First and Only (15 page)

When the trooper from the apartment poked his head round the door, a cubit of hard-flung Tanith silver impaled his skull and dropped him to the floor, jerking and spasming. Gaunt leapt up. A second, two seconds, and he would have the fallen man’s lasgun in his hands, ready to blast down the stairs.

But the other two from below were in line of sight. There was a flash and he realised their green laser taggers had swept over his face and dotted on his heart. There was a quick and frantic burst of lasgun fire and a billow of noxious burning fumes washed up the stairs over Gaunt.

Blenner climbed the stairs into view, carefully stepping over the smouldering bodies, a smoking laspistol in his hand.

‘Got tired of waiting,’ the commissar sighed. ‘Looks like you needed a hand anyway, eh, Bram?’

Seven

T
HE GREY TRUCK
, with its single remaining pursuer, slammed into high gear as it went over the rise in the snowy road, leaving the ground for a stomach-shaking moment.

‘What’s that?’ Rawne said wildly, a moment after they landed again and the thrashing wheels re-engaged the slippery roadway.

‘It’s called a roadblock, I believe,’ Corbec said.

Ahead, the cold zone street was closed by a row of oil-can fires, concrete poles and wire. Several armed shapes were waiting for them.

‘Off the road! Get off the road!’ Corbec bawled. He leaned over and wrenched at the crescent steering wheel.

The truck slewed sideways in the slush and barrelled beetle-nose-first through the sheet-wood doors of an old, apparently abandoned warehouse. There, in the dripping darkness, it grumbled to a halt, its firing note choking away to a dull cough.

‘Now what?’ Rawne hissed.

‘Well, there’s you, me and Feygor…’ Corbec began. Already the trooper was beginning to pull himself groggily up in the back. ‘Three of Gaunt’s Ghosts, the best damn fighting regiment in the Guard. We excel at stealth work and look! We’re here in a dark warehouse.’

Corbec readied his automatic. Rawne pulled his laspistol and did the same. He grinned.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

Years later, in the speakeasies and clubs of the Cracian cold zones, the story of the shoot-out at the old Vinchy Warehouse would do the rounds. Thousands of shots were heard, they say, mostly the bass chatter of the autogun sidearms carried by twenty armed men, mob overbaron Vulnor Habshept kal Geel’s feared enforcers, who went in to smoke out the off-world gangsters.

All twenty died. Twenty further shots, some from laspistols, some from a big-bore autogun, were heard. No more, no less.

No one ever saw the off-world gangsters again, or found the truck laden with stolen contraband that had sparked off the whole affair.

T
HE STAFF
-
TRACK
whipped along down the cold zone street, heading back to the safety of the city core. In the back, Blenner poured another two measures of his expensive brandy. This time, Gaunt took the one offered and knocked it back.

‘You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, Bram. Not if you don’t want to.’

Gaunt sighed. ‘If I had to, would you listen?’

Blenner chuckled. ‘I’m loyal to the Emperor, Gaunt, and doubly loyal to my old friends. What else do you need to know?’

Gaunt smiled and held his glass out as Blenner refilled it.

‘Nothing, I suppose.’

Blenner leaned forward, earnest for the first time in years. ‘Look, Bram… I may seem like an old fogey to you, grown fat on the luxuries of having a damn near perfect regiment… but I haven’t forgotten what the fire feels like. I haven’t forgotten the reason I’m here. You can trust me to hell and back, and I’ll be there for you.’

‘And the Emperor,’ Gaunt reminded him with a grin.

‘And the bloody Emperor,’ Blenner said and they clinked glasses.

‘I say,’ Blenner said a moment later, ‘why is your boy slowing down?’

Milo pulled up, wary. The two tracked vehicles blocking the road ahead had their headlamps on full beam, but Milo could see they were painted in the colours of the Jantine Patricians. Large, shaven-headed figures armed with batons and entrenching tools were climbing out to meet them.

Gaunt climbed out of the cabin as Milo brought them to a halt. Snow drifted down. He squinted at the men beyond the lights.

‘Brochuss,’ he hissed.

‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ replied Major Brochuss of the Jantine Patricians, stepping forward. He was stripped to his vest and oiled like a prize fighter. The wooden spoke in his hands slapped into a meaty palm.

‘A reckoning, I think,’ he said. ‘You and your scum-boys cheated us of a victory on Fortis. You bastards. Playing at soldiers when the real thing was ready to take the day. You and your pathetic Ghosts should have died on the wire where you belong.’

Gaunt sighed. ‘That’s not the real reason, is it, Brochuss? Oh, you’re still smarting over the stolen glory of Fortis, but that’s not it. After all, why were you so unhappy we won the day back there? It’s the old honour thing, isn’t it? The old debt you and Flense still think has to be paid. You’re fools. There’s no honour in this, in back-street murder out here, in the cold zones, where our bodies won’t be reported for months.’

