Necropolis (8 page)

Folik nodded and shuffled away to get Mincer to unlap the rope coils.

“Commissar Kowle himself uses our boat!” gasped Folik to his crew mate.

“Kowle? Are you sure? The People’s Hero?”

“It’s him, I tell you, in the flesh, bold as all bastardy, right here on our tub!”

At the rail, Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt gazed out from the deck of the
Magnificat
and smiled as he overheard the words.

The Magnificat was in mid-stream when the eastern sky lit up brightly. There was a sucking shudder, like a wind-rush over the water. The eastern horizon blazed with a midnight sun.

“What was that?” Mincer cried. A commotion rose from the troops.

Gaunt raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare as a heat-wash rolled down the river. He knew the blast-effects of a nuclear detonation when he saw it.

“That was the beginning of the end,” he said.

“Insanity! Insanity! What kind of war are we fighting?”

—Marshal Edric Croe, on hearing

the news from Vannick

Kowle went directly to House Command when the news was voxed to him. He had been touring the South Curtain and it took him almost an hour to cross the hive back to the Main Spine.

The control auditorium was a chaotic mess. Munitorum clerks, regimental aides and other junior personnel hurried about, gabbling, panicking, relaying reports from the operators manning the main tactical cogitators banked around the lower level of the large, circular chamber. Many Vervun Primary officers and even some VPHC troops were clogging the place too, anxious to find out if the rumours were true.

Kowle pushed past the onlookers at the chamber door and sent many back to their stations with curt words. None argued. They saluted and backed off from him quickly. He crossed the wide floor and then hurried up the ironwork staircase onto the upper deck of the auditorium, where the chiefs of staff were gathered around the vast, luminous chart table. Junior aides and technicians, many bearing important vox reports, made way for him without question.

Marshal Croe presided over the group at the chart table. His eyes were blacker than ever and he had removed his cap, as if the weight of it was too much now. His personal bodyguard, Isak, dressed in an armoured maroon body-glove and carrying a shrouded gun, hovered at his shoulder. Vice Marshal Anko, wearing a medal-heavy white ceremonial uniform, stood glowering nearby. He had been attending a formal dinner thrown by House Anko to welcome the Volpone. Sturm and his aides stood alongside him, clad in the impressive dress uniforms of the Volpone. Also present were Xance of NorthCol — looking tired and drawn, along with several of his senior staff — the Narmenian Grizmund and his tank brigadiers, Nash of the Roane Deepers and his adjutants, and a dozen more senior Vervun Primary officers, as well as Commissar Tarrian of the VPHC.

“Is it true?” Kowle asked, removing his cap but making no other formal salute.

Croe nodded, but remained silent.

Tarrian coughed. “Vannick Hive was destroyed ninety minutes ago.”

“Destroyed?”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept, Kowle,” Croe said flatly. “It’s gone.”

“Zoica has levelled it. We have no idea how. They got inside the Shield somehow and used a nuclear device—”

Croe cut Anko off mid-sentence. “How is not the real issue here, vice marshal! There are any number of ‘hows’ we might debate! The real question is why.”

“I agree, marshal,” General Sturm said. “We must consider this may not have been deliberate. I’ve known emplacements destroyed accidentally by the over-ambitious actions of those attacking. Perhaps Zoica meant to take the hive and struck… too hard.”

“Is there any other way of striking when you use atomics?” a calm voice asked from the head of the stairs. The group turned.

“Gaunt…” Colonel Gilbear of the Volpone hissed under his breath.

The tall newcomer wore a commissar’s cap and a long, black leather coat. He stepped towards them. His clothing was still flecked with dust from his journey. He saluted Marshal Croe smartly.

“Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, of the Tanith First. We arrived to reinforce you just as the event occurred.”

“I welcome you, Gaunt. I wish I was happier to see you,” the white-haired giant replied respectfully. “Are your men billeted?”

“They were proceeding to their stations when I left them. I came here as soon as I could.”

“The famous Gaunt,” Anko whispered to Tarrian.

“You mean ‘notorious’, surely?” Tarrian murmured back.

Gaunt stepped up to the chart table, pulling off his gloves and studying the display. Then he looked up and nodded a frank greeting to Nash.

“Well met, general.”

