Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

Here, in the wall gully of Oskray, it was easy to hate Gaunt. The stink of death and fire filled the place. Caffran slid in low against a fallen tower of stone blocks as he approached the opening into the island proper. Varl, Mkendrik and Trooper Vulliam dropped in beside him.

Behind them, down the crash-chasm at the mouth of the breach, Caffran could hear shouts and grinding tracks.

He looked at Varl questioningly.

'The fething Basilisks!' the sergeant said. 'They want to storm in ahead of the infantry, but they can't get their fat arses into the gap.'

'Then we still have point,' Caffran smiled. 'Feth the armour!'

Varl chortled. 'Feth them indeed. Did us no favours on Voltemand, doing us no favours now.'

Varl signalled the advance beyond the breach gap, and fifty-nine Ghosts rose from cover and moved forward. Vulliam, two metres ahead of Caffran, was one of the first to break into the open. Stub rounds broke him messily into four.

Six more Ghosts died as they broke cover. Though hammered, the Kith had their side of the chasm in the wall soundly covered. Caffran fell back with the others as las-rounds and bolts and stub charges peppered the exit of the breach.

In cover, they lay trembling as the deadly rain continued to drum the opening ahead.

'Blocked as surely as we were before,' Domor said, scratching at his eye-sutures.

'You all right?' Mkendrik asked.

'Vision's a little foggy. Got water in there. Hope…' Domor said no more, but Caffran knew what he was thinking. The seawater had ruined Varl's arm, and now it seemed to be starling its slow work on Domor's eyes.

'Might as well have left this fething wall standing for all tin-good it's going to do us!'

'Trooper Callun said.

Varl nodded, nursing his strapped arm. His laspistol, the only weapon he could handle now, lay in his lap.

'What about missiles? Munitions?' Mkendrik wondered. 'We could blow them out and—'

'What do we aim at?' Varl asked sourly. 'Do you even see them?

Mkendrik settled back with no answer. Ahead of them was nothing but a sliced mouth cut in the wall. Beyond, the steeple girders and scaffolds of the refinery, thirty storeys high. 'The enemy gunners could be anywhere.

Silence fell. Sand flies billowed around the dead, and oceanic carrion swooped in to peck at the cindered flesh with hooked, pink beaks. The birds mobbed the chasm, squawking and shrilling. Trooper Tokar drove them off with a scatter burst of las-fire.

There was movement and voices behind them. Caffran and the others turned to see several Ketzok gunnery troopers creeping their way, pausing to exchange words with each group of Ghosts.

One hurried over to them, bent double, and saluted Varl's sergeant patch as he crouched next to them.

'Corporal Fuega, Ketzok 17th Serpents.'

Varl, sergeant, Ghost. And your purpose is?'

Fuega scratched his ear for a moment, unmanned by Varl's attitude. 'Our Basilisks can't manage this breach, so we're going to split it wider with shelling. My commander asks you to fall back out of the fire-zone.'

'Wish he'd given us such a warning on Voltemand,' Domor said icily.

Fuega stepped back. That black day is forever in our shame, Tanith. If we could give anything, even our lives, to change it, we would.'

'I'm sure you would,' Varl sneered. He got up to face the Ketzok corporal. 'What's the plan?'

Fuega coughed. 'Orders from General Kline. You pull out, we shell, then we advance with heavy infantry.'

'Heavy infantry?'

'The Volpone have just beached in legion strength. They have heavy armour and weapons. We will clear the way for their advance.' Fuega turned away. 'You have fifteen minutes to withdraw.'

The Ghosts sat in a stupefied gaggle. 'All this, all we lost, for nothing?' Domor sighed.

Varl was angry. 'Teth those Volpone, and the Ketzok too! We die in the wire to open the beach and then they march in and follow the tanks to glory!'

'I don't know about you, sergeant, but I don't want to be sitting here still, complaining about life, when those Basilisks open up.'

Varl spat and sighed. 'Me neither. Okay! By platoon team, call the retreat.'

The Ghosts all around scrambled up and prepared to fall back. Domor, looking up, caught Caffran by the arm.

'What?'

'Up there – do you see it?'

Domor pointed and Caffran looked up. The broken wall rose like a cliff above them, scabbed with slumping masonry and broken reinforcement girders. Fifty metres up, just above a severed end of pipe work, Caffran saw the door. Teth, but your eyes are sharp!'

There were tunnels in the wall, troop tunnels buried deep This hole has cut through one of them and exposed it.'

Caffran called Varl over, and a group of Ghosts gathered to look up.

'We could get a fire-team inside the wall… follow the tunnel to where ever it led us.'

'Hell?' supposed Trooper Haven. 'It's high up…' Varl began.

'But the cliff is ragged and full of good handholds. The first man up could secure a line. Sergeant, it's a plan…'

Varl looked round at Caffran. 'I'd never make it, with one arm dead. Who'd lead?'

'I could,' said Sergeant Gorley of five platoon. He was a tall, barrel-chested man with a boxer's nose. 'You get the wounded back onto the beach. I'll take a squad and see what we can do.'

Varl nodded. He began to round up the walking wounded, and seconded several able bodies to help him with the more seriously injured. Gorley selected his commando squad: Caffran, Domor, Mkendrik, Haven, Tokar, Bude, Adare, Mkallun, Caill.

Mkendrik, raised in the mountains of Tanith Steeple, led off, clambering up the splintered wall, hand over hand. He left his flamer and its tanks with Gorley, to raise them later on a line.

By the time the ascent was made, and ropes secured, their leeway was almost up, and the ten Ghosts were alone in the chasm. Within moments, the Basilisks at the throat of the breach would start their bombardment.

The men went up quickly, following the ropes. Gorley was last, securing a line around the flamer unit and other heavy supplies. The team at the top, crowded into the splintered doorway, hauled them up.

Gorley was halfway up the ascent when the bombardment began. The nine Ghosts above cowered into the shelter of the concrete passageway they had climbed into and covered their ears at the concussion.

A shell hit the wall and vaporised Gorley, as if he had never been there.

Realising he was gone, Caffran urged the party to collect their equipment and move inwards. Soon this entire wall section would be brought down.

The Ghost squad crept up the unlit passageway. Though generally intact, the tunnel had slumped a little following the massive shockwave from the troop-ship crash. The ground was split in places, exposing crumbling rock. Pipes and cables dangled from the cracked roof; dust trickled down from deep fissures. In places, the shock-impact had sectioned the wall, cutting the originally straight and horizontal tunnel into a series of cleanly stepped slabs. The Tanith clambered on, probing the dusty darkness with the cold green glare of assault lamps.

Behind them, the stonework of the great sea wall began to shake. The Ketzok had redoubled their furious work. Caffran found himself leading, as if there had been an unspoken vote electing him in Gorley's place. He presumed it was because he had suggested this incursion in the first place. The Ghosts picked up their speed and moved deeper into the tunnel system that threaded the marrow of the wall.

They reached a vertical communications shaft, down the centre of which ran a great wrought-iron spiral staircase. The air was damp and smelled of wet brick and the sea. Shock damage was evident here too, and the bolts securing the metal stairway and its adjoining walkways to the shaft-sides had sheared off or snapped. The entire metal structure, hundreds of tonnes of it filling the shaft, creaked uneasily with each shuddering impact from the guns of the distant Basilisks.