Necropolis (12 page)

Rawne indicated the scene below with precise gestures of his nimble hands, his killer’s hands. “If you watch the armour flashes as General Grizmund has suggested, they form a rough line, like a contour. Compare that to the fall of shells. The edge of the shortest falling shells — you can see that from the explosions and from the smoke fires — approximately matches that line, with a break of perhaps a kilometre and a half between armour and line of fire. That is the space we might expect the infantry advancing before the armour, to occupy.”

Nash nodded, impressed by the junior Tanith’s insight.

“We can’t judge their tactics by our own,” Rawne went on, “Feth, I’ve seen the forces of the Chaos-scum perform many tactical aberrations on the fields of war, but assuming they are not intent on slaughtering their own troops, and assuming the widest margin of error, that shows us a clear belt of infantry advance. Even single line abreast, I’d say we were welcoming over half a million down there. Double the line, double the figure, triple it—”

“We may be senior cadre, but we follow your maths, major,” said Gaunt and the others laughed darkly. “A fine assessment. Thank you.”

“At least a million,” said Mkoll, suddenly.

They all looked round at him.

“Scout-sergeant?”

“Listen, sir,” said Mkoll and they all did, hearing nothing more than the persistent wail and wail-echoes of the shelling and the crumps of explosions.

“Behind the impacts, a higher note, like a creaking, like the wind.”

Gaunt fought hard to screen out the sounds of the assault bombing. He heard vague whispers of the sound Mkoll described.

“Lasguns, sir. So many lasguns firing over each other that their individual sounds have become one shrieking note. You’d need a… a feth of a lot of lasguns to make that sound.”

At the back of the group, Daur noticed that Gaunt’s adjutant, Milo, had crossed to the western lip of the tower and was gazing out. The adjutant was no more than a youth, his pale skin marked by a strange blue tattoo as seemed to be the custom with so many of the Ghosts.

Daur crossed to him, limping. “What do you see?” he asked.

“What’s that?” asked Milo, pointing down to the east. Far away, round the curve of the massive Curtain Wall, past the Sondar and Veyveyr Gates and the ruin of the Ore Works, a great, black slope extended down out of the hive, two kilometres wide and five deep. It looked like a tide of tar. The Curtain Wall broke in a gap fourteen hundred metres wide to let it out.

“The Spoil,” Daur replied. “It’s a… a mountain of rock refuse and processed ore waste from the smelteries and mine workings. One of the landmarks of Vervunhive,” he laughed.

“The Wall is broken there.”

“The Spoil’s been there longer than the Wall. The Wall was built around it.”

“But still, it’s a break in the defence.”

“Don’t worry, it’s well protected. The fifth division of my Regiment, the ‘Spoilers’, are dedicated to guarding that area: twenty thousand men. They take their work seriously. Besides, the Spoil itself is bloody treacherous: steep, unsafe, constantly slipping. It’s probably harder to get past than the Curtain Wall itself. An enemy would waste thousands trying a foolish gambit like that!”

Daur smiled encouragingly at Milo and then turned away and rejoined the oversight tour.

Milo felt sorry for him. Daur had no experience of the enemy, no knowledge of the way they expended and used their troops wholesale to gain their objectives. The soldiers of Vervunhive and the tactics they had evolved were too deeply focused upon the experience of fighting sane enemies.

In the main group, Gaunt looked to his fellow regiment commanders. “Assessments?”

“Way too much armour for an infantry-based counterjab just now, but I’d as soon not let those bastards reach the walls,” said Nash.

“I’d like to deploy my tank divisions to engage them out there,” Grizmund said. “Supported by whatever the NorthCol armour units can supply. We’re not overwhelmed yet. If we can stop them in the outer habs clear of the main hive, we can push an advance spearhead right down into the heart of them. For all their infamous numbers, they are extended over a massive area. That’s how I’d go. Armoured counter-assault, direct and sudden, take the ground out from under them, if only a section, then open a way to turn and flank them, cutting into their reserve lines. And dig a path for the infantry too.”

Nash agreed vehemently. “I’ll happily support an organised push of that sort.”

“So will I,” Gaunt said. “They’ve taken more than enough ground. We should stop them dead, even if only in this west sector.”