‘I don’t believe you’re in a position to argue,’ said Brochuss. ‘We of Jant will take our repayment in blood where it presents itself. Here is as good a place as any other.’

‘So you’d act with dishonour, to avenge a slight to honour? Brochuss, you ass – if you could only see the irony! There was no dishonour to begin with. I only corrected what was already at fault. You know where the real fault lies. All I did was expose the cowardice in the Jantine action.’

‘Bram!’ Blenner hissed in Gaunt’s ear. ‘You never were a diplomat! These men want blood! Insulting them isn’t going to help their mood.’

‘I’m dealing with this, Vay,’ Gaunt said archly.

‘No you’re not, I am…’ Blenner pushed Gaunt back and faced the Jantine mob. ‘Major… if it’s a fight you want I won’t disappoint you. A moment? Please?’ Blenner said holding up a finger. He turned to Milo and whispered, ‘Boy, just how fast can you drive this buggy?’

‘Fast enough,’ Milo whispered, ‘and I know exactly where to go…’

Blenner turned back to the Patrician heavies in the lamplight and smiled. ‘After due consultation with my colleagues, Major Brochuss, I can now safely say… burn in hell, you shit-eating dog!’

He leapt back aboard, pushing Gaunt into the cabin ahead of him. Milo had the staff-track gunned and slewed around in a moment, even as the enraged troopers rushed them.

Another three seconds and Gaunt’s ride was roaring off down the snowy street at a dangerous velocity, the engines raging. Squabbling and cursing, Brochuss and his men leapt into their own machines and gave chase.

‘So glad I left that to you, Vay,’ Gaunt grinned. ‘I don’t think I would’ve have been that diplomatic.’

Eight

T
ROOPER
B
RAGG KISSED
his lucky dice and let all three of them fly. A cheer went up across the wagering room and piles of chips were pushed his way.

‘Go on, Bragg!’ Mad Larkin chuckled at his side. ‘Do it again, you fething old drunk!’

Bragg chuckled and scooped up the dice.

This was the life, he thought. Far away from the warzone of Fortis, and the mayhem, and the death, here in a smoke-filled dome in the cold zone back-end of an ancient city, him and his few true friends, a good number of pretty girls and wager tables open all night.

Varl was suddenly at his side. His intended friendly slap was hard and stinging – Varl had still to get used to the cybernetic implant shoulder joint the medics had fitted him with on Fortis.

‘The game can wait, Bragg. We’ve got business.’

Bragg and Larkin kissed their painted lady-friends good bye and followed Varl out through the rear exit of the gaming club onto the boarding ramp. Suth was there: Melyr, Meryn, Caffran, Curral, Coll, Baru, Mkoll, Raglon… almost twenty of the Ghosts.

‘What’s going on?’ Bragg asked.

Melyr jerked his thumb down to where Corbec, Rawne and Feygor were unloading booze and smokes from a battered six wheeler.

‘Colonel’s got us some tasty stuff to share, bless his Tanith heart.’

‘Very nice,’ Bragg said, licking his lips, not entirely sure why Rawne and Feygor looked so annoyed. Corbec smiled up at them all.

‘Get everyone out here! We’re having a party, boys! For Tanith! For us!’

There was cheering and clapping. Varl leapt down into the bay and opened a box with his Tanith knife. He threw bottles up to those clustered around.

‘Hey!’ Raglon said suddenly, pointing out into the snowy darkness beyond the club’s bay. ‘Incoming!’

The staff track slid into the bay behind Corbec’s truck and Gaunt leapt out. A cheer went up and somebody tossed him a bottle. Gaunt tore off the stopper and took a deep swig, before pointing back out into the darkness.

‘Lads! I could do with a hand…’ he began.

M
AJOR
B
ROCHUSS
leaned forward in the cab of his speeding staff-track and looked through the screen where the wiper was slapping snow away.

‘Now we have him! He’s stopped at that place ahead!’

Brochuss flexed his hand and struck it with his baton.

Then he saw the crowds of jeering Ghosts around the drive-in bay. A hundred… two hundred.

‘Oh balls,’ he managed.

T
HE BAR WAS
almost empty and it was nearly dawn. Ibram Gaunt sipped the last of his drink and eyed Vaynom Blenner who was asleep face-down on the bar beside him.

Gaunt took out the crystal from the inside pocket where he had secreted it and tossed it up in his hand once, twice.

Corbec was suddenly beside him.

‘A long night, eh, commissar?’

Gaunt looked at him, catching the crystal in a tight fist.

‘Maybe the longest so far, Colm. I hear you had some fun.’

