First and Only (26 page)

He selected other plates and surveyed the disposition of the army under his direct command, the Primaris invasion. The infantry regiments were down and advancing strongly from the dispersal sites, and the motorised armour were disembarking from their landing craft into the lower valleys. He was pushing on three prongs to encircle the ancient mountainside structures of Shrine Target Primaris, fanning his armour out to support three infantry advances, led by the Mordian to the west, the Lattarii to the east and the Tanith to the south. So far there had been no sign of an enemy to engage. No sign at all, in fact, that there were anything other than Imperium forces alive on Epsilon.

Dravere took up a stylus and inscribed a short message on a data-slate to Colonel Flense of the Jantine. Flense would be his eyes and ears on the ground, tailing the Tanith Ghosts and standing ready to intercede. Gaunt’s advance was the only one he was interested in.

Dravere coded the message in Jantine combat-cant and broadcast it to the Patricians on a stammered vox-burst. Flense would not fail him.

He sat back in his harness and allowed a smile to cross his thin lips. He knew this gambit would cost him, but he had lives enough to pay. The lives of the fifty thousand infantry under his command here on Epsilon. He considered them a down-payment on his apotheosis.

He decided to take the opportunity to rest and meditate.

T
HE SECOND DAY
was dawning when he returned to his command-hammock, and overviewed the intelligence from the night. All of his units had advanced as expected until dark and then established watch-camps and stagings. At first light, they were moving again. The night had brought no sign of the foe, nor had Dravere expected such news. His staff would have roused him immediately at the first shot fired.

Chatter and industry filled the command globe beyond the circular guard rail surrounding his hammock-pit. Navy officers and Munitorium aides mixed with Guard tactical officials and members of his own staff, manning the artifi-cers and codifiers, processing, analysing and charting movement on the huge hololithic deployment map, a three-dimensional light-shape projecting down from the domed roof.

A sudden call rang through the deck: ‘Marshal Tarantine reports his Cadian and Afghali units have engaged. Heavy fighting now at Shrine Target Tertius!’

First blood, Dravere thought, at last. Red indicator runes flashed on the continental deployment map. Stains of telltale brown and crimson shone out to delineate firefight spread and range at the Tertius location. Enemy positions flashed into life as they were assessed, appearing as aggressive little yellow stars.

He issued more orders, bringing the heavy artillery and tanks around to begin bombardment to cover Tarantine’s line. Two more heavy fighting zones erupted on the map, as the Secundus push suddenly ground hard into hidden enemy emplacements. A counter-bombardment opened up from the enemy forces. More stains, more yellow stars. Dravere kept one eye fixed on the jinking signals that flagged the swift Tanith advance, with Mordian, Jantine and Vitrian columns at its heels. The Primaris assault was unopposed so far.

‘It begins, lord,’ a voice said to his left. Dravere looked up into the face of Imperial Tactician Wheyland. Whey-land was a grizzled, bald man with a commanding frame and piercing eyes. He wore the black and red-braid uniform of Macaroth’s tactical advisors, but Dravere had known who the man really was when he first met him. A spy, a watcher, an observer, sent by Macaroth to supervise Dravere’s efforts.

‘Your assessment, Wheyland?’ Dravere said smoothly.

The tactician scrutinised the deployment map. ‘We expected fierce resistance. I anticipate they have more than this up their sleeves.’

‘Nothing yet here at Primaris. We expected this to be the worst, didn’t we?’

‘Indeed.’ Wheyland seemed oblivious to Dravere’s sarcasm. ‘Not yet, but it will come. If this is the Shrine World we fear it to be, their defence will be more indomitable and fanatical than we can imagine. Do not advance your forces too swiftly, lord general, or you will render them vulnerable and over-extended.’

Dravere wished he could tell the tactician exactly what he thought of his advice, but Wheyland was part of Mac-aroth’s military aristocracy and an insult would be counter-productive. He wanted to shout: I’ve dispersed this invasion faster and more efficiently than any commander in the fleet and you dare advise me to slow? But he simply nodded, biting his tongue for now.

Wheyland sat on the guard rail and sighed reflectively. ‘It’s been a long time for us, eh, Hechtor?’

Dravere looked at him crossly. ‘Long time? What do you mean?’

Wheyland smiled at him. ‘The heat of combat? We were both footsloggers once. Last action I saw was against the accursed eldar on Ondermanx, twenty years past. Now we’re data-slate watchers, plate-pushers. Command is an honourable venture, but sometimes I miss the sweat and toil of combat.’