Grizmund nodded. “The gates this side of the hive must be opened. I’ll gladly fight these bastards, no matter how many there are, but I need room for my machines to mobilise and manoeuvre. I’d rather do that out there in the habs than wait until they’re at the Wall.”

“Or inside it,” Rawne added.

“Something of a first,” Gaunt smiled at his colleagues. “Three regimental officers agreed on a tactical approach.”

There was more general laughter, cut short by the first shrieks of the missile launchers on the tower reopening fire now the awnings were down.

“That assessment does not jibe with General Sturm’s strategy,” Tarrian said from the side.

Gaunt looked round at him. “I feel uneasy whenever a political officer uses a vague word like ‘jibe’, Commissar Tarrian. What do you mean?”

“I understand General Sturm’s tactical recommendations for the prosecution of this conflict are already drawn up and under examination by Marshal Croe, the House Command Strategy Committee and representatives of the noble houses. I hear they have the full support of Vice Marshal Anko and Commissar Kowle.”

“It sounds like they’re as good as decided!” Nash snarled, his heavy chin with its bristle of grey stubble set hard.

“Are we wasting our time up here? What good is this oversight tour if they’ve already set on a course?” Grizmund asked.

“I have had past dealings with the general of the Volpone,” Gaunt remarked sourly. “I have no doubt he feels himself to be the senior Guard officer in this theatre and the hive elders have lauded him as such. But he is not a man for personal confrontation. Better he gives us something to occupy our attentions while he makes his own decisions. Hence this… sight-seeing.”

Gaunt turned sharply to look at Tarrian. “And you’d know what those decisions were, wouldn’t you, Tarrian?”

“It is not my place to say, colonel-commissar,” Tarrian said flatly.

“To hold the Wall, to keep the gates sealed, to give up all territory outside and to dig in for a sustained siege, trusting the Shield, the Curtain Wall and the army strengths within Vervunhive to hold the enemy off forever, or at least until the winter breaks them.”

They all looked round. As he finished speaking, Captain Daur shrugged, ignoring the murderous look the VPHC commander was giving him. “The plans were circulated this morning, with a magenta clearance rating. I have no reason to assume that clearance excluded senior echelon Guard officers.”

“Thank you, Daur,” Gaunt said. He looked back at Tarrian. “The generals and I wish to see Sturm and the marshal. Immediately.”

Quietly, the quintet of ochre-clad troops picked their way down the corridor of the bombed-out workshop, moving through the dust-filled air. Outside, a tank grated past down the river of debris that had once been Outhab Transit Street 287/fd.

The soldiers wore ochre battledress, shiny, black leather webbing straps, and polished, newly stamped lasguns. On their heads were full-face composite helmets with flared, sneering features like blurred skulls and the crest of Ferrozoica inlayed on the brow.

The squad checked each doorway and damage section they came to. Gol Kolea could hear the hollow crackle of their terse vox-signals barking back and forth.

He slid back into cover and made a hand gesture that his company could read. They moved back, swallowed by the shadows and the dust.

Gol let the five troopers advance down the corridor far enough until the last one was standing on the false flooring. Then he connected the bare end of the loose wire in his hand to the terminals of the battery pack.

The concussion mine tore out a length of the corridor and obliterated the last trooper where he stood, tearing the one directly in front of him into pieces with fragments of shrapnel and shards of bone from his exploded comrade.

The other three fell, then scrambled up, firing blind in the smoke. Bright, darting bars of las-fire pierced the smoke cover like reef fish scudding through cloudy water.

Gol smashed out his fake wall and came down on the first of them from the rear, swinging the hook-bill of his axe-rake down through helmet and skull.

Sergeant Haller dropped down from the ceiling joists where he had been crouching and felled another of them, killing him with point-blank shots from his autopistol as his bodyweight flattened the trooper.

The remaining Zoican bastard switched to full auto and swung wild. His withering close-range shots punched right through a flak-board wall partition and blew the guts and thighs out of Machinesmith Vidor, who had been waiting to spring out from behind it.

Nessa came out of cover under some loose sacking and slammed the rock-knife into the back of the Zoican’s neck. She held on, screaming and yanking at the blood-slick knife-grip as the trooper bucked convulsively. By the time he dropped, his head was nearly sawn off.