“Good to see you, commissar,” Nash replied. Their forces had served alongside each other on Monthax and there was a genuine, mutual admiration.

Gaunt greeted the Narmenian officers too, then looked over at Sturm, Gilbear and the other Volpone, who stared icily at him.

“General Sturm. Always a pleasure. And Major Gilbear.”

Gilbear was about to blurt out something but Sturm stepped forward, offering his hand to Gaunt.

“Gilbear’s bravery on Monthax has earned him a colonel’s pips, Gaunt.”

“Well done, Gilbear,” Gaunt smiled broadly. He shook the general’s hand firmly.

“Good to know we have more brave, reliable Guard forces here with us, Gaunt. Welcome.”

Gaunt smiled to himself. The last time he had met Sturm in person, back on Voltemand, the pompous ass had been threatening him with court martial. Gaunt had not forgotten that Sturm’s callous leadership had resulted in heavy losses in the Ghost ranks from friendly artillery.

You’re only putting on this show of comradeship so you can look good in the eyes of the local grandees, Gaunt thought, returning Sturm’s gaze with unblinking directness. You are an unspeakable wretch and I regret this place has the likes of you to look after it. But Gaunt was a political animal as well as a combat leader, and he knew how to play this game as well as any runt general. He said, “I’m sure our worthy brothers of the Volpone could handle this alone.”

Sturm nodded as the handshake broke, clearly trying to work out if there had been some cloaked insult in Gaunt’s compliment.

“From your opening remark, may we presume you believe the loss of Vannick Hive is deliberate?” Kowle stepped forward to face Gaunt. The Imperial commissars nodded a stiff greeting to each other.

“Commissar Kowle, the People’s Hero. It’s been a long time since Bal-haut.”

“But the memories never fade,” Kowle replied.

Gaunt turned away from him. “Kowle judges my words correctly. The enemy has destroyed Vannick Hive deliberately. Can there be any other explanation for a nuclear event?”

“Suicide,” Grizmund said. “Overrun, overwhelmed, perhaps a last act of desperation in the face of a victorious foe. A detonation of the hive’s power plant.”

Several Vervun officers expressed dismay.

“You are new to Verghast, general, so we will not think badly of your comment,” Tarrian said softly. “But no Verghastite would be so craven as to self-destruct in the face of the enemy. The hives are everything, praise the Emperor. Through them and their output, we hallow and honour him. Vannick Hive would no more destroy itself than we would.”

Many around the chart table averred.

“Brave words,” Grizmund said. “But if this hive was conquered, Emperor save us… Would you let it fall into the hands of the enemy?”

Various voices rose in anger, but Gaunt’s words cut them to quiet. “I’m sure the general here is not questioning any loyalties. And he may have a point, but I think it doubtful Vannick Hive succumbed to anything other than an invader’s wrath.”

“But why?” barked Croe. “Again it comes back to this question! Invasion, conquest… I can understand those things! But to destroy what you have fought to take? Where is the sense?”

“Marshal, we must face the darkest truth,” said Gaunt. “I have studied the data sent to me concerning this theatre. It seems that Commissar Kowle here has reported millions of foe, an assessment that beggars belief, given the proportional mustering capacity of a hive the size of Ferrozoica. The answer is there. Vervunhive can raise half a million from a forty million population. Zoica can only be raising millions from a population a third the size… if the entire population itself is being used.”

“What?” Anko barked, laughing at the idea.

“Go on, commissar,” Croe said.

“This is not a war of conquest. This is not a hive-war, a commercial spat, a new ‘Trade War’, as you refer to it. Zoica is not massing, arming and rising to conquer and control the hive production of this planet or to subjugate its old rival Vervunhive. They are rising to exterminate it.”

“A taint,” murmured General Nash, slowly understanding.

“Quite so,” Gaunt said. “To turn not just your potential fighting men into an army but your workers and hab families too, that takes a zealot mindset: an infection of insanity, a corruption, a taint. The vile forces of Chaos control Zoica, there can be no doubt. The poison of the warp has overrun your noble neighbour and set every man, woman and child in it on a frenzied path to obliterate the rest of this world and everything on it.”

“In war, best know what enemies are around you in your own camp, before you step out to face the foe and wonder why you do so alone.”

