riverside defences. A plume of fire underlit the storm clouds and blazed up into the sky like a rising sun.
General Nash was at Croe Gate still and he dismally voxed the situation to House Command. He urgently requested significant reinforcements to his position. In the wake of a major breach like this, ground forces couldn’t be far behind.
As if on cue, one of his spotters reported movement on the Vannick Highway, twenty kilometres north-east. Nash used his magnoculars on heat-see and gazed out at the shimmering, green phantoms of tanks and armoured vehicles, thousands of them, roaming towards Ontabi in a spearhead formation.
“I have contacts! Repeat, I have contacts! At least a thousand mechanised armour units advancing down the Vannick Highway and the surrounding hinterlands! They’ll be on top of Hass East in under an hour! Reinforce my position now! I need armour! Lots of bloody armour! House Command! Do you respond? Do you bloody respond?”
An almost eerie silence fell across the main auditorium of House Command. Only the desperate chatter of vox-traffic could be heard, reeling out reports of fearful destruction from a thousand different locations.
His face pinch
ed and pale, Marshal Croe looked down at the chart table on the upper level. Hass East was gone. A mass armour force was approaching from the eastern levels. Artillery was beginning to pound Croe Gate and the eastern wall circuit. Zoican troops were assaulting the Spoil and the defences at Veyveyr. Heavy tanks and infantry columns were hitting Sondar Gate and the wall stretches towards Hass Gate and Hass West Fort. Hass West Fort itself was receiving ferocious ranged shelling.
An attack on all fronts. The defences of Vervunhive were already at full stretch and Croe knew this was only the beginning.
“What — what do we do?” stammered Anko, his face as white as his dress uniform. “Marshal? Marshal Croe? What do we do, Croe? Speak, you bastard!”
Croe struck Anko across his fat mouth and sent him whimpering to the ironwork floor. Croe looked across at Sturm. “Your thoughts, general?” There was venom and ice in equal parts in Croe’s voice.
“I…” Sturm began. He faltered.
“Don’t even begin to suggest an evacuation, Sturm, or I’ll kill you where you stand. Evacuation is not an option. You were sent here to defend Vervunhive, and that’s what you’ll do.” He handed Sturm his ducal signet. “Go to the stockade. Take troops with you. Release Grizmund and set him to command the armour before its strength is wasted. If that bastard Tarrian or any VPHC resists, deal with them. I expect you back at Veyveyr Gate to assume command there as soon as Grizmund is free. We have spent too much time arguing amongst ourselves. Vervunhive lives or dies tonight.”
Sturm nodded stiffly and took the ring. “Where will you be, marshal?”
“I will take personal command of Sondar Gate. The hive will not die while I yet live.”
The shutter hatch of the stockade remained resolutely shut. Gaunt hammered on it with the butt of his bolt pistol, but there was no response. Gaunt, Pater and Bwelt stood pinioned by the floodlights, locked out in the damp cold of Level Sub-40. Captain Daur was with them, bleary and pale with sleep. Gaunt had dragged the liaison officer from his quarters on his way down to the stockade.