Ghostmaker Read online

  'What are you doing?' Gaunt asked, as threatening as a drawn knife.

  'Playing, sir,' the boy said. He was about seventeen, not yet a man, but tall and well-made. His face, a blue fish tattoo over the left eye, was strong and handsome. His be-ringed fingers clutched a Tanith pipe, a spidery clutch of reeds attached to a small bellows bag that was rhythmically squeezed under the arm.

  'Was this your idea?' Gaunt asked.

  The boy shook his head. 'It's tradition. For every visitor, the pipes of Tanith will play, wherever they go, to lead them back through the forest safely.'

  'I'm not in the forest, so shut up!' Gaunt paused. He turned back to the boy. 'I respect the traditions and customs of the Tanith, but I… I have a headache.'

  'I'll stop then,' the boy said. 'I— I'll wait outside. The Elector told me to attend on you and pipe you while you were here. I'll be outside if you need me.'

  Gaunt nodded. On his way out of the door, the boy collided with Sym, who was on the way in.

  'I know, I know…' Gaunt began. 'If I don't hurry, I'll be late for the dinner and— What? Sym? What is it?'

  The look on Sym's face immediately told Gaunt that something was very, very wrong.

  Gaunt gathered his senior staff in a small, wood-panelled lobby off the main banqueting hall. Most were dressed for the formal function, stiff in gilt collars and cuffs. Junior Munitorium staff watched the doors, politely barring the entry of any Tanith dignitaries.

  'I don't understand!' said a senior Departmento Munitorium staffer. 'The nearest edge of the warzone is meant to be eighty days from here! How can this be?'

  Gaunt was pacing, reviewing a data-slate with fierce intensity. 'We broke them at Balhaut, but they splintered. Deep intelligence and the scout squadrons suggested they were running scared, but it was always possible that some of their larger components would scatter inwards, looping towards us, rather than running for the back end of the Sabbat Worlds and away.'

  Gaunt wheeled on them and cursed out loud. 'In the name of Solan! On his damn deathbed, Slaydo was quite precise about this! Picket fleets were meant to guard all the warpgates towards territories like Tanith, particularly when we're still at founding and vulnerable like this! What does Macaroth think he's playing at?'

  Sym looked up from a flatplan-chart he had unfurled on a desk. The lord high militant commander has deployed most of the Crusade Forces in the liberation push. It is clear he is intent on pressing the advantage won by his predecessor.'

  'Balhaut was a significant win…' began one of the Ecclesiarchy.

  'It will only stay a victory if we police the won territories correctly. Macaroth has broken the new front by racing to pursue the foe. And that's let the foe through, in behind our main army. It's text book stupidity! The enemy may even have lured us on!'

  'It leaves us wide open,' another Ecclesiarch agreed flatly.

  Gaunt nodded. 'An hour ago, our ships in orbit detected a massive enemy armada coming in-system. It is no exaggeration to say that Tanith has just hours of life left to it.'

  'We could fight—' someone ventured bravely.

  'We have just three regiments. Untried, unproven. We have no defensive position and no prepared emplacements. Half of our force is already stowed in the troop carriers upstairs and the other half is penned in transit. We couldn't turn them around and get them unlimbered and dug in in under two full days. Either way, they are cannon fodder.'

  'What do we do?' Sym asked. Some of the others nodded as if urging the same question.

  'Our astropaths must send word immediately to the main crusade command, to Macaroth, and tell him of the insurgency. If nothing else, they need to turn and guard their flank and back. The rest of you: the carrier ships will leave orbit in one hour or at the point of attack, whichever comes first. Get as much of the remaining disembarked men and equipment aboard as you can before then. Whatever's left gets left behind.'

  'We're abandoning Tanith?' a Munitorium aide said, disbelief in his thin voice.

  Tanith is already dead. We can die with it, or we can salvage as many fighting men as we can and re-deploy them somewhere they will actually do some good. In the Emperor's name.'

  They all looked at him, incredulous, the enormity of his decision sinking in.

  'DO IT!' he bawled.

  The night sky above Tanith Magna caught fire and fell on the world. The orbital bombardment blew white-hot holes out of the ancient forests, melted the high walls, splintered the towers, and shattered the paved yards.

