Contents

Cover

Straight Silver – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

One

Up the line to the Naeme

‘It’s all a matter of ratios.’

– Savil Fep Lyntor-Sewq, Supreme Commander, Aexe Alliance Forces, on reviewing casualty lists

The hulking lift-carriers had dispersed them onto lush green paddocks near a place they had been told was called Brunsgatte. They could see the city skyline in the distance, through leafy woodland and the low-rise roofs of outer boroughs. Some time that morning it had rained, but now the day was warm and clear and felt like spring.

Everything had come off in the paddocks: infantry, heavy support, munitions, supplies, even the disorderly, unofficial ranks of camp followers. Processions of big, dirty-sided trucks had begun to lurch onto the grass to gather them all up and transport them to the railhead. Two kilometres away, over the woodland, the drop-ships of the Krassian Sixth were visible in the air, gliding down onto their own assembly points.

Trooper Caffran of the Tanith First-and-Only wandered slowly away from the landing zone, where the grass was bent over by jetwash, and stood by a hedge, overlooking the belt of woods. He sort of liked this place already. There were trees. There was greenery.

Caffran, first name Dermon, was twenty-four standard years old. He was short but well-made, with a blue dragon tattooed on his temple. He had been born and bred on Tanith, a forest world that no longer existed. Caffran was an Imperial Guardsman – a highly effective one, according to his formal record.

He wore the standard issue kit of a Tanith soldier: cross-laced black boots, black fatigue trousers and blouse over standard issue vest and shorts, with webbing – which supported his field pouches and a plump musette bag – and lightweight, matt-grey cloth armour. A tight, black buckle-under helmet made of ceramite swung from his waist belt beside his warknife. On his collars he wore the skull and dagger crest of the Tanith First and around his shoulders was draped a camo cloak, the signature item of the Tanith regiment, the so-called ‘Ghosts’.

A heavy pack was slung from his back. His standard pattern Mark III lasrifle, its stock and furniture made of nalwood, as were all Tanith-stamped lasguns, hung on a fylon sling over his shoulder.

Caffran could smell rain and beech-mast on the air, the wet odours of a woodland floor. Just for a second, the smell was unbearably evocative. His heart struggled to accommodate the feelings.

He glanced back to see if he was missed, but there already seemed some delay in loading the regiment onto the trucks. Engines idled and grumbled, and an occasional wheel spun in the muddy grass that the convoy was quickly chewing up. Local military had pegged out assembly points on the paddock with metal tent stakes and twine, but seeing the wait, few of the Tanith had stayed in their sections. Some sat on the grass. A few dropped their packs and started kicking a ball around. Stewards in long, tan greatcoats hurried about, shouting instructions, directing trucks and trying to gather guardsmen together as if they were escaped poultry.

At the end of the hedge, Caffran found a brick-paved path that ran away under an avenue of grey-barked trees. These paddocks were clearly a municipal park, he realised, turned into a makeshift landing zone.

There were benches facing the path, and he sat down on one in damp shade of the avenue trees. It was nice, he thought. Sure, the trees had none of the grandeur of Tanith trees, but still.

He wondered how Tona was doing. She was his girl, though she was a fellow trooper too. Tona had come in on a different carrier because they were in different squads now. Sergeant Criid. It still made him chuckle. Another first for the First-and-Only.

Between every other tree in the avenue, there was a large, smooth cube of white stone. Each had a faded oblong patch on the side facing the path. Caffran wondered what they were. Markers of some sort, maybe.

He heard someone coming up behind him and turned. It was Commissar Hark, the regiment’s political officer. Caffran grabbed up his pack hurriedly and stood, but Hark waved him down with a relaxed hand. Sometimes Hark could be a bastard disciplinarian, but only when it mattered, and it clearly didn’t matter now. He gave the bench a quick brush with his gloved hand and sat down next to Caffran, curtseying the tails of his stormcoat over his thighs so he could cross his legs.

‘Some kind of general balls-up,’ he said, indicating the dispersal area behind them with a sideways nod. ‘I don’t know. There’s about twenty trucks packed with our people just sitting there, trying to leave the park. No wonder the war here’s been going on for forty years. They can’t even organise their way out of a field.’

Caffran smiled.

‘Still,’ said Hark, ‘a chance to take the air. You had the right idea.’

‘Thought I was about to get a reprimand,’ said Caffran.

Hark glanced over at him and raised his eyebrows in a ‘you never know’ expression. Viktor Hark was a sturdy man, strong but fleshy from years of good living. His eyes were slightly hooded and his clean shaven cheeks slabby. He took off his commissariate cap and fiddled with the lining, revealing thick, cropped black hair on a skull that rose like the round tip of bullet from his broad neck.

