[Gaunt's Ghosts 01] - First & Only

  It mattered little. After a week and a half of levy organisation, resupply and tactical processing at the hexathedrals, the Ghosts had been selected to participate in the assault on Menazoid Epsilon, advancing before an armoured host of forty thousand vehicles from the Lattaru Gundogs, Ketzok 17th, Samothrace 4th, 5th and 15th, Borkellid Hellhounds, Cadian Armoured 3rd and Sarpoy Mechanised Cavalry. With the Tanith First in the field would be eight Mordian and four Pragar regiments, the Afghali Ravagers 1st and 3rd, six battalions of Oudinot Irregulars — and the Vitrian Dragoons.

  The inclusion of the Vitrians gave Gaunt confidence that deployment decisions had been influenced by friendly minds. The fact that the Jantine Patricians were also part of the first wave, and that Lord General Dravere was in over all charge of the Epsilon theatre, made him think otherwise.

  How much of it was engineered by Fereyd’s hand; how much by the opposing cartel? How much was sheer happenstance? Only time would tell. Time… and slaughter.

  The lord general’s strategists had planned out six dispersal sites for the main landing along a hundred and twenty kilometre belt of lowlands adjacent to a hill range designated Shrine Target Primaris on all field charts and signals. Four more dispersal sites were spread across a massive salt basin below Shrine Target Secundus, a line of steeple-cliffs fifteen hundred kilometres to the west, and three more were placed to assault Shrine Target Tertius on a wide oceanic peninsula two thousand kilometres to the south.

  The waves of landing ships came in under cover of pre-dawn light, tinting the dark undersides of the clouds red with their burners and attitude thrusters. As the sun came up, pale and weak, the lightening sky was thick with ships… the heavyweight troop-carriers, glossy like beetles, the smaller munitions and supply lifters moving in pairs and trios, the quick, cross-cutting threads of fighter escort and ground cover. Some orbital bombardment — jagging fire-ripples of orbit-to-surface missiles and the occasional careful stamp of a massive beam weapon — softened the empty highlands above the seething dispersal fields.

  Down in the turmoil, men and machines marshalled out of black ships into the dawn light. Troops components formed columns or waiting groups, and armour units ground forward, making their own roads along the lowlands, assembling into packs and advance lines on the churned, rolling grasses. The air was thick with exhaust fumes, the growl of tank engines, the roar of ship-thrusters and the crackle of vox-chatter. Platoon strength retinues set dispersal camps, lit fires, or were seconded to help erect the blast-tents of the field hospitals and communication centres. Engineer units dug fortifications and defence baffles. Munitorium supply details broke out the crates from the material ships, and distributed assault equipment to collection parties from each assembling platoon. Amid the hue and cry, the Ministorum priesthood moved solemnly through their flock, chanting, blessing, swinging incense burners and singing unceasing hymns of valour and protection.

  Gaunt came down the bow-ramp of his drop-ship into the early morning air and onto a wide mud-plain of track-chewed earth. The noise, the vibration, the petrochemical smell, was intense and fierce. Lights flashed all around, from camp-fires and hooded lanterns, from vehicle headlights, from the winking hazard lamps of landing ships or the flicking torch-poles of dispersal officers directing disembarking troop columns or packs of off-loading vehicles.

  He looked up at the highland slopes beyond: wide, rising hills thick with dry, ochre bracken. Beyond them was the suggestion of crags and steeper summits: the Target Primaris.

  There, if the Vermilion level data was honest, lay the hopes and dreams of Lord High Militant General Dravere and his lackeys. And the destiny of Ibram Gaunt and his Ghosts too.

  Further down the field, Devourer drop-ships slackened their metal jaws and disgorged the infantry. The Ghosts came out blinking, in platoon formation, gazing out at the rolling ochre-dad hills and the low, puffy cloud cover. Gaunt moved them up and out, under direction of the marshals, onto the rise that was their first staging post. Clearing the exhaust smog which choked the dispersal site, they got their first taste of Menazoid Epsilon. It was dry and cool, with a cutting wind and a permeating scent of honeysuckle. At first, the sweet, cold smell was pleasing and strange, but after a few breaths it became cloying and nauseating.

