Necropolis (32 page)

Hastily they both dived aside. Daur rolled into Chass’ crumpled body and frantically tried to reload.

Kowle landed on a Volpone corpse. The creature headed for him.

“Get clear!” Gaunt bellowed. Kowle was apparently fumbling with the dead Blueblood’s equipment belts. Gaunt and Gilbear fired again in a futile attempt to drop the thing.

At the final moment, Kowle turned and rose. He faced the rushing beast with his arms held out. He was clutching a canvas web of grenades. The meat-beast bit his arms off at the elbows and Kowle tumbled backwards, blood jetting from the stumps. He didn’t make a sound.

The creature convulsed, retched and exploded from within. Its massive torso blew out in a rush of flame and body matter. A spinning section of rib, thrown out by the blast, stuck quivering into the wall near Gaunt like a spear. Flames gouted out of the huge mouth.

The beast collapsed onto the floor, pulling feed lines and wires out of the ceiling. The pool of stinking fluid spreading beneath it began to burn the carpet away.

With Gilbear behind him, Gaunt crossed to the carcass. “We need a flamer. We need to burn this abomination as soon as possible.”

“Yes, colonel-commissar,” Gilbear answered, turning to the surviving Volpone.

Kowle, on his back in a widening circle of blood, was still alive. Gaunt knelt beside him, soaking his knees.

“Said… you… didn’t have the balls,” Kowle said, his voice so weak it was barely audible.

Gaunt had no words for him.

“Envy you…”

“What?” Gaunt asked, bending closer.

“Balhaut… you were there at the victory, with the warmaster. I envy you. I would have given… everything to share in that…”

“Pius, you—”

“Shut up, Gaunt… not interested in… anything you have to say to me. You took my honour away, you… ruined me. I hope the Emperor… will forgive you for robbing Terra of a… great leader like me…”

Gaunt shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Kowle’s rank studs and cap badge. Carefully and deferentially, he pinned them back in place. Kowle seemed to notice what Gaunt was doing, though his eyes were wide and dilated, and the blood was now merely trickling from his ghastly stumps.

“Goodbye, commissar. You gave your best.”

Gaunt saluted, a sharp, smart gesture he hadn’t made in a long time.

Kowle smiled, barely, then died.

Gaunt got up from the corpse of the People’s Hero and crossed to the awareness tank. “Get Lord Chass up. Get the Shield back on,” he said to Daur sourly. Daur nodded and began to raise the feeble Verghast noble.

Gilbear joined Gaunt at the tank. They looked down at the thickly glazed porthole.

“Come up with a way for me to pay you back as soon as you can,” Gaunt said, not looking round at the Volpone.

“What?”

“You pulled me clear of the beast. I don’t want to be in the debt of a high-caste bastard like you any longer than I have to be.”

Gilbear grinned. “I think I may have underestimated you, Gaunt. I had no idea you were such an arrogant swine.”

Gaunt glanced round. It would take another Ibram Gaunt and a whole different universe for there to be any trust or comradeship between him and Gilbear. But for now, in the thick of this nightmare, Gaunt couldn’t help respecting the soldier, for that was what he was: a devoted soldier of the God-Emperor, just like Gaunt. They didn’t have to like each other to make it work. A measure of understanding and honour between them was enough.

Gaunt bent down to look through the port glass, and Gilbear did likewise at his side.

Through the fog of murky, phlogistic fluid, they could just make out a frail, naked body, withered and corrupted, drifting inside the tank, its skull linked to wires and cables that curled upwards to the roof.

“We can call it quits if you let me finish this,” said Gilbear.

“He’s all yours,” said Gaunt.

Gilbear smirked, arming the hellgun he had just retrieved. “What about your due process? What about taking the law into your own hands?” he asked sarcastically.

“I can dispense it. I’m a commissar. That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

Gilbear nodded and fired two shots through the portal window. Filthy green water rushed out in torrents, flooding the floor. Steam rose from it.

Gilbear leaned down once the force of the outrush slackened, and he watched the twitching, spasming form of the High Master trembling in his draining tank. He fired a grenade in through the broken port and turned away.

A dull crump and the sheet of steam that billowed out of the window hole marked the end of Salvadore Sondar, High Master of Vervunhive.