‘They’ve been at it forty years, sir?’ Caffran asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Hark, gazing out through the trees at the rise and fall of lift-carriers at another dispersal field in the middle distance. ‘Forty fething years. What do you think of that?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about it at all, sir. I know this planet is called Aexe Cardinal, and that city over there is called Brunsgatte. Apart from that…’

‘There’ll be briefings, Caffran, don’t worry. You’re a guest of a nation called Aexegary, the chief amongst seven nation states that are at war with the Republic of Shadik. The brigade is here to bolster their forces and show Shadik how war really works.’

Caffran nodded. He didn’t really care much, but it wasn’t often he got to have a conversation with Hark.

‘We’re fighting a nation, then, sir?’

‘No, we’re fighting the same arch-enemy as ever. Chaos got its filthy claws into Shadik some time back, trying to use it as a foothold to conquer the entire planet.’

‘I guess it’s pretty impressive they’ve held them off so long,’ Caffran ventured.

Hark shrugged. They were silent for a moment, then Hark said, ‘How do you think that girl of yours will do?’

‘Criid? I think she’ll do fine, sir.’

‘Bit of a gamble, giving a woman squad command, but Gaunt agrees it’s worth it. Besides, we needed a Verghast to take the reins of Kolea’s unit. You think she can take the pressure?’

‘Easily. It’s everyone else I’d worry about. Keeping up with her.’

Hark sniggered and put his cap back on. ‘My appraisal precisely. Still, it’s going to be interesting. Three new sergeants to test in the field.’

Criid wasn’t the only trooper to have been promoted into dead men’s boots after the tour on Phantine. A Verghast called Arcuda had been given charge of Indrimmo’s platoon, and Raglon had been posted to lead Adare’s. Best luck to all three, Caffran felt. Indrimmo had died at Cirenholm, and Adare had been killed during the penetration raid at Ouranberg. Kolea, one of the best loved Verghast troopers, wasn’t dead, but a head wound during the final phase of fighting at Ouranberg had robbed him of memory and identity. He could still function, physically, but Gol Kolea wasn’t living in Gol Kolea’s body any more. He was a trooper now, serving under Criid as part of his old squad.

Tragic is what it was.

‘I see the old heroes and worthies of Aexegary have gone back to fight the war,’ Hark said.

‘Sir?’

The commissar pointed at the white stone blocks under the trees. ‘Those plinths. The statues have been removed. Even the placards. Recycled. Melted down for the war effort. Whoever used to stand on top of those is probably shrieking towards the Shadik lines right now as part of a shell case. Aexegary is on its last legs, Caffran. Drained to the limit. We got here just in time.’

‘Sir.’

‘I hope,’ Hark added. ‘Maybe they’re already dead, just still twitching. Guess we’ll find out.’

His tone was flippant, but his words made Caffran uneasy. No one wants to get into a fight that’s already lost.

Whistles started to blow up on the field. They looked round and saw things were beginning to move. Stewards were urging Ghost troops onto the trucks.

‘Up and at ’em,’ Hark said, rising. He dusted his coat down as Caffran hoisted up his bergen.

‘Do me a favour,’ Hark said. ‘Loop back down this path and check there are no stragglers. I’ll hold your transport for you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

As Hark walked back up the grass to the LZ, Caffran went the opposite way down the path, covering the trees and the line of the hedge. He found Derin and Costin leaning against a vacant plinth smoking lho-sticks.

‘Look sharp,’ Caffran said. ‘We’re moving at last.’

Both of them cursed.

‘And Hark’s on the prowl.’

Derin and Costin finished their smokes and gathered up their kit.

‘Coming, Caff?’ Derin asked.

‘Be there in a sec,’ he replied, and continued down the pathway, leaving them to wander back to the assembly areas.

It all seemed clear. Caffran was about to turn back himself when he spotted a lone figure right down at the edge of the adjoining paddock, lurking under a small stand of trees.

As he jogged closer, he could see who it was: Larkin.

The regiment’s master sniper was so lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t hear Caffran approach. He seemed to be listening to the rustle of the breeze through the branches above him. His kit and his bagged long-las were piled up on the grass beside him.

Caffran slowed his pace to a walk. Larkin had never been the most stable of the Tanith, but he’d become particularly withdrawn and distant since Bragg’s death.

Everyone had been fond of Try Again Bragg. It was hard not to be. Genial and good-natured, almost gentle, he’d used his famous size and strength to great effect as a heavy weapons specialist… never mind his terrible aim, which had earned him the nickname. Bragg had fallen to enemy fire at Ouranberg and everyone missed him. He’d seemed to be one of the regiment’s permanent features, immovable, like bedrock. His death had robbed them all of something. Confidence perhaps. Even the most gung-ho Ghosts had stopped believing they would live forever.

Bragg had been Larkin’s closest friend. They’d been a double act, the wiry sniper and the giant gunner, like Clarco and Clop, the clowns in the Imperial mystery plays. Larkin had taken the big man’s death hardest of all, probably, Caffran guessed, because Larkin hadn’t been there. The sniper had been part of the penetration mission, sent in ahead of the main force, and by the time he had been picked up and returned to the Ghost’s ranks, Bragg was already dead.

