Anarch

Seventeen: Flesh is Weak

There was no quarter, no room to move, no time to think. The twilit gallery shook with gunfire, stray las-rounds spitting through the fug of accumulated smoke. The leading Qimurah hit the line, taking shots point blank, shredding and dying, and soaking up damage for the warriors behind them. The Ghosts had fixed silver, and resorted to stabbing and thrusting as the Qimurah swept into them. Most were simply bowled backwards by the superior power and force of the Archenemy creatures. Even with bayonets driven deep into blistered neon flesh, they were carried over or dragged backwards.

Some were crushed underfoot, others fell to raking claws or sprays of shot. Corrod was in the thick of it, tearing his way forwards. He had known since setting out that many of his kind would not return from the mission. One did not enter the heartland of the enemy and expect to survive unscathed. The holy work was all that mattered. The orders of the voice. The Qimurah could be remade. New and worthy sons could be blessed and reworked to replace the fallen. They would all share the same, eternal purpose: to prevail, even to the last of them.

And they would prevail. They would break all opposition and bear the keys of victory to his side, and lay them at his feet. Even if they were reduced to just a handful. To just one.

Never had so many of the Qimurah been deployed together, and never had so many perished in the same action. It was a mark of honour. A mark of trust. Their very losses, unthinkable in extent, proved the magnitude of their task. Victory, no more, no less. Ultimate victory in the Sabbat War. A few metres of filthy ground in a rockcrete channel. A few outclassed enemy soldiers in their path.

That was all that stood in the Anarch’s way.

A few metres. A few bags of human meat. The Qimurah could conquer that. The Imperials had fought well. Where they lacked strength, they had compensated with wit and diligence. They had executed to effect. They had shown courage and resolve, and tactical skill.

And now they would die because their unworked bodies were too fragile to sustain the effort, their weapons too weak. At the last moment, which was always the only moment that truly mattered, their strength could not match their determination.

He could see the looming mouth of the duct behind them.

‘Flamer!’ Obel yelled into the carnage. The .20 was overrun. Everything was just smoke and blood and jarring impacts and crashing bodies.

Lubba stood his ground, and sent a lance of sucking, roaring white heat into the first of the Qimurah, searing flesh from bone. The superheated stream annihilated one entirely, scattering fused and burning fragments of bone. Another managed to stagger a few steps, skinless and ablaze, before falling.

Criid and Obel tossed their rifles aside and pulled the adept wardens’ staves out of their shoulder packs. They stood their ground and fired.

The air distorted as grav-pulses blasted from the ends of the staves. The next two Qimurah fell back, their skulls crushed like eggs. Criid and Obel tried to fire again, but the Mechanicus weapons took a moment to cycle.

And there were no more moments.

‘Lunny!’ Criid yelled.

‘Charges now!’ Obel roared.

On the ledge, Larkin heard Obel’s distant order as he scrambled back from the gate. A Qimurah bounded over it, dropping onto him. For a second, he locked eyes with the thing’s neon gaze. Then he met it with his silver.

The Qimurah landed and impaled itself on the Tanith blade locked to the end of Larkin’s long-las.

It writhed, pulling on the long gun, threatening to wrench it out of the old marksman’s hands or roll them both off the ledge.

Larkin pulled the trigger. The hot shot blew the Qimurah in half and hurled the sectioned creature off his blade. Another Qimurah came over the gate gears behind it. Larkin reached for his reload bag, but quick as he was, there wasn’t going to be enough time.

Hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him down onto his face. Wes Maggs was kneeling on his back, hosing rapid fire at the oncoming Qimurah. Trooper Galashia was behind him, lighting it up over Maggs’ head. The combined fire swatted the Qimurah off the ledge. It plunged towards the channel below just as the Ghosts’ explosives began to go off.

Tube charges and grenades were the only things they had left. The dwindling line of Ghosts was being crushed back into the mouth of the gallery. At Obel’s order, they had frantically hurled their tube charges and whatever grenades they were carrying.

The staggered blasts lit up along the Ghosts’ end of the chamber, filling the artificial ravine with a sudden forest of explosions. It was a desperate choice. A final choice. Many of the Qimurah were blown apart instantly, but the blast pressure was trapped and channelled. The rockcrete ravine cupped and focused the over-shock and drove it up and out.

The Ghosts defending the duct mouth were hurled off their feet by the hammering wave, rolling and tumbling, deaf, dazed and blind.

The over-pressure scorched up the revetments too. It swept Maggs off the ledge. Larkin and Galashia managed to grab him before he fell, and clung on desperately as he tried to drag himself up again, his feet swinging over the drop.

Smoke and flames boiled down the gulley, dense and caustic. Criid tried to rise. She saw a Qimurah almost on her, and fired her stave. The gravity round hammered him back into the revetment wall and split his torso like a ripe ploin. The Qimurah had a guard-issue satchel over one shoulder. It slumped along with his corpse into the filth of the channel bed.

Corrod saw Ulraw die.

‘Take it up! Take it up!’ he yelled.

He saw Drehek stumble out of the swirling, spark-filled smoke, casting aside an Imperial he’d just gutted with his claws. Drehek saw the fallen treasure, and ran for it. He pulled it off Ulraw’s corpse and turned. A javelin of white-hot fire raked him and torched him. The Qimurah and the satchel collapsed in a consuming ball of flame.

Corrod howled. There was no time to go back. No time to recover what was lost. He still had four of the stones.

He threw himself on, the duct ahead.

An Imperial blocked his path. He smashed the man aside, snapping his neck and removing half of his face.

Zhukova, deafened by the bombs, saw the monster kill Gansky. She fired full auto, cutting Corrod off his feet with a hail of las. Corrod rose, his skin blistered and smouldering. She hit him with another burst. He fell, then came at her.

She hit him again, and saw neon blood spurt and spatter.

He was centimetres from her when his head wrenched sideways. The side of his skull caved in and burst.

Corrod fell.

Lunny Obel lowered the stave.

‘These fethers just don’t know when to die, do they?’ he asked.

A hunched, stumbling figure slammed into Obel from behind and knocked him aside. Hacklaw, wounded and disfigured and perhaps the last Qimurah left alive, was still going. His claws tore the musette bag from his damogaur’s corpse.

Clutching it to his chest, he plunged on into the duct.