Gol hurried forward, picking Nessa up and pulling her off the corpse. She handed the bloody rock knife to him, shaking.

“Keep it,” he mouthed. She nodded. Eardrums ruptured by a close shell on the seventh day, she would never hear again without expensive up-hive surgery and implants — which meant simply she would never hear again. She was a trainee medic from the outer habs. Not the lowest of the low, but way, way down in the hive class system.

“You did good,” Gol signed. She smiled, but the fear in her eyes and the blood on her face diffused the power of the expression and diluted the beauty of the young woman.

“Not so easy,” she signed back. She’d learned to sign her remarks early on. Captain Fencer, the Emperor save his soul, had trained her well and explained how she could not modulate the volume of her own voice now she was deaf.

Gol looked round. Haller and the other members of Gol’s team had recovered four working lasguns, two laspistols and a bunch of ammunition webs from the dead by then.

“Go! Move!” Gol ordered, emphasising his words with expressive sign-gestures for the deaf. Of his company of nine, six were without hearing. He took a last look at Vidor’s corpse and nodded a moment of respect. He had liked Vidor. He wished the brave machinesmith had found the chance to fight. Then he followed his company out.

They moved out of the workshop, circuiting back around through a side alley and into a burned-out Ecclesiarchy chapel. The bodies of the Ministorum brothers lay all around, venting swarms of flies. They had not abandoned their holy place, even when the shells began to fall.

Haller crossed to the altar, straightened the slightly skewed Imperial eagle and knelt in observance. Tears dripped down his face, but he still remembered to sign his anguish and his prayer to the Emperor rather than speak it. Gol noticed this, and was touched and impressed by the soldier’s dual devotion to the Emperor and to their continued safety.

Gol got his company into the chapel, spreading them out to cover the openings and find the obvious escape routes.

The ground shook as tank rounds took out the workshop where they had sprung their trap.

In the cover of the explosions, he dared to speak, signing at the same time. “Let’s find the next ones to kill,” he said.

“A squad of six, moving in from the west,” hissed loom-girl Banda, setting down her lasgun and peering out of a half-broken lancet window.

“Drill form as before,” Gol Kolea signed to his company, “Form on me. Let’s set the next snare.”

Lord Heymlik Chass sent his servitors and bodyguard away. The chief of the guard, Rudrec, his weapon dutifully shrouded, tried to refuse, but Chass was not in the mood for argument.

Alone in the cool, gloomy family chapel of House Chass, high up in the Main Spine upper sectors, the lord prayed diligently to the soul of the undying Emperor. The ghosts of his ancestors welled up around him, immortalised in statuary. Heymlik Chass believed in ghosts.

They spoke to him.

He unlocked the casket by the high altar between the family stasis-crypts with a geno-key that had been in his family for generations. He raised the velvet-padded lid, hearing the moan of ancient suspensor fields, and lifted out Heironymo’s Amulet.

“What are you doing, father?” Merity Chass asked. His daughter’s voice startled him and almost made him drop the precious thing.

“Merity! You shouldn’t be here!” he murmured.

“What are you doing?” she asked again, striding forward under the flaming sconces of the chapel, her green velvet dress whispering as she moved.

“Is that…” Her voice trailed away. She could not utter the words.

“Yes. Given to our house by Great Heironymo himself.”

“You’re not thinking of using it! Father!”

He stared down into her pained, beautiful face.

“Go away, my daughter. This is not for your eyes.”

“No!” she barked. She so reminded him of her mother when she turned angry that way. “I am grown, I am the heir, female though I may be. Tell me what you are doing!”

Chass sighed and let the weight of the amulet play in his hands. “What I must, what is good for the hive. There was a reason Old Heironymo bequeathed this to my father. Salvadore Sondar is a maniac. He will kill us all.”

“You have raised me to be respectful of the High House, father,” she said, a slight smile escaping her frown. That was her mother again, Heymlik noticed.

“It amounts to treason,” his daughter whispered.

He nodded and his head sank. “I know what it amounts to. But we are on the very brink now. Heironymo always foretold this moment.”

He hugged her. She felt the weight of the amulet in his hands against her back.