  Dark shapes moved through the smoke-choked corridors of the Assembly, dark shapes that gibbered and hissed, clutching chattering, whining implements of death in their stinking paws.

  With a brutal cry, Gaunt kicked his way through a burning set of doors and fired his bolt pistol. He was a tall, powerful shape in the swirling smoke, a striding figure with a long coat sweeping like a cloak from his broad shoulders. His bright eyes tightened in his lean, grim face and he wheeled and fired again into the gloom. In the smoke-shadows nearby, red-eyed shapes shrieked and burst, spraying fluid across the stonework.

  Las fire cut the air near him. He turned and fired, and then took the staircase at a run, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen. There was a struggling group up ahead, on the main landing. Two bloodied fighting men of the Tanith militia, wrestling with Sym at the doors to the launch silos.

  'Let us through, you bastard!' Gaunt could hear one of them crying, 'You'd leave us here to die! Let us through!'

  Gaunt saw the autopistol in the hand of the other too late. It fired the moment before he ploughed into them.

  Raging, he broke one's jaw with the butt of his bolter, knocking the man backwards to the head of the stairs. He picked up the other and threw him over the stair rail into the smoke below.

  Sym lay in a pool of blood.

  'I— I've signalled… the carrier fleet, as you ordered… for the final withdrawal… Leave me and get aboard the cutter or—' Sym began.

  'Shut up!' Gaunt snapped, trying to lift him, his hand slick with the man's blood. 'We're both going!'

  'T-there's no time, not for me… just for you! Go, sir!' Sym rasped, his voice high with pain. From the bay beyond, Gaunt heard the scream of the cutter's thrusters rising to take-off readiness.

  'Damn it, Sym!' Gaunt said. The aide seemed to reach for him, clawing at his tunic. For a second, Gaunt though Sym was trying to pull himself up so that Gaunt could carry him.

  Then Sym's torso exploded in a red mist and Gaunt was thrown back off his feet.

  At the head of the stairs, the grotesque shock troops of Chaos bayed and advanced. Sym had seen them over Gaunt's shoulder, had pulled himself up and round to shield Gaunt with his own body.

  Gaunt got to his feet. His first shot burst the horned skull of the nearest beast. His second and third tore apart the body of another. His fourth, fifth and sixth gutted two more and sent them spinning back into their comrades behind on the steps.

  His seventh was a dull clack of dry metal.

  Hurling the spent bolter aside, Gaunt backed away towards the silo bay doors. He could smell the rancid scents of Chaos over the smoke now, and hear the buzz of the maggot-flies. In a second they would be on him.

  Autocannon fire blasted into the heathen nightmares, sustained heavy fire from an angle nearby. Gaunt turned, and saw the boy, the piper with the fish tattoo. He was laying down an arc of covering fire from the portico of the silo bay with a sentry's autocannon that he had rested across the stonework. 'Get in! The last cutter's waiting for you!' cried the boy.

  Gaunt threw himself through the bay doors into the fierce whirlwind of the cutter's engine backwash. The side hatch was just closing and he scrambled through, losing the tails of his coat to the biting hinge.

  Enemy weapons fire resounded off the hull.

  Gaunt was face down on the cabin floor, drenched in blood, loo
king up at the terrified faces of the Munitorium officials who made up this last evacuation flight to the fleet.

  'Open the door again!' he yelled. 'Open it again!'

  None of them moved to do so. Gaunt hauled himself up and heaved on the hatch lever. The door thumped open and the boy scrambled inside.

  Gaunt dragged him clear of the hatch and yanked it shut. 'Now!' he bellowed down the cabin to the pilot's bay. 'Go now if you're going!'

  The cutter rose from the tower bay hard and fast, lifter jets screaming as they were jammed into overdrive. Aerial laser fire exploded the brass orchid-shutters around them and clipped a landing stanchion. Hovering, the cutter wobbled. Below it, Tanith Magna was a blazing inferno.

  Forgetting fuel tolerances, flight discipline, even his own mother's name, the pilot hammered the main thrusters to maximum and the cutter fired itself up through the black smoke like a bullet.

  Left to die, the forests burned.

  Gaunt fell against a bulkhead and clawed his way to a porthole. Just like in his dreams – fire, like a flower. Blossoming. Pale, greenish fire, scuttling like it was alive. Eating the world, the whole world.