Chiria offered Kolosim the detonator casually, the way a trooper might offer a comrade a pack of lho-sticks.

‘You wired it,’ Ferdy Kolosim replied. ‘You do the honours.’

Chiria shrugged. The scars on her face crinkled with a grin of relish.

‘Ghosts, Ghosts,’ she said into her bead. ‘Stand by for det. Brace and ease.’

It had just begun to rain again. Fine sheets of drizzle washed across the approach to EM 14. The Ghosts huddled in the darkness, braced, and opened their mouths to prevent burst eardrums.

Chiria flipped off the switch-guard and pressed the detonator stud.

There was a light-flash, and then a shock that they all felt in their lungs and bones.

Then a boom split the night in half.

A sheet of flame ripped across the front of the Mechanicore fortress. Huge chunks of rockcrete and ouslite came tumbling out, crunching like a landslip across the apron. The blast shock flattened the security fences, tearing the chain link apart, and blew in the back of the guardhouse.

As the concussion dropped, pebbles, grit and flecks of stone began to fall with the rain.

‘Get into it!’ Kolosim ordered. The chosen tactical squads hurried from cover, weapons ready. Debris was still fluttering down. Smoke blanketed the site, and numerous fires were burning. The Mechanicore’s main gate zone was a mass of broken slag and buckled rebar.

The huge blast doors themselves were still entirely intact. They were simply lying on the ground.

‘Nice job,’ Kolosim commented as he clambered over the rubble on the heels of the point team. Chiria followed, lugging her short-snout rig and ammo hopper.

‘I knew a truck load of hi-ex would have its uses, sir,’ she replied.

Needs must, Kolosim thought. Bray and Armin had spent almost twenty minutes trying to cut an entry in the main doors. The Cult Mechanicus built things to last, and on top of that, EM 14’s systems had suffered a catastrophic collapse, so there had been no joy trying to rewire the circuits either.

Kolosim had been urgently considering other potential entry points when Chiria had tapped him on the shoulder and simply pointed to the bomb truck that the Sekkites had tried to drive into their lines.

He had said, ‘Oh, what the feth. Breach it.’

The point teams slithered and climbed in over the rubble, moving through the heavy haze of smoke and dust with weapons up and sweeping. Primary lights and environment were down, but self-powered auxiliary lumen banks had come on, illuminating the interior hall with a soft, blue glow.

Bray had tac lead. He threw hand signs, fanning his entry team wide. They left the edge of the rubble and the blast area, and crossed a marble floor covered with in-blown grit and lumps of rockcrete. The Ghosts moved from pillar to pillar, bounding cover. Vadim’s squad moved in at their heels, then Kolosim with the heavier weapons. Kolosim signalled his own squad wide, then moved up to join Bray and Caober.

The hall ahead was large and silent, a long chamber like the nave of a temple. Back-washed smoke from the entry blast was collecting in the high ceiling space. Kolosim looked around.

A fight had torn through here in the last hour or so. The walls and floor were scarred with bullet and las strikes. He saw several Mechanicus weapons servitors, dead and blown out, plus the bodies of half a dozen Tanith troopers.

It must have been hell, trapped in here when the machines turned.

Caober pointed. Several of the automata had been shot out and wrecked, but several others seemed intact. They had just shut down and died. Kolosim edged close to one and inspected it. Black goo, like treacle, was seeping out of its casing. It had burned out from within, its cogitator and biomech processors dissolving into mush.

‘Like the thing outside,’ Bray remarked.

‘Same here, sir,’ called Vadim. He was examining systems built into a wall – a data duct and a row of monitor screens. Tarry black slime oozed from all of them.

‘Kolosim to Arcuda,’ Kolosim said into his bead. ‘Entry achieved.’

‘Copy,’ Arcuda’s voice replied. ‘I thought I heard you knock.’

Arcuda had taken charge of the companies inside the Mechanicore. Pasha and Elam had already descended into the ducts and, like Obel and Criid’s hunter squads, they were out of comm range. Word was, Theiss was dead, and he’d died in the first few minutes. Kolosim had warned Arcuda once it had become clear he was only going to force entry by unsubtle means. Arcuda had pulled all Ghost forces clear of the entry hall.

‘Moving in by squad,’ Kolosim said. ‘You still got actives?’

‘It’s quietened down a lot,’ said Arcuda. ‘A few bursts, so watch yourself. But the frenzy is done. I think they’re all dead, or dying.’

‘It true about Theiss?’

‘Yeah. We’ve taken a beating. Big purse.’

Kolosim winced. Big purse. The euphemism stung. The Militarum had bastardised it from Munitorum jargon, an assessment term used in action reports and logistical summaries. Big purse was actually ‘big perc’, the cover-sheet abbreviation for ‘big percentage casualty rate’, indicating forty-five per cent losses or higher. To Kolosim it always sounded like some thieving bastard had got away after a brutal mugging.

‘We’re going to need medicae and med-vac soon as,’ Arcuda reported.

‘Working on that,’ Kolosim replied. ‘Links to high command and Eltath Operations are still down.’

‘Another big hit?’ Arcuda asked.

‘Can’t say. Hoping it’s just technical feth. But shit’s kicking off all over town.’

‘No way the palace has been hit,’ said Arcuda.

‘You’d think,’ Kolosim agreed.

The teams moved forwards again. Kolosim stuck tight with Vadim and Caober.

‘What’s the plan,’ Kolosim asked into his bead. ‘Do we start extraction?’

‘Cas-vac yes, soon as you can,’ Arcuda replied. ‘But otherwise we secure the feth out of this place. The operation’s still live down in the ducts. No signal yet, but we need to be ready to support. Or block anything that tries to come out.’

‘Copy that. Key me in.’

‘We’ve covered all the possible duct exits,’ replied Arcuda, ‘but we haven’t reached Turbine Hall One yet. That’s where Criid and Lunny went in. That’s closer to you.’

‘On it,’ said Kolosim. ‘We’ll lock that up.’

He followed the advance in. More automata wrecks. Dead tech-priests and adepts, some of whom had been shot apart or torn limb-from-limb. The Mechanicus had turned on itself as well as its guests. Black slime spattered the floor and was sprayed up some walls. Most of it leaked from the machine dead, but some of it was oozing and dripping from the building itself.