‘Larks?’ Caffran began.

The knife was there in a blink. Larkin’s Tanith warknife, its straight silver blade thirty centimetres long. It appeared as fast as one of Varl’s barrack room sleight-of-hand tricks. Caffran saw the blade, and the fear in Larkin’s eyes.

‘Feth!’ he said, backing off, his hands raised. ‘Steady!’

It seemed to take a moment for Larkin to recognise Caffran. He blinked, swallowed, then shook his head and put the knife away with a hand Caffran could see was shaking.

‘Sorry, Caff,’ Larkin said. ‘You made me jump.’

‘I did that,’ agreed Caffran, raising his eyebrows. ‘You okay?’

Larkin had turned aside and was gazing away into nothing again.

‘Larks?’

‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’

‘About what?’

‘Nothing. You… on your own?’

Caffran looked about. ‘Yeah. Hark sent me to gather everyone up. We’re rousting out.’

Larkin nodded. He seemed a little more composed. It was often hard to tell with Mad Hlaine Larkin. He picked up his bergen and rested his sniper weapon over his shoulder.

‘You sure you’re okay?’ Caffran asked.

‘Jumpy. Always get jumpy before a show. Got me an ill feeling about…’

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Caffran.

Larkin murmured something that Caffran didn’t catch and hooked the little silver aquila he wore round his neck out so he could kiss it.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the Emperor’s even watching.’

At the park gates, the reason for the convoy’s slow departure became evident. The Aexegarian people had come out to greet the liberators. They thronged around the gates, filling nearby streets, blocking the route with a mass of cheering bodies, despite the best efforts of the local arbites to control them. From the back of the troop trucks, the crowd was a sea of waving blue and gold flags, with the odd Imperial crest pennant mixed in. At least three brass bands were vying for attention. Hab-wives held babies up to the sides of the creeping transports, calling to the guardsmen to touch them and make them lucky. Local hierachs in full regalia had come out to bless the off-worlders, and the district mayor had arrived with a delegation of selectmen. Blue and gold bunting threaded the rockcrete lampposts, chirring in the breeze. The mayor’s aides cornered the first Tanith officer to emerge from the park, and dragged him off to be presented to the mayor, who granted him the freedom of the city, strung garlands round his neck and generally shook his hand off on the assumption that he was in charge. He wasn’t. He was Sergeant Varl of nine platoon who had just happened to get his men onto a truck first. Varl was quite enjoying the attention until he was asked to address the crowd.

It took over three hours to get the Tanith from their LZ to the railhead. The massive convoy finally shook free of the crowds and moved off through an industrial suburb of Brunsgatte where long straight avenues of identical red-brick habitat blocks alternated with guild halls, labourers’ welfare clubs and shabby grey manufactories. It started to rain along the way, a shower at first and then heavier and heavier until the downpour hid the receding towers of the city and obscured the great palace overlooking it all.

In the rain, the railhead was a blur of steam. Troop trains, converted from livestock wagons, were lined up in siding areas, their maroon locomotives panting wet heat and hissing out vapours of sooty fumes. Tractors with fat bowser tanks watered the boilers, and mechanised chutes fed gleaming floods of coke straight into the tenders.

The air smelled of coal-tar. Whistles shrilled. The Tanith exited the trucks and huddled under dripping temporary awnings as the local militia moved amongst them, issuing embarkation numbers. Heavy equipment and vehicles were loaded aboard freight trains with wide conflat wagons. From under the awnings, the Tanith waved and exchanged cat-calls with the Krassian troops mustering on the far side of the tracks. The regiments had fought together at Ouranberg. Old friendships – and rivalries – were renewed.

Ditching the military staff car that had brought him from the LZ, Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt strode in through the steam and the bustle. The liaison officer appointed to him, a Major Nyls Fep Buzzel, scurried to keep up. Buzzel was a short, plump man who kept his right hand stiffly in the pocket of his green overcoat, and Gaunt presumed him to be an invalid veteran. As Gaunt understood the circumstances on Aexe Cardinal, all able-bodied men not in reserved occupations were at the front. The fronts, he corrected himself. This was a global war, with theatres to the north and west of Aexegary, along the sovereign states of the southern oceans, and in the east.

Buzzel was pleasant enough. He wore an officer’s cap with cockade made from some sort of plumage. The feather was wilting in the rain. He’d said something about serving with the Bande Sezari, a name he mentioned with pride as if to suggest it was something special, but Gaunt had never heard of it.

‘When do I see data-slates? Tacticals? Charts of disposition?’ Gaunt asked as he strode along.

‘There will be time, sir!’ Buzzel replied, side-stepping a munition cart.

Gaunt stopped and looked at the Aexegarian. ‘I’m moving my troops to the front line, major. I’d like to have a feel for that area at least before they get there.’

