Dan Abnett - First and Only

His face caked in the pungent white grease, Adjutant Brochuss slid his tin away in the pocket of his fur-trimmed, purple-and-chrome Patrician battledress and took a wire-handled can of caffeine up to the turret.

Dercius accepted it gratefully. Brochuss, a young and powerfully built trooper, nodded down at the prints spread out on the turret canopy.

'A target? Or just another collection of thlak hunters?'

'I'm trying to decide,' Dercius said.

Since they had left the mouth of the Heort eight days before, they had made one early, lucky strike at a camp of nomad guerrilla Kheddite, and then wasted four afternoons assaulting helukas that had sheltered nothing more than herders and hunters in ragged family groups. Dercius was eager for another success. The Imperial Guard had strength, technology and firepower in their corner, but the nomad rebels had patriotic determination, a fanatical mindset and the harsh environment in theirs.

Dercius knew that many campaigns had faltered when the initially victorious forces had driven the natives back onto the advantage of inhospitable home turf. The last thing he wanted was a war of attrition that locked him here in a police action against elusive guerrillas for years. The Kheddite knew and used this beautiful, cruel environment well, and Dercius knew they could be hunting them for months, all the while suffering a slow erosion of strength to lightning strikes by the fast-moving foe. If they only had a base, a static HQ, a city that could be assaulted. But the Kheddite culture out here was fierce and nomadic. This was their realm, and they would be masters of it until he could catch them.

Still, he reassured himself that Warmaster Slaydo had promised him three more Guard units to help his lantine Fourth and Eleventh in their hunt. Just a day or two more…

He looked back at the prints, and saw something. 'This is promising,' he told Brochuss, sipping his caffeine. 'It's a large settlement. Large by comparison with the herder/hunter helukas we've seen. Sixty plus animals. Those anahig are big; they look like war-mounts to me.'

'Veritable destrier!' Brochuss laughed, referring to the beautiful, sixteen-hand beasts traditionally bred in the stud-farms of the baronies back on Jant Normanidus Prime.

Dercius enjoyed the joke. It was the sort of quip his old major, Gaunt, would have made; a pressure-release for the slow-building tension bubble of a difficult campaign. He rubbed the memory away. That was done, left behind on Kentaur.

'Look here,' he said, tapping a particular print. Brochuss leaned closer.

'What does that look like to you?' Dercius asked.

'The main habitat tent? Where your finger is? I don't know – a smoke flue? An airspace?'

'Maybe,' Dercius said and lifted the print so that his adjutant could get a closer look. 'There's certainly smoke issuing from it but we all know how easy smoke is to make. That wink of light… there.'

Brochuss chuckled, nodding. Throne! An uplink spine. No doubt. They've got a vox-vista set in that place, with the mast extending up out of the opening. You've got sharp eyes, general.'

'That's why I'm the general, Trooper Brochuss!' Dercius snorted with ample good humour. 'So what does that give us? A larger than normal heluka, sixty head of war-mount in the pen…'

'And since when did thlak herders need an intercontinental uplink unit?' finished the adjutant.

'I think the Emperor has smiled on our fortune. Have Major Saulus circle the tanks into a crescent formation around the edge of the glacier. Bring the Hellhounds forward, and hold the troops back for final clearing. We will engulf them.'

Brochuss nodded and jumped back off the track bed of the Leman Russ, running to shout his orders.

Dercius poured the last dregs of his caffeine away over the side of the turret. It melted and stained the snow beside the tank's treads.

Just before sunset, with the first sun a frosty pink semi-circle dipping below the horizon and the second a hot apricot glow in the wispy clouds of the blackening sky, the heluka was a dark stain too.

The Kheddite had fought ferociously… as ferociously as any fur-dad ice-soldier whose tented encampment had been pounded by tank shells and hosed by infernos unleashed from the trundling Hellhounds. Most of the dead and the debris were fused into thick curls of the rapidly refreezing ice-cover; twisted, broken, blackened shapes around which the suddenly liquid ice had abruptly solidified and set.

Some twenty or so had made it to their anahig mount and staged a counter charge along the north flank. A few of his infantry had been torn apart by the clacking beaks or churned under the heavy, three-toed feet. Dercius had pulled the troops back and sent in the tanks with their relentless dozer blades.

The sunset was lovely on Khedd. Dercius pulled his vehicle up from the glacier slope until he overlooked the ocean. It was vibrant red in the failing light, alive with the flashing biolumi-nescence of the micro-growth and krill which prospered in the winter seas. Every now and then, the dying light caught the slow glitter of a mahish as it surfaced its great bulk to harvest the surface. Dercius watched the flopping thick-red water for the sudden breaks of twenty metre flukes and dorsal spines and the sonorous sub-bass creaks of deep-water voices.

The vox-caster set in the lit turret below him was alive with back-chat, but he started as he heard a signal cut through: a low, even message couched in simple Jantine combat-cant.

'Who knows that… who's broadcasting?' he murmured, dropping into the turret and adjusting the dial of the set.

He smiled at first. Slaydo's promised reinforcements were coming in. The Hyrkan Fifth and Sixth. And the message was from the Hyrkan commissar, little Ibram Gaunt.

Fog lights lit the glacier crest as the armoured column of the Hyrkan hove in to view, kicking up snow-dust from their tracks as they bounced down towards the Jantine column.

It will be good to see Ibram, Dercius thought. What's it been… thirteen, fourteen years? He's grown up since I last saw him, grown up like his father. Served with the Hyrkan, made commissar. Dercius had kept up with the long-range reports of Ibram's career. Not just an officer, as his father intended, a commissar no less. Commissar Gaunt. Well, well, well. It would be good to see the boy again.

Despite everything.

Gaunt's HALF-TRAK slewed up in the snow next to the general's Leman Russ. Dercius was descending to meet it, putting his cap on, adjusting his regimental chain-sword in its decorative sheath. He hardly recognised the man who stepped out to meet him.

Gaunt was grown. Tall, powerful, thin of face, his eyes as steady and penetrating as targeting lasers. The black uniform storm-coat and cap of an Imperial Commissar suited him.

'Ibram…' Dercius said with a slow smile. 'How long has it been?'

'Years,' the commissar said flatly, face expressionless. 'Space is wide and too broad to be spanned. I have looked forward to this. For too long. I always hoped circumstance would draw us together again, face to face.'

'Ah… so did I, Ibram! It's a joy to see you.' Dercius held his arms out wide.

'Because I am, as my father raised me, a fair man, I will tell you this, Uncle Dercius,' Gaunt said, his voice curiously low. 'Four years ago on Darendara, I experienced a revelation. A series of revelations. I was given information. Some of it was nonsense, or was not then applicable. Some of it was salutary. It told me a truth. I have been waiting to encounter you ever since.'

Dercius stiffened. 'Ibram… my boy… what are you saying?'

Gaunt unsheathed his chainsword. It murmured waspishly in the cold air. 'I know what happened on Kentaur. I know that, for fear of your own career, my father died.'