There were more dead Ghosts too. Men and women Kolosim knew well, lying where they had fallen, buckled and twisted. Some had died instantly from massive wound trauma. Others had died slowly, alone and in pain, caught in the open. Blood trails demonstrated that.

‘Feth this,’ Vadim muttered.

‘How do we know they’re dead?’ Bray asked.

‘Throne, look at them!’ Kolosim replied.

‘Not ours, sir,’ said Bray. ‘The Cult Mech.’

Kolosim hesitated. Feth of a time to think that thought. They looked dead. Servitors and priests, cold and still, leaking black shit onto the floor.

They’d been infected by something.

But they had never been alive in the first place, not in ways Kolosim or his Ghosts understood. Cult Mechanicus were pretty cold and still at the best of times. How could he tell? The shot-up ones, sure, but the others? They knew a frenzy had overtaken them, a killing bloodlust. Then they’d shut down and dropped, spewing the black goop everywhere. Was that death? Or was it just another phase? Inertia? A dormant state while the infection progressed to the next stage?

Kolosim looked around and swallowed nervously. There were hundreds of dead Cult Mech personnel and servitors littering the halls and arcades. He could see forty alone from where he was standing.

What if they were about to come back? Switch the feth back on? Wake up and resume their kill-frenzy?

He’d just walked two full companies in amongst them.

‘Feth,’ he breathed.

‘What?’ Caober asked.

Kolosim fumbled for his bead.

‘Kolosim to all entry teams. I want confirm taps on every Mech body you see. Repeat. Kill-confirm every potential hostile. No exceptions.’

His team leaders voxed affirmative. The shots started. The men around him spread out, aiming down at the heads or central processors of every dead adept, priest and servitor, and firing a point-blank round to destroy them.

It was grim work. It was vital work. The Mechanicus kept its mysteries and secrets to itself. If there was even a slim chance any of them would revive, it had to be erased.

Obel clambered to his feet and stumbled towards the duct. Criid and Zhukova had already taken off into the vent in pursuit of the fleeing Qimurah.

‘Tona!’ he yelled.

There was no reply. He felt woozy, his lungs tight from the heat. The thing had hit him hard, and he was pretty sure he was carrying broken ribs or worse. But the adrenaline surge of the savage fight was still pumping through him.

He glanced back at the devastation behind him. Smoke virtually filled the gallery’s rockcrete ravine, and fires were burning where both bodies and the chemical silt in the channel bed had caught. The enemy dead choked the gulley mouth, and the Tanith dead and injured were all around him.

‘Sergeant!’ he yelled.

Ifvan limped to him, gashes on his face. ‘Sir?’

‘Check the dead. The enemy dead. None of these bastards can be alive, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then see to our wounded. Come on, Ifvan! Rally whoever’s left!’

Ifvan nodded.

‘Where – where will you be, sir?’ he asked.

Obel was already hurrying towards the vent.

Tona Criid was a strong runner, but Zhukova was staying with her. The heat in the close confines of the vent was intense. Criid wasn’t sure how much longer either of them would last before dehydration shock or the stifling air overcame them.

She wasn’t going to let the bastard go.

And there were very few places he could go. This was the main vent spur, the route they’d followed to get in. It ran all the way out beyond the limits of the EM 14 site, and eventually joined the main geotherm shaft. No divisions, no sub-tunnels. At least that was what the chart had seemed to show. Two kilometres out to the main magmatic pipeway.

The heat was bad enough. The noxious volcanic gases were burning her throat and binding her chest, as though her respiratory system was corroding. The duct was a tube, and the base was littered with magmatic residue and liquid spoil, making it treacherous under foot. She twisted her ankle twice, and then stumbled so badly she fell and slammed painfully into the curved wall of the duct.

Zhukova pulled her up.

‘We can’t–’ Zhukova began.

‘We can,’ Criid insisted.

It had been easier coming in, despite the weight of gear. They’d moved steadily, picking their way. Nothing like this blind, headlong rush. Chasing down a pipe into hell after one of its daemons.

They started to run again. Zhukova had strapped her rifle over her back. Criid’s rifle was back in the gallery, but she still had the Mechanicus stave.

‘He was hurt–’ Zhukova said, coughing.

‘So are we.’

‘No, he was wounded. I don’t care how inhuman he was, he was damaged!’

Criid knew she was right. She’d seen the Qimurah go past her, torso and arm torn and blistered from weapons-fire. She’d seen splashes of yellow fluid on the wall of the duct as they rushed into it. Maybe that was their only edge. Maybe they could overtake him, despite his speed, because he’d start to flag as his wounds slowed him.

She saw a vertical beam of pale light ahead. It was the down-duct that led back to Turbine Hall One, the one they’d lugged the support weapons and ammo down, rung by rung.

She ran straight under the opening and kept going.

‘Tona!’ Zhukova called.

Criid looked back. ‘Not that way!’

‘He might have–’

‘No! He’s gone out the same way he went in! Right down to the main thermal line, Zhukova! That just goes back up into the Mechanicore!’

‘But–’

‘Come on!’ Criid turned and started running again.

‘Captain Criid!’ Zhukova yelled.

Criid cursed and swung back around.

‘What?’ Zhukova was standing under the ceiling duct, looking up.

‘What, Zhukova?’

‘He would have gone up,’ Zhukova said, ‘if it was the easy way.’

Criid stumbled back to her, panting.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘If he was wounded,’ said Zhukova. ‘Desperate. Knew he couldn’t make it all the way to the main line. Decided to hide.’

Criid looked at her. ‘Is that a guess? Are you guessing?’

‘I’m trying to think as he might think,’ Zhukova replied. ‘I don’t think I can go much further. Not all the way along. And then how many more kilometres to get out of the city, the clave zones, back to enemy lines? If I was hurt, I’d hide. And this is the only hiding place. The only one.’

Criid glared at her.

Zhukova reached up and grabbed the lowest rung of the service ladder. She hauled her way up a short distance into the base of the down-shaft.

She paused, and dragged her hand along the next rung up, then looked down at Criid and showed her palm.

It was smeared with yellow fluid.

‘The bastard went up,’ she said.

‘Feth,’ Criid growled. ‘Jump down! Jump the feth down, Ornella!’

Zhukova landed beside her. Criid raised the stave, aimed it up the down-shaft, and loosed a pulse of rippling gravitron force.

