Dan Abnett - First and Only

'A good man, Bram; a true loss,' Fereyd said with import.

'You'll never know,' Gaunt said, snatching up his las-gun in a sudden turn and advancing into the thicket of enemy dead.

He turned. 'Mkoll! With me! We'll advance together!'

Mkoll hustled up to join him.

'Fereyd, have your men watch our backs,' Gaunt said.

Fereyd nodded his agreement and pulled his troopers back into the van of the advance. Now it went Gaunt and Mkoll, Bragg, Rawne and Larkin, Dorden with Domor, Caffran, Fereyd and his bodyguard.

They trod carefully over and between the fallen bodies of the foe and found the tunnel dipped steeply into a wider place. Light, like it was being emitted from the belly of a glowing insect, shone from the gloom ahead, outlining an arched doorway. They advanced, weapons ready, until they stood in its shadows.

'We're there,' Mkoll said with finality.

Gaunt slipped his data-slate out of his pocket and thought to consult his portable geo-compass, but Mkoll's instinct was far more reliable than the little purring dial. The commissar looked at the slate, winding the decoded information across the little plate with a touch of the thumb wheel.

The map calls this the Edicule – a shrine, a resting place. It's the focus of the entire necropolis.'

'And it's where we'll find this… thing?' Mkoll asked darkly.

Gaunt nodded, and took a step into the lit archway. Beyond the crumbling black granite of the arch, a great vault stretched away, floor, walls and roof all fashioned from opalescent stone lit up by some unearthly green glow. Gaunt blinked, accustoming his eyes to the lambent sheen. Mkoll edged in behind him, then Rawne. Gaunt noticed how their breaths were steaming in the air. It was many degrees colder in the vault, the atmosphere damp and heavy. Gaunt clicked off his now redundant lamp pack.

'It looks empty,' Major Rawne said, looking about them. They all heard how small and muffled his voice sounded, distorted by the strange atmospherics of the room. Gaunt gestured at the far end wall, sixty metres away, where the thin scribing of a doorway was marked on the stone wall. A great rectangular door or doors, maybe fifteen metres high, set flush into the wall itself.

This is the outer approach chamber. The Edicule itself is beyond those doors.'

Rawne took a pace forward, but pulled up in surprise as Sergeant Mkoll placed an arresting hand on his arm.

'Not so fast, eh?' Mkoll nodded at the floor ahead of them. 'These vaults have been teeming with the enemy, but the dust on that floor hasn't been disturbed for decades, at least. And you see the patterning in the dust?'

Both Rawne and Gaunt stooped their heads to get an angle to see what Mkoll described. Catching the light right they could see almost invisible spirals and circles in the thick dust, like droplet ripples frozen in ash.

'Your data said something about wards and prohibitions on the entrance to the Edicule. This area hasn't been traversed in a long while, and I'd guess those patterns are imprints in the dust made by energies or force screens. Like a storm shield, maybe. We know the enemy here has some serious crap at their disposal.'

Gaunt scratched his cheek, thinking. Mkoll was right, and had been sharp-witted to remember the data notes at a moment where Gaunt was all for rushing ahead, so close was the prize. Somehow, Gaunt had expected gun emplacements, chain-fences, wire-strands – conventional wards and prohibitions. He caught Rawne's eye, and saw the resentment burning there. Gaunt had still managed to exclude the major from the details he had shared with the other officers, and Rawne remained in the dark as to the nature of this insertion, if not its importance. Gaunt had only brought him along because of his ruthless expertise in tunnel fighting.

And because, after the business on the Absalom, he wanted to keep Rawne where he could see him. And, of course, there was…

Gaunt blinked off the thoughts. 'Get me Domor's sweeper set. I'll sweep the room myself

'I'll do it, sir,' a voice said from behind them. The others had edged into the chamber behind them, with Fereyd's men watching the arch, though even they were clearly more interested in what lay ahead. Domor himself had spoken. He was standing by himself now, a little shaky but upright. Dorden's high-dose pain-killers had given him a brief respite from pain and a temporary renewal of strength.

'It should be me,' Gaunt said softly, and Domor angled his blind face slightly to direct himself at the sound of the voice.

'Oh no, sir, begging your pardon.' Domor smiled below the swathe of eye-bandage. He tapped the sweeper set slung from his shoulder. 'You know I'm the best sweeper in the unit… and it's all a matter of listening to the pulse in the headset. I don't need to see. This is my job.'

There was a long silence in which the dense air of the ancient vault seemed to buzz in their ears. Gaunt knew Domor was right about his skills, and more over, he knew what Domor was really saying: I'm a ghost, sir, expendable.

Gaunt made his decision, not based on any notion of expendability. Here was a task Domor could do better than any of them, and if Gaunt could still make the man feel a useful part of the team, he would not crush the pride of a soldier already dying.

'Do it. Maximum coverage, maximum caution. I'll guide you by voice and we'll string a line to you so we can pull you back.'

The look on what was left of Domor's face was worth more than anything they could find beyond those doors, Gaunt thought.

Caffran stepped forward to attach a rope to Domor as Mkoll checked the test-settings on the sweeper set, and adjusted the headphones around Domor's ears.

'Gaunt, you're joking!' Fereyd snapped, pushing forward. His voice dropped to a hiss. 'Are you seriously going to waste time with this charade? This is the most important thing any of us are ever going to do! Let one of my men do the sweep! Hell, I'll do the sweep—'

'Domor is sweeper officer. He'll do it.'

'But—'

'He'll do it, Fereyd.'

Domor began his crossing, moving in a straight line across the ancient floor, one step at a time. He stopped after each footfall to retune the clicking, pulsing sweeper, listening with experience-attuned ears to every hiss and murmur of the set. Caffran played out the line behind him. After a few yards, he edged to the right, then a little further on, jinked left again. His erratic path was perfectly recorded in the dust.

'There are… cones of energy radiating from the floor at irregular intervals,' Domor whispered over the microbead intercom. 'Who knows what and for why, but I'm betting it wouldn't be a good idea to interrupt one.'

Time wound on, achingly slow. Domor slowly, indirectly, approached the far side of the chamber.

'Gaunt! The line! The fething line!' Dorden said abruptly, pointing.

Gaunt immediately saw what the doctor was referring to. Domor was safely negotiating the invisible obstacles, but his safety line was trailing behind him in a far more economical course between the sweeper and his team. Any moment, and its dragging weight might intersect with an unseen energy cone.

'Domor! Freeze!' Gaunt snarled into the intercom. On the far side of the vault, Domor stopped dead. 'Untie your safety line and let it drop,' the commissar instructed him. Wordless, Domor complied, fumbling blindly to undo the slip-knot Caffran had tied. It would not come free. Domor tried to gather some slack from the line to ease the knot, and in jiggling it, shook the strap of the sweeper set off his shoulder. The rope came free and dropped, but the heavy sweeper slipped down his arm and his arm spasmed to hook it on his elbow. Domor caught the set, but the motion had pulled on the cord of his headset and plucked it off. The headset clattered onto the dusty floor about a metre from his feet.