First and Only (24 page)

‘Weapons discharge on the Munitorium deck!’ a Jantine trooper with a vox-caster on his back reported. ‘The Navy details are closing to contain it… Sir, the channels are alive with cross-reports. They’re blaming it on the Jantine! They say we conducted a feud strike on Tanith-scum in the supply vaults!’

Flense cursed. ‘Gaunt! The devil’s trying to match our game!’ He turned to his men. ‘Brochuss! Secure the deck! Security detail with me!’

‘I’ll stay and finish my work,’ the robed figure said in a deep, liquid tone that quite chilled Corbec. As the various men moved off to comply with orders, the robed figure stopped Flense with a hand to his shoulder. Or rather, what seemed more like a long-fingered claw than a hand, Corbec noticed with a shudder.

‘This isn’t good, Flense,’ the figure breathed at the suddenly trembling colonel. ‘Use violence against a soldier like Gaunt and you can be assured he will use it back. And you seem to have underestimated his political abilities. I fear he has outplayed you. And if he has, you should fear for yourself.’

Flense shook himself free and hurried away. ‘I’ll deal with it!’ he snarled defensively over his shoulder. The robed figure watched him leave and then withdrew into the infirmary.

‘What do we do?’ Varl hissed.

‘Tell me we go back now,’ Larkin whispered urgently.

Another scream issued from the chamber beyond.

‘What do you think?’ Corbec asked.

Eighteen

S
IRENS WAILED IN
the normally tranquil strategium. Grasticus shifted in his cot-throne, wanding screens to him and cursing at the information he was reading.

Gaunt and Zoren exchanged glances.

I hope this confusion is the confusion we planned, Gaunt thought.

Grasticus rose up on his elbows and bawled at the quaking Lekulanzi. ‘Weapons fire on the Munitorium deck! My data says it’s Jantine feuders!’

‘Are any of mine hurt?’ Gaunt asked, pushing forward, urgent. ‘I told you the Jantine were out for blood–’

‘Shut up, commissar,’ the captain said with a suddenly sour look. His day had been disrupted enough. ‘The reports are unconfirmed. Get down there and see to it, warrant officer!’

Lekulanzi scurried out of the chamber. Grasticus turned back to the two Imperial Guard colonels.

‘This matter needs my undivided attention. I will summon you when we can speak further.’

Zoren and Gaunt nodded and backed out of the strategium smartly. Side by side they crossed the nave of the bridge, through the hubbub of bridge crew, and entered the lifts.

‘Is it working?’ Zoren asked as the doors closed and the choral chime sang out.

‘Pray by the Throne that it is,’ Gaunt said.

Nineteen

T
HEY TOOK THE
infirmary in a textbook move.

The room was wide, long and low. The robed figure was bent over Rawne, who was strapped, screaming, to a gurney. A pair of Jantine troopers stood guard at the door. Corbec came in between them, ignoring them both as he dived into a roll, his shotgun raised up to fire. The robed figure turned, as if sensing the sudden intrusion. The shotgun blast blew him backwards into a stack of wheezing resuscitrex units.

The guards began to turn when Mkoll and Baru launched in on Corbec’s heels and knifed them both. Corbec rolled up onto his feet, slung his shotgun by the strap and grabbed Rawne.

‘Sacred Feth…’ he murmured, as he saw the head wound, and the insidious pattern of scalpel cuts across the major’s face, neck and stripped body. Rawne was slipping in and out of consciousness.

‘Come on, Rawne, come on!’ Corbec snapped, hauling the major up over his shoulder.

‘We have to move now!’ Mkoll bellowed, as secondary weapons violation sirens began to shrill. Corbec threw the shotgun over to him.

‘Take point! We shoot our way out if we have to!’

‘Colonel!’ Baru yelled. Weighed down by Rawne, Corbec couldn’t turn in time. The robed figure was clawing its way back onto its feet behind him. Its hood was thrown back, and they gasped to see the equine extension and bared teeth of the head. Fury boiled in the eyes of the man-monster, and violet-dark energy crackled around him.

Corbec felt the room temperature drop. Fething magic, was all he had time to think – before a shot took the man-monster’s throat clean away.

Larkin stood in the doorway, the old rifle raised in his hands. ‘Now we’re leaving, right?’ he said.

Twenty

G
AUNT TOOK THE
tile Milo held out for him. Then he shut the door of his quarters on the faces of the men crowded outside. Inside, Corbec, Zoren and Milo watched him carefully.

‘This had better be worth all that damn effort,’ Corbec said eventually, voicing what they all thought.

Gaunt nodded. The gamble had been immense. But for the Jantine’s bloodthirsty and brutal methods of pursuing their intrigue, they would never have got this far. The ship was still full of commotion. Adeptus Mechanicus security details clogged every corridor, conducting barrack searches. Rumour, accusation and threat rebounded from counter rumour, counter accusation and promise.

