Dan Abnett - First and Only

Close to, the Vitrians were impressive soldiers. Their unusual body armour was made from a toothed metallic mail which covered them in form-fitting sections. It glinted like obsidian. Their helmets were full face and grim with narrow eye slits, glazed with dark glass. Their weapons were polished and clean.

'Commissar Gaunt of the Tanith First and Only,' Gaunt said as he saluted a greeting.

'Zoren of the Vitrian Dragoons,' came the reply. 'Good to see that there are some of you left out here. We feared we were being called in to support a regiment already slaughtered.'

'The drums? Are they yours?'

Zoren slid back the visor of his helmet to reveal a handsome, dark-skinned face. He caught Gaunt with a quizzical stare. They are not… we were just wondering what in the name of the Emperor it was ourselves.'

Gaunt looked away into the smoke and the fractured buildings around them. The noise had grown. Now it sounded like hundreds of drums… thousands… from all around. For each drum, a drummer. They were surrounded and completely outnumbered.

TEN

Caffran dragged himself across the mud and slid into a crater. Around him the bombardment showed no signs of easing. He had lost his lasgun and most of his kit, but he still had his silver knife and an auto-pistol that had come his way as a trophy at some time or other.

Wriggling to the lip of the crater he caught sight of figures far away, soldiers who seemed to be dressed in glass. There was a full unit of them, caught in the crossfire of the serial bombardment. They were being slaughtered.

Shells fell close again and Caffran slid down to cover his head with his arms. This was hell and there was no way out of it. Curse this, in the name of Feth!

He looked up and grabbed his pistol as something fell into the shell hole next to him. It was one of the glass-clad soldiers I he had seen from a distance, presumably one who had fled in search of cover. The man held up his hands to avoid Caffran's potential wrath.

'Guard! I'm Guard, like you!' the man said hastily, pulling off his dark-lensed full-face helmet to reveal an attractive face with dan that was almost as dark and glossy as polished ebonwood.

'Trooper Zogat of the Vitrian Regiment. We were called in to support you and half our number were in the open when the artillery cranked up.'

'My sympathies,' Trooper Caffran said humourlessly, holster-I inghis pistol. he held out a pale hand to shake and was aware I of the way the man in the articulated metallic armour regarded I the blue dragon tattoo over his right eye with disdain.

'Trooper Caffran, Tanith First,' he said. After a moment the Vitrian shook his hand.

A shell fell close and showered them in mud. Getting up from their knees they turned and looked out at the apocalyptic vista all around.

'Well, friend,' Caffran said, 'I think we're here for the duration.'

ELEVEN

To the west, the Jantine Patricians moved in under the command of Colonel Flense. They rode on Chimera personnel carriers that lurched and reeled across the slick and miry landscape. The Patricians were noble soldiers, tall men in deep purple uniforms dressed with chrome. Flense had been honoured when, six years before, he had become their commanding officer. They were haughty and resolute, and had won for him a great deal of praise. They had a regimental history that dated back fifteen generations to their first Founding in the castellated garrisons of Jant Normanidus Prime, generations of notable triumphs, and associations with illustrious generals and campaigns. There was just the one blemish on their honour roll, just the one, and it nagged at Flense day and night. He would rectify that. Here, on Fortis Binary.

He took his scope and looked at the battlefield ahead. He had two columns of vehicles with upwards of ten thousand men scissoring in to cut into the flank of the Shriven as the Tanith and the Vitrians drove them back. Both those regiments were fully deployed into the Shriven lines. But Flense had not counted on this bombardment from the Shriven artillery in the hills. Two kilometres ahead the ground was volcanic with the pounding of the macro-shells and a drizzle of mud fogged back to splatter their vehicles. There was no way of going round and Flense didn't even wish to consider the chances of driving his column through the barrage. Lord General Dravere believed in acceptable losses, and had demonstrated this practicality on a fair few number of occasions without compunction, but Flense wasn't about to commit suicide. His scar twitched. He cursed. For all his manoeuvring with Dravere, this wasn't the way it was meant to go. He had been cheated of his victory.

'Pull back!' he ordered into the vox handset and felt the gears of his vehicle grind into reverse as the carrier pulled around.

His second officer, a big, older man called Brochuss, glared at him under the low brim of his helmet. 'We are to pull out, colonel?' he asked, as if obliteration by artillery shell was something he craved.

'Shut up!' spat Flense and repeated the order into the vox-caster.

'What about Gaunt?' Brochuss asked.

'What do you think?' Flense sneered, gesturing out of the Chimera's vision slit at the inferno that raged along the dead-land. ' We may not get glory today, but at least we can content ourselves in the knowledge that the bastard is dead.'

Brochuss nodded, and a slow smile of consolation spread across his grizzled features. None of the veterans had forgotten Khedd 1173.

The Patrician armoured convoy snaked back on itself and thundered home towards friendly lines before the Shriven emplacements could range them. Victory would have to wait a while longer. The Tanith First and Only and the Vitrian support regiments were on their own. If there were indeed any of them left alive.

A MEMORY

GYLATUS DECIMUS, EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER

Oktar died slowly. It took eight days.

The commander had once joked – on Darendara, or was it Folion? Gaunt forgot. But he remembered the joke: 'It won't be war that slays me, it'll be these damn victory celebrations!'

They had been in a smoke-filled hall, surrounded by cheering citizens and waving banners. Most of the Hyrkan officers were drunk on their feet. Sergeant Gurst had stripped to his underwear and climbed the statue of the two-headed Imperial Eagle in the courtyard to string the Hyrkan colours from the crest. The streets were full of bellowing crowds, static, honking traffic and wild firecrackers.

Folion. Definitely Folion.

Cadet Gaunt had smiled. Laughed, probably.

But Oktar had a way of being right all the time, and he had been right about this. The Instrumentality of the Gylatus World Flock had been delivered from the savage ork threat after ten months of sustained killing on the Gylatan moons. Oktar, Gaunt with him, had led the final assault on the ork war bunkers at Tropis Crater Nine, punching through the last stand resistance of the brutal huzkarl retinue of Warboss Elgoz. Oktar had personally planted the spike of the Imperial Standard into the soft grey soil of the crater bottom, through Elgoz's exploded skull.

Then here, in the Gylatan hive city capital on Decimus, the victory parades, the hosts of jubilant citizenry, the endless festivities, the medal ceremonies, the drinking, the—

The poison.

Canny, for orks. As if realising their untenable position, the orks had tainted the food and drink reserves in the last few days of their occupation. Taster servitors had sniffed most of it out, but that one stray bottle. That one stray bottle. Adjutant Broph had found the rack of antique wines on the second night of the liberation festivities, hidden in a longbox in the palace rooms which Oktar had commandeered as a playground for his officer cadre. No one had even thought-Eight were dead, including Broph, by the time anyone realised. Dead in seconds, collapsed in convulsive wracks, frothing and gurgling. Oktar had only just sipped from his glass when someone sounded the alarm.