Ghostmaker

  Ghostmaker

  Dan Abnett

  Annotation

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  Gaunt's Ghosts

  GHOSTMAKER

  Dan Abnett

  For Craig, who was there with Nova, long ago.

  IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth.

  He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls arc sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.

  YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms arc legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

  To BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These arc the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.

  There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  INHERITING COMMAND of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade force from the late and lauded Warmaster Slaydo, Warmaster Macaroth renewed the Imperial offensive to liberate the Sabbat Worlds, a cluster of nearly one hundred inhabited systems along the edge of the Segmentum Pacificus.

  'Many legendary actions distinguished that twenty year campaign, and many legends were made: the last stand of the Latarii Gundogs at Lamicia, the Iron Snakes' victories at Presarius, Ambold Eleven and Fornax Aleph, and the dogged prosecution of the enemy by the so-called Ghosts of Tanith on Canemara, Spurtis Elipse, Menezoid Epsilon and Monthax. Of these, perhaps Monthax presents the most intriguing question for Imperial historians. Ostensibly a head-on confrontation with the forces of Chaos, this action is clouded in mystery and the details are still sequestered in the archives of Imperial High Command. Only speculation remains as to what truly occurred on the tangled shores of that hideous battle site.'

  — from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

  It was summer here, apparently.

  Intermittent but heavy rain sluiced the Imperium lines from a sky wrinkled with grey cloud cover. Barbed, twisted root-plants with florid, heavy leaves groped their way out of every inch of muddy land and poked from the shimmering waterbeds too. As land went, most of it had gone. Lagoons and long pools of sheened water forked through the groves of undergrowth, home to billowing micro-flies and unseen, chirruping insects.

  There was a smell in the air, a smell like rank sweat. The smell didn't surprise Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt. What did surprise him was that it wasn't coming from his men. It was exuding from the water, the plants, the mud. Monthax reeked of corruption and rot.

  There was no digging-in on Monthax. Trenches were raised abutments of imported flak-board and locally cut timber. Levees and sand-bagged walls had been dug out and raised by the Ghosts. For three days, since the drop-ships landed them, there had been no other sound except the squelch of entrenching tools as work parties filled plastic sacks. No other sound except the chirrup of a billion insects.

  Seeping sweat into his freshly-donned tunic from the moment he had it on, Gaunt emerged from his command shed, a three chamber modular habitat staked up on girder poles out of the soupy water. He put his commissar's cap squarely on his head, knowing full well that it would make sweat run into his eyes. He wore high boots, breeches and a tunic shirt, carrying his weatherproof overcoat over his shoulders. It was too hot to wear it, too wet to go without.

  Ibram Gaunt stepped down off the shed steps and his feet settled in satin-skinned water twenty centimetres deep. He paused. The oily ripples ebbed away and he looked down at himself. A reflected Gaunt lay horizontal in the rank water at his feet. Tall, lean, with a sculpted, high-cheeked face that ironically mocked his name.

  He looked away, up, through the fleshy leaves of the thickets and the coiled low cover of the plant growth. On the horizon, partly screened by sweating mist, firepower roared back and forth as Imperial gunnery duelled with the heavy artillery of Chaos.

  He strode forward through the slushy water, up through the dry land of an islet thick with tendrils and overhanging flowers, and along a duck-board walkway towards the lines.

  Behind a long, meandering, S-shaped embankment levee three kilometres long, the Tanith First-and-Only stood ready. They had raised this dyke themselves, armouring it with rapidly decaying planks of flak-board. Artificial mounds had been dug behind the defence to keep ammo piles out of the water. His men stood ready in fire-teams, fifteen hundred strong, dressed in the black capes and dull body-armour uniform that was their signature. Some stood at eyeholes in the dyke, guns fixed. Others manned heavy weapon nests. Others stood and smoked and chatted and speculated. All stood in at least fifteen centimetres of murky slime.

  The bivouacs, also raised on girder legs out of the swamp, were set back from the dyke line by about thirty metres. Little sanctuaries of dryness lifted out of the ooze.

  Gaunt wandered along the dyke to the first group of men, who were digging up a footstep by the dyke wall from mud spaded out of the waterline.

  Whooping birds swung overhead, large-winged and stark-white with folded, gangly pink legs. The insects chirruped.

  Sweat made half moons in the underarms of his tunic in less than a dozen paces. Flies stung him. All thoughts of future glory, of the bitter action to come, left Ibram Gaunt's mind. Instead, the echoes came. The memories.

  Gaunt cursed quietly, wiped his brow. It was days like this, in the slow, loaded hours while they waited for combat, that the memories flooded back at their most intense. Of the past, of lost comrades and missed friends, of glories and defeats long gone, of ends.

  And of beginnings…

  ONE

  GHOSTMAKER

  Fire, like a flower. Blossoming. Pale, greenish fire, scuttling like it was alive. Eating the world, the whole world…

  Opening his eyes, Ibram Gaunt, Imperial Commissar, gazed into his own lean, pale face. Trees, as dark green as an ocean at night, rushed past behind his eyes.

