Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

A Deeper won the next, the winner of the last round given the honour of placing the censer. He was no closer than five holes, but the others were grouped and very wrong. Milo begged Varl to let him stop but Varl shook him off, glancing sidelong at the glowering Gilbear.

Gilbear won the next by guessing within two. He collected a massive pile of coins and one of the Deepers dropped out in disgust. The level of the bets – and off-game bets – had risen considerably and now real money was at stake. Cash was changing hands all around. The Bluebloods were jubilant and so were others. Others still bemoaned their losses. Two more Slammabadden and another Deeper stepped up to play, their bets bolstered by whip-rounds amongst their friends. No Blueblood dared to play against Gilbear. Flushed with success, Gilbear placed his won pot again, and doubled it. Some of the guardsmen present, especially the Deepers and the watching Ghosts, had never seen so much ready cash in their lives Caffran made a fuss and swigged from a bottle of sacra, imploring his friend Brostin for a sub which was eventually, reluctantly, given.

The next round. Gilbear and a Deeper, each three holes away from the winning aperture, split the now considerable pot.

The next round. Playing was Gilbear, three of the Slammabadden, two Deepers, Caffran (now subbing from a worried-looking Raglon, Brostin having exited in a convincing rage) and Milo. A huge pile of wagers.

Caffran came out two off the mark, a Slammabadden was one off. Gilbear was on the other side of the censer. Milo was spot on.

Howls, anger, jubilation, tumult.

'He was just lucky,' Varl said, collecting up the winnings. 'Are we done?'

'The boy got a fluke,' Gilbear said, ordering his subalterns to empty their pockets. Another big wager was assembled. The Deepers had dropped out, and so had Caffran, leaving the chamber with Raglon. The Slammabadden mustered their strengths into one wager.

Milo turned the censer and set it down.

Silence.

The bug ticked and bounced against the inside of the metal ball. It emerged.

Milo had it again, spot on.

Pandemonium. It seemed like a riot would overturn the troop bay. Varl collected the winnings and the censer and pulled Milo out of the chamber by the scruff of his tunic. Men were shouting, milling around, and a fight had begun over the outcome of one of the side-bets.

In the companionway that led back to the Tanith troop deck, Varl and Milo rejoined Caffran, Raglon and Brostin. They were all laughing, and Caffran seemed suddenly sober. He would have to wash his tunic to get the stink of sacra out of it, of course.

Varl grinned at them and held up the bulky pouch containing their winnings. 'Spoils to be divided, my friends!' he announced to them, slapping Milo across the back with his bionic arm. He had never got used to its strength and Milo nearly fell.

Caffran uttered a warning. Dark shapes loomed down the companionway behind them. It was Gilbear and four of his men.

'You'll pay for that trickery, whore's-son,' Gilbear told Varl.

'It was a fair game,' began Varl, but realised at once that his silver tongue was useless now.

There were five on each side, but each of the Bluebloods towered over Brostin, the largest of the Tanith present. In a close-quarter brawl, the Ghosts might score, draw even perhaps, but it would be bloody.

'Is there a problem?' asked the sixth member of the Tanith scam team. Bragg pulled his vast bulk into the light behind his comrades, squinting in a relaxed way down at the five Bluebloods. He seemed to fill the corridor.

The Ghosts parted to let Bragg lumber through. He adopted the slow gait Varl had trained him in, to emphasise his power. 'Go away, little Bluebloods. Don't make me hurt you,' he said, repeating the cue Varl had also given him. It came out stilted and false, but the Bluebloods were too amazed at his size to notice.

They turned. With a final scowl, Gilbear followed them. The Ghosts began to laugh so hard, they wept.

Below him, Monthax, green, impenetrable.

Gaunt gazed down through the arched viewports of the hexa-thedral Sanctity, studying the distant surface of the planet that, within a week, his forces would be assaulting, from time to time, he referred to a data-slate map in his hand, checking off geographical details. The dense jungle cover was the biggest problem they faced. They had no idea of the hidden enemy's strength.

Advance reports suggested a vast force of Chaos filth had retreated from a recent engagement at Piolitus and dug in here. Warmaster Macaroth was taking no chances. Around the huge bulk of the orbiting hexathedral, a colossal towered platform designed as a mustering point for the invasion forces, great legions massed. Over a dozen huge troop-ships were already docked around the crenellated rim of the hexathedral's skirt platform, like fat swine at the teats of their obese mother, and tugs were easing another in now to join them. More were due. Further away, Imperial battlecruisers and escort ships, including the frigate Navarre on which Gaunt and the Ghosts had been stationed for a while, sat at high orbit anchor, occasionally buzzing out clouds of attack squadrons heading off for surface runs or patrol sweeps.

Gaunt turned from the windows and stepped down a short flight into the cool, echoing vastness of one of the Sanctity's main tactical chapels, the Orrery. A vast circular dial was set flush in the centre of the chamber's floor, thirty metres across and made of intricate, interlocking, moving parts of brass and gold, like a giant timepiece. As it whirred and cycled, the three dimensional globe of coloured light it projected upwards altered and spun, advancing data, chart runes, bars of information across the luminous surface.

Trim uniformed Guard officers, robed members of the Ecclesiarch and the Munitorium, Navy commanders in their Segmentum Pacificus deck dress, and the hooded deaconal staff of the hexathedral itself, prowled the edges of the great fight Orrery, consulting the data and conferring in small groups. Skeletal servitors, emaciated, wired into the machine banks via cables from their eyes, spines, mouths and hands, hunkered in booth-cribs, murmuring and chattering. Around the sides of the great chamber, under cloistered roofing, great chart tables were arranged at intervals, each showing different sections of Monthax. Staff groups stood around every table, engaged in more specific and detailed planning sessions. The air chimed with announcements and updates, some of these overlapping and chattering with data noise. The Orrery turned, whirring, and new details and deployments appeared.

Gaunt walked a circuit of the chamber, nodding to those fellow officers he knew, saluting his seniors. The whole place had an exceptional, expectant hush, like a great hunting animal, breathless, coiled to pounce.

The commissar decided it was time he took a walk down to the Ghosts' troop-ship. The men would be restless, awaiting news of debarkation and deployment, and Gaunt knew well that trouble was always likely to brew when guardsmen were cramped together in transportation, idle and nervous.

And bored. That was the worst of it. In any Guard regiment, disciplinary matters rose in number during such times, and he and the other commissars, the political enforcers of the Imperial Guard, would be busy. There would be brawls, thefts, feuds, drunkenness, even murder in some of the more barbaric regiments, and such disorder quickly spread without the proper control.

Across the chamber, Gaunt saw General Sturm, the commander of the Volpone 50th and some of his senior aides. Sturm did not seem to see him, or chose not to acknowledge Gaunt if he did, and Gaunt made no effort to salute. The crime of Voltemand was still raw in his mind, despite the interval of months. When he learned that the Volpone Bluebloods and the Ghosts would encounter each other again at Monthax, for the first time since Voltemand, he had been apprehensive. The action on Menazoid Epsilon had shown him personally what a long-standing feud between regiments could do. But there was no chance of redeployment, and Gaunt comforted himself that it was only Sturm and his senior staff he had a problem with. The rank and file of the Ghosts and the Bluebloods had no reason for animosity. He would keep a careful watch, but he was sure they could billet side by side safely enough until the assault sent them their separate ways.