Honour Guard, page 36
There were fast moving ribbons of pearly sculpture, dotting puffs of yellow fleece, iridescent bars of almost silver gas. Murky darkness seeped up through parts of the cloud, unwholesome twists of smog and venting corruption. Far below, occasional flares of ignited gas blossomed in the dense, repellent cloud.
Phantine had been an industrial world for fifteen centuries, and now it was largely inhospitable to human kind. Unchecked resource mining and rapacious petrochemical overproduction had ruined the surface and created a lethal blanket of air pollution five kilometres deep.
Only the highest places remained. Spire-like mountains, or the uppermost tips of long-dead hives. These spires and tips protruded from the corrosive gas seas and formed remote islands where mankind might just continue the habitation of the world its greed had killed. Places like Cirenholm and Ouranberg.
And the only reason for those precarious habitations was so that mankind could continue to plunder the chemical resources of Phantine.
Sliding under the handrail, Gaunt sat down on the edge of the walkway so that his boots were dangling. Craning out, he could just see back down the vast underbelly of the drogue. The pleated gas sacks. The armoured canvas panels. They glowed ochre in the unhealthy half-sun. He could see one of the huge engine nacelles, its chopping propeller blades taller than a warlord titan.
‘They said I’d find you up here, Ibram.’
Gaunt glanced up. Colonel Colm Corbec hunkered down next to him.
‘What’s the word, Colm?’ asked Gaunt, nodding to his second-in-command.
The big, thick-bearded man leaned against the handrail. His bared forearms were like hams and decorated, under the hair, with blue spirals and stars.
‘So, what did Lord General Van Voytz have to say?’ said Corbec. ‘And what’s he like?’ he added, sitting down next to Gaunt and letting his legs swing off the grille.
‘I was just wondering that. It’s hard to know, sometimes, what a commander is like. Dravere and Sturm, well, they don’t fething count. Bastards, the both of them. But Bulledin and Slaydo… they were both fine men. I always resented the fact Lugo replaced Bulledin on Hagia.’
‘Lugo,’ growled Corbec. ‘Don’t get me started on him.’
Gaunt smiled. ‘He paid. Macaroth demoted him.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ grinned Corbec. He plucked a hip flask from his trouser pocket, took a swig, and offered it to Gaunt.
Gaunt shook his head. He’d abstained from alcohol with an almost puritanical conviction since the dark days on Hagia several months before. There, he and his Ghosts had almost paid the price for Lord General Lugo’s mistakes. Cornered and frustrated, and tormented by an over-keen sense of responsibility invested in him by his mentors Slaydo and Oktar, Gaunt had come closer to personal failure than at any time in his career. He’d drunk hard, shamefully, and allowed his men to suffer. Only the grace of the Emperor, and perhaps of the beati Saint Sabbat, had saved him. He’d fought back, against the forces of Chaos and his own private daemons, and routed the arch-enemy, driving back their forces just hours before Hagia could be overrun.
Hagia had been spared, Lugo disgraced, and the Ghosts had survived, both as an active unit and as living beings. There was no part of that hard path Gaunt wanted to retrace.
Corbec sighed, took back the flask and sipped again. He missed the old Gaunt, the commander who would kick back and drink the night away with his men as hard as he’d fight for them the next day. Corbec understood Gaunt’s caution, and had no wish to see his beloved commander turned back into a raging, drunken malcontent. But he missed the comradely Gaunt. There was a distance between them now.
‘So… this Van Voytz?’
‘Van Voytz is a good man, I think. I’ve heard nothing but good reports about him. I like his style of command–’
‘I sense there’s a “but”, Ibram.’
Gaunt nodded. ‘He’s sending the Urdeshi in for first kill. I don’t think their hearts are in it. He should trust me. And you. The Ghosts, I mean.’
‘Maybe he’s on our side for once.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Like you said, it’s often hard to get the measure of your commander on first sight.’
Gaunt turned to look at Corbec. ‘Meaning?’
‘Look at us.’
‘Look at us, what?’
Corbec shrugged. ‘First time I saw you, I thought I’d been saddled with the worst bum-boil of a commander in the Imperium.’
They both snorted with laughter.
‘Of course, my planet was dying at the time,’ said Corbec as their amusement subsided. ‘Then it turned out you were–’
‘What?’
‘Okay.’
Gaunt toasted Corbec with an imaginary glass. ‘Thanks for that underwhelming vote of confidence.’
Corbec stared at Gaunt, all the laughter gone from his eyes. ‘You’re the best fething commander I’ve ever seen,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Colm,’ said Gaunt.
‘Hey…’ said Corbec quietly. ‘Look, sir.’
Outside, the sun had come out and the noxious clouds had wafted away from the ports. They looked out and saw the vast shape of the drogue escorting them, a kilometre long dirigible painted silver on the belly and white on the top. It had a ribbed, hardwood frame and extended out at the front in a fluked ram the size of a giant nalwood. They could see the eight motor nacelles along its belly beating the air with their huge props. Beyond it, in the suddenly gleaming light, they could see the next drogue in formation.
Floating islands, armed and armoured, each carrying upwards of four thousand men.
‘Feth!’ Corbec repeated. ‘Pinch me. Are we aboard one of them?’
‘We are.’
‘I knew it, but it takes seeing it to know it, you know what I mean?’
‘Yes.’
Gaunt looked up at Corbec.
‘Are we ready, Colm?’
‘Not really. I’m not even going to tell you about the ammunition situation. But… well, we’re as ready as we can be.’
‘Then that’s good enough for me.’
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