They heard it strike something in the darkness far above. A dull metallic thump. Dust, pebbles and flakes of rusted metal showered down on them.

Criid pushed the stave into her pack and grabbed the lower rungs, heaving herself up.

Obel ran up, panting and coughing, from the duct behind them.

‘Criid? Where the feth are you going?’ he gasped.

‘Up!’ Criid yelled, disappearing from view.

Zhukova looked at Obel.

‘Because he did,’ she said.

‘Is it dead?’ he asked.

The Beati Sabbat sighed. Gaunt had never seen her look so exhausted. Even the soft, inner light she seemed to generate had dimmed.

‘Yes,’ she said.

The billet hall of the undercroft was just a billet hall. All the reality distortions had vanished like dreams. The flood water had drained away swiftly, leaving only foul puddles and debris on the flagstones. Baskevyl’s men were lighting lamps so there was a little light at least.

Gaunt slowly looked around. Just a cellar now: cold, damp, damaged, old. Just a place, a solid, ordinary reality, a set of deep chambers no one cared about. The malice that had infused the stones had fled with the woe machine’s death-shock. The undercroft had realigned with reality and returned to what it had always been.

Gaunt checked himself. No, the place had changed forever. No one would come here now. It ought to be sealed, not because there was some lingering trace of immaterial evil, but because of what it was. A tomb. A scene of murder. A site so burdened with grief and loss it was hard to even stand there.

The dead littered the ground between waste-water puddles and broken cots. Sancto’s men. Osket was moving from body to body, checking for life, though it was just a formality. They had been cut to ribbons. Sariadzi had been destroyed so completely, no trace of him remained.

Gaunt wondered how many others had died here. Ghosts, men and women of the retinue, so devoured by the darkness that nothing had survived to show they had ever existed.

Daur sat in a corner, his back to the wall. This loss, this slaughter, had scarred them all. Gaunt doubted he would ever see Ban Daur flash his eager smile again.

And then there was Gol.

Kolea was sitting on the ground, staring at the spot where Yoncy had been. Only a few fused black thorns remained, like a scatter of dead leaves. There was no expression on his face. Gaunt couldn’t begin to know what Gol Kolea was feeling.

Except that part of him was afraid he could. Merity had been down here. She’d been caught in this. Gaunt barely knew her, and what little he did know was lies. In truth, he hadn’t known his daughter any better than Gol had known his. But the damage was primal. It defied rationalisation. A child was a child, no matter how estranged, no matter how false.

Dalin Criid stood apart from the rest, leaning against a wall, staring at the whitewashed stones. His weeping had stopped, and his anguished denials had trailed into silence. Gaunt knew Dalin felt this more bitterly than anyone. Even more than Gol, he had been close to the girl. The conflict had broken him. Grief for the loss of a sister, rage at the sheer depth of the betrayal.

Yoncy had never been Yoncy, but that hadn’t stopped them from believing she was real. For years, she had been part of them, part of the Tanith company, a survivor, a cheerful, quirky girl who had often been a welcome antidote to the grind of war. Caring for her, laughing with her, protecting her, amusing her… that had been part of their lives, simple human interactions that had allowed them to forget, once in a while, the struggle they were committed to.

Except she had been the war all along. The war had been dwelling with them, within their ranks, inside their trust, inside their minds and their hearts, waiting to reveal its true nature.

This was the greatest wound the Ghosts had ever suffered. It had cut the heart of them out, from the inside, striking from the single place that seemed safe. Gaunt had never doubted the devotion of his duty. He had never questioned his belief that man should fight against the Ruinous Powers with every fibre of his soul. Yesterday, he’d wanted the Anarch dead and defeated, just as he had the week before that, and the year before that.

But this? Sek would die, not because it was Gaunt’s duty, not because it was the right thing, not because it was the Emperor’s will, and not because his death would protect mankind.

Sek would die because of this.

Stablights bobbed in the archway behind him. Colonel Grae appeared, leading a team of Urdeshi troops and palace staff.

‘My lord?’

‘See to the survivors,’ Gaunt said. ‘Get them out of here.’

Grae nodded, and his men moved forward, gathering up Sancto, who was bleeding out and could no longer stand or speak, and assisting Hark, who was still supporting the wounded Laksheema.

Laksheema looked at Gaunt.

‘This area must be purged and sealed, sir,’ she said, her voice frail. ‘The entire level.’

‘It will be.’

‘I will assign ordo staff to undertake the purification rituals.’

Gaunt nodded. Laksheema turned and allowed Hark to help her limp away.

‘What is the situation?’ Gaunt asked Grae.

‘All power and systems in the palace are out, my lord,’ Grae replied. ‘Defences are down, and all comms are non-functional.’

‘So no word from Rawne?’

‘None, sir. There are reports of attacks throughout Eltath. The enemy has made a play.’

‘I’ll be up directly. Does Van Voytz have command?’

‘He does, sir,’ said Grae. ‘He began evacuation, but then the power crashed. I believe he is working to restore the palace and war room to combat function as quickly as possible.’

‘We need it.’

Grae nodded. He saluted, and turned to go, then looked at Gaunt again.

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘your daughter is safe. I had her taken to a medicae station just twenty minutes ago.’

Gaunt found he could not reply.

‘She was shaken, sir, but essentially unharmed. I’ll request further reports. I would say she acquitted herself well. Braved the ordeal with great composure.’

‘Thank you, colonel,’ said Gaunt. Grae made the sign of the aquila, and hurried off to oversee the recovery efforts.

Gaunt had never, in his entire life, felt more like weeping. He looked at Gol, seated, silent, staring, and registered a stab of guilt at his own, selfish relief.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Curth.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Ibram,’ she said in a low voice. ‘This is something… this is… Throne, I don’t know. None of us will just walk away from this. It won’t just heal like a battle wound. And even when it does, it won’t be a scar any of us wear with any pride. And Gol, and Ban and poor Dalin–’

‘I know,’ he said. He hugged her quickly, to her surprise, then let her go. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘Ana, I was thinking… I might be forced to step down.’

‘As Lord Executor?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘No one would question it,’ she said. ‘This trauma, it would break any–’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I might step down because Macaroth will never permit his Lord Executor to lead a vengeance strike in person.’

‘Against Sek?’