  Ibram Gaunt gazed into his reflection, his own lean, pale, bloody face. Trees, blazing like the heart of a star, rushed past behind his eyes.

  High over the cold, mauve, marbled world of Nameth, Gaunt's ships hung like creatures of the deep marine places. Three great troop carriers, their ash-grey, crenellated hulls vaulted like monstrous cathedrals, and the long, muscular escort frigate Navarre, spined and blistered with lance weapons and turrets, hooked and angular like a woodwasp, two kilometres long.

  In his stateroom on the Navarre, Gaunt reviewed the latest survey intelligence. Tanith was lost, part of a conquered wedge of six planet systems that fell to the Chaos armada pincer which Macaroth had allowed to slip behind his over-eager war-front. Now Crusade forces were doubling back and re-engaging the surprise enemy. Sporadic reports had come in of a thirty-six hour deep-space engagement of capital ships near the Circudus. The Imperial Crusaders now faced a war on two fronts.

  Gaunt's ruthless retreat had salvaged three and a half thousand fighting men, just over half of the Tanith regiments, and most of their equipment. The cruellest, most cynical view could call it a victory of sorts.

  Gaunt slid a data-slate out from under a pile of other documents on his desk and eyed it. It was the transcript of the communique from Macaroth himself, applauding Gaunt's survival instinct and his great feat in salvaging for the crusade a significant force of men. Macaroth had not seen fit to mention the loss of a planet and its population. He spoke of ''Colonel-Commissar Gaunt's correct choice, and frank evaluation of an impossible situation'', and ordered him to a holding position at Nameth to await deployment.

  It made Gaunt queasy. He tossed the slate aside.

  The shutter opened and Kreff entered. Kreff was the frigate's executive officer, a hard-faced, shaven-headed man in the emerald, tailored uniform of the Segmentum Pacificus Fleet. He saluted, a pointless over-formality given that he had been covering as Gaunt's adjutant in Sym's place, and had been in and out of the room ten times an hour since Gaunt came aboard.

  'Anything?' Gaunt asked.

  'The astropaths tell us that something may be coming soon. Perhaps our orders. There is a current, a feeling. And also, uhm…'Kreff was obviously uncomfortable. He didn't know Gaunt and vice versa. It had taken Sym four years to get used to the commissar.

  Sym…

  'What is it?' Gaunt asked.

  'I wondered if you would care to discuss our more immediate concern? The morale of the men.'

  Gaunt got up. 'Okay, Kreff. Speak your mind.'

  Kreff hesitated. 'I didn't mean with me. There is a deputation from the troop-ships—'

  Gaunt turned hard at this. 'A what?'

  'A deputation of Tanith. They want to speak to you. They came aboard thirty minutes ago.'

  Gaunt took his bolt pistol out of the holster slung over his chair back and checked the magazine. 'Is this your discreet way of announcing a mutiny, Kreff?'

  Kreff shook his head and laughed humourlessly. He seemed relieved when Gaunt reholstered his weapon.

  'How many?'

  'Fifteen. Mostly enlisted men. Few of the officers came out alive.'

  'Send three of them in. Just three. They can choose who.'

  Gaunt sat down behind his desk again. He thought about putting his cap on, his jacket. He looked across the cabin and saw his own reflection in the vast bay port. Two metres twenty of solid bone and sinew, the narrow, dangerous face that so well matched his name, the cropped blond hair. He wore his high-waisted dress breeches with their leather braces, a sleeveless undershirt and jack boots. His jacket and cap gave him command and authority. Bare-armed, he gave himself physical power.

  The shutter clanked and three men entered. Gaunt viewed them without comment. One was tall, taller and older than Gaunt and built heavily, if a little paunchy. His arms were like hams and were decorated with blue spirals. His beard was shaggy, and his eyes might once have twinkled. The second was slim and dark, with sinister good looks that were almost reptilian. He had a blue star tattooed across his right eye. The third was the boy, the piper.

  'Let's know you,' Gaunt said simply.

  'I'm Corbec,' said the big man. 'This is Rawne.'

  The snake nodded.

  'And you know the boy.' Corbec said.

  'Not his name.'

  'Milo,' the boy said clearly. 'Brin Milo.'

  'Hmagine you're here to tell me that the men of Tanith want me dead,' said Gaunt simply.

