‘This is a character of the Mons, you think?’

  Novobazky shrugged. ‘The various standing stones in the inner terrain seem to be the focal points of the gates. Throne, I don’t know. I’m no expert in these things. In my opinion, the Mons is wired to let them through. It’s built into the architecture. Established warp gates, networked to I don’t know where. This isn’t a level playing field.’

  ‘And the stalkers themselves?’ Gaunt asked, looking at Dorden, who was standing in the doorway of the habi-tent.

  ‘Tissue samples say they’re ogryns,’ Dorden said, ‘with some human genetic material. The creations of some vicious eugenic program. Their brains are modified for absolute aggression. We’re talking about human and ogryn specimens who have been stripped down, rebuilt and programmed just to kill.’

  ‘You’ve proof?’

  Dorden shook his head. ‘I’m still collating. I don’t have the right instrument back-up here to be conclusive. This is just a field hospital. Maybe if I had access to the body scanners and biopsy vaults at Frag Flats or Tarenal. Right now, it’s just a hunch.’

  ‘We do hunches,’ Rawne said. ‘Inklings too.’

  Gaunt looked at Dorden. ‘But from what you’ve seen, doctor, you’d say these were modified human or human-allied troops?’

  Dorden nodded. ‘The corpse I was autopsying, it had dog tags buried in the flesh of its throat. I mean overlapped by skin graft and regrowth. The tags identified a Trooper Ollos Ollogred, Fifth Storm Faction (Ogryn), 21st Hurgren Regiment. I checked it out. The 21st is currently in action on Morlond.’

  ‘They’re sending our own people back to fight us,’ Novobazky said.

  ‘It seems so,’ Gaunt replied. ‘And they’re sending them back through punctures in the warp. Anyone here remember the jehgenesh?’ he asked.

  Rawne, Varl, Criid and Bonin nodded. Beltayn moaned at the memory.

  ‘The what?’ asked Novobazky, but Gaunt had already moved on. ‘Mkoll and…what was his name? Maggs? They went through?’ he asked.

  ‘And came back alive,’ Rawne replied.

  ‘I want to talk to them,’ Gaunt said.

  Dorden injected something powerful into Mkoll’s drip, and nursed him back into consciousness.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he told Gaunt. ‘That’s all I’ll allow.’

  Gaunt nodded. He crouched down at Mkoll’s bedside. ‘Oan? Hey, Oan? It’s Gaunt.’

  ‘…never come back…’

  ‘Mkoll?’

  ‘Thought you’d never come back,’ Mkoll slurred, opening his eyes.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, Oan. Dorden says so. I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘So talk. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘What did you see, Oan? What the feth did you see?’

  Mkoll rolled over and stared at the roof of the habi-tent. ‘Maggs went through, so I followed him. Never leave a man behind, that’s what you always taught me.’

  ‘I did. I did.’

  ‘So I went after him. It was cold, that place. Really cold. I knew at once that I’d stepped off Ancreon Sextus completely. I was… somewhere…’

  ‘Oan?’

  ‘Sorry sorry, drifting off. I was somewhere else. The stars weren’t right, that was the first thing I noticed. The constellations were entirely different. I navigate by the stars. I notice these things.’

  ‘Go on, Oan.’

  ‘It was cold. Did I mention that? I mean really cold. Rocks, slabs. Everywhere you looked. Maggs was shouting about the sky, and I noticed that too. I could see star patterns, but directly overhead, it was a roof. A ceiling. Massive blocks of stone hanging in the night sky. It made no sense. How could stones be just hanging there? And they were so quiet.’

  ‘Quiet?’ Gaunt asked.

  ‘Really quiet,’ Mkoll whispered. ‘They should have been making a huge noise, a sky filled with stone slabs. But they were quiet.’

  His voice faded away. Dorden reluctantly pushed another vial into the drip.

  ‘No more,’ he told Gaunt.

  Gaunt nodded. ‘Oan? Tell me about the place. Was it empty?’

  ‘No! No, no, no. Hordes of stalkers, massing to attack. Inhuman things too. Machines. War machines. Blood Pact. We ran, and we tried to hide. The stalkers came after us. The wrought ones. I saw legions of the damned, assembled, en masse, waiting for the gates to open.’

