Anarch - Dan Abnett Read online

  ‘What sort of situation, trooper?’ asked Daur.

  ‘Well, the lights have failed. Total blackout,’ she said.

  ‘Then get a fething tech crew on it,’ said Daur. ‘Bask doesn’t need my permission to call in a–’

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Perday, ‘he’s already done that. It’s f – bad word dark as arseholes down there – sorry, sir. It’s totally dark. And Commissar Fazekiel, she’s called an amber status.’

  Daur and Hark looked at each other sharply.

  ‘What?’ asked Daur. ‘Why?’

  ‘No one really knows, sir, but that’s what happened. Sergeant Major Yerolemew sent me up right away to appraise you, sir.’

  ‘Amber status is a hazard advisory…’ said Daur, mystified.

  ‘“Threat suspected”,’ Hark agreed. ‘But that’s a combat zone condition. This isn’t a combat zone.’

  ‘I think Rawne might disagree with that,’ said Curth.

  Hark scowled. ‘Urdesh is,’ he said. ‘The fething palace isn’t.’

  ‘Luna’s not one to jump at nothing,’ said Curth.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Hark. ‘Nor one to get a technical definition wrong.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Daur, ‘but even so…’

  ‘Major Bask, he’s ordered the retinue out, sir,’ said Perday. ‘Personnel evac. They’re making their way up now.’

  ‘Luna and Bask don’t piss around, Ban,’ said Hark.

  Daur nodded. ‘I’ll alert the palace watchroom. See if they’ve got anything. Then I’ll take this to Gaunt immediately. In person. Viktor, you go down and take a look. Report back to me.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hark.

  ‘You think this is something?’ asked Curth.

  ‘I think someone’s got their shorts in a knot,’ said Daur.

  ‘But you’re taking it to Gaunt…’ Curth said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Daur, ‘because he’ll put a rocket up the Munitorum and get specialist crews down there to sort it out.’

  ‘If it’s just a circuit problem…’ Hark said.

  ‘We’re inside the void-shielded Urdeshic palace, Viktor,’ said Daur, ‘as you just pointed out. What else could it be?’

  Curth and Hark exchanged uneasy glances.

  ‘Well, that’s why you’re going to check it out, isn’t it, commissar?’ said Daur.

  Hark nodded.

  ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve spoken to Gaunt,’ said Daur, and hurried away.

  ‘There’s an officer’s mess on the third floor,’ Hark said to Curth. ‘Decent log fire, decent amasec–’

  ‘Feth that,’ she replied, ‘I’m coming with you.’

  The beams of their stablights criss-crossed the walls as they moved into the darkness.

  ‘Gol, take the left there,’ Baskevyl instructed.

  Kolea nodded, and moved through an archway with a team of troopers from V Company.

  Baskevyl shone his torch around to the right. ‘Meryn?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Move through the billets in that direction.’

  ‘Right,’ Meryn replied. He sounded reluctant. Baskevyl couldn’t blame him. The internal scratching was getting more intense, like a dry hum, a crackle. His own hands were shaking.

  Meryn played his light around, picking out the faces of Leyr, Banda, Neskon and the E Company corpsman, Leclan.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Baskevyl could feel Blenner’s nervous presence at his elbow, even though he couldn’t see him.

  ‘We’ll follow the main tunnel down to the latrine area,’ he said.

  ‘Close up behind,’ Blenner said to the E Company men at their heels. ‘Where’s Shoggy?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t he go this way?’

  ‘I don’t know where the feth he is,’ said Baskevyl. He tried the micro-bead links several times, but there was some kind of interference pattern.

  ‘Domor? Domor, this is Blenner,’ he heard Blenner say behind him. ‘Report your location, Shoggy. Have you found the work crew?’

  ‘I’ve tried that,’ Bask snapped.

  ‘Just getting noise,’ Blenner muttered. Their voices in the small, dark space sounded dead and muffled. ‘Is that jamming?’

