Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

He was wrestling with the biggest of his opponents now, blind in the rain and the mud spray. Corbec got a glimpse of gold and grey carapace armour, an Imperial Eagle stud of precious blue. Underneath his rolling foe, he punched upwards into what should have been the face twice and then rolled his stunned aggressor over so that he was straddling him.

A flash of lightning. Corbec saw he was astride a Volpone Blueblood, a big man with a battered, bloodied face. A major. Corbec had his hands around the man's throat.

'What the feth?' he gasped. Hellgun muzzles were suddenly pressing to his head.

'You stinking bastard!' the major underneath him groaned venomously, trying to rise.

Corbec raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, wary of the guns around him. The major, released, threw Corbec back off him and rose, pulling out his hellpistol and aiming at Corbec's head.

'Don't,' said a voice, quiet yet more commanding than the thunder.

Gaunt stepped into the clearing, his bolt pistol aimed squarely at Major Gilbear's cranium. The Blueblood guns swung around to point at him but he didn't flinch.

'Now,' Gaunt added. His gun was unfaltering. Corbec looked up from the mud, lying on his back, conscious that the Blueblood major's gun was still pointed his way.

'Shoot him and I can assure you, Gilbear, you will be dead before any of your men can fire.' Gaunt's voice was low and threatening. Corbec knew that tone.

'Gaunt…' Gilbear murmured, not slackening his aim.

More Ghosts moved in around the commissar, guns aimed.

'Something of a stand-off,' Corbec muttered from the ground. Gilbear kicked him, his aim not leaving Corbec's head, his gaze not leaving Gaunt.

'Lower your weapon, Major Gilbear.' Inquisitor Lilith stepped into the glade, her cowl drawn up, a staccato roll of thunder eerily punctuating her words.

Gilbear wavered and then holstered his gun.

'Help Colonel Corbec to his feet,' Lilith added in the perfect, effete tones of the courtly dialect.

Gaunt's aim had not changed.

'And you, commissar. Put up your weapon.'

Gaunt lowered his bolt pistol.

'Inquisitor Lilith.'

'We meet again,' she said, turning away, a shrouded, sinister figure in the rain.

Gilbear held his hand down to Corbec and pulled him to his feet. Their eyes locked as Gilbear brought him up. Gilbear had the advantage of a few centimetres in height, and his broad shoulders, encased in the bulky carapace segments, eclipsed Corbec's shambling form, but the Tanith colonel had the benefit of sheer mass.

'No offence,' Gilbear hissed into Colm Corbec's face.

'None taken, Blueblood… until next time.'

Gaunt passed Gilbear as he approached Lilith, and the commissar and the major exchanged looks. Neither had forgotten Voltemand.

'Inquisitor Lilith,' Gaunt began, raising his voice over the cacophony of the storm, 'is this a chance encounter or have you sniffed me out with your psyker ways?'

She turned and looked at him, clear eyed. 'What do you think, Ibram?'

'What am I supposed to think, inquisitor?'

She half-smiled, rain pattering off her white skin. 'A psyker storm lights up the battle zone, aborting our assault against the foe.'

'You're not telling me anything I hadn't already noticed.'

'Where is your Third platoon?'

Gaunt shrugged. 'You tell me. Voxing has become impossible in this hell.'

She showed him the lit dial of her data-slate.

'They're right in there, as last reported, fell me, don't you think it's significant?'

'What?'

'Milo… Oh, he answered my questions and wriggled out, but still, I wonder.'

'What do you wonder, inquisitor?'

'A boy suspected of psyker power, given rank by you, in the depth of this when it begins.'

'This is not Brin Milo's work.'

'Isn't it? How can you be sure?' Gaunt was silent.

'What do you know of psykers, commissar? What do you know? Have you talked with them? Have you seen the way they blossom? A boy, a girl, barely in their teens, never having shown any spark of the craft, suddenly becoming all that we fear.'

Gaunt stayed quiet. He didn't like where this was going.

'I've seen it, Ibram. The sudden development of untrained powers, the sudden eruption of activity. You can't know for sure this isn't Milo's doing.'

'It isn't. I know it isn't.'

'We'll see. After all, that's what we are here to find out.'

Rawne stared down from a slit window in the thick stonework, night rain and high winds lashing the outside. There were fires outside, but no longer the reassuring lines of cook fires on the founding fields. The sky had fallen. Doom had come to Tanith. If there had been any doubt, Rawne had seen warning flares rise and fall above the tree line not three minutes past.

Rawne clutched his freshly-issued lasgun to his chest. At least he would get to use it before he died.

'What's happening, sir?' Trooper Caffran asked. Rawne bit back the urge to yell at him. The boy was a novice, first taste of battle. And Rawne was the only officer present.

'Planetary assault. The enemy have fallen on us while we were still mustering.'

Others in the squad moaned.

'We're finished,' Larkin howled and Feygor disciplined him with a blow to his kidneys.

'Enough of that talk!' Rawne snapped. 'They'll not take Tanith without a fight from us! And we can't be the only unit inside the Elector's palace! We have a duty to protect the life of the Elector.'

The rest murmured and nodded. It was a desperate course, but it seemed right. They all felt it.

Feygor checked his intercom again. 'Nothing. The lines are dead. Must be scrambling us.'

'Keep trying. We have to locate the Elector and form a cohesive defence.'

Brin Milo's head was spinning. It all seemed so unreal, but he cautioned himself that was just shock at the speed of events. It had been stressful enough to prepare to leave Tanith for ever. All the men had been edgy these last few days. Now… this nightmare.

That was what it was like. A nightmare. A twisting of reality where some things seemed blurred and others bright and over-sharp.

There was no time to settle his nerves or soothe it away Gunfire and a gout of flame rushed down the stone hallway from behind them. The enemy had gained access to the palace Rawne's squad took cover-places along the wall and returned fire.

'For Tanith!' Rawne yelled. 'While it yet lives!'

Eon Kull, the Old One, awoke with a start. He cried out, an animal bark of pain. He found himself lying on the polished stone floor of the Inner Place. For a moment, he did not remember who or what he was.

Then it trickled back, like sand through the waist of an hourpiece, a grain at a time. He had lost consciousness and lain here, undiscovered, in his delirium.

He could barely rise. His hands trembled; his limbs were as weak as a fildassai. Blood was clotting in his mouth and nose. He felt his beating organs and pumping lungs rustle and wheeze inside his ribs like dying birds in a cage.

He had to take stock. Had he been successful?

The spirit stones had all gone dark. Fuehain Talchior sat silent and still in her rack. The rune slivers were scattered across the floor as if someone had kicked over the arrangement. Some glowed red hot and smouldered like iron in a smelter. Others were wisps of curled ash.

Eon Kull Warlock gasped at the sight. He clawed at the runes, gathering up the fragments and the ash, burning his fingers. In the name of Vaul the Smithy-God, what had he wrought this day? What had he done? Attempted too much, that was certain His age and his frailty had failed him, made him pass out and lose control, but surely for only a second or two. What had he unleashed? Sacred Asuryan, what had he done?

His exhausted mind sensed Muon Nol returning to the Inner Place. The warrior should not, would not see him like this, Eon Kull found strength from somewhere and hauled himself back into his throne, clasping the purse of ash and bone-cinders to his belt. Joints cracked like bolter shots and he felt blood rise in his gorge as his head span.