He was aware of a little amber rune winking on the rim of the clip-socket above his thumb. Powercell low. He needed a reload. Why hadn’t he thought to take one off the corpse?
A series of heavy explosions detonated along the centre of the deck space, marching towards him. Debris showered into the air, whole deck plates and underdeck pipework.
The Archenemy had sent heavier units into the Armaduke.
Ezra spied the first of the stalk-tanks as it clattered along the drive hall towards him. Two more followed. He had seen such machines before. They were lightweight, with an almost spherical pod of a body just large enough to contain a single driver or hardwired servitor operator plus control packages and data sumps. Powerful quad-lasguns or plasma cannons were mounted on a gyro cradle beneath the body. The tanks walked on eight pairs of long, slender spider-legs.
These devices were heavier than normal. The body-shells were armoured against hard vacuum and heavy fire. The legs were more robust, and ended in flexible grab-claws. These things were designed to walk in the cold silence of the void, to scurry across the surface of starships, to find purchase as they sought to bite or cut a way inside. They were built to live like lice or ticks on the hull-skin of a shiftship.
The underslung gunpods were firing, the gyro-mounts turning each recoil slap into a fluid bounce. Deck plates erupted. Part of the chamber wall blew out in a dizzy gout of flame and sparks. One of the fueling wagons was blown to pieces.
An iron wheel squealed as it rolled across the deck.
Enemy foot soldiers, their visor slits glowing, advanced behind the stalk-tanks, firing as they came. Ezra felt a laugh building in his throat. He had survived the one-sided war by sticking to the hit-and-run resistance tactics of the Nihtgane. Stalk, kill, move, stay invisible. His situation was now beyond impossible.
Ezra knelt and took aim. He was partially shielded by the burning remains of a service crate. He aimed for the small, armoured window port on the nearest stalk-tank, and wondered if he could hit it. He was pretty confident he could. But could he penetrate it? Even if he poured on all the power left in the cell?
Yes. Yes, he could. He would kill it. It would be his last act as part of the Ghost regiment.
Ezra pulled the trigger. The gun did not fire. The rune was red. Power out.
Ezra allowed himself to laugh.
‘Is there any way of getting an external visual?’ Gaunt asked.
‘Are you commanding this ship now?’ Kelvedon snapped back.
‘Be silent, Kelvedon,’ Darulin commanded.
They had descended to the main tactical strategium, a broad projector well in the forward section of the bridge. Kelvedon was back on his feet, though his face was flushed. Other bridge seniors had followed them. Gaunt was surrounded by towering robed men who were only marginally organic, and angry, blue-uniformed command echelon officers. He was entirely out of place. This was not his kind of war, nor his area of expertise. He was Guard. Battlefleet and Astra Militarum, they were ancient rivals in glory, with entirely different mindsets. They always had been, since mankind first left the cradle of Terra and set out across the stars. One branch of humanity conquered worlds, the other conquered the void. They were allies, brothers… closer than that, perhaps. But they had never been friends. Their philosophies were too different. For a start, each one presumed that the other depended upon them.
But Gaunt put himself in the middle of it all. There were two reasons for that. The first was that all their lives were at stake and he was hardly going to sit idly by and let the battlefleet officers determine his regiment’s fate.
The second was that he had a sense of things. He had a sense of command. The thread of authority was the same in the Navy as it was in the Guard, and his years of service had left him with an instinct for it. The Armaduke was lost. It had lost its spirit. Spika was dead, and the confusion Gaunt had discovered on the bridge when he arrived was profound. These were high-functioning officers. They were brilliant and mentally agile. They should not have been frozen in shock and incapable of decision. They should not have been gazing down at the corpse of their commander wondering what to do next.
They should not have needed a scruffy Guard commander to push his way in and administer futile chest compressions.
They were lost. Gaunt didn’t know why. He felt sure it was less to do with Spika’s death, and much more to do with the shredding violence and incomprehensible time-loss of their retranslation. The Armaduke was crippled, and its crew – linked to it in too many subtle and empathic ways to count – was crippled too.
Someone had to take the lead. Someone had to ignite some confidence. And that someone wasn’t Kelvedon, who saw only his own career path.
Gaunt remembered his time on the escort frigate Navarre, right at the start of his service with the Ghosts. There had been an executive officer, Kreff, who had been sympathetic. Most of what Gaunt understood about the battlefleet he had learned from Kreff.
The scions of the battlefleet, they were just men even if they didn’t look like men. And men were the same the universe over.
‘We need to get out of this,’ Gaunt said. He started speaking generally, casually. That was the first thing you did; you brought everybody in and acknowledged them. He hated to be so clinical, but there was no choice.
‘Can we light the strategium display?’ he added. Casual, just a side comment. Confidence.
The hololithic well started to light up around them. Hardlight forms and numeric displays painted their faces and their clothes.
‘I’m going to get my troopers ready,’ he said, still casual. ‘They’re going to protect this ship. They’re going to fight off anything that tries to get inside. I’ll welcome the support of your armsmen too.’
Be inclusive. That was the next step. Breed a sense of common action and respect. Now it was time for truth.
‘You’re hurt, and you’re dismayed. There’s no shame in that. What has overtaken us is terrible and it has hurt you all. But the ship is you, and you are the ship. It will not live without you. Spika loved this old girl. He would have wanted her to see out her days in safe hands.’
Gaunt looked at Darulin.
‘Externals?’
‘Processing now, sir,’ said the acting shipmaster.
‘How badly hurt are we?’ Gaunt asked. He aimed the question softly and generally.
The cowled Master of Artifice, flanked by his functionaries, sighed.
‘No drive. No main serial power. No secondary power. No shields. No weapon commit. No navigation. No sensory auspex. No scope. No intervox. No real space stability. Massive and serial gravitic disruption.’
‘I’m not Fleet,’ Gaunt said. ‘I take it that’s not a good list?’
The Master of Artifice actually smiled.
‘It is not, sir.’
‘Then enumerate the positives for me.’
The Master of Artifice hesitated. He glanced at Darulin and his subordinates.
‘Well… I suppose… we have environmental stability and general pressure integrity. Life support. Gravitics have resumed. We are running on tertiary batteries, which gives us six weeks real time, permitting use. We… we are alive.’
Now Gaunt smiled.
‘That, sir,’ he said, ‘is the basis for most Imperial Guard fightbacks. We’re alive. Thank the Throne. I never wanted to live forever, but a little while longer would be appreciated.’
‘Ten years longer,’ said Criid.
A grim ripple of laughter drifted around the strategium.