[Gaunt's Ghosts 05] - The Guns of Tanith Read online

  Everyone turned. Bragg stumbled out from behind some empty munition boxes, clutching a deep red stain on his shoulder that wasn’t paint.

  “What happened?” asked Gaunt.

  “Cuu stuck me,” growled Bragg.

  “Trooper Cuu, front and centre!” Hark bellowed.

  Cuu emerged from cover. His face, split by an old scar from top to bottom, was expressionless.

  “You want to explain?” Hark asked him.

  “It was dark. I tussled with the big f… with Bragg. I was sure I had my paint stick in my hand, sir. Sure as sure.”

  “He jabbed me with his fething blade,” Bragg complained sourly.

  “That’s enough, Bragg. Go find a medic,” said Gaunt. “Cuu. Report to me at sixteen hundred for discipline detail.”

  “Sir.”

  “Salute, damn you.” Cuu made a quick salute.

  “Get into line and don’t let me see that blade again until we’re in combat.”

  Cuu wandered back to the passive unit. As he passed Larkin, he turned and glared at the sniper with his cold, green eyes.

  “What are you looking at, Tanith?”

  “Nothing,” said Larkin.

  “Let me explain,” said Sergeant Ceglan Varl. He laid his guard-issue lasrifle on the counter of the Munitorium store and brushed the backs of his fingers down the length of it like a showman beginning a trick. “This here is a standard pattern mark III lascarbine, stamped out by the armourers of Tanith Magna, God-Emperor rest their oily fingers. Notice the wooden stock and sleeve. That’s nice, isn’t it? Real Tanith nal-wood, the genuine article. And the metalwork, all buffed down to reduce shine. See?”

  The Munitorium clerk, a paunchy, dimpled man with greasy red hair and starchy robe, stood on the other side of the counter and stared back at Varl without any show of interest.

  “Here’s the thing,” said Varl, tapping the weapon’s ammunition slot. “That’s a size three power port. Takes size three power cells. They can be short, long, sickle-pattern, box-form or drum, but they have to be size three or they won’t fit. Size three. Thirty mil with a back-slant lock. With me so far?”

  The clerk shrugged.

  Varl took a power clip from his musette bag and slid it across the counter.

  “You’ve issued my company with size fives. Size fives, you see? They’re thirty-four mil and flat-fronted. You can tell they’re not threes just by looking at the size of them, but if you’re in any doubt, the fething great ‘5’ stencilled on the side is a handy guide.”

  The clerk picked up the dip and looked at it.

  “We were instructed to issue ammunition. Eight hundred boxes. Standard pattern.”

  “Standard size three,” said Varl patiently. “That’s standard size five.”

  “Standard pattern, they said. I’ve got the docket.”

  “I’m sure you have. And the Tanith First-and-Only have got boxes and boxes of ammo that they can’t use.”

  “It said standard pattern.”

  Varl sighed. “Everything’s standard pattern! This is the Imperial fething Guard! Standard pattern boots, standard pattern mess-tins, standard pattern bodybags! I’m a standard pattern infantryman and you’re a standard pattern no-neck, and any minute now my standard pattern fist is going to smack your nose bone back into your very sub-standard pattern brain!”

  “There’s no need to be abusive,” said the clerk.

  “Oh, I think there might be,” said Sergeant Gol Kolea quietly, joining Varl at the counter. Kolea was a big man, an ex-miner from Verghast, and he towered over his Tanith comrade. But it wasn’t his size that immediately alarmed the clerk. It was his soft tone and calm eyes. Varl had been spiky and aggressively direct, but the newcomer oozed potent wrath held in restraint below the surface.

  “Tell him, Gol,” said Varl.

  “I’ll show him,” said Kolea and waved his hand. Guardsmen, all of them the so-called Ghosts, began to troop in, lugging ammo boxes. They started to stack them on the counter until there wasn’t any more room. Then they started to pile them on the deck.

  “No, no!” cried the clerk. “We’ll have to get counter-signed dockets before you can return these.”

  “Tell you what,” said Kolea, “let’s not. Let’s just swap these for boxes of size threes.”

  “We… we don’t have size threes,” said the clerk.

  “You what?” Varl cried.

  “We weren’t told to carry any. On Phantine, size five is the—”

  “Don’t say standard pattern. Don’t say it!” warned Varl.