  Gaunt signalled his disposition and quickly received the command to advance as per the sealed battle orders. The Ghosts moved forward, rising up through the bracken, leaving countless trodden trails in their wake. The growth was hip-high and fragile as ash, and the troopers were encumbered by tripping roots and wiry sedge weeds.

  Gaunt lead them to the crest of the hill and then turned the regiment west, as he had been ordered. Two kilometres back below them, on the busy dispersal field, burners flared and several of the massive drop-ships rose, swinging low above the hillside, shuddering the air and billowing up a storm of bracken fibres as they lifted almost impossibly into the cloudy sky.

  Three kilometres distant, Gaunt could see through his scope two regiments of Mordian Iron Guard forming up as they advanced from their landing points. Another two kilometres beyond them, the Vitrian Dragoons were advancing from their first staging. The rolling hilly landscape was alive with troops, clusters of black dots marching up from the blasted acres of the dispersal site, forward through the scrub.

  By mid-morning, the parallel-advancing regiments of Imperial Guard armour and infantry were pushing like fingers through the bracken and scree-marked slopes of the highlands. At the dispersal sites now left far behind, ships were still ferrying components of the vast assault down from orbit. Thruster-roar rolled like faraway thunder around the sleeve of hills.

  They began to see the towers: forty-metre tall, irregular piles of jagged rock rising out of the bracken every five hundred metres or so. Gaunt quickly passed the news on to command, and heard similar reports on the vox-caster’s cross-channel traffic. There were lines of these towers all across the highland landscape. They looked like they had been piled from flat slabs, wide at the base, narrowing as they rose and then wider and flat again at the top. They were all crumbling, mossy, haphazard, and in places time had tumbled some of their number over in wide spreads of broken stone, half-hidden amidst the bracken.

  Gaunt wasn’t sure if they were natural outcrops, and their spacing and linear form seemed to suggest otherwise. He was disheartened as he remembered the singular lack of data on Epsilon that had been available at the orbital preparatory briefings.

  “Possibly a shrine world,” had been the best the Intelligence cadre had had to offer. “The surface of the planet is covered in inexplicable stone structures, arranged in lines that converge on the main areas of ruins — the targets Primaris, Secundus and Tertius.”

  Gaunt sent Mkoll’s scouting platoon ahead, around the breast of the hill through a line of mouldering towers and into the valley beyond. He flipped out the data-slate which he had secreted in his storm-coat pocket for two days and consulted the crystal’s data.

  Calling up Trooper Rafflan, he took the speaker-horn from the field-caster on his back and relayed further orders. His units would scout ahead and the Mordians, advancing in their wake, would lay behind until he signalled. It was now local noon.

  Turning back to his men, Gaunt saw Major Rawne nearby, standing in a grim hunch, his lasgun hanging limply in his hands. Gaunt had all but refused to allow Rawne to join them, but the hexathedral medics had pronounced him fit. He was a shadow of his former self since the torture by the Jantine and that mysterious robed monster which Larkin had shot. Gaunt missed the waspish, barbed attitude that had made Rawne a dangerous ally — and a good squad leader. Feygor, his adjutant, was here too, his life owed to Dorden. Feygor was a loose cannon now, an angry man with an axe to grind. He’d railed against the Jantine in the barracks and cursed that they were sharing this expedition. Gaunt feared what might happen if the Ghosts and the Jantine crossed on Epsilon, particularly without Rawne sharp enough to keep his adjutant in line.

  What will happen will hap
pen, Gaunt decided, hearing Fereyd’s counsel in his head. He checked his bolt gun for luck and was about to turn and tell Milo to play up when the shivering notes of a march spilled from the chanters of the Tanith pipes and echoed across the curl of the valley.

  They were here. Now they would do this.

  TWO

  Lord General Dravere’s Command Leviathan, a vast armoured, trundling fortress the size of a small city, crawled forward across the loamy soil of the lowland slope overlooking one of the main dispersal sites for the Primaris target.

  At its heart, Dravere, swung around in his leather command g-hammock. He was in a good mood. Thanks to his urgent requests, Warmaster Macaroth had personally instructed him to the command of the Epsilon offensive. The fool! Here lay the secret which the freak-beast Heldane had told him of on Fortis Binary. The reward. The prize that would win him everything.