‘We will be breaking the transit to Rhonforq, the allied staff headquarters, sir. Briefing dossiers have been forwarded there.’

‘Are these cattle trucks?’ Gaunt asked, banging the side of the nearest wagon.

‘Yes, but–’ Buzzel began before realising Gaunt was already moving again.

‘Sergeant Bray! Secure those tent rolls!’ Gaunt called.

‘Sir!’

‘Obel? Ewler? Which train are you supposed to be on? Look at the dockets, for feth’s sake!’

‘Yes sir!’

‘Varl? Nice speech. You’re missing a few of your mob. I saw them down past the gangers’ huts, smoking and dicing.’

‘Right on it, sir!’

Buzzel watched the colonel-commissar curiously. Apparently, he was quite a war hero, so they said. Tall, imposing in his black leather stormcoat and commissariate cap, with a face like… like his name. Narrow, sculptural, noble. Buzzel reflected sourly that he didn’t know what a war hero was meant to look like. Sixteen years of front-line service and he’d never met one.

He liked Gaunt’s manner. Authoritative, brisk, disciplined, and he still seemed to know every man by name.

‘Daur!’

A handsome young Tanith captain rushing past stopped to salute Gaunt.

‘You making any sense of this?’

Captain Daur nodded, producing a data-slate. ‘I borrowed this from one of the local marshals,’ he said. ‘Makes more sense than a lot of whistle blowing and shouting.’

‘Let me look,’ said Gaunt and reviewed the slate.

‘Managing all right?’ he asked as he read.

‘Yes sir. Trying to find Grell’s platoon. They should be aboard C Train already, but they’ve been lost in the mix.’

Gaunt turned and pointed. ‘I saw them over there, behind the signal gantries, helping to load munition crates from a stalled tractor.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Daur said as he took back the slate and hurried off.

‘A car has been prepared for you in Train A,’ Buzzel said, but Gaunt wasn’t listening.

‘Surgeon Curth? What’s the problem?’

A woman had appeared. She was young and wore a borrowed rain-slicker over her red medicae overalls. A stern expression gave her appealing, heart-shaped face a hard edge.

‘All the regimental medical supplies have gone walkabout, Gaunt,’ she said. Buzzel was surprised to hear her use the colonel-commissar’s surname without the respect of rank.

‘Have you looked around?’

‘We’ve all looked around. Dorden’s hopping mad.’

Buzzel stepped forward. ‘If I may, sir… the medical supplies would have been loaded onto Train E along with consumables. That’s already on its way.’

‘There’s your answer, Ana,’ said Gaunt. ‘Aexegarian efficiency is a step ahead of you.’

The woman smiled and disappeared into the mêlée of hurrying bodies.

Gaunt moved on, jumping down off the rockcrete platform so he could walk down the side of a troop train along the gravelly sleeper bed. Tanith troops pressed themselves eagerly against the wagon window slits and dangled like apes out of the doorways, clapping their hands and chanting his name. ‘Gaunt! Gaunt! Gaunt!’

Gaunt made a mock bow, doffed his cap to them and then stood again, clapping back at them. There were cheers.

‘Soric! Mkoll! Haller! Domor! My thanks to your men for that warm support! Are you ready to move?’

A chorus of ‘Ayes!’

‘We’re ready, sir!’ called a thickset, older sergeant with one eye.

‘Good for you, Soric. Tell your boys to get as comfortable as they can. It’s a six-hour ride.’

‘Aye, sir!’

‘It’s only four hours to Rhonforq, sir,’ whispered Buzzel.

‘I know. But if they steel themselves for six, four will seem like nothing. It’s called psychology,’ Gaunt whispered back.

He turned to face the train again. ‘Sergeant Domor?’

‘Sir!’ replied a soldier with bulky augmetic optical implants.

‘Where’s Milo?’

‘Here, sir!’

A lad appeared in the crowded wagon doorway, the youngest Tanith Buzzel had yet seen.

‘Milo… pipe us on our way,’ Gaunt said. The boy nodded and, after a few moments, a wailing, haunting note rose up above the frenetic activity. Buzzel recognised the tune: The old Imperial hymn ‘Behold! the Triumph of Terra’.

Three tracks away, Colm Corbec, colonel and second officer of the Tanith regiment, heard the pipes as he slammed the wagon’s side-door shut and dropped the latch.

Corbec was an oak of a man, bearded and hairy limbed, with a fighting temper and a playful good humour that made him beloved of the men.

‘Ah, the pipes,’ he sighed. ‘Magnifying the glory of Terra to the heavens in bitter-sweet lament.’

‘You talk a lot of old feth sometimes, chief,’ said Muril, the sniper in Corbec’s squad, and the other troopers laughed. Muril was a Verghastite, one of a host of men and women recruited from the city of Vervunhive to bolster the original Tanith strength. The divided loyalties and cultural differences of the two sides – Tanith and Verghast – had taken a long time to gel, but now they seemed to be pulling together as one fluid unit and for that Corbec was grateful. They’d fought well together, mixed well, complemented each other’s strengths, but as far as Corbec was concerned, the real breakthrough had come when they’d started using each other’s curse words. Once he’d heard Verghastites saying ‘Feth!’ and Tanith saying ‘Gak!’ he’d known they were home and dry.