  “You’re saying the blessed and hallowed Munitorium has no ammunition for the entire Tanith regiment?” asked Kolea.

  “Feth!” Varl cursed. “We’re about to assault… what’s it called?”

  “Cirenholm,” said Kolea helpfully.

  “That’s the place. We’re about to assault it and this is what you tell us? What are we supposed to use?” Varl pulled his Tanith knife from its sheath and showed the clerk the long, straight silver blade. “Are we supposed to take the city using these?”

  “If we have to.”

  The Ghosts snapped to attention. Major Elim Rawne had wandered silently into the store. “We’ve had to do worse. If Tanith straight silver is all I have, then it’s all I need.”

  The major looked at the clerk and the clerk shivered. Rawne’s gaze tended to do that. There was a touch of snake about him, in his hooded eyes and cold manner. He was slim, dark and good-looking and, like many of the Tanith men, had a tattoo. Rawne’s was a small blue star under his right eye.

  “Varl, Kolea… get your men back to the billet. Round up the other squad leaders and run an inventory. I want to know just how much viable ammunition we’ve got left. Account for all of it. Don’t let any of the men stash stuff in socks or musette bags. Pool it all and we’ll distribute it evenly.”

  The sergeants saluted.

  “Feygor,” said Rawne, turning to his sinister adjutant. “Go with them and bring the count back to me. Don’t take all day.”

  Feygor nodded and followed the troopers out. “Now,” said Rawne, facing the clerk again. “Let’s see what we can sort out…”

  Trooper Brin Milo, the youngest Ghost, sat down on his cot and looked across at the young man on the next bunk.

  “That’s very nice,” said Milo, “and it will get you killed.”

  The other man looked up, puzzled and wary. He was a Verghastite by the name of Noa Vadim, one of the many new Ghosts recruited after the siege of Vervunhive to replenish the ranks of the Tanith regiment. There was still a lot of rivalry between the two camps. The Tanith resented the new intake, and the Verghastites resented that resentment. In truth, they were slowly fusing now. The regiment had endured the fight for the shrineworld of Hagia a few months before and, as is ever the case with war, comradeship and a common goal had alloyed the Tanith and Verghast elements into one strong company.

  But still, Verghastites and Tanith were breeds apart. There were so many little differences. Like accents — the gruff Vervunhive drawl beside the sing-song Tanith lilt. Like colouring — the Tanith were almost universally pale skinned and dark haired where the Verghastites were a rather more mixed lot, as was typical with a hive city of such size. The Verghastites’ weapons had folding metal stocks and hand-plates where the guns of Tanith had sturdy nalwood furniture.

  Vadim held the biggest difference in his hands: the regimental pin. The recruits from Vervunhive wore a silver axe-rake design denoting their home world. The Tanith wore a gold, wreath-surrounded skull backed by a single dagger that carried the motto “For Tanith, for the Emperor”.

  “What do you mean, ‘killed’?” asked Vadim. He’d been polishing his axe-rake pin with a hank of vizzy-cloth until it shone. “There’s a dress inspection at twenty hundred.”

  “I know… and there’s a night assault in the next day or two. Something that shiny will pick up any backscattered light.”

  “But Commissar Gaunt expects—”
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  “Gaunt expects every man to be battle-prepped when we fall in. That’s what the inspection’s for. Ready for war, not ready for the parade ground.”

  Milo tossed his own slouch cap across to the Vadim and the young Vervunhiver caught it. “See?”

  Vadim looked at the Tanith badge pinning back the brim-fold. It was clean, but non-reflective, dulled like granite.

  “A little camo-paint and spit. Or boot-wax. Takes the shine right off.”

  “Right.” Vadim peered more closely at Milo’s pin. “What are these rough edges here? On either side? Like something’s been snapped off.”

  “The skull was backed by three daggers originally. One for each of the original founded regiments. The Tanith First the Tanith Second and the Tanith Third. Only the Tanith First made it off the home world.”

  Vadim had heard the story secondhand a few times, but he had never plucked up the nerve to ask a Tanith about it directly. In honour of his service to Warmaster Macaroth’s predecessor, Gaunt had been given personal command of the Tanith forces. That in itself was unusual, a commissar in command. Commissars were political officers. It explained why Gaunt’s official rank was colonel-commissar.