  'We're making the final approach now, sir.'

  Gaunt looked round, away from his reflection in the small, thick port of the orbital cutter, and saw his adjutant, Sym. Sym was an efficient man of middle years, his slightly puffy flesh marked across the throat and cheek by a livid, ancient burn.

  'I said, we're making the final approach,' Sym repeated.

  'I heard you,' Gaunt nodded gently. 'Remind me again of the schedule.'

  Sym sat back in his padded leather G-chair and perused a data-slate. 'Official greeting ceremony. Formal introductions to the Elector of Tanith and the government assembly. Review of the Founding regiments. And a formal dinner tonight.'

  Gaunt's gaze drifted back to the vast forests that flew by under the window. He hated the trappings of pomp and protocol, and Sym knew it.

  'Tomorrow, sir, the transfer shifts begin. We'll have all the regime
nts aboard and ready to embark before the end of the week,' the man said, trying to put a more positive spin on things.

  Gaunt didn't look round but said, 'See if you can get the transfers to begin directly after the review. Why waste the rest of today and tonight?'

  Sym nodded, thoughtful. That should be possible.'

  A soft chime signalled imminent landfall, and they both felt the sudden pull of deceleration g-forces. The other passengers in the craft's long cabin: an astropath, silent in his robes, and officials of the Adeptus Ministorum and the Departmento Munitorium, began to buckle their harnesses and settle back for landing. Sym found himself looking out of the port, watching the endless forests that so intrigued Gaunt.

  'Strange place this, this Tanith. So they say.' He rubbed his chin. 'They say the forests move. Change. The trees apparently… uhm… shift. According to the pilot, you can get lost in the woods in a matter of minutes.'

  Sym's voice dropped to a whisper. They say it's a touch of Chaos! Can you believe that? They say Tanith has a touch of Chaos, being this close to the Edge, you see.'

  Gaunt did not reply.

  the spires and towers of Tanith Magna rose to meet the small barbed shape of the cutter. The city, set here amid the endless oceans of evergreen trees, looked from the air like a complex circle of standing stones, dark grey slabs raised in a clearing in defiance of the forest around. Banners and brazier smoke fluttered from the higher fortress walls, and outside the city perimeter, Gaunt could see a vast plain cut from the forest. Row upon row of tents stood there, thousands of them, each with its own cookfire. The Founding Fields.

  Beyond the tent-town, the huge black shadows of the bulk transports, whale-mouths and belly ramps open, squatting in fire-blackened craters of earth, ready to eat up the men and the machines of the new regiments of Tanith. His regiments, he reminded himself, the first Imperial Guard regiments to be founded on this enigmatic, sparsely populated frontier world.

  For eight years, Gaunt had served as political officer with the Hyrkan 8th, a brave regiment that he had been with from its founding on the windy hills of Hyrkan to the ferocious victory of Balhaut. But so many had fallen, and another founding would fill familiar uniforms with unfamiliar faces. It was time to move on, and Gaunt had felt grateful to be reassigned. His seniority, his experience… his very notoriety made him an ideal choice to whip the virgin units of Tanith into shape. Part of him, a young, eager but small part deep inside, relished the prospect of building a fresh name for the Guard's roll of honour. But the rest of him was dull, set rigid, empty. More than anything, he felt he was simply going through the motions.

  He had felt that way since Slaydo's death. The old commander would have wanted him here, wanted him to carry on to glory… after all, wasn't that why he'd made his gift? Promoting him there, on the firefields of Balhaut, to colonel-commissar… making him one of the few political officers in the Guard capable of commanding a regiment. Such trust, such faith. But Gaunt was so tired. It didn't seem much like a reward now.

  The cutter dipped. Great brass shutters atop one of the city's largest towers hinged open like an orchid's petals to receive it.

  On the Founding Fields, the men looked up as the approaching cutter purred overhead, banked against the slow cloud and settled like a beetle over the city wall towards the landing tower.

  'Someone important,' noted Larkin, squinting up at the sky. He spat on the wirecloth in his hand and resumed polishing his webbing buckles.

  'Just more traffic. More pompous off-worlders.' Rawne lay back and turned his face to the sun.

  Corbec, stood by his tent, shielded his eyes against the glare and nodded. 'I think Larkin's right. Someone important. There was a big Guard crest on the flank of that flier. Someone come for the Founding Review. Maybe this colonel-commissar himself.'

  He dropped his gaze and looked about. On either side of him, the rows of three-man tents stretched away in ordered files, and guardsmen in brand new uniforms sat around, cleaning kit, stripping guns, eating, dicing, smoking, sleeping. Six thousand men, all told, mostly infantry but some artillery and armoured crews, three whole regiments and men of Tanith all.

  Corbec sat down by his own cook stove and rubbed his hands. His new, black-cloth uniform chafed at the edges of his big frame. It would be the very devil to wear in. He looked across at his tent-mates, Larkin and Rawne. Larkin was a slender, whipcord man with a dagger face. Like all the Tanith, he was pale skinned and black haired. Larkin had dangerous eyes like blue fire, a left ear studded with three silver hoops, and a blue spiral-wyrm tattoo on his right cheek. Corbec had known him for a good while: they had served together in the same unit of the Tanith Magna militia before the Founding. He knew Larkin's strengths – a marksman's eyes and a brave heart – and his weaknesses – an unstable character, easily rattled.