‘Wherever he is. Yes. He dies for this. For this, above and beyond any part of his heinous catalogue of crimes.’

‘Don’t be rash,’ she said. ‘Bram? Bram, listen. You can do more against him as Lord Executor than as an avenger. This is what he wants. It’s the spite he uses to snap us. He weakens us by striking at our souls. He wants to break you, and if you step down, he will have succeeded.’

She gripped his arm and stared into his eyes. Only she, it seemed, was not afraid to look into his eyes.

‘Sek doesn’t feel,’ she said. ‘He has no humanity. That’s why he can do this to us. Don’t let him turn your humanity against you. Feel this, and use it to help you prosecute this war to victory. Don’t squander it on some doomed gesture. You’re the Lord Executor. Worlds depend on you. And Sek should be fething afraid.’

‘Afraid?’

‘He’s made a mortal enemy even stronger.’

There was a clatter. The Beati’s sword, scorched and buckled, had slipped from her hand. Auerben rushed to steady her.

‘She’s passed out,’ Auerben cried out, her fire-scarred voice even more of a rasp than usual. ‘Help me here!’

Curth and Gaunt rushed to the Saint’s side.

‘Just exhaustion,’ said Curth, examining her.

Gaunt nodded. The Saint had come straight from days of battle at Ghereppan and Oureppan. Her divine strength had already been depleted before they’d even begun. These superhuman efforts in the undercroft had drained all the reserves she had left.

‘I see no major wounds,’ said Curth. ‘But then, I don’t begin to know how the warp may have wounded her in that fight.’

‘She is so pale,’ said Auerben. ‘Her light is gone–’

‘Get her up!’ Curth yelled. ‘Help me! Osket!’

The Ghosts from Baskevyl’s team rushed to her, and lifted the Beati’s limp form between them.

‘There’s no weight to her!’ Osket exclaimed.

‘This way!’ Curth urged them, leading the men towards the exit.

The Ghosts, in black, with their fragile pale burden, reminded Gaunt of pall bearers.

‘Ana?’ he called out.

Curth looked back at him and simply nodded. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. It was the same uncompromising determination he’d seen every time Medicae Curth had fought to save a wounded soul on the fields of war they had crossed together.

There were very few of them left in the undercroft now. Daur, Kolea and Dalin lost in their own pain, Blenner lurking by the door, anxious, as if he was waiting for something. Gaunt was heartened a little to see Blenner show a simple, human response of sympathy for once.

Baskevyl glanced at Gaunt. Shock was etched on his face too.

‘Should we try to move them?’ he asked Gaunt.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Gently,’ he said. ‘They should mourn as long as they need to, but this place is–’

‘I know, sir,’ Baskevyl replied. Gaunt took a step towards Kolea, but Baskevyl stopped him. Bask and Gol were best friends. Bask would be a more welcome comfort.

Gaunt crossed to Daur instead.

‘Let’s go upstairs, Ban,’ he said.

Daur looked up at him. He rose, and brushed off his coat.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ban–’

‘I haven’t found her yet,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving until I have.’

‘Ban, we can get teams down here, a proper search of all–’

‘No,’ Daur said fiercely. ‘I’ll look. Me.’

He walked past Gaunt, and disappeared into the neighbouring chamber. Gaunt heard Daur calling her name.

Haller cut loose with a long burst from the short-snout rigged around his body. The link-belt from the hopper at his feet clattered as it fed out. Harsh flowers of muzzle flash flickered around the cannon’s wide barrel, and spent brass fluttered into the air.

The automata, limping and drooling black ooze, punctured in fifty places. Its casing disintegrated, flayed off it by the hail of shells, and it slumped, burning from the core, black fluid pouring from its ruptured innards.

‘Still one or two of them active,’ Haller remarked.

‘Stay sharp,’ Kolosim said. He looked at Bray. The sergeant was trying to force the hatch into Turbine Hall One. Caober was working with him.

‘Any luck?’ Kolosim called out.

‘Stand by,’ said Bray.

‘Are we gonna need more shit from that truck?’ Kolosim asked.

‘No, I’ve got it,’ said Bray, working intently. ‘It’s just locked from inside.’

Criid and Zhukova clambered out of the open duct, weapons ready. Obel limped out behind them. Turbine Hall One was just as they’d left it. The huge vapour engines had slowed down to an impotent wheeze. The bodies of the dead – Ghost and Mechanicus alike – lay where they had fallen.

‘You were wrong,’ said Criid.

‘No,’ replied Zhukova with a firm shake of her head.

‘Then where is he?’

Criid edged out across the floorspace, picking her way over bodies, watching for any sign of movement. There were plenty of hiding places. So much pipework, bulk machines, consoles. The hostile could have concealed himself. Criid wasn’t sure if he’d had a weapon, but if he did, he could be lining up a shot.

She crossed to the hatch. It was still locked tight, internal setting, just the way Zhukova had sealed it before they had entered the ducts. No one could have exited and locked it again from the inside.

‘We went the wrong way,’ she said. She was dizzy from the fumes of the duct, dead on her feet from running and climbing. ‘He didn’t come this way.’

‘He did,’ Zhukova said.

‘Then where is he?’ Criid asked. ‘Fething where?’

‘Somewhere,’ said Zhukova. She prowled across the chamber. ‘He’s in here.’

‘I’ll tell you where he is,’ snapped Criid. ‘He’s two kilometres away heading out into the main thermal pipe. He’s home free. We went the wrong fething way.’

‘It was just a call, Tona,’ said Obel, sitting down and trying to collect his breath. He was wheezing badly. ‘We made a call. It was just the wrong one.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Zhukova.

‘Then where is he?’ Criid snarled.

‘Hiding,’ said Zhukova. She started to slam open storage lockers along the west wall, aiming her weapon into each one as she threw the doors open. Just machine spares. Clusters of cables. Pipework.

‘They won,’ said Criid. ‘They fething won. They got the stones.’

The main hatch let out a bang of auto-bolts and then slid open with a slow pneumatic hiss. Criid, Obel and Zhukova turned, weapons aimed.

‘Hold fire! Hold fire!’ Bray yelled as he saw them. The Ghosts around him lowered their aim, and fanned out into the hall.

‘What happened?’ asked Kolosim.

Criid just shook her head, exhausted.