  On Tanith, about six years earlier, on the very day of the Founding, the legions of the arch-enemy had swept in. Tanith was lost, there was no question. For Gaunt there had been a choice: stay and die with every man, or withdraw with what strengths he could save to fight another day. He had chosen the latter, and escaped with only the men of the Tanith First. The Tanith First-and-Only. Gaunt’s Ghosts.

  Many of the Ghosts had hated Gaunt for that for cheating them out of the chance to fight for their world. Some, like Major Rawne, still did. But the last few years had shown the wisdom of Gaunt’s decision. Gaunt’s Ghosts had chalked up a string of battlefield victories that had significantly helped the Crusade endeavour. He’d made them count which made sense of saving them.

  And at Vervunhive, perhaps Gaunt’s most lauded victory so far, the Ghosts had benefited from new blood. The Verghastite recruits: scratch company guerillas, ex-hive soldiery, dispossessed civilians, all given the chance to join by Warmaster Macaroth as a mark of respect for the shared defence of the great hive.

  “We snapped the side daggers off the crest,” said Milo. “We only needed one piece of Tanith straight silver to remind us who we were.”

  Vadim tossed the cap back to Milo. The billet room around them was a smoky haze of men lolling in bunks or finessing kit. Domor and Brostin were having a game of regicide. Nehn was playing a little box-pipe badly.

  “How you finding the drills?” Milo asked Vadim.

  “The drop stuff? It’s okay. Easy enough.”

  “You think? We’ve done rope deployments before a few times, but not in the dark. And they say the drop could be a long one. I hate heights.”

  “I don’t notice them,” said Vadim. He’d taken a tin of boot-wax out of his kitbag and was beginning to apply it to his pin as Milo had suggested.

  “Why?”

  Vadim grinned. He wasn’t much older than Milo, perhaps early twenties. He had a strong nose and a generous mouth, and small, dark mischievous eyes. “I was a roofer. I worked repairing the masts and plating on the Main Spine. High level stuff, mostly without a harness. I guess I’m used to heights.”

  “Feth!” said Milo, slightly impressed. He’d seen Vervunhive Main Spine himself. There were smaller mountains. “Any tips?”

  “Yeah,” said Vadim. “Don’t look down.”

  “Twenty-three hundred hours tomorrow night will be D-hour,” said Lord General Barthol Van Voytz. He folded the fingers of his white-gloved hands together, almost as if in prayer. “May the Emperor protect us all. Field muster begins at twenty thirty, by which time, given advance meteorology, the drogues should be manoeuvring into the dispersal field. I want drop-ships and support air-ready by twenty-one thirty, when mount up commences. First wave launch is at twenty-two hundred, with second wave ten minutes after that and third wave at twenty-two thirty.”

  He glanced around the wide, underlit chart table at his officers. “Questions?”

  There were none, not immediately anyway. Gaunt, two places to Van Voytz’s left, leafed through his copy of the assault orders. Outside the force-dome surrounding the briefing session, the bridge crew of the mighty drogue manned their stations and paced the polished hardwood decks.

  “Let’s remind ourselves what’s on offer,” said the lord general, nodding to his adjutant. Like the lord general, the aide was dressed in a crisp, emerald green Navy dress uniform with spotless white gloves. Each gold aquila button on his chest twinkled like a star in the soft, white illumination. The adjutant pressed a button on a control wand, and a three dimensional hololithic view of Cirenholm rose from the chart table’s glass top.

  Gaunt had been over the plans a hundred times, but he still took the opportunity to study this relief image. Cirenholm, like all the habitations still viable on Phantine, was built into the peaks of a mountain range that rose dramatically above the lethal atmospheric oceans of pollution covering the planet. It had three main domes, the two largest nestled together and the third, smaller, adjoining at an angle on a secondary peak. The domes were fat and shallow, like the lids of forest mushrooms. Their skirts projected out over the sides of the almost vertical mountains. The apex of each dome was spined with a cluster of masts and aerials, and a thicket of flues, smoke-stacks and heat exchangers bloomed from a bulge in the upper western slopes of the secondary dome. It had a population of two hundred and three thousand.

