[Gaunt's Ghosts 09] - His Last Command

  “Get the men rested and watered,” he told Baskevyl. “Ration detail, and a weapons check by fourteen hundred. I want every one with a full load, no excuses.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wilder headed up the dirt causeway to the hospital.

  Munitorum pioneers had roofed the house with precast armour-ply sheeting, and reinforced the walls with flak-board and sandbags. The north end contained the post command station in an area extended from the building with tent canopies. A pair of vox masts had been set up nearby, trailing cables off to the bank of generators behind the building. The rest of the place was given over to the triage station and infirmary. There was a pervading smell of sawdust and new chip-panel that almost choked out the regular odours of a field hospital.

  Neither the severely wounded nor the dead stayed there long. There was no facility for them. Regular transport runs ferried them away to main station compounds at Frag Flats and Tarenal, or to the gradually swelling cemetery out in the desert. Post 36’s hospital was a processing point, superficial and efficient, treating minor wounds, illness, infection, and patching the less fortunate up for evac.

  The less fortunate. Wilder thought about that. Were they? Were they really? He walked in under the low arch, stepping aside to let a procession of stretcher bearers inside. To the right lay a pair of rooms given over to triage, with an adjoining chamber fitted up as a field theatre. There were two more theatres in habi-tents outside on the causeway. To the left were three small wards where men with minor wounds could be given bedrest and treatment for a few days before returning to active duties, and the grossly injured could wait for transport.

  The place was busy. It hadn’t stopped being busy since the Guard had moved in and occupied the position five days earlier. Wilder saw a few of his men amongst the injured, most of them walking wounded with cuts and burns. He exchanged encouraging words with a few. So far there were about five more seriously hurt. Two were unconscious: one of them Sergeant Piven, who Wilder had always had a lot of time for. Piven looked like he’d been smacked in the face with a flat iron. The other, Trooper Boritz, had been shot eight or nine times. Lumps of his torso and legs were missing. Two corps-men were busy intubating him.

  Further down, Wilder found trooper Raydee on a cot. The Belladon was woozing in and out of consciousness, high on painkillers. His foot and ankle had been crushed by a stalker.

  “Big bastard it was, sir,” Raydee said.

  “You get it?” Wilder asked.

  “Not me, no sir, but it was got.”

  Wilder smiled. Raydee’s injury would be a long time healing. He would soon be one of the less fortunate.

  “Did Mkard make it, sir?” Raydee called out.

  “Sorry?”

  “Mkard, sir. He was with me when it happened. I hope he made it, sir,” Raydee said.

  “I’ll find out,” Wilder said. Raydee had expressed genuine concern, and for one of the influx. Mkard was a Tanith name. Maybe the alloy was strong already.

  Nearby, Wilder spotted the elderly chief medicae who had joined with the Tanith. He was strapping up a Verghastite’s arm-wound.

  “Doctor?”

  Dorden looked around. “One moment, colonel,” he said, finishing up. Dorden seemed fragile and brittle to Wilder, too old for battlefield duty, but he had the seniority and the skill, and since the Belladon had lost most of its medicae staff, that counted for a lot.

  “This way, colonel,” Dorden said. He led Wilder over to a vacant dressing table. “Just tilt your head back, please.”

  “What? Oh!” Wilder had almost forgotten his own injury. “I’m not here for that, doctor. I just stopped in to get some idea of numbers. We had to pull out of the line in a hurry, and I’ve no idea what kind of hit we took.”

  Dorden shrugged. “I’m sorry, colonel, I can’t answer that. They’re still coming in, as you can see, and I’ve not been keeping a tally of badges. Just bodies to patch. The Kolstec 50th took a hammering early this morning up along the bluff. They’ve been airlifting them in for the past hour.”

  “A bad hammering?”

  “Is there a good kind? What about you?”

  “Fairly intense. A mess, actually. I’ll go talk to the men.”

  “I’d prefer to treat that wound right now, actually,” Dorden said.

  “Later. Get to someone who needs you more urgently.”

  Dorden looked at him for a moment then turned away.

