Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

Gaunt cursed. Cultists he could fight… World Eaters, daemons… anything. He'd set square with any beast in the cosmos. But seventy million litres of water pressured down through a stone conduit…

'May have lost as many as forty to the flood,' Varl said. He'd dragged Caffran by the tunic from the water and the young man could only retch and cough.

'Get a confirmed figure from the squad leaders! I don't want rumours!' Gaunt snarled, then keyed his own radio link and spoke into his bead. 'Squad leaders! Discipline the radio traffic. I want regroup status! Corbec! Rawne!'

The channels crackled and a more ordered litany of units and casualties reeled in.

'Corbec?' Gaunt asked.

'I'm west of you, sir. On the banks. Got about ninety men with me.' Corbec's voice hissed back. 'Assessment?'

'Tactical? You can forget the watergate, sir. Once they realised they couldn't hold us out in a straight fight, they blew the sluices. It could run at flood for hours. By then they'll have the chute exits on the city side sewn up with emplacements, maybe even mines.'

Gaunt cursed again. He wiped a wet hand across his face. They'd been so close and now it was all lost. Voltis would not be his.

'Sir?' Meryn called to him. The corporal was listening to other frequencies on his bead. 'Channel eighty. The word has just been given.'

Gaunt crossed to him, adjusting his own setting. 'What?'

'The word. 'Thunderhead',' Meryn said, confused.

'Source that signal!' Gaunt snapped, 'If someone thinks that's a joke, I'll—'

He got no further.

The blast was so loud, it almost went beyond sound. The Shockwave mashed into them, chopping the water like a white squall. A kilometre away, a hundred metre section of the curtain wall blew out, ripping a vast wound in the city's flank, burning, raw, exposed.

The channels went mad with frenzied calls and whoops.

Gaunt looked on in disbelief. Corbec's voice cut through, person to person on the link.

'It's Cluggan, sir! The old bastard got his boys into the sanitation outfalls and they managed to dump all of their high-ex into a treatment cistern under the walls. Blew the crap out of the cultists.'

'So I saw, colonel,' Gaunt said wryly.

'I mean it literally, sir,' Corbec crackled innocuously. 'It was Cluggan sent the signal. We may have lost the fight to take the watergate, but Cluggan has won us the battle!'

Gaunt slumped back against a tree bole, up to his waist in the stinking river. Around him the men were laughing and cheering.

Exhaustion swept over him. And then he too began to laugh.

General Sturm took breakfast at nine. The stewards served him toasted black bread, sausage and coffee. He read a stack of data-slates as he ate, and the message-caster on the sideboard behind him chattered and dealt out a stream of orbital deployment updates.

'Good news,' said Gilbear, entering with a coffee and a message slate in hand. 'The best, in fact. Seems your gamble paid off. These Ghost fellows have taken Voltis. Broken it wide out. Our attack units followed them in en masse. Colonel Maglin says the city will be cleansed by nightfall.'

Sturm dabbed his mouth with a serviette. 'Send transmissions of congratulation and encouragement to Maglin and to Gaunt's mob. Where are they now?'

Gilbear eyed his slate and helped himself to a sausage from the dish. 'Seems they've pulled out, moving back to Pavis Crossroads along the eastern side of the Bokore Valley.'

Sturm set down his silver cutlery and started to type into his memo-slate. 'The greater half of our work here is accomplished, thanks to Gaunt,' he told the intrigued Gilbear. 'Now we thank him. Send these orders under extreme encryption to the CO. of the Ketzok Basilisks at Pavis. Without delay, Gilbear.'

Gilbear took the slate. 'I say…' he began.

Sturm fixed him with a stare. There are dangerous cultist units fleeing along the eastern side of the valley, aren't there, Gilbear? Why, you've just read me the intelligence reports that confirm it.'

Gilbear began to grin. 'So I did, sir.'

Colonel Ortiz snatched the radio from his corn-officer and yelled This is Ortiz! Yes! I know, but I expressly query the last orders we received. I realise that, but I don't care! No, I-Listen to me! Oh, general! Yes, I… I see. I see, sir. No, sir. Not for a moment. Of course for the glory of the Emperor. Sir. Ortiz out.'

He sank back against the metal flank of his Basilisk. 'Make the guns ready,' he told his officers. 'In the name of the Emperor, make them ready.'

The guns had been silent for ten hours. Ortiz hoped he would never hear them blaze again. Dawn frosted the horizon with light. Down in the valley, and in the Blueblood emplacements, victory celebrations continued with abandon.

Dorentz ran over to Ortiz and shook him. 'Look, sir!' he babbled. 'Look!'

Men were coming up the Metis Road out of the valley towards them, tired men, weary men, filthy men, walking slowly, carrying their dead and wounded. They were a straggled column that disappeared back into the morning mist.

'In the name of mercy…' Ortiz stammered. All around, shocked, silent Basilisk crew were leaping down from their machines and going to meet the battered men, supporting them, helping them, or simply staring in appalled disbelief.

Ortiz walked over to meet the arrival. He saw the tall figure in the long coat, now ragged, striding wearily out of the mist. Ibram Gaunt was half-carrying a young Ghost whose head was a bloody mess of bandages.

He stopped in front of Ortiz and let medics take the wounded Ghost from him.

'I want—' Ortiz began.

Gaunt's fist silenced him.

'He's here,' Gilbear said with an insouciant smirk. Sturm got to his feet and straightened his jacket. 'Bring him in,' he said.

Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt marched into the study. He stood, glowering at Sturm and his adjutant.

'Gaunt!' Sturm said. 'You opened the way for the Royal Volpone. Good show! I hear Chanthar turned a melta on himself.' He paused and absently tapped at a data-slate on his desk. 'But then this business with what's-his-name…?'

'Ortega, sir,' Gilbear said helpfully.

'Ortiz,' Gaunt corrected.

'The Ketzok fellow. Striking a fellow officer. That's a shooting offence, and you know it, Gaunt. Won't have it, not in this army. No, sir.'

Gaunt breathed deeply. 'Despite knowing our position, and line of retreat, the artillery unit pounded the eastern flanks of the Bokore Valley for six hours straight. They call the phenomenon ''friendly fire'', but I can tell you when you're in the target zone with nothing but twigs and dust for cover, it's nothing like friendly. Host nearly three hundred men, another two hundred injured. Amongst the dead was Sergeant Cluggan, who had led the second prong of my assault and whose actions had actually won us the city.'

'Bad show indeed,' Sturm admitted, 'but you must learn to expect this kind of loss, Gaunt. This is war.' He tossed the data-slate aside. 'Now this hitting business. Chain of command and all that. My hands are tied. It's to be a court martial.'

Gaunt was level and unblinking. 'If you're going to shoot me for it, get on with it. I struck Ortiz in the heat of the moment. In hindsight, I realise he was probably following orders. Some damn fool orders from HQ.'

'Now look, you jumped up—' Gilbear began, stepping forward.

'Would you like me to demonstrate what I did to Ortiz?' Gaunt asked the bigger man acidly.

'Silence, both of you!' snarled Sturm. 'Commissar Gaunt… Colonel- commissar… I take my duty seriously, and that duty is to enforce the discipline and rule of Warmaster Macaroth, and through him the beloved Emperor himself, strictly and absolutely. The Imperial Guard is based upon the towering principles of respect, authority, unswerving loyalty and total obedience. Any aberration, even from a officer of your stature, is to be— What the hell is that noise? '