Dan Abnett - Necropolis

At Croe Gate, General Nash had a measure of success. He switched to a wideband his Roane Deepers had famously been forced to use once on Kroxis and his vox-staffers on the ground had the same idea. For most of the day, Nash was the only senior commander in the field to have a direct open link to his forces.

A Volpone force under Corday also managed to resume contact with its distant elements. Corday adroitly used his short-range micro-beads to relay the new channel setting from man to man through the field. Unfortunately, he had chosen a channel that was crippled by interference from the Shield harmonics.

At Veyveyr, matters were made worse by the fact that Modile had shut down the main channel to cut off the demands of his officers men like the late Racine who were now questioning Modile's orders. Corbec received Bulwar's Anvil code over the short-range and was able to coordinate his resistance with the NorthCol commander, but they found their forces conflicting with Vervun Primary troops following Modile's increasingly knee-jerk commands.

Gaunt, who had been at Hass West when the storm began, immediately headed for Veyveyr with Daur and a platoon of Tanith. Their troop-truck convoy found the back end of the reinforcement columns jammed fast and they struggled to find a way around or through. Gaunt tried Raglon's vox-set frantically to get House Command to rectify the growing logistical disaster, but he found the lines as jammed as the other commanders had before him.

He handed the speaker horn back to Raglon and looked down at the pale-faced Daur. The rumble and roar of the nightmarish Veyveyr battle backlit the buildings and habs ahead of them.

How far to Veyveyr from here? Gaunt snapped.

Four, maybe five kilometres, replied the Vervun Primary liaison.

Gaunt eyed the solid wall of troops and troop carriers choking the highway ahead and cursed quietly. Establishing proper and workable vox-protocols would be his priority once this day was done. The Vervun Primary were brave men and the noble houses were honourable institutions, but in war they were rank amateurs.

Dismount! Gaunt yelled back down his force and leaped out of the lead truck. Daur joined him, prepping the lasrifle he had drawn from stores after the First Storm. His arm still hurt and wasn't mended, but it worked well enough for him to carry a weapon and he'd be damned if he was going to follow the commissar into action again and have to ask to borrow a gun. He gulped down a couple of painkiller tablets to soothe the ache.

The fifty Tanith Ghosts had assembled on the road beside the trucks.

Gaunt walked down the rank, speaking directly and briefly. We're advancing on foot. It's five or so kilometres and we need to move fast, so ditch any extra weight just carry weapons and ammunition, bayonets. Get rid of anything that'll slow you down or wear you out by the time we get there. Daur will lead.

He looked round at Daur. Captain? Find a way.

Daur nodded, confidently. Though a hiver born and bred, he knew the vast complexities of the southern manufactory district no better than the off-worlders. He pulled a chart-plate out of a thigh-pouch and deftly cycled through the map-patterns until he found the area they were in.

With a stylus, he worked out a possible route. He was determined not to fail the Ghosts and, more particularly, Gaunt.

Follow me, he said and headed off the road at a trot, pushing through a flak-board fence and into the service yard of a machinesmithy.

Gaunt and the Ghosts hurried after him.

At Croe Gate, the Zoican push was hitting the adamantine gates so hard and so frequently that they were denting and starting to glow with heat. Nash brought what mechanised forces he had into place inside the gates, in case they fell.

Outside, a line of enemy tanks and armoured fighting vehicles perhaps five hundred strong, stretched out down the cuttings of the rail tracks and the rockcrete supports of the elevated express line. Some Zoican infantry strengths were visible too, but so far it was entirely a war of cannon, rocket, mortar and wall-gun against tank and artillery. If the Vervunhive forces could only keep them out and keep the mighty gates sealed tight, the battle might never descend to the level of infantry mayhem that was occurring at Veyveyr.

If two such infantry fronts opened if Croe Gate broke Nash knew it could signal the start of an inexorable defeat for Vervunhive. He prayed to the holy Emperor of Terra that the Zoicans had no more death machines left to unleash.

Veyveyr was truly a nightmare. The air across the vast yard was thick with las-fire and tracers, gouts from flamers, whooping rockets and dense palls of smoke. Despite the volatile highlights of his combat career, Corbec had seldom seen anything so fierce or intense. Ducking into cover and trying to clear a feed-jam in the autocannon with Genx crouched next to him, Corbec wondered if it was because the fight was so enclosed: the Curtain Wall on one side, the manufactories around, the Shield above. It was as if this hellish firefight was being conducted in a box that concentrated the fury and amplified the noise.

Bulwar signalled him again and Corbec had to strain to hear. The NorthCol Commander was driving forward in a wedge from the west, bringing his armour in as well as his ground troops and several units of Vervun Primary that he had been able to pry away from the useless Modile. He wanted Corbec to support with his Ghosts from the east.

Corbec acknowledged. He sent the word down, from man to man, trying to unify them into a co-ordinated effort. But the Zoicans were everywhere and Corbec knew at least three parts of his force were bottled in behind him and fighting for their lives.

He took a look eastwards at the dank slopes of the Spoil. Enemy shelling still whooshed down into it and he could see the sparks of las-fire exchanged up and down the ore-slag. The Spoilers were engaging hostiles coming up the Spoil. He hoped the Zoicans would continue their push up at the well-defended Spoilers. If they turned west, they would flow in on his meagre force from the rear and

He shut off the thought.

How much? he shouted at Genx.

With his one good hand, Genx indicated they had about three thousand rounds left for the autocannon, in loops around his body or in the panniers of ammo-drums he had collected. About two minutes' sustained fire, Corbec thought.

He voxed his men to present and move west. They rose, then immediately ducked back as a heavy rake of las-fire swept in from the northwest.

Corbec screamed a curse. The fething Vervun Primary, effectively leaderless and alone in the mid-yard, were firing at anything that moved and had flanked the Ghosts as well as if they'd planned it.

Corbec tried to raise Modile on the vox. All he got was Modile's adjutant screaming obscenities down the link, demanding that the NorthCol and the Tanith regroup as per battle orders.

Modile's dead. Gonna kill him myself, Corbec decided.

He rose and set the autocannon chugging a blurt of fire down the rubble line at Zoican movement.

A bolt-round slammed into the stone beside him and glanced off, hitting him in the thigh.

Corbec tumbled down with the impact and tried to claw the smouldering shell-case fragments out of his tunic pants. The cloth was punctured and there was blood. He found the round had been spent on impact with the stone and just the case had spun off into him, peppering his leg with dozens of metal scraps. He flexed the limb. It hurt and was bleeding freely, but he could use it.

Modile was definitely going to die.

There was no going west, not directly. He pulled his units after him and headed towards the gate under cover of the eastern trenches and barricades. They might be able to break west further down, beyond the range of the hopeless Vervun Primary.