  Wilder was about to cross over into the wards when he saw that the door at the back of the house was open. In the patch of sunlight outside, body bags lay on the dry earth. He went out, removing his cap despite the glare. Nearly forty bodies lay in neat lines, drill ground perfection. Orderlies were carrying more over from nearby trucks. Wilder walked down the line, looking at the tags tied off round the bag-seals. He found two Belladon, and a Tanith. Mkard.

  An ancient, hunched man was slowly moving down the rows, reading from a hymnal and blessing each body in turn. Last rites, field style.

  “Ayatani,” Wilder nodded.

  Zweil peered at him. The old priest always struck Wilder as a little mad, but he was just another part of the influx.

  “Colonel. Another day in the dust, unto which we will all return, most of us faster than we’d like, at this rate.”

  Wilder wasn’t quite sure what to say. The old man had a knack of blindsiding him.

  “Some days, you know, I pray to the beloved beati for some skill that I can contribute. I don’t fight, as you know, and I don’t fix… not like Dorden. I often pray to her for the gracious ability to bring them back from the dead.”

  “Who, father?”

  Zweil gestured at the bodies on the ground. “Them. Others. Anyone. But so far she’s refused to grant me that knack. Can you do it, Wilder?”

  “What?”

  “Bring them back from the dead?”

  “No, father.”

  “It’s funny, sometimes you look to me exactly like the sort of person who can bring them back from the dead.”

  “Sorry, no. I’d like to think my area of skill lay in not getting them killed in the first place, and even that’s not infallible.”

  Zweil sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “None of us are perfect.” He stared up at Wilder, then, to Wilder’s surprise, grabbed hold of Wilder’s jaw with his less than clean fingers.

  “You should get that looked at,” Zweil said, twisting Wilder’s face around so he could scrutinise the head wound.

  “Yes, I will. Thanks, father,” Wilder said, prying the priest’s hand away. “Dorden already offered to patch it, but I said it could wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Triage, father.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What?”

  Zweil took a dried fig from his pocket and sucked it thoughtfully. “Triage. Degrees of priority. Only a scrape, but you are the company commander. What if you leave it and it gets infected? That’s the regiment, at this early, delicate stage, without a chief.”

  “I suppose so, father.”

  “So get it done. Priorities.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Before the whole mob of them starts flailing around for the want of proper leadership with you in bed, feverish with blood poisoning—”

  “Yes, father.”

  “And gangrene of the eyebrows. And black pus oozing from—”

  “Thank you, father. I’ll go right away.”

  “That’s my other skill,” Zweil called out as Wilder turned away. “I just remembered. It’s to give sage advice and good counsel. I bless the beati for granting me that talent.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Are you sure?” Zweil called out as Wilder reached the door into the house.

  Wilder looked back. “About what?”

  Zweil was staring down at the bagged bodies on the dry earth. He was subdued again now. His sudden mood swings and skipping trains of thought had a bipolar quality to them.

  “You can’t bri
ng them back?”

  “No, ayatani father, I can’t.”

  Zweil sighed. “Carry on, then.”

  * * * * *

  “Lose the headset and the hat,” Dorden said, and Wilder obliged. “Head back.”

  Dorden washed the wound and pulled it shut with some plastek staples. “I’d dress it, but it’d be better to get the air to it,” Dorden said. He handed Wilder a small tube of counterseptic gel. “Put that on it every few hours, keep it clean, come back in a day or two.”

  “Thanks,” Wilder said.

  Baskevyl appeared in the triage bay doorway, and sighted Wilder. “DeBray wants a field debrief, sir. I don’t think he’s too taken with the mess this morning.”

  “He can join the queue behind me,” Wilder said. “When does he want me?”

  “At your convenience. I told him you were being patched.”

  Wilder nodded. “We got a tally yet?”

  “Eight dead,” Baskevyl said. “Thirty-eight wounded, twelve of those serious. That’s so far.”

  “Could have been a whole lot worse,” Wilder said. “A whole hell of a lot worse. Pass on my compliments to Captain Domor, by the way. He’s one of the reasons it wasn’t.”