  “Cirenholm is not a fortress,” said Van Voytz. “None of the cities on Phantine are. It was not built to withstand a war. If it was simply a matter of crashing the enemy here, we’d be doing it from orbit, and not wasting the time of the Imperial Guard. But… and I think this is worthy of repetition… our mission here is to recapture the vapour mills. To drive out the enemy and reclaim the processors. The Crusade desperately needs the fuel-gases and liquid chemicals this world produces.”

  Van Voytz cleared his throat. “So we are forced into an infantry assault. And in infantry terms, Cirenholm is a fortress. Docking and hangar facilities are under the lips of the domes and well protected, so there is no viable landing zone. That means cable drops.”

  He took out a hard-light pointer and indicated the narrow decks that ran around the rim of the domes. “Here. Here. And here. These are the only viable drop zones. They look small, I know. In reality, they’re about thirty metres broad. But that will look small to any man coming out of a drop ship on an arrestor hook. The last thing we need tomorrow night is inaccuracy.”

  “Can I ask, sir, why tomorrow has been chosen as a go?” The question came from Captain Ban Daur, the Verghastite fourth officer of the Tanith regiment. Gaunt had brought him along as his aide. Corbec and Rawne were busy readying the men and Daur, Gaunt knew, had a cool head for strategy and soaked up tactics like a sponge.

  Van Voytz deferred to the person on his immediate left, a short, fidgeting man dressed in the black leather and red braid of the Imperial Tacticians cadre. His name was Biota. “Long range scans indicate that weather conditions will be optimal tomorrow night, captain,” said Biota. “Low cloud, and no moonlight. There will be a crosswind from the east but that should keep the cloud cover behind us and shouldn’t pick up. We’re unlikely to get better conditions for another week.”

  Daur nodded. Gaunt knew what he was thinking. They could all do with a few more days’ practice.

  “Besides,” said the lord general, “I don’t want to keep the drogues out in open sky any longer than I have to. We’re inviting attack from the enemy’s cloud-fighters.”

  Admiral Ornoff, the drogue commander, nodded. “Every day we wait multiplies the chance of interception.”

  “We have increased escort patrols, sir,” objected Commander Jagdea. A small woman with close-cropped black hair, Jagdea was the chief officer of the Phantine Fighter Corps. Her aviators had been providing protectio
n since the drogues set out, and they would lead the raid in.

  “Noted, commander,” said Van Voytz. “And we are thankful for the efforts of your flight officers and ground crews. However, I don’t want to push our luck.”

  “Wbat sort of numbers do the enemy have at Cirenholm?” Gaunt asked quietly.

  “We estimate between four and seven thousand, colonel-commissar,” said Biota. “Mostly light infantry from the Blood Part, with close support.”

  “What about loxatl?” Daur asked.

  “We don’t think so,” said the tactician.

  Gaunt noted the number down. It was vague, and he didn’t like that. The Blood Part was the backbone of the Chaos forces in this sub-sector, the personal retinue of the infamous warlord Urlock Gaur.

  They were good, so the reports said. The Ghosts had yet to face them. Most of the opposition the Tanith had met so far had been extreme fanatics. The Infardi, the Zoicans, the Shriven, the Kith. Chaos zealots, demented by their foul beliefs, who had taken up weapons. But the Blood Part was composed of soldiers, a fraternal military cult, every one of them sworn to Gaur’s service in a grisly ritual that involved cutting their palms against the jagged edges of his ancient Space Marine armour.

  They were well-drilled, obedient efficient by Chaos standards, blindly devoted to both their dark daemon-gods and their twisted warrior creed. The Blood Pact elements on Phantine were said to be commanded by Sagittar Slaith, one of Urlock Gaur’s most trusted lieutenants.

  The loxatl were something else. Xenos mercenaries, an alien breed co-opted by the arch-enemy as shock troops. Their murderous battle lust was fast becoming legendary. Or at least the meat of barrack room horror stories.

  “As you have read in your assault orders, the first wave will strike at the primary dome. That’s you and your men, Colonel Zhyte.”

  Zhyte, an ill-tempered brute on the other side of the table, nodded. He was the field commander of the Seventh Urdeshi Storm-troop, a regiment of nine thousand men. He wore the black and white puzzle-camo of his unit like he meant it. The Urdeshi were the main strength of the Imperial war on Phantine, if only numerically, and Gaunt knew it. Numbering little more than three thousand, his Ghosts were very much light support.