  ‘In here?’ Baskevyl replied. ‘I don’t know how that would be possible.’ The palace was the most secure Imperial site on the Urdesh surface, and its void shields were up. Furthermore, they were in a sub-surface level. The undercroft might not be the most salubrious area of the palace complex, but it was buried in bedrock and sheathed in foundation stonework metres thick. None of the Archenemy dispositions on Urdesh could get within kilometres of the Great Hill, let alone undertake the engineering efforts necessary to undermine the foundations without being detected.

  But Baskevyl’s mind kept returning to two things: the weird acoustics that they were all experiencing, and the simple fact that Luna Fazekiel was trustworthy and meticulous.

  Baskevyl called her name into the darkness. There wasn’t even an echo, just a dull silence. Then he called other names… Domor, Dalin… Yoncy…

  Nothing.

  ‘Keep up,’ he said to the others.

  ‘Sir?’

  Baskevyl looked back, shining his beam. It was trooper Osket.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something’s up with the commissar,’ Osket said.

  Baskevyl played his beam around. Blenner was leaning against the passage wall, breathing hard.

  ‘Vaynom?’

  He got a light on Blenner’s face. Blenner flinched. He was sweating and almost panting.

  ‘Vaynom?’ Baskevyl said calmly. ‘Vaynom? You’re having a panic attack. Vaynom, just breathe with me–’

  ‘There’s no air,’ Blenner gasped. ‘There’s no fething air…’

  ‘Vaynom, breathe with me. Slow. Count of three in… Hold it, count of three exhale…’

  ‘This is death,’ Blenner gasped, his breathing painfully quick and shallow. ‘This is death. It’s fething death. It’s fething punishment–’

  ‘Vaynom, breathe. Slow. Slower than that. Now hold it. Fill your lungs.’

  ‘What did I ever do, Bask? I mean really,’ Blenner stammered. ‘I didn’t want it. Not any of it. Just wanted to mind my own business and–’

  ‘Concentrate on your breathing,’ Baskevyl said firmly. He gripped Blenner by the shoulder. ‘Come on. That’s better.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Blenner mumbled, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Baskevyl. ‘It happens to all of us. Just gets up in your head–’

  He paused. Where he was gripping Blenner’s shoulder, it felt wet to the touch. He took his hand away and shone his stablight at his palm.

  ‘What is it?’ Blenner asked.

  ‘Oil, I think,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘There must be some on the wall. You’ve leant on it–’ He sniffed his hand.

  It wasn’t oil.

  Baskevyl pushed Blenner out of the way and shone his light on the wall. The wet spatters read only as black in the harsh glare. Baskevyl didn’t have to see red to know it was blood.

  ‘Are you hurt, Vaynom?’ he asked. ‘Are you cut or–’

  ‘N-no,’ Blenner replied.

  Baskevyl ran his beam along the ground. More black spatters there, gleaming in the light.

  ‘Someone’s hurt,’ he said. Then he pulled his lasrifle off his shoulder, clipped the stablight to the under-barrel lugs, and brought the weapon up in a ready position.

  ‘Secondary order,’ he said.

  ‘I thought…’ Erish began.

  ‘What?’ Kolea asked.

  The big V Company bandsman hesitated.

  ‘Just thinking out loud, sir, sorry. I just thought there was another room beyond this one.’

  Kole
a’s team was in one of the smaller billet chambers. Forty cots in neat rows, head-ends to the cellar walls. Kolea turned his stablight on the end wall.

  ‘There, you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Erish.

  ‘You’d know better than I would,’ Kolea said. This was his first visit to the undercroft. Erish and the others had been down here for two days.

  ‘The layout’s really simple,’ said Kores. ‘Just a grid with…’

  He paused.

  ‘What?’ asked Kolea.

  ‘I don’t like to say, sir,’ replied Kores awkwardly. ‘But Erish is right. I’d have sworn there was a door there. An archway.’

  Kolea slapped the stone wall with his hand.

  ‘Well, there isn’t,’ he said. ‘Let’s back it up and go on to the left.’

  The squad started to turn.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Arradin, a little woodwind player.

  ‘What?’ asked Erish.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that?’ asked Arradin. ‘Sounded like crying. Sobbing.’