‘We met them coming out,’ said Obel. ‘Held them. Fething mess of a fire-fight. Unreal. They weren’t human and they kept coming. Just savage. Big purse. But one got past us.’

‘Just one,’ said Zhukova.

‘Fething bastard had a bag. Had the stones,’ said Obel. ‘We went after him, but he got out through the geotherm system.’

‘Oh feth,’ said Kolosim.

‘He didn’t go that way,’ Zhukova insisted. She turned back to her search. ‘He came this way.’

‘Then where?’ asked Criid.

‘I told you,’ said Zhukova. ‘He’s hiding. In here somewhere. There’s nowhere else. That’s the first time that hatch has opened. He’s in this chamber right now.’

‘Search! Top to bottom!’ Kolosim yelled. Squads of Ghosts fanned out, hunting in every alcove, checking the service walks behind machines. Some climbed up onto the inspection gantries. Others stood in a mob by the hatchway, gazing dismally at the dead.

‘No sign!’ Bray called. Other Ghosts sang out negatives.

‘See?’ said Criid.

‘I’ll try and patch through to Pasha,’ said Kolosim. ‘Tell her the word.’

Zhukova was still searching. She ducked down to look behind the hall’s control desks. Trooper Etzen’s corpse was sprawled under the console.

He’d been felled by one of the adept wardens’ grav pulses. The energy had crushed and mangled him.

Zhukova frowned. The graviton force was powerful, but it would not have removed Etzen’s jacket and cape.

She rose.

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘What?’ asked Obel.

‘Etzen. No cape. No–’

Criid and Zhukova turned. The bodies of four Ghosts had been lying on the floor between the consoles and the hatch. Now there were only three.

Criid and Zhukova sprang forwards, Obel staggering after them.

‘What the feth, Tona?’ Kolosim exclaimed as Criid pushed past him.

‘He’s just walking out!’ she yelled. She had no idea how a rail-thin, two-metre tall spectre could just walk out, but she knew it had. She and Zhukova pushed through the bewildered Ghosts standing in the doorway.

‘Move!’ Criid yelled at them. ‘Move!’

One Ghost had detached himself from the back of the group. Draped in his camo cloak, he was limping away across the wide arcade outside, heading for the main exit. He was just walking past the Ghost squads stationed in the arcade area.

It wasn’t her quarry. This man was short, small. He looked old and frail, the cape pulled tight around him.

But Criid knew it wasn’t any Ghost she knew.

‘You!’ She yelled. ‘You! Halt!’

The Ghost kept walking.

‘Last warning!’ Criid yelled.

The man paused. He stopped limping, he glanced back at her over his shoulder.

He was an old man, weathered and skinny. He looked like one of the scrawny ayatani priests that had been flooding into the city.

He looked straight at her for a second, then turned and kept on going, limping on towards the door.

In that one second, Criid had seen the neon glint in his pupils.

She fired her stave. The grav pulse thumped out of the projector end. Ghosts scattered and recoiled as the seething mass of distorted air ­bubbled across the concourse.

It hit the limping man in the back, crushing his spine and ribcage, and pulping his internal organs.

Hacklaw fell. He died as he had entered the world, his blessed reworking hidden from view.

Criid and Zhukova reached the corpse. Criid turned it over gingerly with her foot. Just a dead old man, wrapped in a Tanith combat cloak.

Zhukova knelt down, and pulled the dirty musette bag out of his dead hands.

She opened it, and gently lifted out one of the four eagle stones.

‘I take it back,’ Criid said. ‘You were right. Fether came this way.’

They ran through the rain into the drab rockrete compounds of the vapour mill beside Camp Xenos. Snapshots of las whined after them.

‘Keep moving,’ Rawne said.

‘There’s no fething cover, sir,’ said Laydly, glancing around. The trooper was right, and Rawne knew it. The Plade Parish vapour mill was a large site generating power for an entire district of the city. Open-air yards and serviceways ran between the rows of blank work-sheds and machine-shops. The main stacks and primary hall of the mill were ahead.

It was an automated facility. There was no one around, and every door or hatch they tried was sealed. Wartime. Blackout protocols. The mill had been locked down.

Overhead, masses of white steam oozed from the huge stacks and flowed like a glacier into the night’s black sky. Full dark. Rain was blowing in off the wastelands beyond the mill perimeter. It smelled of the fycelene lifted by the munition store explosion.

‘Just go,’ Mabbon said. ‘Leave me. I will face them. It will all end then.’

Rawne wanted to slap him, but the pain in his gut was getting worse. He gritted his teeth to stop himself from making a sound.

‘Shut the feth up,’ Varl said to Mabbon. ‘Just shut up. We lost good people getting you out–’

‘I never asked for that–’ Mabbon replied.

‘I won’t let them be dead for no reason,’ said Varl. He sniffed, breathing fast. ‘I just won’t. I just fething won’t. So shut up about leaving you. Shut up.’

Mabbon looked away.

‘How many left?’ asked Oysten.

‘Three,’ said Laydly. ‘Three, I think.’

‘What have we got that will put them down?’ asked Rawne, finally managing to speak without screaming.

‘Launcher, grenades,’ said Varl, brandishing Bellevyl’s weapon.

‘Maybe this?’ said Brostin, indicating the big autogun he’d taken off Oken. ‘AP rounds. Not much ammo though.’

‘Hard rounds are better than energy weapons,’ said Mabbon.

‘I’ll take anything at this point,’ said Rawne.

Two las bolts shrieked around a blockhouse nearby.

Rawne bundled them forward. Varl ran with Mabbon, driving him on, the others following, covering the group’s six with weapons levelled.

‘What can we do that they won’t expect?’ Varl asked.

‘Turn,’ said Brostin. ‘Turn on them. Meet them.’

‘Feth off,’ said Oysten.

‘No, he’s right,’ said Laydly. They got in against the wall of a work-barn and he pointed at the sheds and service buildings around them. ‘Someone in there, by the steps. Another there. You see, by those tanks? You could get in under the pipework right there. They come through there, the yard, you’d have a killing ground. Rake ’em.’

‘No,’ said Rawne. ‘Suicide.’

‘Suicide Kings, sir,’ said Laydly.

Rawne glowered at him.

Oysten grabbed Rawne’s arm. ‘Sir!’

The pull on his arm made Rawne grunt with pain.

She looked at him.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes, Oysten.’

‘Sir, are you hit?’

‘No. What did you want?’

She studied his face for a second, questioning, then turned and pointed. About half a kilometre away, on the other side of the mill compound, there was a small light. Oysten handed Rawne the scope, and he took a look.

‘Night watchman’s station,’ he said. It made sense. The mill would leave a supervisor on site overnight, even in raid conditions.

‘In case something goes wrong?’ Oysten said. ‘A fault in the mill? Then what would he do?’

Rawne glanced at her.

‘Call it in,’ he said. ‘Call in for service support.’

She nodded. ‘He’ll have a vox, that one,’ she said.

‘We’d… we’d need the Militarum code channels,’ said Rawne.

‘I know them by heart, sir,’ said Oysten. ‘Learn them off pat every morning.’

Rawne took her by the face with both hands and smacked a kiss on her brow.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Go fast as feth. Think you can make it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Call in the fething cavalry, Oysten,’ he said. ‘We’ll dig in and slow these bastards down.’

She nodded, then surprised him by throwing a formal salute.

‘It’s been an honour, sir,’ she said.

‘It will be again, you silly bastard. Run!’

She took off into the darkness.

‘Right,’ said Rawne. ‘Let’s slow these fethers down.’ He looked back at the yard.

‘All right,’ he said. He was having trouble breathing.

‘You all right? Eli?’ Varl asked.

‘Fething fantastic,’ Rawne replied. ‘Varl? Keep going. Keep moving Mabbon that way. Just stay with him. Keep him alive.’

He looked at Laydly and Brostin.

‘Let’s fething do this,’ he said. ‘Just like Laydly set it out.’

‘Only two decent firing positions,’ said Brostin.

‘I can get in there,’ said Rawne, pointing. ‘Down by that vent.’

‘That’s shit-all cover, sir,’ said Brostin. ‘Go with Varl. Two of you are better than one. Keep that fether safe, all right?’

‘I think I’m in charge here,’ said Rawne.

‘I think we play to our strengths,’ said Laydly. ‘Suicide Kings. Picture cards are high, and you keep your kings back in case you need them late in the game.’

‘I should never have taught you to play,’ said Rawne.

‘I should never have joined the Imperial Guard,’ replied Laydly.

‘We had a choice?’ asked Brostin.

Rawne looked at them both.

‘Live forever,’ he said.

They nodded. Brostin lumbered away to the steps of the service shed. Laydly sprinted low across to the heavy feeder tanks. They vanished into the deep shadows, just ghosts, then gone.

Rawne stood for a moment, then turned and hurried after Varl and Mabbon. He was limping. Every step was a jolt of pain.

Hadrel sniffed the rain. He looked at the others. Sekran. Jaghar. Just the three of them. More than enough.

‘They’re close,’ he said. They’d stripped the resin from their snouts so their acute senses were as sharp as possible.

Jaghar nodded. ‘I smell blood, sirdar.’

‘At least one is wounded,’ Sekran agreed.

Hadrel eyed them. The fight had been fierce. He and Sekran were intact apart from some las burns. Jaghar had been hurt in the blast. Swollen crusts of mucus covered part of his face, throat and shoulder.

‘We’re low on munitions,’ Hadrel said. ‘They have run us quite a game. So conserve. The pheguth is the one that counts. Bite out his throat if you have to.’

‘Kha, magir,’ they responded.

‘He dies,’ said Hadrel.

‘He dies,’ they echoed.

Hadrel gestured, and they moved forwards.

‘He will regret the day he left us,’ he said.

Nade Oysten ran through the darkness, following shadows, darting between blank anonymous sheds and silent service huts.

The mill compound was larger than it had seemed. The night watch post still looked a million kilometres away, and every shadow made her jump. She kept expecting one of those things, those Qimurah, to loom up, to spring out of the darkness.

She had her weapon ready, her cut-down riot gun and its bag of breaching shells. Let’s see how they like that, she thought. Let’s see how they like a face-full of wound titanium shot-wire.

Oysten touched her face where Rawne had seized her with both hands to kiss her. There was blood on her fingers.

She’d known. Just the way he had been moving, holding himself. Always a lying bastard. That look he’d shot her.

Say nothing.

She turned towards the distant light and started running as fast as she could.

There was no sound except the hiss and spatter of the rain. Laydly had his weapon up, covering the middle of the yard. They had to come through here. He had switched to full auto, last cell locked in the receiver.

He couldn’t see Brostin, but he could see the steps of the service shed. Good bit of shadow. Nice angle for that big autogun. Brostin would be the hitter on this one. That thing, at short range, with those armour-piercing shells Okel had prized, would make a hole in anything.

A waiting game now. Patience. Waiting for the deal. Waiting for the cards to land. Those things moved as quietly as any Ghost, but there was an open killbox waiting.

Laydly took aim, nice and loose, ready for the snap.

Sekran’s claws closed around his throat. The Qimurah hoisted him off the ground. Laydly tried to scream, but the vicing grip had crushed his throat. Sekran kept squeezing until he’d wrung and snapped the human’s neck. As he died, Laydly squeezed the trigger. Full auto, aimed at nothing, sprayed out of the swinging gun, tearing into the rockcrete ground of the yard, pinging off the tanks, stitching up the wall.

Brostin saw the wild burst, saw two figures strobe-lit by the muzzle flash. One lifting the other by the throat.

He yelled Laydly’s name, then opened fire. The autogun’s big rounds smacked into the feeder tanks. The Qimurah tossed Laydly’s body aside and ran at Brostin, bringing up his lasrifle to fire.

‘Yeah, you fething come at me,’ Brostin snarled.

He put the first armour piercing hard round through Sekran’s face, the second and third through his torso. By then, there was very little left of him above the sternum or between the shoulders. The Qimurah folded and collapsed in the middle of the open yard.

Brostin switched around, looking for the others. He saw movement and banged off two more shots.

On the roof of the machine shop opposite, Hadrel noted the muzzle flashes. He took the grenade out of his jacket pocket and weighed it in his hand. They’d picked over the bodies of the Imperial dead, and found a few useful items.

He threw it.

Brostin heard it strike the gutter above him. He knew the sound of an anti-personnel bomb whacking against metal. He threw himself forward.