Muril was one of his favourite troopers. Like many of the female Verghast volunteers, she’d excelled at marksmanship and had specialised as a sniper. Her bagged long-las lay beside her on the straw-littered floor of the wagon and the grey silk marksman’s lanyard was displayed between the third button of her field jacket and the stud of the left-hand breast pocket. Muril was tall and lean, with long dark hair that she kept pinned back in a bun, and a slender, sharp-nosed face framing knowing dark eyes and a refreshing smile. Corbec had seen her injured during the fight for Cirenholm. In fact, he’d almost got himself killed dragging her to safety. Despite the fact the surgeon had been required to rebuild her pelvis, she had recovered a fething sight quicker than he had.

He was still shaky, still weak, though he put a brave face on it. Several people had commented on how much weight he had lost. I’m old, Corbec told himself. Recovery takes longer for a man of my distinguished years.

Old in so many ways, he reflected. Sehra Muril was as lovely as any girl he had courted back in his oat-sowing days in County Pryze, but he appreciated she was quite out of his league now. He knew several young troopers were competing for her attention. Muril paid Corbec attention all right, but he was rather afraid he knew that look. The look a girl would give her father.

Mkoll, the regiment’s chief scout, had told Corbec that Muril had put in for scout training. If she was successful, Corbec would lose her, but he didn’t begrudge it. Stealth scouts were the Tanith First’s forte, and so far no Verghastite had made the grade. Mkoll was doing his best to bring some of them up to scratch, and if one of those was going to be Sehra Muril, Corbec was determined to be nothing but fething proud.

The train lurched and then began to roll. Corbec shot out a hand to steady himself against the wagon’s side.

He pulled his dog-eared tarot pack from his blouse pocket and grinned. ‘Okay, lads and lasses. Who’s for a game of Strip Solon Naked?’

Train E pulled out, rattling as it hunted over the multiple points and gained speed.

Major Elim Rawne, third officer of the regiment under Gaunt and Corbec, sat back in the first troop wagon and accepted a lho-stick from his adjutant, Feygor.

‘What do you reckon to this one, major?’ Feygor asked.

Feygor was a vicious whip of a man, tall and thin, who had allied himself to Rawne right from the off. Some said they had a murky history that went back to their days on Tanith. They were alike. Rawne was handsome, in the way that weapons and snakes are handsome. Slim but well-built, Rawne had a fine profile and eyes that, as Corbec put it, could charm the drawers off a Sororitas nun. When this comment had filtered back to Rawne, his only remark had been, ‘Oh. Do they wear drawers?’

Rawne hated Gaunt. It was that simple. He hated him for a number of things, but foremost he hated him for letting the Tanith homeworld die. But it was an old hatred, and it had become feeble with neglect. These days, he tolerated Gaunt. Even so, most of the troops thought Rawne was the nastiest piece of work the Tanith First could offer.

They were wrong.

Murtan Feygor had got his throat shot away during the fight for Vervunhive, and his every word came flat and monotone through a speech enhancer sewn into his larynx. Since then, he’d sounded permanently sarcastic, though several Ghosts, Varl and Corbec in particular, had opined that it was no great disability because he always had anyway. Fierce as a cornered plague-rat, he was snide and cunning and trusted no one except Rawne.

But he wasn’t the nastiest piece of work the Tanith First could offer either.

Rawne exhaled a long bar of blue smoke as he thought about Feygor’s question. ‘Dug-in war, isn’t it, Murt? Drawn out, old. It’ll be trenches, you mark my words. Fething field fortifications. We’ll spend our time either labouring with nine seventies like common navvies or ducking for cover in some other bastard’s latrine.’

‘I hear you,’ said Feygor with disgust. ‘Fething trenches. Fething nine-seventies.’

A nine-seventy referred to the Imperial Guard’s standard issue entrenching tool: a heavy, compact multi-purpose pick that could be stowed by detaching the helve from the head. Its official name was the ‘Imperial Implement (General Field Fortification) Pattern 970’. Every Ghost wore one in a buttondown leather sheath on the back of his webbing.

‘Trenches,’ Rawne muttered blackly. ‘It’ll be just like Fortis Binary again.’

‘Fortis fething Binary,’ Feygor echoed.

‘Where was that?’ Banda whispered to Caffran. They were sitting a little way down the wagon with their backs to the door, close enough to overhear their platoon commander’s remarks.

‘Before your time,’ Caffran told her. Jessi Banda was Verghast, another grade one sniper like Muril. Fortis Binary was a piece of hell the Tanith had endured several years before the fight at Vervunhive had brought the new recruits in.

