Dan Abnett - Necropolis

Shells roared overhead and there were a great many more rockets banging in through the gate mouth now.

Corbec's force had gone a hundred metres when they met a battlegroup of Zoican shock troops head on.

Milo reached the end of a shattered stretch of wall and tossed a grenade around the corner. As soon as the blast thumped out, vibrating his chest and spilling brick dust and plaster from the wall-section, he raced across the gap and took up station at the next las-chewed corner, kneeling, sweeping his lasgun around in the grenade smoke to cover Baffels, who crossed behind him.

A few enemy shots rang over their heads, higher than the wall, cracking the air.

Neskon and Rhys came up after, darting across the gap as Baffels and Milo fired cover.

Where's Dremmond? shouted Neskon over the roar. He was plastered in blood, but it wasn't his own.

Ahead, I think! yelled Milo. He tried his micro-bead link, but it just ground out static.

The platoon had been advancing down the ditchlines between the buildings towards the gate, in support of Colonel Corbec's brave push and for a while Dremmond's flamer had been clearing the way. But a trio of rockets had slammed into the ditch and broken the advance, and now the forward section of the platoon format, with Dremmond and Sergeant Fols in it, had advanced out of sight in the smoke.

Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed on down the side of the next bombed-out storeblock as Neskon covered the gap for the next group of Ghosts: Domor, Filain and Tokar, followed by the vox-officer, Wheln, and Troopers Caill and Venar. Neskon and Domor then advanced, leaving Filain and Tokar to cover the overlap for the three following.

At the front of the group, Milo, Baffels and Rhys pushed forward again, grenading a break in the wall and sprinting across it to lay cover for the parties behind.

There was ferocious fighting from a hundred metres ahead. Milo's micro-bead squawked and he heard flashes of Corbec's commanding voice.

Domor and Neskon moved up to them and Domor probed the smoke cover ahead with the optic implants he had acquired after an injury on Menazoid Epsilon.

The focus rings hummed and whirred around the blank lenses. I read heat lots of it. A flamer, pouring it on.

Milo nodded. He could smell prometheum.

Dremmond, Baffels suggested.

Encouraged that they might be closing on their forward element, the platoon rallied and pushed forward. Milo realised that they seemed to be following him, looking to him for leadership, with Sergeant Fols absent. It was mad they all had more combat experience than him, and all were older.

It was as if the gloss of Gaunt was on him, as if he represented some kind of natural authority simply by association with the commissar.

The cover ahead broke into a series of low-dug ditches punctuated with shell-craters. Enemy fire was sheeting across it, making it impassable. Milo saw at least two dead Ghosts twisted and broken in the ditch-line.

Round! We go round! he urged and Baffels nodded. The men liked Baffels too, and he seemed to be readily adopting the role of second to Milo's lead, like Corbec to Gaunt. Milo marvelled at the way structures simply evolved organically in combat, without question or spoken decision. With focus, fear and adrenaline that high, right on the tightrope of life and death, men made simple, natural decisions.

Or a well-trained, motivated unit like the Ghosts did at any rate. Milo was sure the Vervun Primary troops were collapsing simply because they lacked that resolve and that organic spontaneity.

He took his fellows left, towards the edge of the Spoil, through a series of drumlike scrap stores where greasy rail bogeys and axle blocks were stacked. Venar had an autocannon and several cans of ammo still strapped to his load-bearing harness, so Milo gave him point to clear the way. The rattle of short cannon bursts echoed through the stores as Venar picked the way ahead clean.

The stores opened out into a hectare or so of stockyard that was miraculously unscathed. Flatbed wagons and pipe-trucks sat in linked trains along six parallel sidings. There was a burned-out diesel locomotive at one buffer-end.

The platoon edged forward, through and around the dormant wagons, sometimes sliding under or between trucks, or clambering over hook assemblies thick with sooty oil.

Las-shots began to hammer into the wagons near Milo. They blew out sections on the wooden sideboarding, and Baffels and Milo were showered with splinters.

The men dropped into cover, spread out through the wagon yard. Curt assessments as to the angle and position of the shooters flicked back and forth through the micro-bead link. Venar fired a few bursts of cannon under the wagon he was sheltering behind, and Milo heard shots ping and ricochet off the ironwork of the bogeys.

The enemy fire increased.

Milo moved them forward. He saw Filain scoot out from between wagons and then duck back into cover as las-fire scooped up the gravel and stone around him. One shot severed a piece of track and the metal section broke with an almost musical chime.

Domor and Neskon also tried to move forward. They skirted back a few trucks and came out around a high-sided freight wagon. Las-shots spanged off the thin metal sides of the wagon. Neskon dropped, but Domor dragged him up and they fell into cover along the next truck line. Neskon wasn't hit. He had simply stumbled.

Milo and Baffels, with Rhys and Tokar just behind them, were pinned. Milo tried to creep around the end of the nearest wagon, but more firing erupted and he hit the ground, winded.

You're hit! he heard Baffels call.

No, I'm fine Milo said.

You're fething hit! Baffels repeated.

Milo reached around and felt a wet hole in the left shoulder of his tunic. It was sore, but there was no real pain. He had been hit. He hadn't even felt it.

Milo got to his feet and then paused, lowering himself again and carefully looking out under the wagons. When he had dropped, he'd glimpsed something that his mind was only just identifying.

Three trains away, under the trucks, he could see feet. Armoured, heavy booted feet in distinctive ochre armour.

He waved the others down to look.

A dozen, maybe more.

Zoicans.

The punishing fire that had pinned them slowed. The Zoicans were evidently moving too, pushing in and around the trucks just as the Ghosts were, but from the other side.

Milo counted off the men and sent them wide, using the concealment of the trucks. Few in the Imperial Guard moved as stealthily as the Tanith.

There was a burst of cannon fire twenty metres south of Milo. Then two more, a few answering las-shots. Venar had engaged.

More firing, brief and fierce, came from the next lane of wagons. Over the link, he heard Wheln curse, then laugh.

Baffels crawled ahead of Milo, down the length of a flatbed wagon. The Ghosts were all grey with gravel dust now, and their hands and knees were thick with oil.

Milo heard a dull sound from the body of the truck.

He yelled a warning and swung upwards as the Zoican storm-trooper appeared over the lip of the wagonbed and fired down. Baffels had rolled instinctively in under the side of the truck and slammed against the wheels and the sleepers as the Zoican's fire exploded the grit where he had been crawling.

Milo fired a burst upwards, punching three las-rounds through the aluminium siding of the wagon and the Zoican behind. The ochre-armoured figure convulsed and toppled clumsily out of the wagon. He landed next to the cowering Baffels, who automatically turned and shot the corpse through the head, point-blank.

Neskon, Rhys and Tokar were firing out between wagons, scoping for Zoicans just the other side of the track. Zoican las-fire and hard rounds came back between and under the wagons and forced Tokar to scramble on his arse back behind a slumped fuel drum. Neskon used the heavy bogey assembly of a wagon as cover and shuddered as persistent fire whipped under the cart-body and slammed into the huge iron wheels against his back.