He got to his feet, his black fatigues shredded and falling off his body, and stumbled to the nearest stairhead.
Hundreds of men—Tanith, Roane and Vervun Primary—fled the Wall fortifications and Ontabi Gate and ran for cover in the streets and habs adjacent to the docks. Enemy shelling and beam-fire were punching clean through the Wall and the fort structure now and blasting into the edges of the worker habs. The Shield, ignited above them, mocked the scene. What good was an energy screen when the enemy was blasting through ceramite and adamantium?
Stretches of the habs were engulfed in flame and thousands of hab-dwellers filled the streets in panic, mingling with the fleeing soldiery, choking the access routes and transits in a panicked stampede. Hass East Fort convulsed and collapsed volcanically, the great hatches of Ontabi Gate melting like ice. A breach had been cut in the Curtain Wall of Vervunhive more terrible and more extensive than any damage done so far, even than at the brutalised Veyveyr Railhead.
At Croe Gate, the next main fortification down the Curtain Wall from Hass East, some ten kilometres south of Ontabi, the wall troops and observers watched in incredulous horror as beams of destruction and heavy shelling punished the riverside defences. A plume of fire underlit the storm clouds and blazed up into the sky like a rising sun.
General Nash was at Croe Gate still and he dismally voxed the situation to House Command. He urgently requested significant reinforcements to his position. In the wake of a major breach like this, ground forces couldn’t be far behind.
As if on cue, one of his spotters reported movement on the Vannick Highway, twenty kilometres north-east. Nash used his magnoculars on heat-see and gazed out at the shimmering, green phantoms of tanks and armoured vehicles, thousands of them, roaming towards Ontabi in a spearhead formation.
“I have contacts! Repeat, I have contacts! At least a thousand mechanised armour units advancing down the Vannick Highway and the surrounding hinterlands! They’ll be on top of Hass East in under an hour! Reinforce my position now! I need armour! Lots of bloody armour! House Command! Do you respond? Do you bloody respond?”
An almost eerie silence fell across the main auditorium of House Command. Only the desperate chatter of vox-traffic could be heard, reeling out reports of fearful destruction from a thousand different locations.
His face pinched and pale, Marshal Croe looked down at the chart table on the upper level. Hass East was gone. A mass armour force was approaching from the eastern levels. Artillery was beginning to pound Croe Gate and the eastern wall circuit. Zoican troops were assaulting the Spoil and the defences at Veyveyr. Heavy tanks and infantry columns were hitting Sondar Gate and the wall stretches towards Hass Gate and Hass West Fort. Hass West Fort itself was receiving ferocious ranged shelling.
An attack on all fronts. The defences of Vervunhive were already at full stretch and Croe knew this was only the beginning.
“What—what do we do?” stammered Anko, his face as white as his dress uniform. “Marshal? Marshal Croe? What do we do, Croe? Speak, you bastard!”
Croe struck Anko across his fat mouth and sent him whimpering to the ironwork floor. Croe looked across at Sturm. “Your thoughts, general?” There was venom and ice in equal parts in Croe’s voice.
“I…” Sturm began. He faltered.
“Don’t even begin to suggest an evacuation, Sturm, or I’ll kill you where you stand. Evacuation is not an option. You were sent here to defend Vervunhive, and that’s what you’ll do.” He handed Sturm his ducal signet. “Go to the stockade. Take troops with you. Release Grizmund and set him to command the armour before its strength is wasted. If that bastard Tarrian or any VPHC resists, deal with them. I expect you back at Veyveyr Gate to assume command there as soon as Grizmund is free. We have spent too much time arguing amongst ourselves. Vervunhive lives or dies tonight.”
Sturm nodded stiffly and took the ring. “Where will you be, marshal?”
“I will take personal command of Sondar Gate. The hive will not die while I yet live.”
The shutter hatch of the stockade remained resolutely shut. Gaunt hammered on it with the butt of his bolt pistol, but there was no response. Gaunt, Pater and Bwelt stood pinioned by the floodlights, locked out in the damp cold of Level Sub-40. Captain Daur was with them, bleary and pale with sleep. Gaunt had dragged the liaison officer from his quarters on his way down to the stockade.
Gaunt turned to the advocate, who was wheezing for breath and leaning on his cane after the exertions of the frantic journey down into the bottom of the Spine. “Don’t you have an override, an authorisation?”
Pater held up his badge of office. “Administratum pass level magenta… but the VPHC are a law to themselves. They have their own lock codes. Besides, colonel-commissar, do you see a keyhole?”
Gaunt pulled off his leather coat and threw it to Bwelt. “Hold that,” he said bluntly and swung out his chainsword. The weapon whined as he cycled it up to full power.
He stabbed it at the armoured shutter. It rode aside, shrieking, leaving scratch marks and sending broken saw-teeth away in a flurry of sparks. He dug again and sliced into the metal, cutting a jagged slot a few centimetres across before the sword meshed and over-revved. With the sheer force of his upper arms and his shoulders, Gaunt heaved down, snarling a curse out at the top of his lungs, tearing down another few centimetres.
“Sir?” Daur said sharply behind him.
Gaunt spun around, raising the chainsword, in time to see the armoured lift cage descend and clank to rest. The grill-doors squealed open. General Sturm, flanked by Colonel Gilbear and ten Blueblood stormtroops, emerged from the lift car.
“Sturm, don’t make this worse by—”
“Oh, shut up, you stupid fool, and put that weapon away,” snapped Sturm. He and his men approached and surrounded the quartet at the shutter. Gilbear was oozing a dreadfully superior smile at Gaunt.
“Get him out of my face, Sturm, or I’ll practise what I’m doing to the door on him.”
Gilbear raised his hellgun, but Sturm slapped it aside. “You know, Gaunt,” Sturm said, “I almost respect you. I could do with a few men of your passion in my regiment. But still and all, you are a benighted fool and beneath the contempt of civilised men. You’ve spent too much time with those Tanith savages and—
This last remark was directed at Pater, who was carefully and quietly dictating material for Bwelt to set down on his slate.
“Transcribing your words, general, in case the colonel- commissar wishes to press a slander action against you later on.” The old advocate’s voice was utterly empty of expression or nuance: a true lawyer. Gaunt laughed out loud.
Sturm looked away from the old man. He held up Croe’s ducal signet. “If you want to get inside, you need one of these.” He pressed it against the centre of the shutter. There was a dull thunk, a noise of servos churning and the shutter, with its chainsword tear, rose.
The group entered and Sturm opened the inner shutter. They passed on into the sodium-lit inner hall of the stockade.
