Dan Abnett - First and Only

'No,' Gaunt admitted darkly.

The intrigue threatens everything. How can a Crusade force this vast continue when its commanders are at each other's throats? And if we're fighting each other, how can we fight the foe?'

'Why am I here?' Gaunt cut in flatly.

'He said you would be cautious.'

'Who said? Fereyd?'

The man paused, but didn't reply directly. Two nights ago, associates of mine here in Cracia intercepted a signal sent via an astropath from a scout ship in the Nubila Reach. It was destined for Lord High Militant General Dravere's Fleet headquarters. Its clearance level was Vermilion.'

Gaunt blinked. Vermilion level .

The man took a small crystal from his coat pocket and held it up so that it winked in the violet light.

The data is stored on this crystal. It took the lives of two psykers to capture the signal and transfer it to this. Dravere must not get his hands on it.'

He held it out to Gaunt.

Gaunt shrugged. 'You're giving it to me?'

The man pursed his lips. 'Since my network here on Cracia intercepted this, we've been taken apart. Dravere's own counter-spy network is after us, desperate to retrieve the data. I have no one left to safeguard this. I contacted my offworld superior, and he told me to await a trusted ally. Whoever you are, friend, you are held in high regard. You are trusted. In this secret war, that means a lot.'

Gaunt took the crystal from the man's trembling fingers. He didn't quite know what to say. He didn't want this vile, vital thing anywhere near himself, but he was beginning to realise what might be at stake.

The older man smiled at Gaunt. He began to say something.

The wall behind him exploded in a firestorm of light and vaporising bricks. Two fierce blue beams of las fire punched into the room and sliced the man into three distinct sections before he could move.

SIX

Gaunt dived for cover in the apartment doorway. He drew Milo's blade, for all the good that would do.

Feet were thundering up the stairs.

From his vantage point at the door he watched as two armoured troopers swung in through the exploded wall. They were big, dad in black, insignia-less combat armour, carrying compact, cut-down lasrifles. Adhesion damps on their knees and forearms showed how they had scaled the outside walls to blow their way in with a directional limpet mine.

They surveyed the room, sweeping their green laser tagger beams. One spotted Gaunt prone in the doorway and opened fire. The blast punched through the doorframe, kicking up splinters and began stitching along the plasterboard wall.

Gaunt dived headlong. He was dead! Dead, unless—

The old man's pistol lay on the worn carpet under his nose. It must have skittered there when he was cut down. Gaunt grabbed it, thumbed off the safety and rolled over to fire. The gun was small, but the odd design clearly marked it as an andent and priceless specialised weapon. It had a kick like a mule and a roar like a Basilisk.

The first shot surprised Gaunt as much as the two stealth troops and it blew a hatch-sized hole in the wall. The second shot exploded one of the attackers.

A little rune on the grip of the pistol had changed from ''V'' to ''III''. Gaunt sighed. This thing clearly wasn't over-blessed with a capadous magazine.

The footfalls on the stairway got louder and three more stealth troopers stumbled up, wafting the candle flames as they ran.

Gaunt dropped to a kneeling pose and blew the head off the first. But the other two opened fire up the well with their las-guns and then the remaining trooper in the apartment behind him began firing too. The cross-blast of three lasguns on rapid-burst tore the top hallway to pieces. Gaunt dropped flat so hard he smashed his hand on the boards and the gun pattered away down the top steps.

After a moment or two, the firing stopped and the attackers began to edge forward to inspect their kill. Dust and smoke drifted in the half-light. Some of the shots had punched up through the floor and carpet a whisker from Gaunt's nose, leaving smoky, dimpled holes. But Gaunt was intact.

When the trooper from the apartment poked his head round the door, a cubit of hard-flung Tanith silver impaled his skull and dropped him to the floor, jerking and spasming. Gaunt leapt up. A second, two seconds, and he would have the fallen man's las-gun in his hands, ready to blast down the stairs.

But the other two from below were in line of sight. There was a flash and he realised their green laser taggers had swept over his face and dotted on his heart. There was a quick and frantic burst of lasgun fire and a billow of noxious burning fumes washed up the stairs over Gaunt.

Blenner climbed the stairs into view, carefully stepping over the smouldering bodies, a smoking laspistol in his hand.

'Got tired of waiting,' the commissar sighed. 'Looks like you needed a hand anyway, eh, Bram?'

SEVEN

The grey truck, with its single remaining pursuer, slammed into high gear as it went over the rise in the snowy road, leaving the ground for a stomach-shaking moment.

'What's that?' Rawne said wildly, a moment after they landed again and the thrashing wheels re-engaged the slippery roadway.

'It's called a roadblock, I believe,' Corbec said.

Ahead, the cold zone street was closed by a row of oil-can fires, concrete poles and wire. Several armed shapes were waiting for them.

'Off the road! Get off the road!' Corbec bawled. He leaned over and wrenched at the crescent steering wheel.

The truck slewed sideways in the slush and barrelled beetle-nose-first through the sheet-wood doors of an old, apparently abandoned warehouse. There, in the dripping darkness, it grumbled to a halt, its firing note choking away to a dull cough.

'Now what?' Rawne hissed.

'Well, there's you, me and Feygor…' Corbec began. Already the trooper was beginning to pull himself groggily up in the back. 'Three of Gaunt's Ghosts, the best damn fighting regiment in the Guard. We excel at stealth work and look! We're here in a dark warehouse.'

Corbec readied his automatic. Rawne pulled his laspistol and did the same. He grinned.

'Let's do it,' he said.

Years later, in the speakeasies and clubs of the Cracian cold zones, the story of the shoot-out at the old Vinchy Warehouse would do the rounds. Thousands of shots were heard, they say, mostly the bass chatter of the autogun sidearms carried by twenty armed men, mob overbaron Vulnor Habshept kal Geel's feared enforcers, who went in to smoke out the offworld gangsters.

All twenty died. Twenty further shots, some from laspistols, some from a big-bore autogun, were heard. No more, no less. No one ever saw the offworld gangsters again, or found the truck laden with stolen contraband that had sparked off the whole affair.

The staff-track whipped along down the cold zone street, heading back to the safety of the city core. In the back, Blenner poured another two measures of his expensive brandy. This time, Gaunt took the one offered and knocked it back.

You don't have to tell me what's going on, Bram. Not if you don't want to.'

Gaunt sighed. 'If I had to, would you listen?'

Blenner chuckled. 'I'm loyal to the Emperor, Gaunt, and doubly loyal to my old friends. What else do you need to know?'

Gaunt smiled and held his glass out as Blenner refilled it.

'Nothing, I suppose.'

Blenner leaned forward, earnest for the first time in years. 'Look, Bram… I may seem like an old fogey to you, grown fat on the luxuries of having a damn near perfect regiment… but I haven't forgotten what the fire feels like. I haven't forgotten the reason I'm here. You can trust me to hell and back, and I'll be there for you.'

'And the Emperor,' Gaunt reminded him with a grin.