Gaunt knew his hands weren’t spotless in this, and he would make no attempt to hide that his men fought back against the Jantine in a feud. There would be reprimands, punishment details, rounds of questioning that would lead to nothing conclusive. But, like him, the Jantine would not take the matter beyond a simple regimental feud. And only he and those secret elements pitched against him would know precisely what had been at stake.

He slotted the tile into his artificer, and then set the crystal in the read-slot. He touched a few keys.

There was a pause.

‘It isn’t working,’ Zoren began.

It wasn’t. As far as Gaunt could tell, Milo had indeed downloaded the latest clearance ciphers via the Munitorium artificer, but still they would not open the crystal. In fact, he couldn’t even open the ciphers and set them to work.

Gaunt cursed.

‘What about the ring?’ Milo asked.

Gaunt paused, then fished Dercius’s ring from his pocket. He fitted that into the read-slot beside the one that held the crystal and activated it.

Old and too out of date to open the dedicated ciphers of the crystal, the ring was nevertheless standardised in its cryptography enough to authorise use of the downloaded codes. The vista-plate scrolled nonsense for a moment, as runic engram languages translated each other and overlaid data, transcribing and interpreting, rereading and re-setting. The crystal opened, spilling its contents up in a hololithic display which projected up off the vista-plate.

‘Oh Feth… what’s this mean?’ Corbec murmured, instantly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he saw.

Milo and Gaunt were silent, as they read on for detail.

‘Schematics,’ Zoren said simply, an awed note in his voice.

Gaunt nodded. ‘By the Golden Throne, I don’t pretend to understand much of this, but from what I do… now I see why they were so keen to get it.’

Milo pointed to a side bar of the display. ‘A chart. A location. Where is that?’

Gaunt looked and nodded again, slowly. Things now made sense. Like why Fereyd had chosen him to be the bearer of the crystal. Things had just become a great deal harder than even he had feared.

‘Menazoid Epsilon,’ he breathed.

A MEMORY

T
HE
K
HEDDITE HAD
not expected them to move in winter, but the High Lords of Terra’s Imperial Guard, whose forces dwelt in seasonless ship-holds plying the ever-cold of space, made no such distinction between campaigning months and resting months. They burned two clan-towns at the mouth of the River Heort, where the deep fjord inlets opened to the icy sea and the archipelago, and then moved into the glacial uplands to prosecute the nomads who had spent the summer harrying the main Imperial outposts with guerrilla strikes.

Up here, the air was clear like glass, and the sky was a deep, burnished turquoise. Their column of Chimera troop transports, ski-nosed half-traks commandeered locally, Hellhounds and Leman Russ tanks with big bulldozer blades, made fast going over the sculptural ice desert, snorting exhaust smoke and ice-spumes in their wake. The khaki body-camouflage from their last campaign in the dust-thick heatlands of Providence Lenticula had been painted over with leopard-pelt speckles of grey and blue on white. Only the silver Imperial eagles and the purple insignia of the Jantine Patricians remained on the flanks of the rushing, bouncing, roaring vehicles.

The Sentinel scouts, stalking as swift outriders to the main advance, had located a nomad heluka three kilometres away over a startlingly vivid glacier of green ice. General Aldo Dercius swung the column to a stop and sat on the turret top of his command tank, pulling off his fur mittens so he could sort through the sheaf of flimsy vista-prints the sentinels had brought back.

The heluka seemed of normal pattern – a stockade of stripped fir-stems surrounding eighteen bulbous habitat tents of tanned mahish hide supported on umbrella domes of the animals’ treated rib-bones. There was a corral adjacent to the stockade, holding at least sixty anahig, the noxious, hunch-backed, flightless bird-mounts that the Kheddite favoured. Damn things – ungainly and comical in appearance, but the biped steeds could run faster than an unladen Chimera across loose snow, turn much faster, and the scales under their oily, matted down-fur could shrug off las-fire while their toothed beaks sliced a man in two like toffee.

Dercius slid his flare goggles up for a better look at the vista-prints, and winced at the glare of the open snow. Down on the prow of the Leman Russ, his crew were taking time to stretch their limbs and relax. A stove boiled water for treacly caffeine and Dercius’s two adjutant/bodyguards were applying mahish fat to their snow-burned cheeks and noses out of small, round tins they had bartered from the local population. Dercius smiled to himself at this little thing. His Patricians had a reputation for aristo snobbery, but they were resourceful men – and certainly not too proud to follow the local wisdom and smear their faces with cetacean blubber to block the unforgiving winter suns.

