Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett Page B

had descended like locusts onto Voltemand and destroyed its people. The sigils and runes of the blasphemy Khorne were cut into the flesh of their brows and cheeks. They were well equipped, with bolters and lasguns, and armoured. Cluggan hoped to the sweet, dead gods of Tanith that his commissar was faring better.
     
    The Ghosts staggered and stumbled back from the spewing watergate, through the reed beds, towards the comparative cover of the riverbank. Enemy fire from the walls high above killed dozens, their bodies joining the hundreds swept out, swirling and turning, by the torrent of brown water roaring from the watergate.
    Micro-bead traffic was frantic with cross-chatter and desperately confused calls. Despite their discipline, the madness of the flight from the water had broken Gaunt’s main force into a ragged jumble, scrambling for their lives.
    Soaked through, furious, Gaunt found himself sheltering by some willows in a scummy river bend eighty yards from the watergate. With him were Caffran, Varl, a corporal called Meryn and two others.
    Gaunt cursed. Cultists he could fight… World Eaters, daemons… anything. He’d set square with any beast in the cosmos. But seventy million litres of water pressured down through a stone conduit…
    “May have lost as many as forty to the flood,” Varl said. He’d dragged Caffran by the tunic from the water and the young man could only retch and cough.
    “Get a confirmed figure from the squad leaders! I don’t want rumours!” Gaunt snarled, then keyed his own radio link and spoke into his bead. “Squad leaders! Discipline the radio traffic. I want regroup status! Corbec! Rawne!”
    The channels crackled and a more ordered litany of units and casualties reeled in.
    “Corbec?” Gaunt asked.
    “I’m west of you, sir. On the banks. Got about ninety men with me.” Corbec’s voice hissed back. “Assessment?”
    “Tactical? You can forget the watergate, sir. Once they realised they couldn’t hold us out in a straight fight, they blew the sluices. It could run at flood for hours. By then they’ll have the chute exits on the city side sewn up with emplacements, maybe even mines.”
    Gaunt cursed again. He wiped a wet hand across his face. They’d been so close and now it was all lost. Voltis would not be his.
    “Sir?” Meryn called to him. The corporal was listening to other frequencies on his bead. “Channel eighty. The word has just been given.”
    Gaunt crossed to him, adjusting his own setting. “What?”
    “The word. ‘Thunderhead’,” Meryn said, confused.
    “Source that signal!” Gaunt snapped, “If someone thinks that’s a joke, I’ll—”
    He got no further.
    The blast was so loud, it almost went beyond sound. The Shockwave mashed into them, chopping the water like a white squall. A kilometre away, a hundred metre section of the curtain wall blew out, ripping a vast wound in the city’s flank, burning, raw, exposed.
    The channels went mad with frenzied calls and whoops.
    Gaunt looked on in disbelief. Corbec’s voice cut through, person to person on the link.
    “It’s Cluggan, sir! The old bastard got his boys into the sanitation outfalls and they managed to dump all of their high-ex into a treatment cistern under the walls. Blew the crap out of the cultists.”
    “So I saw, colonel,” Gaunt said wryly.
    “I mean it literally, sir,” Corbec crackled innocuously. “It was Cluggan sent the signal. We may have lost the fight to take the watergate, but Cluggan has won us the battle!”
    Gaunt slumped back against a tree bole, up to his waist in the stinking river. Around him the men were laughing and cheering.
    Exhaustion swept over him. And then he too began to laugh.
     
    General Sturm took breakfast at nine. The stewards served him toasted black bread, sausage and coffee. He read a stack of data-slates as he ate, and the message-caster on the sideboard behind him chattered and dealt out a stream of orbital deployment updates.
    “Good news,” said Gilbear, entering with a coffee and a message