Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

He beat down the fire then rolled over to yank the debris from his ankle. It was the shattered handle of his vehicle's auto-gun return, he realised. The pain was immense. He pulled at it and passed out momentarily. Coming to, he realised that the shrapnel wasn't going to come free from the bones of his foot without a surgeon. He chewed down a handful of painkillers, and as the heady high smacked into his brain, he rolled over and began firing his lasgun into the dune crest behind him.

Wheln blasted away from his vehicle's turret next to Brostin, who had ditched his flamer for a lasrifle. Bandits were running at them from a scoop of low-lying desert, and they shot everything that moved.

Mkendrik realised his guns were out as the last of the belt-feed whickered through the slot and the weapons coughed dry. Bandit troops were all over him, charging up to take his machine. He pulled out his laspistol and shot the first one through the head, gutting the second and blowing a knee off the third. Then he took a glancing wound in the left shoulder that turned him sideways and knocked him to the deck. There was a roaring sound.

Meryn's bike came over the rise in a puff of dust, landing hard, Caffran hammering the enemy with his guns. Meryn slewed to the left as Caffran played the cannons around, exploding most of the enemy who were in eye-shot. The others scrambled for cover.

'Come aboard!' Meryn shouted over the roar of his engine and Mkendrik leapt onto the flat-bed next to Caffran. Meryn gunned the engine and they hammered straight at the enemy lines.

Tiring from the back of his vehicle, Logris, one of Mkoll's elite scout brigade, realised his driver was losing it. Fulke was crying out, screaming, resisting the hammer of weaponsfire. He slewed the bike around, away from the action.

'Pull us back around! The war's over there!' Logris bellowed Fulke said something absurd and gunned the motor of the outrider towards the comparative safety of the convoy circle. Logris climbed forward over the ammo boxes and feeder-cables strewn across the back-platform of the bike. He came upon the whimpering Fulke from behind and slammed his head sideways into the armour panel of the pilot's door. The bike shuddered to a sidelong halt as Fulke went limp.

Logris spat on the driver. 'Coward,' he said, then turned back. Enemy troops were scurrying across the cracked dust-land towards him. He took out his lasgun and armed it.

'Let's go,' he said to them, though they couldn't hear.

Bragg pulled back from the window and released his finger on the trigger assembly. 'What?' Tuvant asked.

'Get out,' Bragg said suddenly. 'You and Milloom, get out of the cab and back onto the trailer.'

'Why?'

'Tire-patterns…'

'What?'

Bragg turned and cursed at the Caligulan driver. 'Tire-patterns! Tire-patterns! They're concentrating their fire on the tractor units. It's the freight they want! If you want to be safe, get into the sections they don't dare shoot at!'

Tuvant and Milloom hurried back through the communicating door into the freight section. Bragg wiped his brow. His hand was rich with sweat and soot. Over the vox-link, he ordered all his crews to do the same. The bandits want this cargo… and so, Throne help me, they'll be less sure of shooting at us when we're part of it.

He yanked his autocannons off the sill and dragged them and the ammo boxes out onto the top of the freight unit.

'We're gonna die here!'Tuvant said, looking out from the top of the freight unit at the hundreds of bandit troopers who were advancing on their circle of machines.

'No, we're not,' Bragg told him.

'You're mad!' spat Tuvant. 'We're surrounded by them! Thousands of them! They'll pick us off, every last man!' Bragg sighed and closed his eyes.

The Maurader bombers came low over the ridge, annihilating the enemy with their belly-slung payloads.

'There are bandits… hiding out there in the deadlands, impossible to target.'Bragg smiled, repeating what Gaunt had told him. 'Unless there is something to draw them out and unify them. Something like… this convoy.'

Tuvant looked at the huge ghost in disbelief. 'We were bait?'

'Yes.'

'Kec you for using us!'

'I'm sorry. It was the colonel-commmissar's idea.'

Tuvant sagged down onto the freighter-top walkway.

Bragg hunkered next to him. Around them, sheets of incendiary bombs and phosphor fire scorched the hills. The Imperial fighter-bombers shattered the air as they went supersonic and crossed the low hills to pull around for another massacre run.

'Tuvant?'

Tuvant looked round at the giant.

'We were bait, but we still have a purpose. We'll get this convoy through. Calphernia will rejoice, just like I said. It's just the colonel-commissar—'

Tuvant turned, eyes red. 'I'm getting kec tired of hearing that title!'

'His name's Gaunt. A good man. General Thoth ordered him to supervise the relief work here on your world. He knew that couldn't happen all the while the terrorists and bandit-clans were out here. So he set a lure. A lure of fat, tasty freight trucks bound for Calphernia.'

'Great.'

'We got them all in one place so that the Navy air-wing could dispose of them. Be happy, man! We've won a great victory here!'

Tuvant looked up at him. His face was pale. 'All I know is I've been used as bait by your colonel-commissar. You knew that all along.'

Bragg sat back against the guard rail, smelling the acid-rich reek of the burning napalm. 'Yes. The bandits aren't working blind, you know. Hive workers in Aurelian are tipping them off as to the movement of supply convoys. Why else do you think the colonel-commissar put me in charge of this run?'

Tuvant blinked at him, uncertain.

Bragg patted his vast chest with huge hands. 'I'm big… I must be stupid. No brain. The sort of – what was it again? – ''kec'' who would drive the convoy into trouble and then circle it in a defense position for easy pickings. The sort of idiot who was likely to deliver the convoy right into the hands of the bandits.'

'Are you telling me you were part of the lure too?'

The sweet part, the part they couldn't resist. The part the workers on the inside would vox to their bandit friends about. Convoy's coming, boys and there's an idiot in charge. Right, Milloom?'

Milloom glared back at them from his place against the rail. 'Kec you!'

Bragg shook his great head. He held up a data-slate. 'Friend of mine, Trooper Raglon… Comms-Officer Raglon, was monitoring your cipher traffic. I've got you here, tipping off your bandit friends as to the time, schedule, make-up and strength of this convoy. Colonel-Commissar Gaunt told me to do it.'

'Milloom?' Tuvant stammered.

A compact auto-pistol was suddenly in Milloom's hand as he leapt up. 'Kec you, Guard filth!'

Bragg was up in an instant, shielding Tuvant and swinging a massive fist at Milloom.

The gun went off. There was a sickening gristle-crack of impact. The shot went wild.

His face mashed beyond recognition, Tlewn Milloom tumbled off the walkway of the freight unit and was dead before his body snapped on the hard-packed desert twenty metres below.

Bragg turned back to Tuvant and helped him up. There was blood on his bulky knuckles. Behind them, the sky was washed with heat-wash and cinder-smog from the bombing runs.

'He was a traitor. And a coward,' Bragg explained to Tuvant.

'Colonel-Commmissar Gaunt told you that, right?'

'No, I worked that out all by myself. Now, I believe we have a date with Calphernia Hive.'

A rusty dawn split the sky over Monthax. The air reminded Gaunt of the tall windows at the Schola Progenium back on Ignatius Cardinal where he had been reared and trained years ago, after his father's death. Smoky, like glass, fading through scattered panels of reds and ochres to the frostier tones of mauve and purple high above where the stars still twinkled. All it lacked was the lead-edged figure of some champion of the Imperium, some holy saint frozen in an attitude of victory over the piled heads of the slain.