  Kolea couldn’t hear anything.

  ‘Just the alarms again?’ Erish suggested.

  Kolea led the way back to the left-hand archway. ‘Close up,’ he said.

  He aimed his light beam through. Nothing–

  He played it back. He’d seen a damned figure. Someone standing there in the darkness. Gone now, gone before his beam could return to it.

  ‘Yoncy?’ he called. It had been her, he was sure of it. Just the flash of a pale face in the dark. ‘Close up,’ he said.

  There was no one behind him.

  ‘Erish? Kores? Where the feth have you gone? Erish?’

  He heard Erish call back. It sounded distant. The acoustics in the basement were off-putting.

  ‘Where the feth have you gone?’ Kolea yelled.

  ‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called back.

  ‘I went to the left. You were right behind me!’

  ‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called.

  ‘Feth’s sake!’ Kolea growled. It sounded like Erish was on the other side of the wall. He went back a few steps to the archway.

  ‘Erish!’

  The archway was there. The chamber beyond was small, and stacked with munition boxes and kitbags.

  Where the feth were the cots? Kolea snorted in annoyance. How the feth had he done that? He’d gone into a side room by mistake, not the billet they’d just searched.

  ‘Erish! Follow the sound of my voice!’

  ‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called from a distance. It didn’t sound like a voice. It sounded like the echo of a voice, the echo returning slowly from Erish’s previous yell.

  Kolea heard a skitter of movement behind him and turned fast. His stablight was quick enough to catch a pale figure darting out of sight.

  ‘Yoncy!’

  He ran after her.

  ‘Yoncy! It’s me! Yoncy, don’t be scared! It’s just a power-down!’

  The hallway ahead of him dead-ended in a solid section of curtain wall.

  ‘Yoncy?’ he called.

  He heard muffled sobbing. He couldn’t tell for the life of him where it was coming from.

  Trooper Luhan moved up through the tail-end of the retinue, handing out the little box-lamps.

  ‘Pass ’em out,’ he said.

  They were crowded into the wide stone hallway that led to the stairwell.

  ‘Why’s everyone stopped?’ Luhan asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said one of the women.

  ‘They’re jammed up on the steps,’ said an elderly tailor, clutching his workbag to his chest so he could take a lamp from Luhan.

  Luhan gave them the rest of the lamps to pass around, and began to push his way up the tightly packed hall.

  ‘What’s the hold up?’ he asked several times, getting nothing but anxious shrugs in reply. The retinue was a fair size: women, children and support artisans. But they should have been filing out by now, up the long steps to the undercroft’s single exit.

  ‘We just stopped moving a couple of minutes ago,’ Elodie said to him as he squeezed past.

  ‘Maybe someone’s had a fall on the steps, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I mean, in this dark.’

  Luhan saw her expression by the glow of the box-lamp he was holding. Captain Daur’s wife was a strong woman. He didn’t like the fear he saw.

  ‘Let us through,’ said Elodie, pushing forwards. Luhan followed. Elodie had become the spokesperson and leader of the retinue, partly because she was married to Daur, but mainly because she was well-liked and cool-headed. She didn’t crumble easily. Luhan stuck close behind her. The retinue was letting her through with more civility than they might have shown him.

  They reached the bottom of the stone staircase. The stairs too were packed with people. The air was very close. Luhan could smell sweat, anxiety and the fouled diapers of some of the babes-in-arms.

  ‘What’s the hold up?’ Elodie called up.

  ‘I think the door’s locked,’ Juniper called back.

  ‘The door? The door to the undercroft?’

  ‘I dunno,’ the woman replied.

  Pushing and apologising, Elodie shoved her way up the steps, Luhan close behind, squirming through the press of bodies.

  ‘Mach!’ she called up. ‘Mach, what’s the issue?’

  High above, in the shadows, she saw the wink of moving stablights.

  ‘Elodie?’ Bonin’s voice boomed down to her.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ she shouted. ‘We can’t leave everybody here like this! We’re crushed in! Get it moving!’

