Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

What kind of universe was it, Dorden wondered, where humans could struggle and break their backs and love their families and worship the Emperor and build for years, only to lose it all in a few hours? His universe, he concluded, the same one that had taken Tanith away.

A late moon was up, a lonely sentry in a sky suddenly clear of storm. The rain had stopped and silver clouds scudded across the purple openness of the heaven.

Counterpart to the moon, a lone sentry stood at the gate of the station. Trooper Tremard, sitting his second shift at the gate in the sandbag emplacement, watched the tree lines, black fuzzes of darkness edging the flats of the equally black fields and fens. He was tired, and he wished that the fething Volpone had left their heavy gun in the emplacement.

Mist rose across the fenland, drifting sideways like smoke. Something twinkled in the dark.

Tremard started up, grabbing his scope from the sandbags. He fumbled with the focus ring, pulling the green-on-green night vision view into true. Mist – and other things in it. The twinkle he had seen. Moonlight flashing back from the staring reflective retina of hunting eyes.

He triggered his micro-bead link. 'Gate to Ghosts! Can you hear me, colonel? To arms! To arms! Movement to the south!'

Corbec rose abruptly from his cot, like a dead man lifting from a grave, making Dorden start. The colonel had been catching forty winks on a spare bed in the ward as the medic sorted pills into paper twists. 'What is it?'

Corbec was on his feet. 'Three guesses, Doc.'

Dorden was up too. He looked around at the fragile hall, the vulnerable, half-dead men, as Corbec readied his lasgun and voxed-in with the other troopers. Dorden felt suddenly stupid. He knew what a full-on assault of Chaos was like. They'd all be shattered like an egg-shell. He'd been stupid to insist on staying. Now he had them all dead – the Bluebloods, the Ghosts… valuable, peerless Ghosts like Corbec and Mkoll. He'd wasted them all, over some foolish pride in an old oath. An old medical oath, taken in safer times, in a nice community practice where the worst injury was a laceration at the sawmill.

Feth me for a fool! Feth me for my pride!

'We'll front them as long as we can. The boys know some tricks,' Corbec told him. 'I'll need Chayker and Foskin… Lesp can stay with you. If we lose the first attack, you need to be ready to get as many of the wounded out into the back rooms. They're ruins I know, but it'll put more walls between you and the fighting.'

Dorden swallowed, thinking of the work it would take him and Lesp to carry sixty-seven men out into the rear of the dwelling on stretchers. He heard the distant wail of las-fire and realised it wouldn't be half the effort Corbec and his soldiers were about to make. So he simply nodded, beckoning Lesp to him.

'Emperor be with you and watch over you, Colm Corbec,' he said. 'And you, Doc.'

Tremard held the gate. Dark shapes moved across the fields and through the dim hedgerows towards him, crackling out green pulses of laser fire and white-hot bolt rounds. The treacherous moon showed movement and the occasional glint of armour, and he picked his targets well, barking orange slices of laser into the open fenland beyond the farm.

Ducking the incoming sprays of fire, a figure dropped into the position beside him. It was Colonel Corbec. Corbec grinned at Tremard, made some obscene remark as to the maternal origins of the enemy that had Tremard cackling at its vulgarity, and leaned up over the bags to loose a volley of shots from his lasgun down the lane into the fens.

Along the ditch walls, the other Chosts opened up. Eight las guns against the encroaching dark, eight lasguns picking their targets through scope and skill, matching the hundreds of fire-points blasting back at them from the fens.

'Where's Brostin?' Corbec barked into his micro-bead, over the howl of gunplay, sustaining a regular fire-pattern.

A second later, his query was lost in a withering assault which blasted down the lane and onto his position. A hundred or more warriors of Chaos were forcing their approach at the main gate, charging them, weapons blazing. Corbec and Tremard could see nothing but the light-blur of their guns.

Corbec ducked under the intense volley. He didn't even curse. It was over, he knew. The end of Colm Corbec. By his side, Tremard, a second too late in ducking, flew backwards, his left arm gone in a shredded waste of flesh below the shoulder, He fell on his back, screaming and writhing. His lasgun, with his left hand still holding the grip, sat miraculously on the parapet where he had rested it.

Corbec scrambled to him, under the hideous rain of bolt and las-fire, grabbing the struggling man and holding him close. He had to calm him and make him still before he could tie up that awful stump. If he lived that long.

Tremard screamed and screamed, fighting like a scalded cat, drenching Corbec and himself with the pumping arterial spray of his stump. Corbec glanced up to see black forms in quilted armour, faces covered by gas-hoods, scrambling over the lip of the sandbags towards him. He could smell their rank animal scent, and the badges of the Dark Gods blazoned on their armour burned in his mind even at a glimpse and turned his stomach.

There was a double click, dry and solid, and then a whoosh of heat as the night lit up. Corbec winced. Trooper Brostin stood over him, raking the tops of the sandbags and the lane beyond with his flamer. The hurricane force of the flame gout cut the enemy away like dry grass.

'I was wondering where you'd got to,' Corbec said to Brostin. Then he tapped his micro-bead. 'Medic! Medic!'

Dorden and Lesp were halfway through transporting the injured into the rear of the house when the call came through. Stray shots were punching through the ward hall, exploding rafters and shattering wall-plaster and brick.

Dorden fumbled with his micro-bead, trying to steady the stretcher he was sharing with the backing Tesp.

'Dorden! What?'

'Tremard's down bad. Get out here!' Any more of Corbec's message was lost in crackling static, drowned by the gunfire.

'Set it down! I'll drag it,' Tesp cried to Dorden as a las-round punched a hole in the plaster near his head.

Dorden did so and Lesp hauled the stretcher through the archway, its wooden handles screeching on the floor, 'Just like a fish box back home!' Lesp yelled over the onslaught as he disappeared.

Dorden grabbed his kit. 'Corbec! I'm coming out, but you need to send someone in to help Lesp move the wounded!'

'Feth that! We're all engaged out here! Can't spare a man!'

'Don't give me that!' Dorden returned, scuttling under the puncture level of the las-range as the hall fell apart around him. 'Lesp needs help! These men need help!'

A hand took his shoulder. He looked round. It was the Blueblood Culcis. Several more of the less seriously injured Volpone were with him. 'I can't manage a stretcher with my leg, but I can man a fire-point, doctor. I'll take any lasgun free if it means able bodies can help you here!'

Dorden smiled at the young man's bravery. Pain was slashed into the Blueblood's thin face.

He nodded them forward to the door and they looked into the rain of fire.

'Caffran!' Dorden called on the link. 'I'm sending a Blueblood over to you. Give him your weapon and then return!'

He didn't wait for an answer.

Using Chayker's mop as a crutch, Culcis scurried out into the yard and made the inner wall, where Caffran was blasting through a fire-slot. A nod, and Caffran gave up his gun and position to the Blueblood. Culcis settled in, leaning against the flak-boards, and resumed blasting. Caffran ran back to the farmhouse door where Dorden was waiting.

'Help Lesp! Go! Go!'