  'Perfectly true,' Rawne said. Gaunt was impressed. None of them even bothered to acknowledge his rank and seniority. Not a ''sir'', not a ''commissar''.

  'Do you know why I did what I did?' Gaunt asked. 'Do you know why I ordered the regiments off Tanith and left it to die? Do you know why I refused all your pleas to let you turn and fight?'

  'It was our right—' Rawne began.

  'Our world died, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,' Corbec said, the title bringing Gaunt's head up sharp. 'We saw it flame out from the windows of our transports. You should have let us stand and fight. We would have died for Tanith.'

  'You still can, just somewhere else.' Gaunt got to his feet. 'You're not men of Tanith any more. You weren't when you were camped out on the Founding Fields. You're Imperial Guard, servants of the Emperor first and nothing else second.'

  He turned to face the window port, his back to them. 'I mourn the loss of any world, any life. I did not want to see Tanith die, nor did I want to abandon it. But my duty is to the Emperor, and the Sabbat Worlds Crusade must be fought and won for the good of the entire Imperium. The only thing you could have done if I had left you on Tanith was die. If that's what you want, I can provide you with many opportunities. What I need is soldiers, not corpses.'

  Gaunt gazed out into space. 'Use your loss, don't be crippled by it. Put the pain into your fighting spirit. Think hard! Most men who join the Guard never see their homes again. You are no different.'

  'But most have a home to return to!' Corbec spat.

  'Most can look forward to living through a campaign and mustering to settle on some world their leader has conquered and won. Slaydo made me a gift after Balhaut. He gave me the military rank of colonel and granted me settlement rights to the first planet I win. Help me by doing your job, and I'll help you by sharing that with you.'

  'Is that a bribe?' Rawne asked.

  Gaunt shook his head. 'Just a promise. We need each other. I need an able, motivated army, you need something to take the pain away, something to fight for, something to look forward to.'

  Gaunt saw something in the reflection on the glass. He didn't turn his head. 'Is that a laspistol, Rawne? Would you have come here and murdered me?'

  Rawne, grinned. 'What makes you put that in the past tense, commissar?'

  Gaunt turned. 'What do I have here then? A regiment
or a mutiny?'

  Corbec met his gaze. The men will need convincing. You've made ghosts of them, hollow echoes. We'll take word back to the troop-ships of why you did what you did and what the future might hold. Then it's up to them.'

  They need to rally around their officers.'

  Rawne laughed. There are none! Our command staff were all on the Founding Fields trying to embark the men when the bombardment started. None of them made it off Tanith alive.'

  Gaunt nodded. 'But the men elected you to lead the deputation? You're leaders.'

  'Or simply bold and dumb enough to be the ones to front you,' Corbec said.

  'It's the same thing,' Gaunt said. 'Colonel Corbec. Major Rawne. You can appoint your own juniors and unit chiefs and report back to me in six hours with an assessment of morale. I should have our deployment by then.'

  They glanced at each other, taken aback.

  'Dismissed,' prompted Gaunt.

  The trio turned away confused.

  'Milo? Wait, please,' Gaunt said. The boy stopped as the shutter closed after the two men. 'I owe you,' Gaunt told him baldly.

  'And you paid me back. I'm not militia or Guard. I only got off Tanith alive because you brought me.'

  'Because of your service to me.'

  Milo paused. The Elector himself ordered me to stay with you, to see to your needs. I was just doing my duty.'

  'Those two brought you along because they thought the sight of you might mollify me, didn't they?'

  'They're not stupid,' noted Milo.

  Gaunt sat back at his desk. 'Neither are you. I have need of an adjutant, a personal aide. It's dogsbody, gopher work mostly, and the harder stuff you can learn. It would help me to have a Tanith in the post if my working relationship with them is going to continue.'

  Before Milo could answer, the shutter slammed open again and Kreff entered, a slate in his hand. He saluted again. 'We've got our orders, sir,' he said.

  Distant, rumbling explosions seemed a constant feature of the deadzone on Blackshard. The persistent crump of heavy gunnery drummed the low, leaden sky over the ridgeline. An earthwork had been built up along the ridge's spine and, under hardened bunkers, a detachment of Imperial Guard – six units of the 10th Royal Sloka – were readying to mobilise.