  Dravere had spent two days reviewing the available data on Menazoid Epsilon before the drop. Little more than a moon compared to its vast partner Sigma, it was reckoned to be a shrine world to the Dark Powers. Vast, mouldering structures of inexplicable ancient design dominated the northern uplands, arranged in patterns that could only be appreciated from high orbit. The vast bulk of the Chaos legions arrayed against them had dug in to defend their cities on the primary world, but intelligence reports had picked up hints of an unknown mass of defence established here. It was clear, though there was no obvious wealth or value to the moon-world, that the foe regarded it as significant. Why else would they have risked splitting their forces?

  Dravere had heard talk of simply obliterating Epsilon from orbit, but had fiercely vetoed the navy plan. He wanted Epsilon taken on the ground, so that they might capture and examine whatever it was here the enemy held in such regard. That was the authorised explanation for this assault.

  Dravere knew more. He knew that the fact the rebellious Gaunt had requested this theatre alone made it significant.

  Dravere readied himself. He knew how to use manpower. He had based his career upon it. He would use Gaunt now. The commissar had not given up the priceless data, so they would instead use Gaunt to lead them to it.

  Dravere pulled on a lever to rotate his command hammock, speed-reading the deposition reports from the repeater plates that hung around his station. He linked in with the Command Globes of Marshal Sendak and Marshal Tarantine, who were overseeing the assaults on target locations Secundus and Tertius respectively. They reported their dispersal complete and their forces in advance. No contact with any enemy thus far.

  The afternoon was half gone, and the first day with it. Dravere was unhappy that fighting had not yet begun at any of the three battle fronts, but he was gratified in the knowledge that he had supervised the landing of an expeditionary force of this size, divided between three targets, in less than a single day. He knew of few Imperial Guard commanders who could have done the same in treble that time.

  He selected other plates and surveyed the disposition of the army under his direct command, the Primaris invasion. The infantry regiments were down and advancing strongly from the dispersal sites, and the motorised armour were disembarking from their landing craft into the lower valleys. He was pushing on three prongs to encircle the ancient mountainside structures of Shrine Target Primaris, fanning his armour out to support three infantry advances, led by the Mordian to the west, the Lattaru to the east and the Tanith to the south. So far there had been no sign of an enemy to engage. No sign at all, in fact, that there were anything other than Imperium forces alive on Epsilon.

  Dravere took up a stylus and inscribed a short message on a data-slate to Colonel Flense of the Jantine. Flense would be his eyes and ears on the ground, tailing the Tanith Ghosts and standing ready to intercede. Gaunt’s advance was the only one he was interested in.

  Dravere coded the message in Jantine combat-cant and broadcast it to the Patricians on a stammered vox-burst. Flense would not fail him.

  He sat back in his harness and allowed a smile to cross his thin lips. He knew this gambit would cost him, but he had lives enough to pay. The lives of the fifty thousand infantry under his command here on Epsilon. He considered them a down-payment on his apotheosis. He decided to take the opportunity to rest and meditate.

  The second day was dawning when he returned to his command-hammock, and overviewed the intelligence from the night. All of his units had advanced as expected until dark and then established watch-camps and stagings. At first light, they were moving again. The night had brought no sign of the foe, nor had Dravere expected such news. His staff would have roused him immediately at the first shot fired.

  Chatter and industry filled the command globe beyond the circular guard rail surrounding his hammock-pit. Navy officers and Munitorium aides mixed with Guard tactical officials and members of his own staff, manning the artificers and codifiers, processing, analysing and charting movement on the huge hololithic deployment map, a three-dimensional light-shape projecting down from the domed roof.

  A sudden call rang through the deck: “Marshal Tarantine reports his Cadian and Afghali units have engaged. Heavy fighting now at Shrine Target Tertius!”

  First blood, Dravere thought, at last. Red indicator runes flashed on the continental deployment map. Stains of tell-tale brown and crimson shone out to delineate firefight spread and range at the Tertius location. Enemy positions flashed into life as they were assessed, appearing as aggressive little yellow stars.

