Dan Abnett - First and Only

As Flense tightened his grip and Gaunt choked, the chant changed from 'Flense!' to that family name that had been stripped from the colonel at the disgrace.

'Dercius! Dercius! Dercius!'

Dercius. Uncle Dercius. Uncle fething Dercius…

Gaunt's punch lifted Flense off him in a reeling spray of mouth blood. He rolled and ploughed into the Patrician colonel, throwing three, four, five well-met punches.

Flense recovered, kicked Gaunt headlong, and the commissar lay sprawled and helpless for a moment. Flense towered over him, a chunk of rock raised high in both hands to crush Gaunt's head.

'For my father!' screamed Flense.

'For mine!' hissed Gaunt. His Tanith war-knife bit through the air and pinned the Patrician's skull to the blackness for a second. With a mouthful of blood bubbling his scream, Flense teetered away backwards and fell with a slapping splash into a pool of black fluid.

His body shattered and aching, Gaunt lay back on the rock shelf. His men, he thought, they'll…

There was the serial crack of an exotic carbine, a las-rifle and a barb-lance. Gaunt struggled up. Caffran, Rawne, Mkoll, Larkin and Bragg stalked into the cavern. The three Jantine lay dead in the gloom.

'The surface… we've got to…' Gaunt coughed.

'We're going,' Rawne said, as Bragg lifted the helpless form of Domor.

Gaunt stumbled across to Dorden. The medic was still alive. Drained of power by the cavern, Flense's pistol had only grazed him, as it had only grazed Gaunt's chest when he had thrown himself at Flense. Gaunt lifted Dorden in his arms. Caffran and Mkoll moved to help him, but Gaunt shrugged them off.

'We haven't got much time now. Let's get out of here.'

TWENTY-NINE

The subsurface explosion ruptured most of the Target Primaris on Menazoid Epsilon and set it burning incandescently. Imperial forces pulled away from the vanquished moon and returned to their support ships in high orbit.

Gaunt received a communique from Warmaster Macaroth, thanking him for his efforts and applauding his success.

Gaunt screwed the foil up and threw it away. Bandaged and aching, he moved through the medical wing of the frigate Navarre, checking on his wounded… Domor, Dorden, Corbec, Larkin, Bragg, a hundred more…

As he passed Corbec's cot, the grizzled colonel called him over in a hoarse, weak whisper.

'Rawne told me you found the thing. Blew it up. How did you know?'

'Corbec?'

'How did you know what to do? Back on Pyrites, you told me the path would be hard. Even when we found out what we were looking for, you never said what you'd do when you found it. How did you decide?'

Gaunt smiled.

'Because it was wrong. You don't know what I saw down there, Colm. Men do insane things. Feth, if I'd been insane enough to try and harness what I found… if I'd succeeded… I could have made myself warmaster. Who knows, even emperor…'

'Emperor Gaunt. Heh. Got a ring to it. Bit fething sacrilegious, though.'

Gaunt smiled. The feeling was unfamiliar. The Vermilion secret of Epsilon was heretical and tainted by Chaos. Bad, which ever way you care to gloss it. But that's not what really made me destroy it.'

Corbec hunkered up oton his elbows. 'Kidding me? Why then?'

Ibram Gaunt put his head in his hands and sighed the sigh of someone released from a great burden. 'Someone told me what to do, colonel. It was a long time ago…'

A MEMORY

DARENDARA, TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

Four Hyrkan troopers were splitting fruit in the snowy courtyard, lit by a ring of braziers. They had found some barrels in an undercroft and opened them to discover the great round globe-fruit from a summer crop stored in spiced oil. They were joking and laughing as they set them on a mounting block and hacked them into segments with their bayonets. One had stolen a big gilt serving platter from the kitchens, and they were piling it with slices, ready to carry it through to the main hall where the body of men were carousing and drinking to their victory.

Night was stealing in across the shattered roofs of the Winter Palace, and stars were coming out, frosty points in the cold darkness. The Boy, the cadet commissar, wandered out across the courtyard, taking in the stillness. Distant voices, laughing and singing, filtered across the stone space. Gaunt smiled. He could make out a barrack-room victory song, harmonised badly by forty or more Hyrkan voices. Someone had substituted his name in the lyric in place of the hero. It didn't scan, but they sang it anyway, rousingly when it came to the bawdy parts.

Gaunt's shoulder blades still throbbed from the countless congratulatory slaps he had taken in the last few hours. Maybe they would stop calling him The Boy' now.

He looked up, catching sight of the landing lights of a dozen troopships ferrying fresh occupation forces down from orbit, their bulks invisible against the darkness of the night. The landing lights reminded him of constellations. He had never been able to make sense of the stars. People drew figures in them: warriors, bulls, serpents, crowns; arbitrary shapes, it seemed to him, imperfect sense made of stellar positions. Back on Manzipor, back home years ago, the cook Oric would sit him on his knee at nightfall and teach him the names of the star groups. Years ago. He really had been a boy then. Oric knew the names, drew the shapes, linked stars until they made a ram or a lion. Gaunt had never been able to see the shapes without the lines linking the stars.

Here, now, he knew the lines of lights represented drop-ships, but he couldn't imagine their shapes. Just lights. Stars and lights, lights and stars, signifying meanings and purposes he couldn't yet see.

Like the stars, the sweeping ship-lights occasionally went dim as they passed beyond the wreathes of smoke that were streaming, black against the black sky, from the parts of the Winter Palace that still smouldered.

Buttoning his storm-coat, Gaunt crossed the wide expanse of flagstones, his boots slipping in the slush. He passed a great stack of Secessionist helmets, piled in a trophy mound. There was a stink of stale sweat and defeat about them. Someone had painted a crude version of the Hyrkan regimental griffon on each and every one.

The men at the braziers looked up as his figure loomed out of the darkness.

'It's the Boy!' one cried. Gaunt winced and smirked at the same time.

'The Victor of Darendara!' another said with a drunken glee that entirely lacked irony.

'Come and join the feast, sir!' the first said, wiping his juice-stained hands on the front of his tunic. 'The men would like to raise a glass or two with you.'

'Or three!'

'Or five or ten or a hundred!'

Gaunt nodded his appreciation. 'I'll be in shortly. Open a cask for me.'

They jibed and cackled back, returning to their work. As Gaunt moved past, one of them turned and held out a dripping half-moon of fruit.

'Take this at least! Freshest thing we've had in weeks!'

Gaunt took the segment, scooping the cluster of seeds and pith out of its core with a finger. In its smile of husky, oil-wet rind, the fruit was salmon-pink, ripe and heavy with water and juice. He bit into it as he strode away, waving his thanks to the men.

It was sweet. Cool. The fruit flesh disintegrated in his hungry mouth and flooded his throat with rich, sugary fluid. Juice dribbled down his chin. He laughed, like a boy again. It was the sweetest thing he'd tasted on Darendara.

No, not the sweetest.

The sweetest thing he had tasted here was his first triumph. His first victorious command. His first chance to serve the Emperor and the Imperium and the service he had been raised to obey and love.

In a lit doorway ahead, a figure appeared. Gaunt recognised the bulky silhouette immediately. He fumbled with the fruit segment, about to salute.