“I suggest you modify your language, madam general,” Novobazky said sharply. Ignoring the Commissariat troopers all around them, he took a step towards her.
“That’s close enough!” Faragut warned.
“I take issue with your characterisation of us as tainted or heretics,” Novobazky said. “There are matters here that—”
“Novobazky,” Balshin said. “I always thought of you as a dependable man. Thank you for demonstrating how odiously and malignantly Gaunt’s contamination can be spread.”
Novobazky’s face hardened and his cheeks flushed with fury, but he kept his mouth shut. Gaunt looked directly at Inquisitor Welt, who had not spoken a word. “Inquisitor? Do you go along with this? I took you to be far less blinkered than Balshin.”
“Say something to convince me,” said Welt.
Gaunt gestured around the theatre tent. “I can tell you plenty. Everyone in this room can tell you plenty. There is taint here, inquisitor. It’s the city itself. The place we’re fighting for is sick.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Balshin. “And borderline heresy. The step-cites of Ancreon Sextus are revered monuments that date back to—”
“Tell me about the stalkers,” Gaunt said.
“What?” Balshin snapped.
The Ordo Xenos has established, through analysis of recovered specimens, that the so-called “stalkers” are augmetically enhanced humans and, more often ogryns,” said Welt. This information has been suppressed for reasons of morale. The unauthorised autopsy you have been conducting here, and all evidence bearing from it, will be sequestered by the Inquisition.”
“And tell me about the warp doors,” Gaunt said.
“What are you talking about?” Balshin asked.
“Tell me about the warp doors that riddle the compartments. Explain to me how the stalkers get in and out during the night.”
“I don’t know what you mean. We have assumed burrows, perhaps…”
“There aren’t any fething burrows,” Rawne said. “My team and I witnessed a warp door in use last night, less than five kilometres from where we’re standing. We saw a stalker come through. Those two men there passed through the gate themselves and re-emerged through a second one.” Rawne pointed at the unconscious forms of Maggs and Mkoll on the cots.
“They must be examined and interviewed,” said Welt.
“That will have to wait,” Dorden told him. “They are in no condition.” Welt half-smiled at Dorden, as if amused at the medicae’s defiance of an Inquisitorial order.
“The structure of the Mons is unsound, Balshin,” said Gaunt.
“The structure of the Mons has been extensively studied and surveyed,” Balshin exclaimed. “It is under constant scrutiny from the Fleet and the Tacticae. Do you really expect me to believe that you and a few of your fellow deviants can come here and, in just a few days, uncover secrets that everyone else has missed? If there was a system of warp doors here as you claim, they would have been detected months ago.”
“They are pretty much invisible to standard sensory systems,” Gaunt replied, “and to regular human senses too.”
“But not to you?” sneered Balshin.
“No, not to me,” Gaunt said. “Nor to any of the Gereon mission team.”
“He’s practically confessing to taint!” Faragut blurted.
“I’m repeating what I’ve told you all along,” Gaunt said. “I’m admitting to a sensitivity, an awareness of the vibrations of Chaos. We could not have survived our time on Gereon without developing an affinity. The very instincts that kept us alive there are showing us the truth now.” He stated directly at Balshin. The fact that we have worked to expose this danger, the fact that we are telling it to your face… Does that alone not prove whose side we’re fighting for?”
Balshin was about to answer back, but Welt raised a hand. “Commissar-general, perhaps you and your team would be so good as to record full statements from the individuals here. Doctor? Please prepare those two men for transportation back to Frag Flats. Gaunt, walk with me.”
Gaunt glanced at Rawne, and then followed Welt out of the theatre tent. There was a moment’s silence.
“That went well, I thought,” said Varl.
* * * * *
Gaunt and the inquisitor walked together through the habi-tent rows of the post, and came to a halt on a patch of higher ground, looking north. The air was still black, but the compartment was lit by the moving lights and the distant radiance of fire.