  He issued more orders, bringing the heavy artillery and tanks around to begin bombardment to cover Tarantine’s line. Two more heavy fighting zones erupted on the map, as the Secundus push suddenly ground hard into hidden enemy emplacements. A counter-bombardment opened up from the enemy forces. More stains, more yellow stars. Dravere kept one eye fixed on the jinking signals that flagged the swift Tanith advance, with Mordian, Jantine and Vitrian columns at its heels. The Primaris assault was unopposed so far.

  “It begins, lord,” a voice said to his left. Dravere looked up into the face of Imperial Tactician Wheyland. Wheyland was a grizzled, bald man with a commanding frame and piercing eyes. He wore the black and red-braid uniform of Macaroth’s tactical advisors, but Dravere had known who the man really was when he first met him. A spy, a watcher, an observer, sent by Macaroth to supervise Dravere’s efforts.

  “Your assessment, Wheyland?” Dravere said smoothly.

  The tactician scrutinised the deployment map. “We expected fierce resistance. I anticipate they have more than this up their sleeves.”

  “Nothing yet here at Primaris. We expected this to be the worst, didn’t we?”

  “Indeed.” Wheyland seemed oblivious to Dravere’s sarcasm. “Not yet, but it will come. If this is the Shrine World we fear it to be, their defence will be more indomitable and fanatical than we can imagine. Do not advance your forces too swiftly, lord general, or you will render them vulnerable and overextended.”

  Dravere wished he could tell the tactician exactly what he thought of his advice, but Wheyland was part of Macaroth’s military aristocracy and an insult would be counter-productive. He wanted to shout: I’ve dispersed this invasion faster and more efficiently than any commander in the fleet and you dare advise me to slow? But he simply nodded, biting his tongue for now.

  Wheyland sat on the guard rail and sighed reflectively. “It’s been a long time for us, eh, Hechtor?”

  Dravere looked at him crossly. “Long time? What do you mean?”

  Wheyland smiled at him. “The heat of combat? We were both footsloggers once. Last action I saw was against the accursed eldar on Ondermanx, twenty years past. Now we’re data-slate watchers, plate-pushers. Command is an honourable venture, but sometimes I miss the sweat and toil of combat.”

  Dravere licked his lips at the delicious thought which had just come to him. “I can use any able-bodied, willing fighting man, Wheyland. Do you want to get out there?”

  Wheyland looked startled for a moment, then grinned suddenly, getting up. “I never refu
se such an opportunity. The combat technique of this much-celebrated Tanith regiment fascinates me. I’m sure the tactical counsel could incorporate many new ideas from close observation of their stealth methods. With your permission, I’d gladly join them.”

  You’re so damn transparent, Dravere thought sullenly. You want to see for yourself, don’t you? But he also knew he couldn’t argue. To deny an Imperial tactician now might risk compromising his plan. I can deal with you later, he decided.

  “Would you care to deploy in the field as an observer? I could always use an eye on the ground.”

  “With your permission,” Wheyland said, making to leave. “I’ll take a Chimera from the reserve and move up the line. I have a detail of bodyguards who can act as a fire-team squad. Naturally, I’ll report all findings to you.”

  “Naturally,” Dravere agreed humourlessly. “I’ll enter your identifier on the chart. Your battle code will be what?”

  Wheyland seemed to think for a moment. “How about my old unit call-sign? Eagleshard.”

  Dravere noted it and passed the details to his aide.

  “Good hunting… tactician,” he said as the man left the command dome.

  THREE

  Gaunt looked up from the inscription that Communications Officer Rafflan had made of the intercepted vox-burst.

  “Mean anything to you, sir?” he asked. “I logged it yesterday afternoon.”

  Gaunt nodded. It was a message in Jantine combat-cant. Watchful of Macaroth’s agencies, he had instructed Rafflan to keep his vox-cast unit open to listen for all battlefield traffic. The message was from Dravere to Flense: a direct order to shadow the Ghosts. Gaunt rubbed his chin. Slowly, the enemies were showing their hand.

  He looked ahead, up the high mountain pass, choked with bracken, and its lines of slumping towers. He was tempted to send Rawne back down the slope to mine the way in advance of the Jantine at their heels, but when all was said and done, they were on the same side. Word had come that the fighting had opened at the other two target sites, heavy and bloody. There was no telling what they would encounter up ahead in the thin altitude. He dared not drive back the units which might be the only forces to support the Tanith in a direct action.