  ‘The gates?’ Gaunt asked.

  ‘You have to understand,’ Mkoll murmured. ‘There’s nothing inside the Mons. It’s empty. It’s just a gateway. A massive gateway, sucking us in so it can open and destroy us. The gates in each compartment don’t lead into the next compartment along. I saw them. Laid out in a row. They open into somewhere else….’

  ‘Mkoll?’

  ‘That’s enough!’ snapped Dorden. ‘He’s passed out again.’

  Eszrah suddenly unharnessed his reynbow and moved to the entrance.

  ‘What is it?’ Varl asked. He and Criid switched round, training their weapons on the mouth of the tent. Bright lights were flickering outside. Gaunt rose, hearing the whine of a gunship.

  ‘Put your guns away,’ he said. ‘You too, Eszrah. I’ve been waiting for this.’

  The tent flaps pulled aside and Commissariat troopers came in, firearms raised.

  ‘Nobody move!’ the squad leader said, playing his hellgun around the tent.

  Nobody did, not even Rawne.

  His pistol aimed squarely at Gaunt, Faragut entered the tent. Behind him came Commissar-General Balshin, Inquisitor Welt and Nahum Ludd.

  ‘You will surrender yourselves to the authority of the Commissariat!’ Faragut barked.

  ‘End of the road, Gaunt,’ Balshin smiled.

  ‘I’m really very sorry, sir,’ Ludd said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  04.10 hrs, 199.776.M41

  Post 36, Fifth Compartment

  Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus

  ‘We gave you a chance, Gaunt,’ Balshin said smoothly. ‘I was against it, but the lord general insisted. We gave you the chance to prove yourself. And as is usually the case when someone is given enough rope…’

  ‘All the things you could be focusing your attention on, commissar-general,’ Gaunt said, ‘and you fixate on me. I really bother you, don’t I?’

  ‘My foremost task is the removal of the heresy of taint in the Imperial Guard, Gaunt,’ she replied. ‘It is endemic on this front of the Crusade. I have never seen its effects so pernicious, so deep-rooted. Of course I am bothered when a senior commissar, a man of influence and authority, walks free amongst us, riddled with the touch of ruin.’

  Gaunt almost laughed out loud. ‘Based on what?’

  Balshin stared at him levelly, as if scolding a recalcitrant child. ‘I was never satisfied with your testimony at the tribunal. It was hollow. To be exposed for such a length of time to an afflicted world? The notion you remained untainted is laughable. Since returning to duty, your behaviour has been wayward to say the least. You have meandered from duty, pursued your own private agendas. There have been unauthorised communiqués, conspiratorial exchanges conducted under the guise of official Commissariat business…’

  Gaunt shook his head. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  She smiled blandly. ‘Let’s consider the fact that just a few hours ago you deserted your post, broke your orders, misappropriated an Imperial transport, moved from one location to another within a martial cordon without clearance or validation… and here I find you, plotting again, in a little huddle with some of the very people who stood accused of taint beside you.’

  ‘I suggest you modify your language, madam general,’ Novobazky said sharply. Ignoring the Commissariat troopers all around them, he took a step towards her.

  ‘That’s close enough!’ Faragut warned.

  ‘I take issue with your characterisation of us as tainted or heretics,’ Novobazky said. ‘There are matters here that–’

  ‘Novobazky,’ Balshin said. ‘I always thought of you as a dependable man. Thank you for demonstrating how odiously and malignantly Gaunt’s contamination can be spread.’

  Novobazky’s face hardened and his cheeks flushed with fury, but he kept his mouth shut. Gaunt looked directly at Inquisitor Welt, who had not spoken a word. ‘Inquisitor? Do you go along with this? I took you to be far less blinkered than Balshin.’

  ‘Say something to convince me,’ said Welt.

  Gaunt gestured around the theatre tent. ‘I can tell you plenty. Everyone in this room can tell you plenty. There is taint here, inquisitor. It’s the city itself. The place we’re fighting for is sick.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Balshin. ‘And borderline heresy. The step-cities of Ancreon Sextus are revered monuments that date back to–’

  ‘Tell me about the stalkers,’ Gaunt said.