“Balshin is under pressure to produce results,” Welt said. The Crusade Second Front is truly ailing. If your claims are validated, it will make a big difference to the way the war goes here on Ancreon Sextus.”
“They’d better be validated soon,” said Gaunt. “Mkoll said he witnessed vast hosts massing beyond the gate. Did no one ever stop and wonder how the enemy was able to keep producing so many troops and fighting vehicles from out of the heart of this Mons?”
Welt paused, as if wondering whether to let Gaunt in on classified information. “It’s not just here, Gaunt. The situation here at Sparshad Mons is being replicated, right now, at every other step-city on the planet.”
“A unified offensive? In cities thousands of kilometres from each other?”
Welt nodded.
“It’s because the enemy isn’t in the cities,” Gaunt said. The cities are just delivery systems to bring them through. The Blood Pact armies are not waiting for us in the next compartment or the one after that. They’re simply coming out of the gates. Mkoll suggested that the main compartment gates are large scale versions of the doors the stalkers use.”
“So the enemy gets our attention, draws us into laying siege to these haunted rocks, gets us to commit all our forces deep inside the walls…” Welt let the words hang.
“And then fully opens the gateways.” said Gaunt. “I sometimes think we’re guilty of underestimating our old foe, inquisitor. The Ruinous Powers operate with levels of guile and sophistication that we scarcely credit. On Gereon, we witnessed them using jehgenesh. Gigantic warp creatures that were bred to consume a planet’s natural resources, such as fresh water or mineral ore, and excrete them via the warp to supply planets light years away. They are not destroyers, they are users. If they work on that kind of scale, why should it surprise us if they deploy entire armies that way, in places like this, where the ancient mechanisms for such transmission still exist?”
“I subscribe to the theory that the Imperium’s worst enemy,” said Welt, “is its own ignorance.”
Welt looked at Gaunt, and studied him curiously for a moment. “Inquisitor?”
“It’s an unhappy position you’re in, Gaunt. Despite all the great service you’ve done for the Imperium, you’re regarded as a difficult, dangerous man now.”
“I don’t know about difficult,” said Gaunt. “Dangerous is right, though.”
“You’re this close to summary execution,” Welt said baldly. “And there’s only one thing keeping you alive.”
“What’s that?”
“Me,” Welt said. “If you and your team could survive as long as you did on that hell-hole world without succumbing to taint, then for the sake of the Imperium and the protection of our species, I have to find out why.”
Welt returned to the theatre tent to assist with the interrogations. Two Commissariat troopers were detailed to Gaunt, and kept him secluded in one of the rooms in the post. He sat alone for a few minutes, and then fell into a deep sleep. Ludd woke him four hours later. Outside, a thin light was announcing the day.
“What’s going on?” Gaunt asked.
“Commissar-General Balshin’s finished here. Rawne’s team has been debriefed. They’re to return to their unit at the front. Maggs and Mkoll will be shipped back to Frag Flats.”
“How are they?”
“Still unconscious, but showing signs of recovery. I’ve been sent to collect you, sir. You’re to come back with us.”
Gaunt got to his feet.
&
nbsp; “Sir, I want to say… I’m sorry,” Ludd said.
“For what?”
“For reporting your actions. Balshin made it quite clear I was to report to her any… unorthodox behaviour on your part. It was my duty. But I didn’t like doing it.”
“I was counting on you, Ludd,” Gaunt said.
“What, sir?”
“When I realised something was wrong here, I knew there was no point me trying to convince Balshin. She has no time for me. I needed her to believe I was up to something, that I had something to hide. That way she’d come looking and wouldn’t be able to dismiss what I had to show her.”
“So… you expected me to—”
“I expected you to do your duty, Ludd. And luckily, you did.”
TWENTY-FIVE
14.10 hrs, 199.776.M41
Frag Flats HQ
Sparshad Combat Zone, Ancreon Sextus
He’d been waiting for hours, almost but not quite a prisoner in a spartan chamber aboard one of the command Leviathans. He kept looking at his pathetic, broken chronometer, watching time creep on slowly.
