So far, nothing had been heard of the promised reinforcements from Vannick Hive, the great refinery collective three thousand kilometres away to the east. Vannick had undertaken to provide nine regiments, but thus far the only thing that had come from them was the continued fuel-oil supplies carried by the eastern pipeline. Many in Vervunhive wondered if the forces of Zoica had reached them too.
* * * * *
At dawn on the fourteenth day, lights were seen in the upper atmosphere. Flaring their braking jets, Imperial Guard dropships descended, diverted to the main lift-port at Kannak in the Northern Collective Hives. With the Shield erected, Vervunhive’s central landing field could accept no ships.
The Imperial Guard disembarked at Kannak and then marched south on the tail of the NorthCol forces. The simple sight of their high-orbit adjustments and blazing descents lifted the morale of the battered hive. The Guard was coming.
The Royal Volpone 1st, 2nd and 4th deployed south from Kannak Port swiftly, using the rail link to bring themselves deep into the hive. Marshal Croe personally greeted General Noches Sturm, the decorated victor of Grimoyr, on the rockcrete platform of the North Spine Terminus. A large crowd of politically approved citizens cheered them, under the watchful eyes of the VPHC.
Dressed in shimmering blue gowns, daughters of the noble houses—Merity Chass, Alina Anko, Iona Gavunda and Murdith Croe amongst them—were sent forward to decorate Sturm and his second officers, Colonels Gilbear and Corday, with silk floral wreathes.
Sturm was also greeted by the famous Commissar Kowle. The image of their smiling handshake was repeated on a million public-address plates across the hive.
The 5th and 7th regiments of the Roane Deepers, under General Nash, arrived by rail later that afternoon, amid more pantomime celebrations. Vice Marshal Anko was there to greet Nash and brass bands pomped and trumpeted the arrival. Amid the jubilation, Nash was able to confirm that three full regiments of Narmenian Armour were off-loading from carriers at the Kannak Port landing fields and would be en route south by dawn. The crowd rose, cheering the news, hailing the honoured Guard arrivals like they had already won the war.
The Tanith First-and-Only arrived by road, almost unnoticed, two nights later.
More than eighty matt-black troop trucks rumbled down the NorthCol highway through the northern outhabs of Vervunhive. The canvas tilts had been removed and around thirty Tanith troopers rode in each, crouched down with their weapons, webbing, haversacks, musette bags and bedrolls gathered to them. The bouncing trucks—six-wheelers with large, snarling front grills and pop-eye headlamps—bore the quadruple chevron cab-marks of NorthCol Utility Transport Division Three. Jerry cans and spare wheels were slung to their sides on sponson fittings.
A dozen outriders astride black-drab motorcycles ran along their flanks, and behind the main column came thirty more high-cabbed eight-wheelers laden with ammunition crates and regimental supplies, as well as the numerous cooks, armourers, mechanics, servitors and other attendant hangers-on that followed a Guard regiment on the move. These freighters were dull yellow, the livery of the Kannak Port Cargo Union, and netting was draped over their payloads. NorthCol soldiers in pale blue overalls and forage caps drove all the trucks, but the outriders were Tanith, in their distinctive dark battledress. Twelve kilometres short of Vervunhive, they paused to trickle through a checkpoint on the highway and they gained a vanguard of two dark-blue staff cars crewed by VPHC officers to lead them in.
All the headlamps in the convoy were blazing. Night had fallen sometime, unnoticed in the thick wallow of smoke. The only sights were the battered districts to either side, the fuzzy green glow of the hive itself—partly obscured by the smoke—and the occasional flash and flare of long- range shells falling into the outer habs they raced through.
Brin Milo, the youngest Ghost, rode with the rest of number one platoon in the lead truck. A slender, pale youth just now filling out with adult bulk, he had been the only non- soldier saved from the ruins of Tanith when their homeworld was overrun and destroyed four years earlier. The commissar himself had saved his life and dragged him from the fires that burned Tanith away.
For a long while, he had been “The Boy,” the company mascot, the piper, a little piece of Tanith innocence saved from hell, a reminder to all of the men of the place they had lost. But six months before, during the battle for Monthax, he had finally become a soldier too. He was proud of his issued equipment and lasgun, and he kept his pack in better order than any of the seasoned Tanith troopers.
He sat huddled in the cramped rear-bay of the rattling truck and polished the regimental crest on his black beret with a rag of gun-cloth.
“Milo.”
Brin looked up at Trooper Larkin opposite him. A wiry, taut- skinned man in his early fifties, Larkin was as well-known for his neurotic personality as his skill as the regiment’s most able sniper. The long, specialised shape of his marksman’s lasgun was sheathed in a canvas roll at his feet. Larkin had produced his gun-scope and was training it like a spyglass out of the truck. Larkin had once told Milo that he didn’t trust anything he hadn’t seen first through his beloved scope.
“Larkin?”
Larkin grinned and looked back, handing the delicate brass instrument to the youth, gently. From the tiny runes glowing on the setting dial, Milo noticed it was fixed to heat- see.
“Take a look. That way.”
Milo squinted into the scope, resting the rubberised cup to his eye-socket. He saw radiance and bewildering crosshair markers of floating red.
“What am I looking at?”
“The hive, boy, the hive.”
Milo looked again. He realised the radiance was the yellow dome of the Shield, a vast energy field that enveloped the unseen city-hive ahead.
“Looks big enough and ugly enough to look after itself,” he suggested.
“The same is said for so many of us,” Colonel Corbec said, holding on to the truck’s iron tilt-hoops as he edged down to Milo and Larkin. “Velvethive is in a pretty fix, so they say.”
“That’s Vervunhive, chief,” Trooper Burun said from nearby.
“Feth you, clever-ass!” Corbec tossed back at the grinning soldier. “Feth knows I can barely remember me own name most days, let alone where I’m supposed to be!”
First platoon laughed.
Milo held the scope up to Corbec, who waved it off with disinterest.
“I’ll meet the place that’ll kill me when I meet it. Don’t need to look for it in advance.”
Milo gave the precious scope back to Larkin, who took a final look and then slid the instrument back into its drawstring bag.
“Seen enough, Larks?” Corbec asked, his vast arms gripping the overhead frame, his beard split by a toothy grin.
“Seen enough to know where to aim,” Larkin replied.
