word for it.”
“What is your situation, Hass West? We are trying to direct troop forces to support you.”
Cargin sighed. He was about to tell Baptistry Command he had less than a thousand men left, most of them wounded, at the end of their ammo supplies, with no artillery support, and an ocean of enemy on all sides. He was about to estimate they could hold on another hour at the most.
The estimate would have been inaccurate by fifty-nine and a half minutes. Anglon grabbed Cargin’s arm, shouting out as fierce lights blinked and fizzled in dark recesses down the centre of the pyramid side facing them. The vast Zoican vehicle shuddered and then retched huge, searing beams of plasma energy at Hass West Fort: cutting beams, like the ones that had dissected Ontabi Gate, but larger still and far more powerful, energy weapons of a scale usually seen in the fleet engagements of naval flagships. The roar was deafening, sending out a Shockwave that was felt kilometres away.
Hass West Fort and the gate it protected were obliterated. Cargin, Anglon and all the remaining defenders were disintegrated in one blinding instant. As the cutting beams faded, rocket and gunnery platforms all across the pyramid opened fire and piled destruction on the ruins. The air stank with ozone and static and fycelene. For half a kilometre in each direction, the Curtain Wall collapsed.
The pyramid machine began to trundle forward again, inching towards the dying hive, blaring the Heritor’s name over and again.
Gaunt woke with a start, his mind spinning. Sleep had taken away his immediate fatigue, but every atom of his body ached and throbbed. It took him a moment to remember where he was. How long had he been asleep?
He clambered to his feet. The sacristy was chilly and silent, the Ecclesiarch choir long since finished.
Merity Chass stood nearby, gazing at the friezes of the Imperial cult. She wore his long overcoat and nothing else. She looked round at him and smiled. “You’d better get dressed. They probably need you.”
Gaunt recovered his shirt and boots and pulled them on. He could still taste her on his lips. He stared at her for a moment more. She was… beautiful. If he didn’t have a reason to fight for Vervunhive before, he did now. He would not allow this girl to perish.
He sat down on the pew and laughed to himself dryly.
“What?” she asked.
Gaunt shook his head. Such thoughts! He had committed the cardinal sin of any good officer. He’d placed his emotions in the firing line. Even now, he could hear Oktar’s dirty chuckle in his mind, scolding him for becoming attached to anyone or anything. Over the years they had spent campaigning together, Gaunt had seen Oktar leave many tearful women behind as he moved on to the next warzone.
“Don’t get involved, Ibram, not with anything. If you don’t care, you won’t care, and that makes the hardest parts of this army life that much easier. Do what you must, take what you need and move on. Never look back, never regret and never remember.”
Gaunt buttoned his shirt. He realised, perhaps for the first time, that he had broken with Oktar’s advice a long time since. When he had met the Tanith and had brought them as Ghosts from the deathfires of their world, he had started to care. He decided he didn’t see it as a weakness. In that one thing, old Oktar had been wrong. Caring for the Ghosts, for the cause, for the fight, or for anyone, made him what he was. Without those reasons, without an emotional investment, he would have walked away or put a gun-muzzle in his mouth years before.
Gaunt got to his feet and found his cap, his gloves and his weapon belt.
He was trying to remember the furious notions that had woken him. Ideas, whirling…
Daur burst into the sacristy. “Commissar! Sir, we—” Daur saw the naked woman cloaked in the overcoat and stopped in his tracks. He turned away, flushing.
“A moment, captain.”
Gaunt crossed to Merity.
“I must go. When this is over—”
“We’ll either be dead, or we’ll be a noble lady and a soldier once again.”
“Then I thank the Emperor for this precious interlude of equality. Until the hour of my death, however far away that is, I will remember you.”
“I should hope so. And I hope that hour is a long time coming.”
He kissed her mouth, stroked his fingers down her cheek, and then followed Daur out of the sacristy, pulling on his jacket and weapon-harness. At the door, he put on his cap and adjusted the metal rose Lord Chass had given him for honour. It was drooping in his lapel and he straightened it.
“Sorry, sir,” Daur said as Gaunt followed him down the hall.
“Forget it, Ban. You should have woken me earlier.”
“I wanted to give you all the rest you could get, sir.”
“What’s the situation now?”
“A holding pattern as before. Intense fighting on all fronts. The enemy has taken the north shore. And Hass West fell a few minutes ago.”
“Damn!” Gaunt growled. They strode into the bustle of the Baptistry Command Centre. Additional cogitators and vox-sets had been added over night. Over three hundred men and women from Vervun Primary, the Administratum and the guilds now crewed them, working in concert with dozens of servitors. Major Otte was occupying “the Font,” as the command station was now known. Intendant Banefail and members of his elite staff assisted the major.
Many saluted as Gaunt entered the chamber. He acknowledged the greetings while taking in the details of the main hololithic display.
“Just before it fell, Hass West reported seeing a massive mobile structure moving in towards them. We’re fairly sure it is their main command vehicle.”
Gaunt spotted the marker on the display. The thing was certainly huge, and now close to the western extremity of the Wall. “The marker code… ‘spike’?”
Banefail joined them. The distinguished lord was almost dead on his feet with fatigue. “My fault, commissar. I referred to it as a bloody great spike, and the word stuck.”
“It’ll do. What do we know about it?”
“It’s a massive weapon, but slow moving,” Major Otte said, crossing the floor to Gaunt. “I guess we can assume it’s well armoured too.”
“What makes you think it’s the command element?”
“It’s the only one we’ve sighted,” Daur said, “and its size clearly indicates its importance.”
“More than that,” Banefail said, gesturing at a vox-set manned by a female Administratum cleric, two servitors and a withered astropath. “It’s the source of the chatter.”
Gaunt glanced at the woman operating the set. She dialled up the speaker and the air filled briefly with the coded, incessant growl of the enemy.
“The enemy vox-traffic unites them all,” lisped the pallid astropath thickly. Gaunt tried not to look at him and the festoon of data-plugs stapled into his translucent scalp.