  Rawne he did not know as well. Rawne was a handsome devil, his clean, sleek features decorated by a tattoo starburst over one eye. He had been a junior officer in the militia of Tanith Attica, or one of the other southern cities, but he didn't talk about it much. Corbec had a bad feeling there was a murderous, ruthless streak under Rawne's oily charm.

  Bragg – huge, hulking, genial Bragg – shuffled over from his tent, a flask of hot sacra in his hands. 'Need warming up?' he asked and Corbec nodded a smile to the giant man. Bragg poured four cups, and passed one to Larkin, who barely looked up but muttered thanks, and one to Rawne, who said nothing as he knocked it back.

  'You reckon that was our commissar, then?' Bragg said at last, asking the question Corbec knew he had been dying to get out since overhearing Corbec's remark.

  Corbec sipped and nodded. 'Gaunt? Yeah, most like.'

  'I heard stuff, from the Munitorium blokes at the transports. They say he's hard as nails. Got medals too. A real killer, they say.'

  Rawne sniffed. 'Why can't we be led by our own, is what I want to know. A good militia commander's all we need.'

  'I could offer,' Corbec joked softly.

  'He said a good one, dog!' Larkin snapped, returning to his obsessive polishing.

  Corbec winked across at Bragg and they sipped some more.

  'It seems funny to be going though, dunnit?' Bragg said after a spell. 'I mean, for good. Might never be coming back.'

  'Most like,' Corbec said. 'That's the job. To serve the Emperor in his wars, over the stars and far away. Best get used to the idea.'

  'Eyes up!' Forgal called from a tent nearby. 'Here comes big Garth with a face on!'

  They looked around. Major Garth, their unit commander, was thumping down the tent line issuing quick orders left and right. Garth was a barrel-chested buttress of a man, whose sloping bulk and heavy, lined features seemed to suggest that gravity pulled on him harder than most. He drew up to them.

  'Pack it up, boys. Time to ship,' he said.

  Corbec raised an eyebrow. 'I thought that was tomorrow?' he began.

  'So did I, so did Colonel 'Forth, so did the Departmento Munitorium, but it looks like our new colonel-commissar is an impatient man, so he wants us to start lifting to the troop-ships right after the Review.'

  Garth passed on, shouting more instructions.

  'Well,' Colm Corbec said to no one in particular, 'I guess this is where it all starts.'

  Gaunt's head ached. He wasn't sure if it was the interminable introductions to Tanith dignitaries and politicos, the endless small talk, the achingly slow review of the troops out on the marshalling yard in front of the Tanith Assembly, or simply the bloody pipe music that seemed to be playing in every damn chamber, street and courtyard of the city that he walked into.

  And the troops hadn't been that impressive either. Pale, dark-haired, undernourished-looking somehow, haggard in plain black fatigues, each with a piebald camo-cloak swept over the shoulder opposite the one to which their lasgun was slung. Not to mention the damn earstuds and hoops, the facial tattoos, t
he unkempt hair, the lilting, sing-song accents. The 'glorious 1st, 2nd and 3rd of Tanith', the new regiments; a scrawny, scruffy mob of soft-voiced woodsmen indeed, and nothing to write home about.

  The Elector of Tanith, the local planetary lord, himself sporting a cheek tattoo of a snake, had assured Gaunt of the fighting mettle of the Tanith militia.

  'They are resolute and cunning,' the Elector had said as they stood on the terrace overlooking the massed ranks. 'Tanith breeds indefatigable men. And our particular strengths are in scouting and stealth. As you might expect on a world whose moving forests blur the topography with bewildering speed, the Tanith have an unerring sense of place and direction. They do not get lost. They perceive what others miss.'

  'In the main, I need fighters, not guides,' Gaunt had said, trying not to sound too snide.

  The Elector had merely smiled. 'Oh, we fight too. And now for the first time we are honoured to be adding our fighting spirit to that of the Imperium. The regiments of Tanith will serve you well, colonel-commissar.'

  Gaunt had nodded politely.

  Now Gaunt sat in private in an anteroom of the Assembly. He'd slung his greatcoat and his cap on a hardwood chest nearby and Sym had laid out his dress jacket for the dinner that would commence in thirty minutes. If only he could rid himself of his headache and of the bad taste in his throat that he had landed a weak command.

  And the music! The damn pipe music, invading his head even here in the private rooms!

  He got to his feet and strode to the sloping windows. Out beyond the cityscape and the Founding Fields, orange fire thumped into the twilight as the heavy transports departed and returned, ferrying the regimental components to the vast troop carriers in high orbit.

  That music still!

  Gaunt walked to a set of dark green velvet drapes and swept them aside. The music stopped. The boy with the small set of pipes looked at his raging eyes in astonishment.