  “Sir.”

  “And we’ll get the company leaders together and—” Wilder was tucking the counterseptic tube into his coat pocket, and his hand had just encountered the forgotten message wafer. He pulled it out and read it.

  “Sir? Something the matter?” Baskevyl asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s a look on your face like… like I don’t know what.”

  Wilder looked up at his first officer and was about to reply when Dorden interrupted. He was holding Wilder’s microbead headset and cap.

  “Your link’s squawking,” he said.

  Wilder pulled the headset in place, in time to hear a repeated call.

  “Wilder receiving, go ahead.”

  “This is Hark, colonel. Please come down to the dispersal area.”

  Hark saluted as Wilder and Baskevyl approached. The wide dirt-pan of the dispersal area was filling up with vehicles: treads returning from the front, and the inbound convoy from the gate. Hark was standing beside a trio of dirty Chimeras sporting Hauberkan livery.

  “This way,” Hark said. A crowd of Hauberkan troopers had gathered around the rear of one of the AFVs. Wilder felt his fists tighten.

  “Stand aside!” Hark snarled, and the tanker crews broke to let them through. Gadovin, the Hauberkans’ commander, was cuffed by one wrist to a tie-bar on the Chimera’s rear end. He was a sallow-faced man with thin, yellow hair. His tunic had half-moons of perspiration under the arms.

  “Release me!” he snapped at Hark. “This is ridiculous!”

  “Ridiculous?” Wilder said.

  Gadovin saw him for the first time and stiffened.

  “You were supposed to advance, Gadovin,” Wilder said.

  “The zone was mined.”

  “Not so much you had to stop dead and cut engines. I warned you what would happen.”

  “I listened to you!” Gadovin protested. “When the assault came, I took immediate action—”

  “You reversed.”

  “To regain the trackway!”

  “Through my men, who had moved in to support you. You nearly ran them down, and left them stranded, line broken. Then you called down an air-strike.”

  “The situation was extremely dangerous! We might have been overrun. It was essential that—”

  “It was dangerous all right. You’d seen to that. My men were still in the target grid, fighting your fight for you, when the Vultures came in. Didn’t you think? Didn’t you care?”

  “I thought you’d pulled back too!”

  “Why? Because you did? We’re not all gutless worms, Gadovin.”

  Gadovin didn’t answer. He was staring over Wilder’s shoulder. Marshal DeBray was approaching, led by Major Gerrogan, Gadovin’s second in command.

  The men drew back further, respectfully. DeBray entered the circle of tank troopers. A slightly-built man, with white hair and a permanently listless expression on his lined face, DeBray looked them up and down.

  “Stand down, Colonel Wilder,” he said. This isn’t your place to direct reprimand. Did you cuff this man, commissar?”

  Hark nodded.

  DeBray stared at Gadovin. “I’ve been reading through the preliminaries, Gadovin. Not a pretty picture. In the first place, you should have pushed on. In the second, you should have held tight, like Wilder told you. Third, the air-strike was a fantastically bad call.”

  “The situation was critical, sir,” Gadovin said. There were mines and—”

  “Funny that, mines. It being a war. You’re an arsehole, Gadovin. But you and your entire unit is new to this theatre and fresh-founded. You’re off to a famously bad start, but I hope you can learn from this and get your bloody act together. Quickly. Be bold, be decisive, stick to the plan, and when an experienced officer like Wilder gives you advice, bloody follow it. Are we dear?”

  “Sir.”

  “Being cuffed up, humiliated and called an arsehole by me in front of your men is probably punishment enough. Uncuff him, please, commissar.”

  Hark paused, then stepped forward and released Gadovin’s restraint.

  “Are you just going to let him—” Wilder began.

  “Ub-bub-bup!” DeBray said, raising a hand. “I appreciate your rancour, Wilder, but I did tell you this wasn’t your place to direct reprimand.”

