different directions, though not before checking they had set their micro-beads to the same channel.
Ormon joined Mkoll as the sergeant led his group of MkVenner, Domor, Larkin and Rilke up shattered internal stairways to the third storey overlooking the slag heap. Nine Spoilers were stationed at the shattered windows up here, using scopes to watch the sleek slopes of the Spoil.
The Ghosts took position amongst them.
Larkin and Rilke, both armed with sniper-variant lasguns, set themselves up carefully. Rilke used a length of pipe to disguise the end of his gun as it protruded from the wall. Larkin covered his own gun down to the muzzle under loose sacks.
Domor took Mkoll’s scope, set it up on a tripod stand in the shadow of a window and linked his mechanical eyes to the sight. He could now see further and clearer than anyone in the fortification.
Ormon was about to ask Mkoll a question when he realised he and the Ghost called MkVenner had vanished.
Mkoll and MkVenner moved invisibly down the Spoil slope, their capes spread over them. The coal-like ore-refuse was wet and slimy underfoot. They were outside the protection of the Shield and the night rain fell around them, making puddles amongst the rock waste.
They raised their scopes. Beyond the Spoil, two kilometres away, they saw the open, flat land and the blasted habs beyond. The heavy rain was creating standing water on the flat soil and the water was rippling like dimpled tin with the rainfall. Visibility was down and cloud cover was descending.
There was a sound. MkVenner armed his lasgun and Mkoll crawled forward.
It was singing. Chanting. From out in the enemy positions, via loudhailers and speakers, a foul hymn of Chaos was ringing out to answer the triumph hymns of the hive.
It grew louder.
Mkoll and MkVenner shuddered.
In the ore-works behind them, Ormon felt his bladder vice and hurried away.
At his position, Larkin tensed. He was weary from the day’s nerve-shredding battle and had only been sent in with Mkoll’s men because of his skills as a sniper.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the face, the face of the Zoican.
Now, from below, down the length of the Spoil, he could hear them.
The Zoican filth were singing a name over and over, in a canon repeat.
THE HERITOR
—Transcript of last broadcast from Ryxus V,
the first “inherited” world
Level Sub-40 was almost a kilometre underground, deep in the foundation structure of the Main Spine. An armoured lift cage with grilled sides transported Gaunt down the last three hundred metres, lowering him into an underworld of dark, damp stone, stale air and caged sodium lamps.
He entered an underground concourse where ground water dripped from the pipework roof onto the concrete floor and rusting chains dangled over piles of mildewed refuse. Along one side was a row of wooden posts with shackle-loops at wrist height. The wall behind the posts was stippled with bullet pocks and darkly stained.
Gaunt approached an adamantine shutter marked with yellow chevrons. Rockcrete bunkers stood on either side of the shutter, blank except for letterbox slits set high up.
As he moved forward, automatic spotlights mounted above the hatch snapped on and bathed him with blue-white light.
“Identify!” a voice crackled out of a vox-relay.
“Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt,” Gaunt replied curtly, reeling off his serial number afterwards.
“Your business?”
“lust open the shutter.”
There was a brief pause, then the great metal hatch screeched open. Gaunt stepped through and found himself facing a second shutter. The one behind him slammed shut before the inner one would open.
Inside the stockade, a caged walkway led down into a dispatch area with an open-sided shower stall and low tables for searching through personal effects. The sodium lamps gave the foetid, recirculated air a frosty hue.
Guards moved out of side bunkers to meet him. They were all VPHC troopers dressed in black shirts, black, peaked caps, graphite-grey breeches and black boots. Each one wore orange arm-bands and wide, black, leather belts with riot-batons and cuffs dangling from them. Three carried pump-action shotguns.
“Grizmund,” Gaunt told them briefly. He allowed himself to be frisked and handed over his bolt pistol. Two of the guards then led him through a series of cage doors with remotely activated electric locks, down the austere, red-washed hallways of the cell-block. There was an astringent ammonia stink of open drains, with a mouldering aftertaste of deep rock and soil. Every sound rang out and echoed.
Grizmund and the four officers arrested with him were sharing a large communal holding tank. They still wore their mustard-brown Narmenian uniforms, but caps, belts, laces and all rank pins had been removed.
Grizmund met Gaunt at the cage door. The VPHC guards refused to open it, so they were forced to talk through the bars.
“I’m glad to see you,” Grizmund said. He was pale, and there was a dark look of anger in his eyes. “Get us out of this.”
“Tell me what happened. In your own words,” Gaunt said.
Grizmund paused, then shrugged. “We were ordered to Veyveyr. Thanks to the gross idiocy of House Command organisation, the routes were blocked. I took my column off the roadway and headed on to the gate through an industrial sector. Next thing I knew, the VPHC were heading me off.”
“Did you disobey any direct order?”
“I was ordered to Veyveyr,” the man repeated. “I was told to take Arterial Route GH/7m. When I couldn’t get through, I tried to achieve my primary order to reach the appointed frontline.”
“Did you strike a VPHC officer?”