His face caked in the pungent white grease, Adjutant Brochuss slid his tin away in the pocket of his fur-trimmed, purple-and-chrome Patrician battledress and took a wire-handled can of caffeine up to the turret.

Dercius accepted it gratefully. Brochuss, a young and powerfully built trooper, nodded down at the prints spread out on the turret canopy.

‘A target? Or just another collection of thlak hunters?’

‘I’m trying to decide,’ Dercius said.

Since they had left the mouth of the Heort eight days before, they had made one early, lucky strike at a camp of nomad guerrilla Kheddite, and then wasted four afternoons assaulting helukas that had sheltered nothing more than herders and hunters in ragged family groups. Dercius was eager for another success. The Imperial Guard had strength, technology and firepower in their corner, but the nomad rebels had patriotic determination, a fanatical mindset and the harsh environment in theirs.

Dercius knew that many campaigns had faltered when the initially victorious forces had driven the natives back onto the advantage of inhospitable home turf. The last thing he wanted was a war of attrition that locked him here in a police action against elusive guerrillas for years. The Kheddite knew and used this beautiful, cruel environment well, and Dercius knew they could be hunting them for months, all the while suffering a slow erosion of strength to lightning strikes by the fast-moving foe. If they only had a base, a static HQ, a city that could be assaulted. But the Kheddite culture out here was fierce and nomadic. This was their realm, and they would be masters of it until he could catch them.

Still, he reassured himself that Warmaster Slaydo had promised him three more Guard units to help his Jantine Fourth and Eleventh in their hunt. Just a day or two more…

He looked back at the prints, and saw something. ‘This is promising,’ he told Brochuss, sipping his caffeine. ‘It’s a large settlement. Large by comparison with the herder/hunter helukas we’ve seen. Sixty plus animals. Those anahig are big; they look like war-mounts to me.’

‘Veritable destrier!’ Brochuss laughed, referring to the beautiful, sixteen-hand beasts traditionally bred in the stud-farms of the baronies on Jant Normanidus Prime.

Dercius enjoyed the joke. It was the sort of quip his old major, Gaunt, would have made; a pressure-release for the slow-building tension bubble of a difficult campaign. He rubbed the memory away. That was done, left behind on Kentaur.

‘Look here,’ he said, tapping a particular print. Brochuss leaned closer.

‘What does that look like to you?’ Dercius asked.

‘The main habitat tent? Where your finger is? I don’t know – a smoke flue? An airspace?’

‘Maybe,’ Dercius said and lifted the print so that his adjutant could get a closer look. ‘There’s certainly smoke issuing from it, but we all know how easy smoke is to make. That wink of light… there.’

Brochuss chuckled, nodding. ‘Throne! An uplink spine. No doubt. They’ve got a vox-vista set in that place, with the mast extending up out of the opening. You’ve got sharp eyes, general.’

‘That’s why I’m the general, Trooper Brochuss!’ Dercius snorted with ample good humour. ‘So what does that give us? A larger than normal heluka, sixty head of war-mount in the pen…’

‘And since when did thlak herders need an intercontinental uplink unit?’ finished the adjutant.

‘I think the Emperor has smiled on our fortune. Have Major Saulus circle the tanks into a crescent formation around the edge of the glacier. Bring the Hellhounds forward, and hold the troops back for final clearing. We will engulf them.’

Brochuss nodded and jumped back off the track bed of the Leman Russ, running to shout his orders.

Dercius poured the last dregs of his caffeine away over the side of the turret. It melted and stained the snow beside the tank’s treads.

J
UST BEFORE SUNSET
, with the first sun a frosty pink semi-circle dipping below the horizon and the second a hot apricot glow in the wispy clouds of the blackening sky, the heluka was a dark stain too.

The Kheddite had fought ferociously… as ferociously as any fur-clad ice-soldier whose tented encampment had been pounded by tank shells and hosed by infernos unleashed from the trundling Hellhounds. Most of the dead and the debris were fused into thick curls of the rapidly refreezing ice-cover; twisted, broken, blackened shapes around which the suddenly liquid ice had abruptly solidified and set.

Some twenty or so had made it to their anahig mount and staged a counter charge along the north flank. A few of his infantry had been torn apart by the clacking beaks or churned under the heavy, three-toed feet. Dercius had pulled the troops back and sent in the tanks with their relentless dozer blades.

The sunset was lovely on Khedd. Dercius pulled his vehicle up from the glacier slope until he overlooked the ocean. It was vibrant red in the failing light, alive with the flashing bioluminescence of the micro-growth and krill which prospered in the winter seas. Every now and then, the dying light caught the slow glitter of a mahish as it surfaced its great bulk to harvest the surface. Dercius watched the flopping thick-red water for the sudden breaks of twenty-metre flukes and dorsal spines and the sonorous sub-bass creaks of deep-water voices.