The chamber doors folded inwards on electric motors. Commissar Faragut stood in the doorway. Faragut stared at Gaunt contemptuously.
“Did you draw the lucky straw, Faragut?” Gaunt asked. “You must be very happy. Back of the head, please. I don’t want your face to be the last thing I ever see.”
Faragut tensed, but didn’t take the bait. “The lord general is waiting for you,” he said.
Van Voytz was in the Leviathan’s main tactical command centre. Intense activity was taking place all around him. Hundreds of voices speaking all at once, hundreds of logic engines chattering and whirring. The hololithic displays above the main strategium pit were changing fast: coloured patterns and contours symbolising the effects of enormous coordination work.
Van Voytz saw Gaunt approaching.
“Ibram,” he said, and gestured around himself. “All this, Ibram.”
“Sir?”
“That’s all, Faragut,” Van Voytz said, and the commissar left them.
Van Voytz led Gaunt through to a quieter side vault where eight tacticians, including Antonid Biota, were softly discussing their art around an active display table.
“Can I have the room, gentlemen?” Van Voytz asked. “You stay, Biota.” The other tacticians filed out.
“There’s been some preliminary investigation, Gaunt,” Van Voytz said. “Ordo Xenos, various astropaths. No solid proof can be found of any warp network within the Mons.”
“I see,” said Gaunt.
“But it’s all rather hasty, preliminary, as I said. Time is not on our side.”
“No, sir.”
Van Voytz sighed. “And that’s when a lord general earns his pay. Proof or no proof, a decisive tactical decision has to be made, based on the best information. You should have heard the arguments amongst the senior staff this morning. I nearly shot a couple of them. Whatever else, there are two Guardsmen in the infirmary—one a “tainted” Ghost from your Gereon team, the other most definitely not—who are well enough to testify about what they saw last night. I spoke to them both myself…”
Van Voytz looked at Gaunt. “I know when men lie, and these men are not lying. Their words chilled me.
“And when I read substantive evidence, written statements from men like Novobazky, I know I’d be a fool to dismiss what you’ve stumbled upon.”
The lord general glanced across at Biota.
“Thirty-eight minutes ago,” the tactician said, “formal order was given for the immediate staged withdrawal of Imperial Guard forces from Sparshad Mons and all other step-cities on this planet. Orbital manoeuvres are now underway to deploy the Fleet in geo-synchronous positions for surface bombardment. It is estimated they will have firing solutions in eight hours.”
“I expect to give the order at around midnight tonight,” Van Voytz said.
“You’re going to destroy the cities…” said Gaunt.
“I’m going to wipe them from the face of creation,” Van Voytz said. “As I wanted to, incidentally, all along. Damn this siege work.”
“It is the prudent thing to do,” Biota said.
“A swift and total victory here could be just what the Second Front needs,” Van Voytz said. “A robust statement of Imperial domination. An end to a long, slow, drawn-out wrestling match that has sapped and shredded morale.”
“In my opinion, sir,” said Gaunt, “the problems the Guard has had here on Ancreon Sextus—the desertions, the sickness, the psychoses—much of that can be attributed to the taint in the cities. Exposure to these places has twisted men’s minds and souls, even if they haven’t been aware of it. The taint Balshin is so desperate to root out is real here, just very, very subversive. But on the Second Front in general, the problem is simply that Macaroth has given you a young, inexperienced army. They’re scared, they’re improperly supported, they’re learning to make war as they go along. In the field here at Sparshad, it’s been my honour to serve alongside young men who have never seen battle before. They have brave hearts, general, I can vouch for that. They simply lack the confidence to use that courage.”
“The Imperial Victory of Ancreon Sextus,” said Van Voytz, banging his fist on the edge of the display table. That’ll put some fire into their bellies. They’ll see that the Second Front is capable of accomplishing something.”