‘It was a forge world,’ Caffran explained. ‘We were trench-bound for a long time. It was… unpleasant.’

‘What happened?’ Banda asked.

‘We survived,’ growled Rawne, listening in.

It was a straight put-down, but Banda just raised her eyebrows and grinned, letting it wash over her. Major Rawne had never been able to disguise his contempt for the female troopers. He didn’t believe they had any business being in the Tanith First. Banda had often wondered why. She’d have to ask him sometime.

‘Any advice?’ she asked.

The boldness of the question floored Rawne for a second, but that was the way of these fething women. He tried to come up with something good, but ‘Keep your head down’ was all he could manage.

‘Fair enough,’ she nodded, and settled back.

‘You hear that?’ Feygor asked suddenly.

‘What?’ asked Rawne.

‘Raised voices. In the next wagon.’

Rawne glowered. ‘Sort it out, will you?’ he said.

‘I won’t tell you again,’ said Tona Criid.

‘So don’t,’ replied Lijah Cuu, not even looking at her. Every member of Criid’s platoon, crowded into the wagon space, had fallen silent and was watching the confrontation warily.

‘You will service your kit and field strip your weapon, trooper.’ Criid’s voice was firm.

‘It’s a waste of time,’ Cuu replied.

‘You got something better to do?’ she asked.

Cuu looked at her for the first time, fixing her with his cold green eyes. ‘Plenty,’ he said.

No one had dared mess with Tona Criid before her promotion. Thin and tough, with cropped bleached hair, Criid was a ganger from the slums of Vervunhive, an environment that had schooled her wits, reflexes and fighting smarts. Though young, she could more than look after herself, and was reckoned to be one of the hardest of the female troopers. Unlike Verghastites such as Banda and Muril, she hadn’t specialised. She was a regular trooper with front-line experience.

Her promotion to sergeant, and the squad command that went with it, was never going to be an easy ride. Gaunt had done it on Hark’s advice. Hark believed it would send the right message to all the troopers in the regiment… take the Verghastites seriously. Take the women seriously.

Certainly ten platoon needed a Verghastite officer now Kolea was incapacitated. He’d commanded almost automatic respect because of his record as a guerrilla company leader during the hive war. But his squad was tight, and everyone knew they wouldn’t take kindly to any replacement, no matter how qualified. There were some tough customers in ten platoon, and none tougher than Lijah Cuu.

Cuu was a bad ploin and no mistake. A competent trooper, with abilities that could probably take him into either sniper or scout speciality, but he had a mean streak as deep and obvious as the scar that split his face from top to bottom. At Cirenholm, he’d been accused of the brutal rape-murder of a civilian and had come within sniffing distance of a firing squad before Gaunt had got him off. Innocent of that, perhaps, but guilty of so many other things. The plain fact was that he liked killing things. You got troopers like that in the Guard sometimes.

Gaunt had considered transferring Cuu out of ten platoon but knew that would undermine Criid’s authority. The Ghosts would read that as him giving Criid an easy ride. He’d told her she’d have to deal with him.

Criid took Cuu’s gaze without blinking. ‘Let’s review,’ she said, slowly and clearly. ‘You’re a member of ten platoon. I’m the squad officer. I’ve just given Ten a direct order to make use of this transit time to service kit and weapons, and everyone else is happy to do that. Aren’t you? Lubba?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ grunted the gang-tattooed flamer bearer.

‘Nessa?’

The squad’s sniper, permanently deaf from shell-damage at the hive, signed back ‘yes’.

‘Jajjo? Hwlan? Any problems with my order?’

Jajjo, a mixed-race Verghastite with dark brown skin and darker eyes shrugged and smiled. Ten platoon’s Tanith scout Hwlan nodded with a brisk ‘Yes, m-sarge!’

‘Only you seem to have a problem, Cuu.’

‘Seems so. Sure as sure.’ He smiled. It was the most unsettling smile in the Imperium. The most evil servants of Chaos would have killed to have a smile that lethal.

Tona Criid was not smiling. Deep inside, she was trembling. Her greatest fear was not death or torture or grievous injury. It was failure. Failure to live up to the opportunity Gaunt had given her. She would make this platoon her own. Or die trying. And die trying, seemed more likely the case.

‘Do it now,’ she said.

Cuu deliberately dropped his pack and weapon onto the floor and took out a lho-stick, which he lit with a tinder box. ‘You know what I hate,’ he said, blowing smoke at her. ‘What I hate is the fact that you talk to me like I was one of your gakking kids.’

‘Oh feth me!’ Trooper Vril whispered to Hwlan. ‘There’s gonna be a fight now.’

‘Sure as sure,’ Hwlan whispered back sarcastically.