  “Actually, marshal, it’s not yours either,” said Hark bluntly. This man was found wanting in the service of the God-Emperor today. Sorely wanting.” He turned. A small autopistol had appeared in his hand. The single shot made everyone around start. Gadovin slammed back against the rear of the Chimera, a fern-leaf of blood from the back of his head decorating the plating. He fell on his face.

  The Hauberkan men all around gazed in speechless horror. DeBray glared at Hark.

  “Discipline and punishment are the provinces of the Commissariat,” Hark said clearly, so all could hear. “We do not need to hear another word from you on the matter, marshal. The Hauberkan crews will learn from this demonstration that the Imperial Guard, Warmaster Macaroth, and Emperor himself will not tolerate incompetence or cowardice, especially from line officers. Major Gerrogan, I hope this is ample inspiration to you to be a much better regimental leader than your predecessor. Clean this up, and clean up your act.”

  He holstered his pistol and walked away. DeBray sniffed, glanced humourlessly at Wilder, then stalked back to his command station. “That report please, Wilder!” he called over his shoulder.

  Wilder caught up with Hark half way to the Eighty-First First billet.

  “What now?” Hark said.

  “Nothing, I just…” Wilder shrugged. “Men desert in the field, and you let them run, but you’re quite happy to execute a ranking officer.”

  “Yes. Let that be a lesson to you,” Hark said. He stopped walking and turned to face Wilder. Tm joking, of course. I’d like to think this might have illuminated you a little as to my approach. Men desert in the field. They’re afraid. Why are they afraid? Because they’re not being led soundly. Should they be executed, for a simple, human failing? No, I don’t believe so. I think they should be given a solid leader so it doesn’t happen again. An officer fails, then the whole structure falls down. Gadovin was why those men were running. Gadovin was the failure. So I reserved my censure for him.”

  Wilder nodded.

  “Are we good?” asked Hark.

  “Yes.” Hark began walking again.

  “Hark?”

  “What, colonel?”

  Wilder held out the message wafer. “I received this earlier. I think maybe you should see it.”

  Hark read the note. “Is this confirmed, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy Throne. They’re alive? After all we… Well, that’s unexpected. Have you told anyone?”

  “No. You
’re the first.”

  Hark nodded. “We’d better decide how to handle this. How do we tell the Ghosts that Gaunt’s still alive?”

  ELEVEN

  12.32 hrs, 193.776.M41

  Departing Frag Flats HQ

  Sparshad Combat Zone, Ancreon Sextus

  In the stark noon heat, the Valkyrie’s turbojets whined up to power, shaking the airframe. The flight sergeant checked Ludd’s harness with a tug, then Gaunt’s, but drew back from doing the same with Eszrah’s.

  “He’s fine,” Gaunt said.

  The flight sergeant nodded, then signalled to the pilot. The roar of the engines suddenly intensified, as if they were going to burst, and then the assault carrier lifted off.

  The flight sergeant had left the side doors of the cargo bay open, and he stood in the left hand doorway beside the swung-out heavy bolter mount, one hand raised to clutch a grip-bar. Past his silhouette and the shading arch of the port wing, Ludd could see the bright world flashing by. Low level at first, as they raced away from the Leviathans across the tent city and vehicle depots of Frag Flats, the jigging flags, the fence-post vox masts, a blur of passing detail. Then they began to climb, bearing north. The view outside became the unbroken white expanse of the Flats themselves, a glaring vista of reflected light. The Valkyrie banked slightly in a wide, climbing turn, and through the mouth of the right-hand door, Ludd could see their tiny, hard shadow, a black dart, chasing them across the bright desert floor far below, flickering and jumping as it was distorted by dune-caps and ridges.

  “Flight time’s about fifteen minutes to the Mons,” the flight sergeant shouted.

  Gaunt nodded and checked his wrist chronometer. Ludd noticed Gaunt was fiddling with the strap. The timepiece was Guard issue, chunky, well worn, but its bracelet strap had long since gone, replaced by a woven braid of what looked like leather and straw.

  “We should have checked you out a fresh one from stores, sir,” Ludd yelled over the engine noise.

  “It’s fine,” Gaunt called back. “It kept time on Gereon, it’ll keep time here.”