“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!”
Corbec put the cigar back between his lips and, still silent, tapped the colonel’s rank pins on his shoulder braid.
“I…” the man began. Then, thinking better of everything, turned and stalked away.
“Colonel?”
Mkoll was approaching with another local, thankfully regular army-issue rather than one of the tight-arsed political cadre.
“This is Captain Daur, our liaison officer.” Daur snapped his heels together as well as any man with a leg-wound could, and saluted with his left hand. He blinked in surprise when Corbec held out his own left hand without hesitation. Then he shook it. The grip was tight. Daur immediately warmed to this bearded, tattooed brute. He’d taken Daur’s injury in at a glance and compensated without any comment.