‘Aye, and at Rawne’s expense, you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear. Do you want to tell me about what’s going on?’

Gaunt smiled. ‘I’d rather buy you a drink,’ he said, motioning to the weary barkeep. ‘And yes, I’d love to tell you. And I will, when the time comes. Are you loyal, Colm Corbec?’

Corbec looked faintly hurt. ‘To the Emperor, I’d give my life,’ he said, without hesitating.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Me too. The path ahead may be truly hard. As long as I can count on you.’

Corbec said nothing but held out his glass. Gaunt touched it with his own. There was a tiny chime.

‘First and Last,’ Corbec said.

Gaunt smiled softly. ‘First and Only,’ he replied.

A MEMORY

T
HEY HAD A
house on the summit of Mount Resyde, with long colonnades that overlooked the cataracts. The sky was golden, until sunset, when it caught fire. Light-bugs, heavy with pollenfibres, ambled through the warm air in the atrium each evening. Ibram imagined they were navigators, charting secret paths through the Empyrean, between the hidden torments of the warp.

He played on the sundecks overlooking the mists of the deep cataract falls that thundered down into the eight kilometre chasms of the Northern Rift. Sometimes from there, you could see fighting ships and Imperium cutters lifting or making planetfall at the great landing silos at Lanatre Fields. From this distance they looked just like light-bugs in the dark evening sky.

Ibram would always point, and declare his father was on one.

His nurse, and the old tutor Benthlay, always corrected him. They had no imagination. Benthlay didn’t even have any arms. He would point to the lights with his buzzing prosthetic limbs and patiently explain that if Ibram’s father had been coming home, they would have had word in advance.

But Oric, the cook from the kitchen block, had a broader mind. He would lift the boy in his meaty arms and point his nose to the sky to catch a glimpse of every ship and every shuttle. Ibram had a toy dreadnought that his Uncle Dercius had carved for him from a hunk of plastene. Ibram would swoop it around in his hands as he hung from Oric’s arms, dog-fighting the lights in the sky.

Oric had a huge lightning flash tattoo on his left forearm that fascinated Ibram. ‘Imperial Guard,’ he would say, in answer to the child’s questions. ‘Jantine Third for eight years. Mark of honour.’

He never said much else. Every time he put the boy down and returned to the kitchens, Ibram wondered about the buzzing noise that came from under his long chef’s overalls. It sounded just like the noise his tutor’s arms made when they gestured.

The night Uncle Dercius visited, it was without advance word of his coming.

Oric had been playing with him on the sundecks, and had carved him a new frigate out of wood. When they heard Uncle Dercius’s voice, Ibram had leapt down and run into the parlour.

He hit against Dercius’s uniformed legs like a meteor and hugged tight.

‘Ibram, Ibram! Such a strong grip! Are you pleased to see your uncle, eh?’

Dercius looked a thousand metres tall in his mauve Jantine uniform. He smiled down at the boy, but there was something sad in his eyes.

Oric entered the room behind them, making apologies. ‘I must get back to the kitchen,’ he averred.

Uncle Dercius did a strange thing: he crossed directly to Oric and embraced him. ‘Good to see you, old friend.’

‘And you, sir. Been a long time.’

‘Have you brought me a toy, uncle?’ Ibram interrupted, shaking off the hand of his concerned-looking nurse.

Dercius crossed back to him.

‘Would I let you down?’ he chuckled. He pulled a signet ring off his left little finger and hugged Ibram to his side. ‘Know what this is?’

‘A ring!’

‘Smart boy! But it’s more.’ Dercius carefully turned the milled edge of the ring setting and it popped open. A thin, truncated beam of laser light stabbed out. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Ibram shook his head.

‘It’s a key. Officers like me need a way to open certain secret dispatches. Secret orders. You know what they are?’

‘My father told me! There are different codes… it’s called “security clearance”.’

Dercius and the others laughed at the precocity of the little boy. But there was a false note in it.

‘You’re right! Codes like Panther, Esculis, Cryptox, or the old colour-code levels: cyan, scarlet, it goes up, magenta, obsidian and vermilion,’ Dercius said, taking the ring off. ‘Generals like me are given these signet rings to open and decode them.

‘Does my father have one, uncle?’

A pause. ‘Of course.’

‘Is my father coming home? Is he with you?’

‘Listen to me, Ibram, there’s–‘

Ibram took the ring and studied it. ‘Can really I have this, Uncle Dercius? Is it for me?’

Ibram looked up suddenly from the ring in his hands and found that everyone was staring at him intently.

‘I didn’t steal it!’ he announced.

‘Of course you can have it. It’s yours…’ Dercius said, hun kering down by his side, looking as if he was preoccupied by something.

‘Listen, Ibram: there’s something I have to tell you… About your father.’