Dravere licked his lips at the delicious thought which had just come to him. ‘I can use any able-bodied, willing fighting man, Wheyland. Do you want to get out there?’

Wheyland looked startled for a moment, then grinned suddenly, getting up. ‘I never refuse such an opportunity. The combat technique of this much-celebrated Tanith regiment fascinates me. I’m sure the tactical counsel could incorporate many new ideas from close observation of their stealth methods. With your permission, I’d gladly join them.’

You’re so damn transparent, Dravere thought sullenly. You want to see for yourself, don’t you? But he also knew he couldn’t argue. To deny an Imperial tactician now might risk compromising his plan. I can deal with you later, he decided.

‘Would you care to deploy in the field as an observer? I could always use an eye on the ground.’

‘With your permission,’ Wheyland said, making to leave. ‘I’ll take a Chimera from the reserve and move up the line. I have a detail of bodyguards who can act as a fire-team squad. Naturally, I’ll report all findings to you.’

‘Naturally,’ Dravere agreed humourlessly. ‘I’ll enter your identifier on the chart. Your battle code will be what?’

Wheyland seemed to think for a moment. ‘How about my old unit call sign? Eagleshard.’

Dravere noted it and passed the details to his aide. ‘Good hunting… tactician,’ he said as the man left the command dome.

Three

G
AUNT LOOKED UP
from the inscription that Communications Officer Rafflan had made of the intercepted vox-burst. ‘

Mean anything to you, sir?’ he asked. ‘I logged it yester day afternoon.’

Gaunt nodded. It was a message in Jantine combat-cant. Watchful of Macaroth’s agencies, he had instructed Rafflan to keep his vox-cast unit open to listen for all battlefield traffic. The message was from Dravere to Flense: a direct order to shadow the Ghosts. Gaunt rubbed his chin. Slowly, the enemies were showing their hand.

He looked ahead, up the high mountain pass, choked with bracken, and its lines of slumping towers. He was tempted to send Rawne back down the slope to mine the way in advance of the Jantine at their heels, but when all was said and done, they were on the same side. Word had come that the fighting had opened at the other two target sites, heavy and bloody.

There was no telling what they would encounter up ahead in the thin altitude. He dared not drive back the units which might be the only forces to support the Tanith in a direct action.

Gaunt pulled a note-pad from the pocket of his storm-coat and consulted several pages that Colonel Zoren had written. Carefully, with uncertainty, he composed a message in the Vitrian battlefield language, using the code-words Zoren had told him. Then he had Rafflan send it.

‘Speaking in tongues, sir?’ the vox-officer laughed, ironically using the Tanith’s own war-dialect that Gaunt had made sure he had learned early on. Many of the regiments used their own languages or codes for internal messages. On the battlefield, secrecy was imperative in vox-commands. And Dravere couldn’t know Gaunt had a working knowledge of Jantine combat-cant.

Gaunt called up Sergeant Blane. ‘Take the seventh platoon and function as a rearguard,’ he told Blane directly.

‘You’re expecting a hindquarters strike, then?’ asked Blane, puzzled. ‘Mkoll’s scouts have covered the hill line. The enemy won’t be sneaking round on us.’

‘Not the given enemy,’ Gaunt said. ‘I want you watching for the Jantine who are following us up. Our code word will be “Ghostmaker”. Given from me to you, or you back to me, it will indicate the Jantine have made a move. I don’t want to be fighting our own… but it may come to that. When you hear the word, do not shrink from the deed. If you signal me, I will send everything back to support you. As far as I am concerned, the Jantine are as much our foe as the things that dwell up here.’

‘Understood,’ Blane said, looking darkly at his commander. Corbec had briefed the senior men well after Gaunt’s unlocking of the crystal. They knew what was at stake, and were keeping the thought both paramount and away from their men, who had enough to concern them. Gaunt had a particular respect for the gruff, workmanlike Blane. He was as gifted and loyal an officer as Corbec, Mkoll or Lerod, but he was also dependable and solid. Almost despite himself, Gaunt found himself offering Blane his hand.

They shook. Blane realised the weight of the duty, the potentially terrible demands.

‘Emperor go with you, sir,’ he said, as he broke the grip and turned to retreat down the bracken slope.

‘And may He watch over you,’ Gaunt returned.

Nearby, Milo saw the quiet exchange. He shook spit from the chanters of his Tanith pipes and prepared to play again. This is it, he thought. The commissar expects the worst.