The vox-caster set in the lit turret below him was alive with back-chat, but he started as he heard a signal cut through: a low, even message couched in simple Jantine combat-cant.

‘Who knows that… who’s broadcasting?’ he murmured, dropping into the turret and adjusting the dial of the set.

He smiled at first. Slaydo’s promised reinforcements were coming in. The Hyrkan Fifth and Sixth. And the message was from the Hyrkan commissar, little Ibram Gaunt.

Fog lights lit the glacier crest as the armoured column of the Hyrkan hove in to view, kicking up snow-dust from their tracks as they bounced down towards the Jantine column.

It will be good to see Ibram, Dercius thought. What’s it been… thirteen, fourteen years? He’s grown up since I last saw him, grown up like his father. Served with the Hyrkan, made commissar.

Dercius had kept up with the long-range reports of Ibram’s career. Not just an officer, as his father intended, a commissar no less. Commissar Gaunt. Well, well, well. It would be good to see the boy again.

Despite everything.

G
AUNT
’
S HALF
-
TRAK
slewed up in the snow next to the general’s Leman Russ. Dercius was descending to meet it, putting his cap on, adjusting his regimental chainsword in its decorative sheath.

He hardly recognised the man who stepped out to meet him.

Gaunt was grown. Tall, powerful, thin of face, his eyes as steady and penetrating as targeting lasers. The black uniform storm-coat and cap of an Imperial commissar suited him.

‘Ibram…’ Dercius said with a slow smile. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Years,’ the commissar said flatly, face expressionless. ‘Space is wide and too broad to be spanned. I have looked forward to this. For too long. I always hoped circumstance would draw us together again, face to face.’

‘Ah… so did I, Ibram! It’s a joy to see you.’ Dercius held his arms out wide.

‘Because I am, as my father raised me, a fair man, I will tell you this, Uncle Dercius,’ Gaunt said, his voice curiously low. ‘Four years ago on Darendara, I experienced a revelation. A series of revelations. I was given information. Some of it was nonsense, or was not then applicable. Some of it was salutary. It told me a truth. I have been waiting to encounter you ever since.’

Dercius stiffened. ‘Ibram… my boy… what are you saying?’

Gaunt unsheathed his chainsword. It murmured waspishly in the cold air. ‘I know what happened on Kentaur. I know that, for fear of your own career, my father died.’

Dercius’s adjutant was suddenly between them. ‘That’s enough!’ Brochuss spat. ‘Back off!’

Major Tanhause and Sergeant Kleff of the Hyrkan stood ready to second Gaunt.

‘You’re speaking to an Imperial commissar, friend,’ Gaunt said. ‘Think hard about your objections.’ Brochuss took a pace back, uncertainty warring with duty.

‘Now I am a commissar,’ Gaunt continued, addressing Dercius, ‘I am empowered to deliver justice where ever I see it lacking. I am empowered to punish cowardice. I am granted the gift of total authority to judge, in the name of the Emperor, on the field of combat.’

Suddenly realising the implications behind Gaunt’s words, Dercius pulled his own chainsword and flew at the commissar. Gaunt swung his own blade up to block, his grip firm.

Madness and fear filled the Jantine commander… how had the little bastard found out? Who could have known to tell him? The calm confidence which had filled his mind since the Khedd campaign began washed away as fast as the dying light was dulling the ice-glare around them. Little Ibram knew. He knew! After all this time, all his care, the boy had found out! It was the one thing he always dreaded, always promised himself would never happen.

The scything chainswords struck and shrieked, throwing sparks into the cold night, grinding as the tooth belts churned and repelled each other. Broken sawteeth spun away like shrapnel. Dercius had been tutored in the duelling schools of the Jant Normanidus Military Academy. He had the ceremonial honour scars on his cheek and forearms to bear it out. A chain-blade was a different thing, of course: ten times as heavy and slow as a coup-epee, and the clash-torsion of the chewing teeth was an often random factor. But Dercius had retrained his swordsmanship in the nuances of the chainsword on admission to the Patricians. A duel, chainsword to chainsword, was rare these days, but not unheard of. The secrets were wrist strength, momentum and the calculated use of reversal in chain direction to deflect the opponent and open a space.

There was no feinting with a weapon as heavy as a chainsword. Only swing and re-address. They turned, clashed, broke, circled, clashed again. The men were calling out, others running to see. No one dared step in. From the frank determination of the officers, it was clear this was an honour bout.

Dercius hooked in low, cycling the action of his blade to a fast reversal and threw Gaunt’s weapon aside with a shriek of tortured metal.

An opening. He sliced, and the sweep took Gaunt across the gut. His commissar’s coat and tunic split open, and blood exploded from a massive cut across his lower belly.