Ghostmaker Read Free Page A

way, they are cannon fodder.”
    “What do we do?” Sym asked. Some of the others nodded as if urging the same question.
    “Our astropaths must send word immediately to the main crusade command, to Macaroth, and tell him of the insurgency. If nothing else, they need to turn and guard their flank and back. The rest of you: the carrier ships will leave orbit in one hour or at the point of attack, whichever comes first. Get as much of the remaining disembarked men and equipment aboard as you can before then. Whatever’s left gets left behind.”
    “We’re abandoning Tanith?” a Munitorium aide said, disbelief in his thin voice.
    “Tanith is already dead. We can die with it, or we can salvage as many fighting men as we can and re-deploy them somewhere they will actually do some good. In the Emperor’s name.”
    They all looked at him, incredulous, the enormity of his decision sinking in.
    “DO IT!” he bawled.
     
    The night sky above Tanith Magna caught fire and fell on the world. The orbital bombardment blew white-hot holes out of the ancient forests, melted the high walls, splintered the towers, and shattered the paved yards.
    Dark shapes moved through the smoke-choked corridors of the Assembly, dark shapes that gibbered and hissed, clutching chattering, whining implements of death in their stinking paws.
    With a brutal cry, Gaunt kicked his way through a burning set of doors and fired his bolt pistol. He was a tall, powerful shape in the swirling smoke, a striding figure with a long coat sweeping like a cloak from his broad shoulders. His bright eyes tightened in his lean, grim face and he wheeled and fired again into the gloom. In the smoke-shadows nearby, red-eyed shapes shrieked and burst, spraying fluid across the stonework.
    Las fire cut the air near him. He turned and fired, and then took the staircase at a run, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen. There was a struggling group up ahead, on the main landing. Two bloodied fighting men of the Tanith militia, wrestling with Sym at the doors to the launch silos.
    “Let us through, you bastard!” Gaunt could hear one of them crying, “You’d leave us here to die! Let us through!”
    Gaunt saw the autopistol in the hand of the other too late. It fired the moment before he ploughed into them.
    Raging, he broke one’s jaw with the butt of his bolter, knocking the man backwards to the head of the stairs. He picked up the other and threw him over the stair rail into the smoke below.
    Sym lay in a pool of blood.
    “I — I’ve signalled… the carrier fleet, as you ordered… for the final withdrawal… Leave me and get aboard the cutter or—” Sym began.
    “Shut up!” Gaunt snapped, trying to lift him, his hand slick with the man’s blood. “We’re both going!”
    “T-there’s no time, not for me… just for you! Go, sir!” Sym rasped, his voice high with pain. From the bay beyond, Gaunt heard the scream of the cutter’s thrusters rising to take-off readiness.
    “Damn it, Sym!” Gaunt said. The aide seemed to reach for him, clawing at his tunic. For a second, Gaunt though Sym was trying to pull himself up so that Gaunt could carry him.
    Then Sym’s torso exploded in a red mist and Gaunt was thrown back off his feet.
    At the head of the stairs, the grotesque shock troops of Chaos bayed and advanced. Sym had seen them over Gaunt’s shoulder, had pulled himself up and round to shield Gaunt with his own body.
    Gaunt got to his feet. His first shot burst the horned skull of the nearest beast. His second and third tore apart the body of another. His fourth, fifth and sixth gutted two more and sent them spinning back into their comrades behind on the steps.
    His seventh was a dull clack of dry metal.
    Hurling the spent bolter aside, Gaunt backed away towards the silo bay doors. He could smell the rancid scents of Chaos over the smoke now, and hear the buzz of the maggot-flies. In a second they would be on him.
    Autocannon fire blasted into the heathen nightmares, sustained heavy fire from an