  ‘Keep everybody calm,’ Bonin called back.

  Bonin looked at Yerolemew. They were painfully aware of the tight press of bodies on the deep stairs behind them.

  ‘What do we do?’ the sergeant major asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bonin.

  ‘With respect, Mach, you’re the fething scout.’

  ‘These are the stairs,’ Bonin growled. ‘The only fething stairs. Unless there’s another flight of stairs I didn’t know anything about.’

  ‘Just the one flight,’ Yerolemew replied. There was a twitch in his voice, the faintest hint of anxiety breaking through. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Right,’ replied Bonin in a low whisper. He shone his light at the wall. ‘So where’s the fething door?’

  The hallway ahead was flooding. Baskevyl tipped his light-beam down and saw the dirty liquid spilling along the flagstones. It stank. The latrine area had backed up entirely. He wondered if it was still raining. How much more water was going to pour into the palace’s ancient drains and force its way up into the lower levels?

  ‘Form on me,’ he instructed. All the Ghosts with him had weapons ready, as per his order to secondary. Blenner was hanging back, but he’d drawn his weapon.

  ‘We’re not going on, are we?’ Blenner asked.

  ‘Of course we are,’ Baskevyl said. ‘This is the area the crew was working.’

  ‘Well, they’re not working now,’ said Blenner, stepping back as the water began to reach his boots.

  That much was obvious. There was no sound of pumps, no sign of pump tubing. Baskevyl had a scenario in his mind: Taskane’s crew had been working to drain the water, and there had been a short. It had blown the circuit and caused the blackout, and shocked Taskane and his men, who’d been standing in flood water. A maintenance accident, that’s all this was. They had to get in and help. The Munitorum crew could be seriously hurt. Maybe Fazekiel too, if she’d been with them when it happened.

  The blood… there had to be some other explanation for that.

  He stepped forward. In just a few steps, he had water gushing around his ankles as it back-fed along the hall.

  ‘Stay sharp!’ he said.

 
They splashed into the stream. It was getting deeper. Did the tunnel slant down at this point?

  ‘Sir!’ Osket called out.

  The lamp’s beam moved and Baskevyl saw an object floating along in the tide. A work boot. Old and worn, laces broken.

  ‘That’s Munitorum issue,’ said Osket.

  ‘Fish it out,’ said Baskevyl.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t bother then,’ Baskevyl snapped, and took a step forward.

  He fell, unable to catch himself. He crashed into water at least a foot deep, and thrashed around to get up again. He’d tripped over something.

  ‘Bask?’ Blenner called.

  ‘Feth it!’ Baskevyl replied. He groped around, swirling the water, trying to keep his light and his weapon raised out of the way.

  He located the object he’d tripped on. He shone his light down.

  A face stared up at him out of the filthy water. Overseer Taskane. Baskevyl jerked back.

  ‘Throne,’ he gasped.

  ‘Bask?’

  ‘I’ve found Taskane. He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  Baskevyl swung the light around. There were other shapes in the water. Other bodies. Munitorum overalls.

  ‘Bask?’ Blenner called. ‘How can he be dead?’

  ‘They’re all dead. I can see all of them. The whole crew.’

  ‘How can they be dead? Did they drown?’

  ‘No,’ said Baskevyl. He rose slowly, weapon braced in his dripping hands. ‘They were killed.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because not a single one of them is intact,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘They’ve been torn apart.’

  Ten: Woe

  ‘Down here?’ asked Curth, dubiously.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Hark. He led her off the well-lit palace hallway and down a broad flight of steps, Trooper Perday at their heels.

  ‘They gave us the palace cellars,’ said Hark, walking briskly. ‘The undercroft.’

  ‘It’s quite cosy, really,’ remarked Perday. ‘Except, you know, in the dark. It really is black when the lights go.’

  ‘Only the best for the Tanith First,’ said Curth.

  ‘As usual,’ Hark replied with a nod.

  They reached a large and heavy set of doors. The area was bare and whitewashed, with simple rush matting on the floor. Overhead, old lumen globes burned in iron holders.