Gaunt looked at the display’s schematic images of the outer compartments. “You intend to order the start of bombardment around midnight, sir?” he asked.
“Thereabouts, as soon as it practicable.”
“It will be quite a logistical exercise getting such a huge commitment of troops and machines clear of the cities by then. Especially in situations where they are engaging the enemy.”
Van Voytz glanced uncomfortably at Biota. “We will orchestrate as full a withdrawal as is feasible,” said the tactician. “It is regrettable that there may be some losses.”
“Black cross losses, you mean?” said Gaunt.
“Yes.”
“So any Guard unit too slow getting clear of the cities by the deadline… or any that can’t break free of enemy engagement…”
“Will be sacrificed,” said Biota calmly. “Such losses are unfortunate, but, up to a certain proportion, considered acceptable when stacked against the over all strategic advantage.”
“What Antonid means,” grumbled Van Voytz, “is that if we stick with the siege, we’ll most likely lose a hell of lot more men than the ones who’ll give their lives in a good cause tonight.”
“I understand what he means,” said Gaunt. The poor rearguard will suffer the worst.”
“Don’t they always?”
Gaunt turned away from the display and faced Van Voytz. “Sir, I request permission to return to the field. Discipline will be the deciding factor in how quickly and cleanly the withdrawal can be managed. There will be fear and panic, and also carelessness. You need every commissar you can find to supervise.”
“I expected you to say as much,” Van Voytz said. “If you must, then—”
“I want to go to the fifth compartment, sir.”
Van Voytz let a slight smile turn his lips. “Yes, I thought you might. That’s where they are, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on, Commissar Gaunt.”
Gaunt removed Eszrah Night from the holding cell where the Commissariat had put him, and together they recovered their confiscated weapons and possessions from a duty officer.
The hull-top flight platforms were seething with activity in the glaring sunlight. Lifters, gunships and fliers were already relaying personnel back from the Mons. Servitors unloaded equipment, and fitter teams in sun-shrouds worked on quick turn-arounds. Gaunt found a deck supervisor, who consulted his checklists and told Gaunt there’d be spaces on one of the Destrier-pattern heavy carriers in fifteen minutes.
Gaunt and Eszrah waited by the guard rail. Other passengers, mostly officers a
nd medicae staff, gathered. From the high vantage, Gaunt could see the Frag Flats camp below, spread out under the white sun, baking in the heat. After days in the Mons’ drab, dank micro-climate, obscured by smoke, it felt like another world.
The camp was striking. Even the Frag Flats HQ was going to withdraw to a greater distance from the Mons before the midnight deadline. Gaunt watched the temporary city slowly deconstructing itself.
A pair of Valkyries lifted off the pad behind him, and he turned to watch them go. They arced away in the bright blue air towards the great, dark cloud on the horizon.
The deck supervisor called them, and they walked with the other waiting men towards one of the bulky Destriers. It was an ugly, obese flier, its hull flaking grey. The side hatch was open, and they clambered into the battered, bare metal hold and made themselves comfortable in the small, wall-mounted strap-downs.
Another of the Destriers lifted away in a huge din of thrust and flying grit. Their own transport’s engines began to turn over.
“Two minutes!” the deck supervisor called.
A figure appeared in the sunlight outside, and climbed into the hold, a last-minute addition to the passengers. He walked across to Gaunt and Eszrah.
“Hello, Ludd,” Gaunt said.
“I heard you were… I mean, I thought I should…”
“Strap yourself in,” Gaunt said.
“This is going to be hard work, isn’t it?” Ludd said. “It’s going to be tough getting the men out of there in time.”
“Especially if they’re rearguard,” Gaunt said. “First in, last out.”
Ludd looked over at Eszrah Night.
Slowly, carefully, as a matter of ritual, the partisan was smearing wode across his face, ready for war.
TWENTY-SIX
15.05 hrs, 199.776.M41
Fifth Compartment
Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus