Dan Abnett - Necropolis

It was evening on the thirtieth day and Curth had been on duty for nearly twenty hours. After the nightmare of the storm assault the previous night, the fighting had slowed, with nothing more than random exchanges of shelling from both sides across the litter of Zoican dead outside the Wall.

Or so Curth had heard from passing soldiers and Administratum officials. She'd barely had time to raise her head above the endless work. She paused to scrub her hands in a water bath, partly to clean them but mainly to feel the refreshingly cold liquid on her fingers. She looked up to see groups of dirty Vervun Primary troopers wheeling a dozen or more of their wounded comrades down the hall on brass gurneys. Some of the wounded were whimpering.

No! No! she cried out. The west wards are full! Not that way!

Several troopers protested.

Weren't you briefed on admittance? Show me your paperwork.

She checked the crumpled, mud and blood-stained admission bills one trooper handed her.

No, this is wrong, she murmured, shaking her head as she read. They've filled out the wrong boxes. You'll have to go back to the main triage station.

More protests. She took out her stylus and over-wrote the details of the bills, signing them and scorching her seal-mark on the paper with a brief flash of her signet ring.

Back, she told them with authority. Back that way and they'll look after you.

The troopers retreated. Curth turned, now hearing raised voices in Ward 12/g nearby.

Ward 12/g had been filled with refugees from the outhabs, most of them fever-sick or undernourished. Days of careful feeding and anti-fever inoculations had improved things, and she was hoping to be able to discharge many of them back to the refugee camps in the next day or two. That would make some valuable space.

She entered the arch-ceilinged ward: a long, green-washed, stone chamber with seven hundred cots. Some were screened. Other cot spaces were crowded with the families of the patients who had refused to be separated from their kin. There was a warm, cloying smell of living bodies and dirt in the air.

The shouting was coming from a cot-space halfway down the ward. Two of her orderlies, distinct in their red gowns from the grimy patients, were trying to calm an outhab worker as gaggles of other outhabbers looked on. The worker was a large male with no obvious injuries but a wasted, pale complexion. He was yelling and making nervous, threatening gestures at the orderlies.

Curth sighed. This wasn't the first such incident. Like far too many of the impoverished underclass, the worker was an obscura addict, hooked on the sweet opiate as a relief from his miserable shift-life. Obscura was cheaper, hit for hit, than alcohol. He probably used a waterpipe or maybe an inhaler. When the invasion began, the workers had fled in-hive. Now many of them were regretting leaving their opiate stashes behind in their desperation. She'd had ninety or more admitted with what at first seemed like the symptoms of gastric fever. After a few days of support and food, this had turned out to be withdrawal cramps.

Strung out, some addicts demanded medicinal drugs to ease their agonies. Others got through the withdrawal phases. Still others became violent and unreasonable. For a few the chronic, long-term users she had been forced to prescribe ameliorating tranquillisers.

Curth stepped between her orderlies and faced the man, her hands raised in a gesture of calm.

I'm chief surgeon, she said softly. What's your name?

The worker snarled something inarticulate, foam flecking his chin as his jaw worked. His eyes showed too much white.

Your name? What's your name?

N-Norand.

How long have you been using obscura, Norand?

Another squeal of not-words. A stammering.

How long? It's important.

S-since I was a j-journeyman

Twenty years at least. A lifelong abuser. There could be no reasoning here. Curth doubted the worker would ever be able to kick the habit that was destroying his brain.

I'll get something for you right now that will help you feel better, Norand. You just have to be calm. Can you do that?

D-drugs? he muttered, chewing at his lips.

She nodded. Can you be calm now?

The worker quivered his head and sat back on his cot, panting and raking the sheets with his fingers.

Curth turned to her orderlies. Get me two shots of lomitamol. Move it! One of the orderlies hurried off. She sent the other away to encourage patients back to their cots.

There was a pause in the background noise of the ward, just for a second. Curth had her back to the worker and realised her oh-so-very-basic mistake. She turned in time to see him leaping at her, lips drawn back from his rotting teeth, a rusty clasp-knife in one hand.

Wondering stupidly how in the name of the Emperor he'd got that weapon into the hall unchecked, she managed to sidestep. The worker half-slammed into her and she went over backwards, overturning a water cart. The bottles smashed on the tiles. The worker, making a high-pitched whining sound, stepped over the mess while trying to keep his balance. He stabbed the knife at her and she cried out, rolling aside and cutting her arm on the broken glass. She scrabbled to rise, expecting to feel him plant the blade in her back at any moment.

Turning, she saw him choking and gagging, held in a firm choke-hold from behind. Dorden, the Tanith medical officer, had his left arm braced around the addict's neck, his right hand holding the knife-wrist tightly at full length away from them both. The addict gurgled. Dorden was completely tranquil. His hold was an expert move, just a millimetre or two of pressure away from clamping the carotid arteries, just a centimetre away from dislocating the neck. Only a brilliant medic or an Imperial assassin could be that precise.

Drop it, Dorden said into the worker's ear.

N-n-nggnnh!

Drop. It, the Ghost repeated emphatically.

Dorden dug his thumb into a pressure point at the base of the man's palm and the addict dropped his knife anyway. The rusty weapon clattered to the floor and Curth kicked it aside.

Dorden increased his chokehold for a fraction of a second, enough for the man to black out, and then dropped him facedown onto an empty cot. Orderlies hurried up.

Restrain him. Give him the lomitamol, but restrain him all the same.

He turned to Curth. This is a war now, you know. You should have guards in here. Things get dangerous during wars, even behind the lines.

She nodded. She was shaking. Thank you, Dorden.

Glad to help. I was coming to find you. Come on. He picked up a clutch of data-slates and paper forms he had dropped in order to engage the man, and he led her by the arm down the length of the ward to the exit.

In the cool of the corridor outside, she paused and leaned against the stone wall, taking deep breaths.

How long have you been working? You need rest, Dorden said.

Is that a medical opinion?

No, a friend's.

She looked up at him. She had still to get the measure of this off-worlder, but she liked him. And he and his Tanith medics had been the backbone of the combat triage station.

You've been up as long as me. I saw you working at midnight last night.

I nap.

You what?

I nap. Useful skill. I'd rate it slightly higher than suturing. I know all the excuses about there being no time for sleep. I've used them myself. Hell, I've been a doctor for a lot of years. So I learned to nap. Ten minutes here, five there, in any lull. Keeps you fresh.

She shook her head and smiled.

Where do you nap? she asked.

He shrugged. I've found there's a particularly comfortable linen cupboard on the third floor. You should try it. You won't be disturbed. They never change the beds in this place anyway.