Daur had carried Chass over to the brass console in the wall and he helped the enfeebled lord punch in the override settings. Chass mumbled the codes to Daur just in time. The noble was dead by the time Gaunt reached them.

The runic sigils on the console plate asked for a noble geno-print. Gaunt simply lifted one of Chass’ limp hands and pressed it to the reader-slate.

“Sic semper tyrannis, Lord Chass,” Gaunt whispered.

“Did he see victory, sir?” asked Daur.

“He saw enough. We’ll find out if this is a victory or not.”

Automated systems cycled and whirred. Deep in the bowels of Vervun-hive, field batteries throbbed. The pylon crackled and the anchor stations that remained intact raised their masts.

With a resounding, fulminating crack and a reek of ozone, the Shield was reignited.

Ibram Gaunt left the audience hall of House Sondar and walked up onto an enclosed roof terrace that overlooked the entire hive. Fires burned below, thousands of them, and streaks of constant shelling lit the air. The Shield overhead glowed and crackled.

Now the Last Ditch had begun.

“Target and deny! By our deaths shall they know us!”

—General Coron Grizmund, at the start

of the Narmenian counterattack

Overnight, between the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth days of the war, Vervunhive had come to the brink of destruction. Now, like a clenching muscle, the Imperial forces tightened and backed through the inner habs and elite sectors, resisting the encircling foe. For all their massive numbers, the Zoicans could only attack by land with the Shield reactivated. The dense streets, city blocks, habitats and thoroughfares favoured the defenders, who could dig in and hold the Zoican push.

Corday and Rawne dragged their forces back from Veyveyr into the worker habs a bare half hour before they could be encircled by enemy forces reaching upwards from Sondar Gate. NorthCol and Vervun Primary battalions pushed west to support the retreating Roane, still resisting street by street as they fell back from the Croe and Ontabi Gates. Colonel Bulwar had nominal command of that front.

Five thousand Vervun Primary troopers under Captain Cargin still held the Hass West Fort fast, though looping columns of Zoican infantry were beginning to bracket them through the chemical plant district.

Throughout the inner habs south of the Main Spine, Imperial units tried to stem the advance. Sergeant Bray directed the Tanith in the wastes north of the chem district. Volpone, NorthCol and Vervun Primary sections strung out to his east, where Corbec’s remaining Tanith and a force of Roane Deepers under Major Relf had consolidated a wide area of manufactories.

The fighting there was thick, as thick as any in the hive. Guild Githran Agricultural had been held since the small hours of the morning. Corbec’s platoons had precious little ammo left and no food. They had been fighting all-out for six hours straight. Enemy flamer-tanks holding the north-south arterial highway rightly were preventing the Tanith from obtaining munitions from the better-provided Roane, just half a kilometre away to the east. The Tanith were forced to scavenge for ammo, running out of cover in twos and threes to loot the fallen Zoicans. At least with the Shield reactivated, they were spared the worst of the shelling, though the enemy armour and field pieces now set up inside the Shield dome were unrelenting.

Baffels whistled a command, and Milo, Neskon and Cocoer dashed from the cover of a derelict abattoir and scurried towards a burning textile mill. Dremmond covered their run with spurts from his flamer. The three Tanith had bayonets fixed. They were all out of ammo, except Cocoer, who had only a handful of shots left.

Six Zoicans lay dead behind the rear wall of the mill. The trio descended on them and stripped them of las-cells. Each corpse had six or seven as well as musette bags filled with stick grenades.

Milo looked up. The air throbbed with las-fire and though the Shield had shut out the rain, the ground was slick and muddy. Me pulled Neskon down into cover. Enemy fire chased down the mill wall, cracking holes in the plaster facing and puffing out brick dust.

A fireteam of Zoican stormtroopers was advancing through the ruins to the west of the mill. Cocoer now had a fresh clip in his Guard-issue weapon and he fired twice, missing his targets but causing the Zoicans to duck and cover.

“We’re pinned!” Milo hissed into his microbead.

“Stay down,” the voice of Sergeant Baffels crackled back.

They did. Neskon poked his head up long enough to be shot at.

“Come on, Baffels!” Milo added urgently. They could hear the crunching footfalls of the Zoicans barely ten paces from their cover.

“Just another moment,” Baffels reassured his friend.

Loud las-shots cracked over the ruins, single shots, high-powered.