  ‘What?’ Balshin snapped.

  ‘The Ordo Xenos has established, through analysis of recovered specimens, that the so-called “stalkers” are augmetically enhanced humans and, more often ogryns,’ said Welt. ‘This information has been suppressed for reasons of morale. The unauthorised autopsy you have been conducting here, and all evidence bearing from it, will be sequestered by the Inquisition.’

  ‘And tell me about the warp doors,’ Gaunt said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Balshin asked.

  ‘Tell me about the warp doors that riddle the compartments. Explain to me how the stalkers get in and out during the night.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. We have assumed burrows, perhaps…’

  ‘There aren’t any fething burrows,’ Rawne said. ‘My team and I witnessed a warp door in use last night, less than five kilometres from where we’re standing. We saw a stalker come through. Those two men there passed through the gate themselves and re-emerged through a second one.’ Rawne pointed at the unconscious forms of Maggs and Mkoll on the cots.

  ‘They must be examined and interviewed,’ said Welt.

  ‘That will have to wait,’ Dorden told him. ‘They are in no condition.’ Welt half-smiled at Dorden, as if amused at the medicae’s defiance of an Inquisitorial order.

  ‘The structure of the Mons is unsound, Balshin,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘The structure of the Mons has been extensively studied and surveyed,’ Balshin exclaimed. ‘It is under constant scrutiny from the Fleet and the Tacticae. Do you really expect me to believe that you and a few of your fellow deviants can come here and, in just a few days, uncover secrets that everyone else has missed? If there was a system of warp doors here as you claim, they would have been detected months ago.’

  ‘They are pretty much invisible to standard sensory systems,’ Gaunt replied, ‘and to regular human senses too.’

  ‘But not to you?’ sneered Balshin.

  ‘No, not to me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Nor to any of the Gereon mission team.’

  ‘He’s practically confessing to taint!’ Faragut blurted.

  ‘I’m repeating what I’ve told you all along,’ Gaunt said. ‘I’m admitting to a sensitivity, an awareness of the vibrations of Chaos. We could not have survived our time on Gereon without developing an affinity. The very instincts that kept us alive there are showing us the truth now.’ He stated directly at Balshin. ‘The fact that we have worked to expose this danger, the fact that we are telling it to your face… Does that alone not prove whose side we’re fighting for?’

  Balshin was about to answer back, but Welt raised a hand. ‘Commissar-general, perhaps you and your team would be so good as to record full statements from the individuals here. Doctor? Please prepare those two men for transportation back to Frag Flats. Gaunt, walk with me.’

  Gaunt glanced at Rawne, and then followed Welt out of the theatre tent. There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘That went well, I thought,’ said Varl.

  Gaunt and the inquisitor walked together through the habi-tent rows of the post, and came to a halt on a patch of higher ground, looking north. The air was still black, but the compartment was lit by the moving lights and the distant radiance of fire.

  ‘Balshin is under pressure to produce results,’ Welt said. ‘The Crusade Second Front is truly ailing. If your claims are validated, it will make a big difference to the way the war goes here on Ancreon Sextus.’

  ‘They’d better be validated soon,’ said Gaunt. ‘Mkoll said he witnessed vast hosts massing beyond the gate. Did no one ever stop and wonder how the enemy was able to keep producing so many troops and fighting vehicles from out of the heart of this Mons?’

  Welt paused, as if wondering whether to let Gaunt in on classified information. ‘It’s not just here, Gaunt. The situation here at Sparshad Mons is being replicated, right now, at every other step-city on the planet.’

  ‘A unified offensive? In cities thousands of kilometres from each other?’

  Welt nodded.

  ‘It’s because the enemy isn’t in the cities,’ Gaunt said. ‘The cities are just delivery systems to bring them through. The Blood Pact armies are not waiting for us in the next compartment or the one after that. They’re simply coming out of the gates. Mkoll suggested that the main compartment gates are large scale versions of the doors the stalkers use.’