Sergeant Mkoll’s scouts were returning from the higher ground. Gaunt joined them to hear their report.

‘I think it’s best if you see it yourself,’ Mkoll said simply and gestured back at the heights.

Gaunt spread the fire-teams of three platoons along the width of the valley slope and then moved forward with Mkoll’s scout unit. By now, all of the Ghosts had rubbed the absorbent fabric of their stealth cloaks with handfuls of ochre bracken and dusted them so that they blended into the ground cover. Gaunt smiled as Mkoll scolded the commissar’s less than Tanith-like abilities, and scrupulously damped down the colour of Gaunt’s cloak with a scrub of ashy bracken. Gaunt removed his cap and edged forward, trying to hang the cloak around him as deftly as the Tanith scout. Behind them, there were two thousand Ghosts on the bracken-thick mountainside, but their commanding officer could see none of them.

He reached the rise, and borrowed Mkoll’s scope as they bellied down in the fern and the dust.

He hardly needed the scope. The rise they were ascending dropped away and a cliff face rose vertical ahead of them, looking like it was ten thousand metres tall. The milky-blue granite face was carved into steps like a ziggurat, a vast steepled formation of weather-worn storeys, rows of archways and slumped blocks. Gaunt knew that this was his first look at Shrine Target Primaris. Other than that, he had no idea what it was. A burial place, a temple, a dead hive? It simply smacked of evil, of the darkness. A vile corruption seeped up from every pore of the rockface, every dark alcove and pillared recess.

‘I don’t like the look of it,’ Mkoll said flatly.

Gaunt smiled grimly and consulted his own data-slate. ‘Neither do I. We don’t want to approach it directly. We need to sweep around to the left and follow the valley line.’ Gaunt scoped down to the left. The carved granite structure extended away beyond the curve of the vale and several of the stalking lines of towers marched up the bracken slopes to meet it, as if they were feelers spread out from the immense shrine itself. Beyond and higher, he could now see towers of blue granite in the clouds: spires, steeples and buttresses. This was just the outskirts of an ancient necropolis, a city long dead that had been raised by inhuman hands before the start of recorded time.

The honeysuckle scent in the air was becoming a stench. Vox-level chatter over the microbead in his ear told him that his men were starting to succumb to a vague, indefinable nausea.

‘You want to go left?’ Mkoll asked. ‘But that’s not in accord with the order of battle.’

‘I know.’

‘The lord general will be furious if we divert from the given advance.’

‘I have my own orders,’ Gaunt said, tapping his data-slate.

‘And the Emperor love you for your loyalty!’ Mkoll shook his head. ‘Sir, we were told to assault this… this place directly.’

‘And we will, Mkoll – just not here.’

Mkoll nodded. ‘How far down?’

‘A kilometre or two. The crystal spoke of a dome. Find it for me.’

‘Gladly,’ Mkoll said. ‘You know that if we alter our advance it will give the Jantine dogs more reason to come for us.’

‘I know,’ Gaunt said. More than ever he appreciated the way his senior officers had accommodated the truth of their endeavour. They knew what was at stake and what the real dangers were.

Mkoll and Corporal Baru led the advancing Ghosts along the top of the valley, just under the crest, and past the threatening, tower-haunted steppes of the graven hillside.

Scout Trooper Thark was the first to spot it. He voxed back to the command group: a dome, a massive, bulbous dome swelling from the living rock of the cliff face, impossibly carved from granite.

Gaunt moved up to see it for himself. It was like some vast stone onion, a thousand metres in diameter, sunk into the stepped rock wall around it, the surface inscribed with billions of obscure sigils and marks.

Thark was also the first to die. A storm of autocannon rounds whipped up the slope, exploding bracken into dust, spitting up soil and punching him into four or five bloody parts. At the cue, other weapon placements in the steppe alcoves of the facing cliff opened fire, raining las-fire, bullets and curls of plasma down at the Ghosts.

The answering fire laced a spider’s web of las-light, tracer lines and firewash between the sides of the valley.

The dying began.

Four

M
ARSHAL
G
OHL
S
ENDAK
, the so-called Ravager of Genestock Gamma, had abandoned his Command Leviathan to lead his forces from the front. He rode a Leman Russ battle-tank of the Borkellid regiments, heading a fast-moving armoured phalanx that was smashing its way across the rocky escarpments below the weathered stone structures of Shrine Target Secundus.