—Warmaster Slaydo, from A
Treatise

on the Nature of Warfare

A party of local troops in blue greatcoats waited for them at the entrance to a dingy shed complex, under the stark-white light of sodium lamps. Their weapons were slung over their shoulders and they wore woollen caps, their spiked helmets dangling from their webbing. They flashed the convoy in through the chain-link gate with dagger-lamps.

Sergeant Mkoll was first into the compound, slewing up his motorbike on the greasy rockcrete skirt and heeling down the kickstand. The heavy machine leaned to the left and rested, its throaty purr cutting off. Mkoll dismounted as the Tanith troop trucks thundered into the yard after him.

Mkoll looked at the manufactory sheds around them. This was a dismal place, but the Tanith had billeted in worse. Despite the thunder of engines and shouts, he sensed a presence behind him and spun before the other could utter a word.

“Steady!” said the figure approaching behind him. He was a tall, well-made man in his twenties, dressed in the local uniform. A captain, his collar pins said. His right arm was bound up tight to his chest in a padded sling, so he wore his greatcoat on one side only, draping it like a cape over the other. Mkoll thought he was lucky that empty sleeve was not a permanent feature.

Mkoll made a brief salute. “Sorry, you caught me by surprise. Sergeant Mkoll, 5th Platoon, Tanith First-and-Only.”

The captain saluted back stiffly with his left hand. Mkoll noticed he was also limping and there were sallow bruises along his forehead, cheek and around his eyes. “Captain Ban Daur, Vervun Primary. Welcome to Vervun-hive.”

Mkoll grunted a curt laugh. He’d never been personally welcomed to a warzone before.

“Can you introduce me to your commanding officer?” Daur asked. “I’ve been given the job of supervising your billet. Not much good for anything else.” He said this with a rueful chuckle and a glance down at his slinged arm.

Mkoll fell in step beside him and they moved through a commotion of men, trucks, diesel fumes and unloading work. They made small, intense, flickering shadows under the harsh lighting gantries overhead.

“You’ve seen action already?” asked Mkoll.

“Nothing to get me a medal,” Daur said. “I was on the ramparts on the first day when the shelling began. Didn’t so much as even see what to shoot at before they took my position down and buried me in rubble. Be a few weeks yet till I’m fit, but I wanted to be useful, so I volunteered for liaison work.”

“So you’ve not even seen the enemy yet?”

Daur shook his head. “Except for People’s Hero Kowle and a few others who made it back from the grasslands, no one has.”

Corbec was standing by his truck, smoking a cigar, gazing placidly around the place, oblivious to the frenzy of activity all about him. He turned slowly, taking in the sheer scale of the hive around him, beyond the glare of the sodium lamp rigs: the towering manufactories and smelteries, the steeples of the work habs beyond them, then the great crest of some Ecclesiarch basilica, and behind it all, the vast structure of the Main Spine, a mind-numbingly huge bulk illuminated by a million or more windows. Big as a fething mountain peak back home on…

On nowhere.
He still forgot, sometimes.

His eyes were drawn to a vast pylon near the Main Spine which rose just as high as the hive-mountain. It seemed to mark the heart of the whole city-hub. Storms of crackling energy flared from its apex, spreading out to feed the flickering green shield that over-arched it all. Corbec had never seen a shield effect this big before. It was quite something. He gazed south and saw the rippling light flashes of shells falling across the Shield, deflecting and exploding harmlessly. Quite something indeed and it looked like it worked.

He took another drag on his cigar and the coal glowed red. The sheer size of this place was going to take a lot of getting used to. He had seen how most of his boys had been struck dumb as they entered the hive, gaping up at the monumental architecture. He knew he had to beat that awe out of them as quickly as possible, or they’d be too busy gazing dumbly to fight.

“Put that out!” a voice ordered crisply behind him.

Corbec turned and for a moment he thought it was Gaunt. But only for a moment. The commissar stalking towards him had nothing of Gaunt’s presence. He had local insignia and his puffy face was pale and unhealthy. Corbec said nothing but simply took the cigar from his mouth and raised one eyebrow. He was a good twenty-five centimetres taller than the black-coated officer.

The man halted a few paces short, taking in the sheer size of Colm Corbec. “Commissar Langana, VPHC. This is a secure area. Put that gakking light out!”