“You’re clear! Go!” Baffels squawked.

Milo led the way, Neskon and Cocoer on his heels. He got a glimpse of the Zoicans behind him, sprawled dead from clean head-shots.

Milo smiled.

The trio slid into cover in the agricultural manufactory, safe behind a solid ceramite wall. Baffels and other Tanith crowded round them as they shared out the clip-cells and the stick-bombs.

Milo looked across the roofless factory-space and saw Larkin dug in high up near a vent hatch. The Tanith snipers, along with the Spoilers, had drawn back from the Spoil. Milo had known that the precision killing of the Zoicans had been the work of marksmen.

He flashed a grin up at Larkin. The weasely sniper winked back.

Milo handed a cell to Baffels. “Your turn next time,” he joked.

“Of course,” said Baffels. Hours before he had ceased to recognise the humour in anything.

“Colm?”

Corbec looked up out of the loophole he was holding, his shaggy head coated in soot and grime. He shot a beaming grin when he saw Mkoll.

“About time you got here.”

“Came as fast as we could. The bastards have the Spoil now. We left it to them.”

Corbec got up and slapped Mkoll on the arm. “You all make it through?”

“Yeah, Domor, Larkin, MkVenner — all the boys. I’ve spread them out through our lines.”

“Good work. We need good marksman coverage all along. Feth, but this is ugly work.”

They looked round, hearing angry voices down the burned-out hall. Vervun Primary troops with long-barrelled lasguns were moving in to join the defence.

“The Spoilers, so called,” Mkoll explained to his colonel. “Dedicated to protecting the Spoil. Took a while to convince them that falling back was the smart choice. They’d have held the slag-slopes forever. It’s a pride thing.”

“We understand pride, don’t we?” grimaced Corbec.

Mkoll nodded. He pointed out the leader of the Spoilers, a bulky man with bloodshot eyes who was doing most of the shouting and cursing. “That’s ‘Gak’ Ormon. Spoiler commander.”

Corbec sauntered over to the big Verghastite.

“Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only.”

“Major Ormon. I want to lodge a complaint, colonel. Your man Mkoll ordered our withdrawal from the Spoil, and—”

Corbec cut him short. “We’re fighting for our fething lives and you want to complain? Shut up. Get used to it. Mkoll made a good call. Another half an hour and you would have been surrounded and dead. You want a ‘spoil’ to defend? Take a look!” He gestured out of a shattered window at the wasteland around. “Start thinking like a soldier, and stop cussing and whining. There’s more than unit pride at stake here.”

Ormon opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish. “I’m glad we understand each other,” Corbec said.

In the north-eastern corner of the hive, Sergeant Varl and Major Rodyin had command of one hundred and seventy or so men holding the burning docks. Half were Tanith; the rest, Vervun Primary and Roane. Zoican stormtroops were blasting in along the Hass East Causeway under the Hiraldi road-bridge, and the Imperial forces were being driven back through the hive’s promethium depots. Several bulk capacity tanks were already ablaze and liquescent fire spurted from derricks and spout-vents.

Firing tight bursts, Varl crossed a depot freightway and dropped into cover beside Major Rodyin, who had paused to fiddle with the cracked lens of his spectacles.

“No sign of support. I’ve been trying the vox. We’re on our own,” the Vervun officer remarked.

Varl nodded. “We can do that. Just a few of us should be able to keep them busy in these industrial sectors.”

“Unless they move armour our way.”

Varl sighed. The hiver was pessimism personified.

“Did you see the way the Zoicans’ armour was smeared with tar and oil?”

“I did,” said Varl, clipping off a few more shots. “What of it?”

“I think that’s how they got in, how they broke us open. They came through the pipeline from Vannick Hive.” Rodyin pointed out across the depot to the series of vast fuel-pipe routes that came in over the river on metal stilt legs from the northern hinterlands. “The pipes come in right under the Curtain Wall.”

“Why the feth weren’t they shut down?” snapped Varl.

Rodyin shrugged. “They were meant to be. That’s what I was told, anyway. The directive was circulated weeks ago, right after Vannick was obliterated. The guilds controlling the fuelways were ordered to blow the pipes on the far shore and fill the rest with rockcrete.”

“Someone didn’t do their job properly,” Varl mused. Somehow the information aggravated him. It was way too fething late to find out how they had been breached.