  ‘So the enemy gets our attention, draws us into laying siege to these haunted rocks, gets us to commit all our forces deep inside the walls…’ Welt let the words hang.

  ‘And then fully opens the gateways.’ said Gaunt. ‘I sometimes think we’re guilty of underestimating our old foe, inquisitor. The Ruinous Powers operate with levels of guile and sophistication that we scarcely credit. On Gereon, we witnessed them using jehgenesh. Gigantic warp creatures that were bred to consume a planet’s natural resources, such as fresh water or mineral ore, and excrete them via the warp to supply planets light years away. They are not destroyers, they are users. If they work on that kind of scale, why should it surprise us if they deploy entire armies that way, in places like this, where the ancient mechanisms for such transmission still exist?’

  ‘I subscribe to the theory that the Imperium’s worst enemy,’ said Welt, ‘is its own ignorance.’

  Welt looked at Gaunt, and studied him curiously for a moment. ’Inquisitor?’

  ‘It’s an unhappy position you’re in, Gaunt. Despite all the great service you’ve done for the Imperium, you’re regarded as a difficult, dangerous man now.’

  ‘I don’t know about difficult,’ said Gaunt. ‘Dangerous is right, though.’

  ‘You’re this close to summary execution,’ Welt said baldly. ‘And there’s only one thing keeping you alive.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Me,’ Welt said. ‘If you and your team could survive as long as you did on that hell-hole world without succumbing to taint, then for the sake of the Imperium and the protection of our species, I have to find out why.’

  Welt returned to the theatre tent to assist with the interrogations. Two Commissariat troopers were detailed to Gaunt, and kept him secluded in one of the rooms in the post. He sat alone for a few minutes, and then fell into a deep sleep. Ludd woke him four hours later. Outside, a thin light was announcing the day.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gaunt asked.

  ‘Commissar-General Balshin’s finished here. Rawne’s team has been debriefed. They’re to return to their unit at the front. Maggs and Mkoll will be shipped back to Frag Flats.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Still unconscious, but showing signs of recovery. I’ve been sent to collect you, sir. You’re to come back with us.’

  Gaunt got to his feet.

  ‘Sir, I want to say… I’m sorry,’ Ludd said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For reporting your actions. Balshin made it quite clear I was to report to her any… unorthodox behaviour on your part. It was my duty. But I didn’t like doing it.’

  ‘I was counting on you, Ludd,’ Gaunt said.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘When I realised something was wrong here, I knew there was no point me trying to convince Balshin. She has no time for me. I needed her to believe I was up to something, that I had something to hide. That way she’d come looking and wouldn’t be able to dismiss what I had to show her.’

  ‘So… you expected me to–’

  ‘I expected you to do your duty, Ludd. And luckily, you did.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  14.10 hrs, 199.776.M41

  Frag Flats HQ

  Sparshad Combat Zone, Ancreon Sextus

  He’d been waiting for hours, almost but not quite a prisoner in a spartan chamber aboard one of the command Leviathans. He kept looking at his pathetic, broken chronometer, watching time creep on slowly.

  The chamber doors folded inwards on electric motors. Commissar Faragut stood in the doorway. Faragut stared at Gaunt contemptuously.

  ‘Did you draw the lucky straw, Faragut?’ Gaunt asked. ‘You must be very happy. Back of the head, please. I don’t want your face to be the last thing I ever see.’

  Faragut tensed, but didn’t take the bait. ‘The lord general is waiting for you,’ he said.

  Van Voytz was in the Leviathan’s main tactical command centre. Intense activity was taking place all around him. Hundreds of voices speaking all at once, hundreds of logic engines chattering and whirring. The hololithic displays above the main strategium pit were changing fast: coloured patterns and contours symbolising the effects of enormous coordination work.

  Van Voytz saw Gaunt approaching.

  ‘Ibram,’ he said, and gestured around himself. ‘All this, Ibram.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That’s all, Faragut,’ Van Voytz said, and the commissar left them.

  Van Voytz led Gaunt through to a quieter side vault where eight tacticians, including Antonid Biota, were softly discussing their art around an active display table.