Unless you were going to make nice, you didn’t mention Criid’s kids. Yoncy and Dalin. They weren’t hers biologically, just war-waifs she’d rescued from the killing grounds at Vervunhive and looked after ever since. She and her man Caffran were parents to them, and when they were off in action, the two kids were looked after by the regiment’s camp followers. It was the Tanith First’s one little happy-ending tale. Criid and Caffran, true love, kids saved from death… you couldn’t make feth like that up.

‘What did you say, trooper?’ asked Criid.

‘Here we go,’ murmured Vril.

‘Ah feth it,’ whispered Hwlan. He slid the haft of his nine seventy out to use as a baton. If it came to fists, he’d get in on Criid’s side. Cuu was a vicious worm. The scout saw that DaFelbe and Skeen both looked ready to jump in, and Nessa had got to her feet too.

But if it went off, Hwlan thought, would it help to get involved? Would Criid thank them? Probably not. She’d want to assert her command over Cuu alone, to make the point. Hwlan could feel Vril’s hand on his arm, pulling him down. Vril clearly thought the same way too.

Cuu picked smoke-weed off his lip. ‘I said I don’t like it when you talk to me like I was one of your kids. Why? Did that upset you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Criid smoothly. ‘But I notice you haven’t shown respect to my rank since this conversation began. Would a “sergeant” or a “ma’am” really kill you?’

‘Gakked if I’m gonna find out,’ Cuu said, winking at the troopers around them.

‘Don’ you talk that way,’ said a voice from the back of the wagon.

‘What?’ sneered Cuu.

‘Don’ talk that way. Don’ be doin’ that.’ It was Kolea. He’d risen, slowly, and was staring at Cuu. There was a vague animosity in his eyes, but his face was blank. The headwound he’d taken at Ouranberg had made him very slow and direct. His mouth slurred words.

‘Sit down, you dimwit,’ said Cuu archly. ‘Go hunt for your brain. I hear the loxatl have it in a little glass trophy box.’

Lubba, staunchly loyal to Kolea, threw himself at Cuu with a snarl, but Criid blocked him and kicked him down on his arse.

‘Full marks for heart,’ she told him. ‘But I won’t have brawling in this platoon.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Lubba said.

‘Why you bein’ so bad?’ Kolea asked Cuu. He shuffled forward, screwing up his eyes in confusion.

‘It’s all right, Gol. You sit down,’ Criid said.

‘Sit down, sarge?’

‘Yeah, you go sit down and I’ll deal with this.’

Kolea wavered. ‘You sure, sarge? This… this man here was being bad.’

Criid knew that Kolea had been struggling to remember Cuu’s name, and had failed. She also knew he only called her ‘sarge’ because he could see her pins.

‘Sit down, Trooper Kolea.’

‘Okay.’

Criid looked back at Cuu. ‘Follow my order and service your kit.’

‘Or what?’

Criid pushed a hand out towards Cuu’s face, and he dodged back, but it was a ruse. The real sting was Criid’s left leg, sweeping round at knee height.

Cuu crashed over onto the straw-covered floor, hard. Criid was on him in a heartbeat, one hand gripping his hair and yanking his head back, one knee in the small of his back.

‘Or I exert my authority,’ she said.

Cuu responded with a gender-related obscenity. In reply, the base of her hand against the back of his head, she smashed him nose-first into the decking. There was a crack that made them all wince, and it wasn’t wood.

‘You gakking bitch!’ Cuu coughed as she yanked his head back again by the hair. Blood was running from his broken nose.

‘You wanna go again, Trooper Cuu?’

‘Gakking b–OW!’

Another headslam.

‘Oooh, that’s gonna smart!’ Vril gasped.

‘I can keep going until we get to where we’re headed and then hand you off to Gaunt…’ said Criid, digging her knee into his spine and making him cry out, ‘…or you can service your kit and your weapon and call me by rank. What do you say, Cuu? What do you gakking say?’

‘I’ll service my kit, sergeant!’

‘…is the right answer. Get up.’

She got off him and he rolled over, his face dripping with blood.

‘Off you go, Cuu.’

Cuu got up, and took his pack and lasgun off to the farthest corner of the wagon. The members of the platoon slow-handclapped and Criid performed a little bow.

‘What don’t you do?’ she asked.

‘Mess with you!’ Lubba called out.

‘Excellent. Carry on.’

‘Everything okay in here?’ Feygor called, pushing open the dividing shutter between the wagons.

‘Just fine,’ said Criid.

‘What’s wrong with Cuu?’ Feygor asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Should he be bleeding like that?’

‘Yes.’

Feygor shrugged. ‘Rawne says keep it down.’

‘We are.’

‘Okay then,’ said Feygor and left.

Criid walked down the rocking wagon and sat herself beside Kolea. ‘That was nice what you did,’ she said.

‘What’d I do?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Never mind,’ she sighed.

Gaunt rode the A train. His carriage had once been a coach-class car, but its luxury days were long passed. Even so, he knew that the worn upholstery of the compartments was a fething sight sweeter than the transit arrangements of his Ghosts.

