Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

Just in time, his fire-team sheltered in doorways as heavy stub gun fire raked up and down the old back-stairway, disintegrating the steps and tearing down the stained wall tiles.

Corbec looked round at Larkin, who was murmuring some Imperial Prayer under his breath, waving off the flies. It was probably the oath of allegiance to the Emperor they'd all been taught at school back home on Tanith.

Home…

This had once been someone's home, thought Corbec, snapping back to the hard facts of real time. A dingy old hallway in a dingy old high rise, where humble, hardworking people came back from the shift-work at the fabrication plants in the hive and cooked meagre meals for their tired children.

'Larks!' He gestured up the stairwell. 'A little Mad Magic on that stubbed.'

Larkin wiped his mouth and shook out his neck like a pianist about to play. He took out his nightscope, a little heat-sensitive spotter he'd used back home poaching larisel out in the woods at night. He trained it up the hall, found a hub of heat emanating from the wall.

Most would have aimed for that, thinking it the body heat of the gunner. Larkin knew better. The source was the muzzle heat of the big cannon. That put the gunner about sixty centimetres behind it, to the left.

'A bottle of sacra says it's a head shot,' whispered Corbec as he saw Larkin snuggle down and aim his lasgun.

'Done,' Varl said.

Larkin punched a single shot up the stairwell and through the wall.

They moved forward, cautious at first, but there was no further firing.

Covering each other, they moved up the smashed staircase, past the landing where the cult soldier lay dead across his stub gun, head half gone. Corbec smiled and Varl sighed.

Then they entered a further landing and fanned out. There was a smell of burning flesh here, and the flies were thicker than ever.

Larkin edged along one wall, looking at the trash and broken possessions that had been dropped in the rubble. Along the wall, under a series of Chaos markings rendered in dark paint, someone had nailed up a series of dolls and other childrens' toys. Something in Larkin's heart broke as he gazed on the crucified dolls, remembering a world of family and friends and children forever lost to him.

Then he realised that not all of the dolls were dolls.

Larkin fell to his knees, retching.

On the far side of the gallery, Corbec, Durcan and Suth burst into a long concrete chamber that had once been a central meeting hall for the tenement block. It was dark inside. Several thousand eyes blinked in their direction.

They all belonged to the same… thing.

Something immeasurably vast began to coil up out of the darkness, extending the flaccid, blue-white mass of its bloated body, toxic spittle drooling from its befanged mouths. Jellied things quivered in the dark spaces of its translucent skin and flies billowed around it like a cloak.

Corbec's nose spurted blood and soaked his beard as he backed away, his mind seized in horror. Suth dropped the melta with a clatter and started to retch, sliding down the wall, unable to stand. Durcan seemed unable to move. He began to cry, wailing as he fumbled to raise his lasgun. Limpid, greasy coils lashed out of the dark chamber and encircled him, embraced him, and then crushed him so hard and so suddenly he burst like a tomato.

Mallor and Varl turned and saw the horror slithering up from the chamber, saw Suth helpless and Corbec frozen, saw the pulpy red slick that had been Durcan.

'Daemon! Daemon!' Varl screamed down the comm link. 'DALMON!'

Gaunt held up a hand and announced a ten minute rest. The group eased back and took the weight off their feet, leaning on tree trunks, hunkering down.

Meryn took the medi-pack back to Bragg and helped him lower the stretcher-bed.

'Oh, feth!' Milo heard him say.

Milo crossed over as Gaunt himself approached.

Meryn looked up, treating the ugly wounds of the two unconscious men. 'It's this place,' he explained, 'hot, wet… spores in the air… insects. Their wounds gel re-infected as fast as I clean them. Obel's fading fast. Some kind of fungus necrotizing the raw flesh. Maggots too.' He shook his head and continued with his work.

Milo moved away. The smell rising from the wounded men was not pleasant.

Nearby stood the co-pilot. He'd pulled his flight helmet off, and was staring nervously into the green darkness around them, clutching his laspistol. Milo thought he looked young, no older than him. The flesh around his cranial implants looked raw and fresh. He probably feels just like me, Milo decided. In over his head.

He had just considered approaching the navy cadet and speaking to him when the low whine of gunfire sang through the trees. Everyone ducked for cover, and there was a staccato series of safety locks disengaging and power-cells humming to life.

Near to Milo, Gaunt crawled forward, tapping his micro-bead.

'Rawne? Answer!' he hissed. The major, with Feygor, Caffran and a trooper called Kalen, had scouted ahead towards the mysterious structure.

'F'irefight!' came Rawne's response, Milo picking it up via his own comm-bead. 'We're pinned! Daagh! Throne of Earth! There's—'

The link went dead.

'Damn!' Gaunt hissed. Tie clambered to his feet. 'Meryn! Bragg! Guard the wounded! You, Navy boy! Stay with them! The rest with me, fire-team spread!'

The Ghosts moved forward and Milo moved with them, checking his pistol was cleared to fire. Despite the fear, he felt pride. The commissar had needed all the men he could muster. He had not thought twice about including Milo.

Corbec was sure: his life was over when Larkin started shooting. Driven over the edge by what he had seen nailed along the wall, Larkin just went crazy; mindless, oblivious to the otherwise transfixing image of Chaos in that old tenement. Larkin simply opened fire and kept firing. 'Larkin! Larkin!' Corbec hissed.

The little man's howl was drying away into a hoarse whisper. A repetitive clicking came from the lasgun in his hands, the power cell exhausted.

The lashing tentacles of the vast thing in the hallway had been driven back by the hammerblow of relentless laser fire.

They had a moment of grace, time to retreat.

Corbec led his scrambling fire-team back down the tenement hall, half-carrying Larkin.

'Oh feth! Oh feth! Oh feth!' Larkin repeated, over and over.

'Shut up, Larks!' warned Corbec. 'Contact Fleet Command!' he yelled to Raglon over his bead. 'Tell them what we've found!'

In the cover of a slumped tree-stump, Trooper Caffran sighted his lasgun to his shoulder and loosed a burst of laser shot that sliced explosively through the foliage ahead. Bolter fire returned, smacking into the wood around him, blasting sprays of splinters and gouts of sap.

'Major Rawne?' Caffran yelled. 'Comm link's dead!'

'I know!' spat Rawne, dropped down against a tree nearby as metal shot exploded the bark behind him. He threw down Gaunt's chainsword and swung his own lasgun up to fire.

Feygor took up a prone position, blasting with his own weapon, Kalen to his side. The four Ghost lasguns blasted an arc of fire into the dense trees, the dim grove flickering with the muzzle flashes.

Rawne span, his gun lowered, but dropped his aim with a curse as he saw Gaunt moving in behind them, the men in fire-team line.

'Report!' hissed Gaunt.

'We just walked into heavy bolter fire. Enemy positions ahead, unseen. Feels like an ambush, but who knew we were coming?'

'Comm link?'

'Dead… jammed.'

'Would help if we could see what we were shooting at,' Gaunt remarked. He waved a ''come here'' to Trooper Brostin, who hurried over, cradling the single flamer they'd pulled intact from the troop-ship.