Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

It was blind. Mkoll could see that at a glance. The wounds of the Adeptus Astartes were deep and fearful across its visor. Its optical units had been blown away in some great act. Mkoll knew the semi-circle of burnt metal Dewr had found was from the recess socket of one of its eyes. It had been blundering around the fern forests for days, hunting by sound alone.

Another step. Another hiss of pistons and a growl of motivator. Another thump of footfall, and other rain of darts. It was only three metres from them now, still cranking its body around, listening.

Dewr started and woke up. He saw the dreadnought – and his filmy, poisoned eyes made even greater nightmares out of the existing one. He convulsed and screamed. Despite the gauze gag, the scream was fierce and high pitched, strangulated and horrible through the choke.

Mkoll knew he had an instant to react, even as Dewr stirred. He dived aside.

The dreadnought swung and targeted the source of the scream as rapidly as the plants around them did. Poison needles spat into a body that had, mere microseconds before, been incinerated by a belching plasma gun.

Needles rattled off the dreadnought again.

Mkoll moved low, sliding round the bulk of the bulbs, trying to keep the listening death machine in sight. His heart was thumping. He cursed it for being so loud.

Behind the next break of growth, he slid in low and checked his weapon. There were fern fronds caught in the trigger. He thought at once to pull them free and then stopped. It would make a sound, and what was the use? What good would a lasgun be against that?

He moved again, his foot skittering a stone. Needles spat ineffectually. The dreadnought began to move, following the sound, walking through rains of needles that convulsed and flew at each footfall.

Mkoll thought to run. It was blind, the plants were blind. If he could only stay silent – and that was his gift – he could slip away and take the information to Gaunt. But would they find it again? Out here, in such a wilderness? It could take weeks to relocate the dreadnought, the lives of many to neutralise it. If he could only…

No. Madness. Suicide.

Then he heard the voice. Distant. It was Waed, calling for Rafel. He was beyond the needle bulbs, searching, querying why Rafel had stopped transmitting. In moments, surely, he would be triggering needles.

Or summoning the dreadnought. Already, the blind beast had turned and begun to stride through the thicket, crushing the spitting cactHnto ochre mash.

Mkoll had seconds to think. He would not lose another of his scout cadre, not like this.

He took out a grenade, primed it and threw it left. The crump took out a cluster of bulbs in a spray of fire and matted fibres, and caused a flurry of spines to shoot. Mkoll then headed directly for the blast site. He slid in with his back to one of the bulbs that had triggered at the sound of the explosion. Its needle apertures were spent. He could use it as cover safely now it was unarmed.

The dreadnought was thumping his way, drawn by the sound of the grenade. Waed had fallen silent.

Mkoll adjusted his gun and set it on the ground. Then he spoke.

'Over here, you bastard!'

It sounded impossibly loud. A final taunt to follow the grenade. Bulbs popped around him. But none had spines left on the sides facing him.

The dreadnought crunched into the clearing. Its left foot clinked against something in the dust. It bent to retrieve it.

Mkoll's lasgun.

The dreadnought raised it in its bionic claws, holding the gun up to its already ruptured frontal armour as if to sniff or taste it.

Mkoll started to run.

By his estimation, there were five seconds before the lasgun magazine overloaded as he had set it. He threw himself flat as it went off. Hundreds of cactHoosed needles at the roar. Then silence.

With Waed, silently, Mkoll re-entered the thicket. They found the dreadnought broken open in the blackened clearing. The overload had not killed it, but it had split its armour as the towering machine had strode forward. Poison darts had done the rest, puncturing and killing the now-vulnerable once-man inside. Mkoll could see where the maddened Chaos beast-machine had strode arrogantly on for a few heavy steps after the puny laser blast. Then it had toppled, poisoned, dead.

They headed back onto the trail.

'You're a fething hero!' Waed said finally.

'How is that?'

'A fething dreadnought, Mkoll! You killed a dreadnought!' Mkoll turned and faced Waed with a look that brooked no denial.

'We'll tell the commissar that the area is cleared. Understood? I don't want any stupid glory. Is that clear?'

Waed nodded and followed his sergeant. 'But you killed it…' he ventured softly.

'No, I didn't. Histened and waited and was silent… and when I made the opening, Ramillies did the rest.'

FOUR

THE HOLLOWS OF HELL

Colm Corbec was sat outside his habitat unit. As regimental second officer, he was given a bivouac like Gaunt's, but the commissar knew that he preferred to sleep in the open.

As Gaunt approached, he saw that Corbec was whittling a piece of bark with his Tanith knife. Gaunt slowed and watched the thick-set man. If he himself died, Gaunt mused, could Corbec hold them together? Could he lead the Ghosts with Gaunt gone?

Corbec would say ''no'', Gaunt knew, but he was confident of Corbec's abilities. Even though he had chosen his second in command on a decision that was as simple as a flick of a coin.

'Quiet night,' Corbec said as Gaunt crouched next to him and his fire.

'So far,' Gaunt replied. He watched the big man's hands play the blade over the pale wood. He knew Corbec hated the role of command, would do almost anything to distract himself. Gaunt also knew that Corbec hated ordering men to their deaths or glories. But he did it well. And he took charge when it was needed. Never more so, than on Caligula…

He would be sick. Very soon, very violently. Of this sole fact, Brin Milo was absolutely sure.

His stomach somersaulted as the troop-ship plunged out of the sky, and every bone in his body shook as the impossibly steep descent vibrated the sixty-tonne vessel like a child's rattle.

Count… …think happy thoughts… …distract yourself… …counselled a part of his mind in desperation. It won't look good if the commissar's aide, the regimental piper, wonderboy and all round lucky bloody charm hurls his reconstituted freeze-dried ready-pulped food rations all over the deck.

And whatever you do, don't think about how pulpy and slimy those food rations were… advised another, urgent part of his brain.

Deck? What deck? wailed another. Chuck now and it'll wobble out in free fall and— Shut up! Brin Milo ordered his seething imagination.

For a moment, he was calm, He breathed deeply to loosen and relax, to centre himself, as Trooper Larkin had taught him during marksman training.

Then a tiny little black-hearted voice in his head piped up: Don't worry about puking. You'll be incinerated in a hyperve-locity crash-landing any second now.

Like pepper falling from a mill, thought Executive Officer Kreff, gazing down out of the vast observation blister below the prow of the escort frigate, Navarre.

Behind him, on the raised bridge, there was a murmur as the systems operators and servitors softly relayed data back and forth. Control systems hummed. The air was cool. Occasionally, the low, reverential voices of the senior helm officers would announce another order from the ship's captain, who lurked alone, inscrutable, in his private strategium, an armoured dome at the heart of the bridge.