He sat in a compartment with Buzzel, Chief Medic Dorden, Hark and the regiment’s chaplain, ayatani Zweil. Gaunt’s adjutant, Corporal Beltayn, waited at the door.

Zweil and Hark were arguing about something, but Gaunt wasn’t paying attention. He gazed out of the window, watching the vales and fields and woods and townships of Mittel Aexe flicker past.

Doc Dorden leaned over and tapped Gaunt’s knee.

‘Credit for them?’

Gaunt smiled at the grey-haired medicae. ‘Not a lot of anything, to be honest. Just trying to focus.’

‘An empty mind is like a pot for Chaos to piss in,’ said Zweil. Buzzel looked shocked.

‘Just kidding,’ said the old priest, chortling into his long, wispy beard. He took out a clay pipe and began to stoke it with weed.

‘This is a non-smoking area,’ said Buzzel.

‘I know that!’ snapped Zweil testily, though he clearly didn’t. He got up. ‘I’m off to bless the poor bastards,’ he announced, and stomped off down the connecting corridor.

‘Your chaplain is an… unusual man,’ said Buzzel.

‘No kidding,’ said Hark.

Gaunt returned his gaze to the landscape outside. Low, hilly country broken by stands of trees and small lakes. It would have been almost picturesque if not for the weather. Rain splashed along the windows of the speeding train.

‘We’re heading for Rhonforq, you say?’ Dorden asked Buzzel.

‘Yes, doctor.’

‘Which is the gateway to the Naeme Valley?’

Buzzel nodded. ‘The Naeme roughly demarcates the front line in the central sector.’

‘It’s dug-in?’ Hark asked.

‘Extensively,’ said Buzzel, ‘and has been for a long time.’

Hark scratched an earlobe. ‘So the front’s as stagnant as we’ve been told?’

‘We make advances,’ Buzzel said firmly.

‘And so do they,’ said Gaunt. ‘As I understand it, there’s a stretch of territory thirty kilometres wide and a thousand long that has remained disputed for forty years. That’s one hell of a no-man’s land.’

Buzzel shrugged. ‘It’s been a hard war.’

‘An impasse,’ said Hark. ‘Which we’re going to break. I take it you’ll be using the Tanith to their strength as stealth infiltrators?’

Buzzel looked confused. ‘I understood you were front-line troops. That’s where you’re being sent. The front line.’

Hark looked at Dorden and both men sighed. Gaunt beckoned Beltayn through the compartment window.

‘Sir?’

‘Can you patch me a link to the lord general?’

‘’Fraid not, sir. Something’s awry. Vox is down.’

‘When we get to Rhonforq, find Mkoll and tell him to move a recon team forward to the line. I want a detailed intelligence capture before we proceed.’

‘Yes, sir!’

Gaunt looked at Buzzel. ‘My Ghosts will fight to the last: harder, braver and stronger than any soldiers you have ever seen. But I will not see them wasted in the meatgrinder of a slow trench war. They have skills, and I’ll have them use those skills.’

Buzzel smiled amiably. ‘I’m sure the supreme commander understands that, sir,’ he said.

The train slowed. Outside, Gaunt saw that the landscape had begun to change. The vegetation looked grey and sick, and acres of farmland had been rutted down to nothing but spongy brown waste. Stands of woodland had been felled leaving acres of dead stumps like badly planned cemeteries. They passed at least one team of timbermen denuding a hillside, their big, blacked-iron logging engine sheeting sparks and woodpulp up into the overcast sky. The roads were thick with drab motor transport and heavy carts drawn by oxen and hippines.

Towns and villages were scruffy and neglected, windows shuttered and boarded. Some had earthworks or pales raised around their eastern fringes, one in five had the steel mast of a shield generator rising from its midst. Apart from the masts and the motor vehicles, there was no other sign of metal in commonplace use.

They passed through one village where bells and horns were sounding. The westerly wind was bringing down not only rain but also a thin, yellowish smoke. Townsfolk in the street went about their business in canvas masks and rebreathers.

They clanked on through mercy stations – tent cities raised to cope with the exodus of injured, generated at the front. By Gaunt’s estimation, they were still over a hundred kilometres from the real front. The war was so old, so chronic, it had spilled back this far.

He could smell it. War has its own smell. Not fyceline, not promethium, not water or mud or blood, not rank soil or ordure, not even the pungent decay of death itself. All of those scents were in the air.

War had a metallic tang. You could almost isolate it. A mineral smell quite subtracted from the diverse secondary odours it generated. A smell of steel and hate. Pure, repellent, universal.

Gaunt had smelled it on Balhaut, on Voltemand, on Caligula, Fortis Binary, Bucephalon, Monthax, Verghast, Hagia, Phantine and all the others. That diamond-tough scent of pure war, lurking behind the sweaty, more obvious perfumes that decorated human conflict.

This was going to be hard. Aexe Cardinal was going to cost them. It was in the air.