The grenade splintered the front of the service shed and obliterated the steps. The blast rolled Brostin hard across the rockcrete, and shrapnel whickered into his flesh.

He lay for a moment, deaf and dazed. Then he tried to rise.

My turn again, you fethers–

The front wall of the wrecked service shed collapsed, and the entire roof gave way. An avalanche of slabs and rockcrete roof tiles buried Aongus Brostin.

Dust billowed off the heap of rubble. It was piled up like the rocks of a tribal grave on some lonely hillside. Just one hand protruded, caked in dirt.

Hadrel leapt down from the roof and landed on his feet. Jaghar emerged from cover and walked to join him.

They clutched their lasrifles and advanced side by side.

‘Just the last of them now,’ said Hadrel.

‘Gol? We have to go up now,’ Baskevyl said gently. ‘Can’t stay down here all night.’

Kolea didn’t reply. He was staring at the burned thorns.

‘Gol?’

‘I made a promise,’ Kolea said at last. ‘Swore it, Bask.’

‘It was a promise you couldn’t keep,’ said Baskevyl. ‘They don’t count.’

‘I should have known.’

‘None of us knew, Gol.’

Kolea looked at him.

‘I did, though,’ he said. ‘I thought it. I considered it. I even… I even took it to Gaunt. I told him what I feared.’

‘I’m sure he–’ Baskevyl began.

‘He reassured me,’ said Kolea. ‘He talked me down, said it was a mistake.’

‘Nobody could have known the truth,’ Baskevyl said. He glanced over his shoulder. Gaunt and Blenner were standing a few yards away, watching them. He could see the expression on Gaunt’s face. Guilt. Guilt for brushing Kolea’s fears aside.

They all felt the guilt. Baskevyl certainly did. Odd nagging doubts that he’d cast aside as stupid. Then the things Elodie had said to him–

He clenched his eyes tight shut. She’d known, but just like Gaunt had done with Kolea, Baskevyl had allayed her fears. Because it just couldn’t have been true.

Now she was dead. Now so many were dead. Nobody had listened. Daur’s wife was dead because Baskevyl hadn’t taken her seriously.

Kolea got up suddenly.

‘Gol?’ Baskevyl rose, and put his hand on Kolea’s arm.

‘I’ve still got a son,’ Kolea said, and pulled his arm away. He walked over to Dalin, who was hunched against the wall.

Baskevyl joined Blenner and Gaunt. They watched Kolea approach the boy.

‘He just needs time,’ Baskevyl said quietly. Gaunt nodded.

‘What did he say?’ asked Blenner.

‘What do you think?’ Baskevyl replied.

‘I don’t know. I was just wondering.’

‘He can’t believe it, even now it’s happened,’ said Baskevyl. ‘He blames himself. He blames everybody. That part’ll go. But he’ll never stop blaming himself. He’s not making much sense at all, to be honest.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t,’ Blenner nodded. ‘I mean, a shock like that. A tragedy. It’d shake a man to his core. It’s shaken all of us. I doubt an ounce of sense will come out of him. Just… just a lot of old nonsense.’

‘What?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘I just meant,’ said Blenner, awkwardly, ‘we can’t expect him to make any sense. Not at a time like this. He’ll probably say all sorts of things, rant and rave, you know, until that pain eases. A trauma like this, that could take years.’

Baskevyl stared at him.

‘Are you trying to make some kind of point?’ he asked.

‘N-no,’ said Blenner.

As they watched, Kolea knelt down facing Dalin. He reached out and put his trembling hands on the young man’s shoulders.

‘Dal.’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Dalin.

‘I don’t know what to say, Dal,’ Kolea said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything anyone can say–’

‘She said plenty,’ said Dalin quietly. ‘All those weird things. She was always so strange. But she was my sister.’

He paused.

‘I thought she was,’ he added.

‘Dalin, let’s go up. Get out of here, eh?’ Kolea said.

‘She was always so strange,’ Dalin said, staring at Gol. ‘Growing up, all her games. All her stories. I used to love them. Now I remember every one of them and I see how creepy they were.’

‘Come on, now.’

‘Then the things she said tonight. When I found her. The things she said. They didn’t make any sense. But then her stories about bad shadows didn’t make any sense either, and they were true. She told me there was a woe machine. That was true. What if all the things she said were true?’

‘Like what?’ Kolea asked.

Dalin shook his head.

‘Look, son, none of us could have known–’ said Kolea.

‘I’m not your son.’

‘Dal, listen. None of us could have known. Not me, not you, not–’

He stopped. There was still a burning anger inside him. He hated himself for it, but the anger was directed at Ibram Gaunt. Kolea had laid it all out, exposed everything that had plagued him, and Gaunt had just talked him out of it. He’d brushed all the fears away, found ways to account for every strange detail, and swept it all out of sight.

If he’d listened–

But no. He’d had an answer for everything. Your mind’s confused, Gol. The Ruinous Powers play games. Even the Archenemy wouldn’t lay a plan that elaborate. They couldn’t see the future and be that many steps ahead.

A brother would know his sister.

Kolea looked at Dalin.

That had been the clincher. The one that had really changed Gol’s mind.

A brother would know his sister.

‘What did she say to you, Dalin?’ he asked.

Dalin shook his head again, lips pursed, fighting back tears and daring not to speak.

‘Dal? Dalin? What did she say to you?’

‘It was all true, wasn’t it?’ Dalin sobbed. ‘It was all true and I didn’t know.’

Kolea pulled him close and wrapped his arms around him. Dalin wept against his chest.

‘Easy, Dal, easy,’ he murmured. ‘What was it she said to you?’

Dalin whimpered a response that Kolea couldn’t hear with the boy’s face buried in his chest. He eased Dalin back, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and looked him in the eyes.

‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘You can tell me. I’ll protect you.’

‘You can’t,’ whispered Dalin.

‘Of course I can. I made that oath, remember? The Kolea oath? Walk into hell to protect you.’

‘You couldn’t protect Yonce.’

‘Well, I couldn’t. Because she wasn’t mine, was she? But you. You are. You’re my son.’

‘Not really. I’m not really.’

‘Ah, so our road through life’s been an odd one. So what? That’s all right. Blood is blood. So come on, what did she say that upset you so much?’

Dalin stared at him.

‘She said there were two of them, papa,’ said Dalin.