A/N: Chap 30 review responses are in my forum. These chapters are heavily influenced and based on the events of Dan Abnett's Necropolis. I despise retreading canon, but I found myself written into a bit of a corner and the only way out was to largely follow that story.
On a housekeeping note, I will not be posting next Saturday due to holiday travel. I hope everyone who celebrates it has a happy Thanksgiving.
Chapter Thirty-One: Manus Lassas Roborasti
On the nineteenth day since the siege of Vervunhive began, Taylor woke before dawn with a surge of adrenaline and a half-swallowed gasp. She remained perfectly still as she looked around the cramped billet where she and a pair of her other girls took their sleep shift.
For a moment, she thought it was another intruder, but she quickly dismissed the thought. No, it wasn't any particular sound at all. Just the opposite.
It was quiet.
Taylor rolled onto her feet. "Calie, Jessi, up! Up!"
Jessi sat up. "What, Jada?"
"Shelling's stopped," Taylor said.
Despite being tired and wounded, Jessi Banda understood immediately and stopped her moaning. Calie took her time–she was always slow to wake. "What do…oh. OH! Gak, they're coming!"
"I'm going to command. Get everyone ready!"
Taylor's ears rang with the ghosts of past artillery shells and adrenaline as she scurried through the trench her teams and the miners from the Seventeen Deep Working Mine dug out. Most of the various units of their scratch-made fighting force were still asleep. It didn't surprise her when she saw the leader of the miners wide awake, though.
Gol Kolea sat in one of the many fire nests built into the wreckage. He sat with a steaming cup of weak recaf from their thinly stretched food stores. He carried one of the VHPC lasguns Taylor claimed at his hip.
He looked up when she emerged. "Jada," he said in greeting. "Shelling's stopped."
"Any sign of movement?"
"Not yet."
And there it was–the recognition of inevitability.
Taylor had to admit she liked Gol. The man was a miner by trade, but he had the same taciturn understanding of life and death her father did. More importantly, his people followed him almost as fervently as hers did. It explained the insignia he now wore on his miner's one-piece–Brevet Lieutenant.
She wore a similar one on her hastily dyed blue jumpsuit. She patted his shoulder. "I'm going to make sure Fencer's awake. You spread the word to your people?"
He gave her a nod and sipped his hot water.
The trenches smelled. It was a sick combination of sweat, blood, rot and the more astringent chemical smell of expended thermite and fycelene from the explosions themselves. The odor was everywhere, and intense enough that even their stolen or scrounged rations had a bitter, industrial aftertaste.
The trenches were much longer thanks to the sheer brute power, tools and expertise Gol and his miners brought. They ran under burned out hab units, shattered towers and industrial domes; they ran under parks and highways. They criss-crossed the outer districts almost from the Hess River to the Spoil. And they were able to do this because once Taylor agreed to help the Vervunhive Primary officer, Fencer, she brought hundreds–even thousands–of civilians with her.
Not every civilian could or even should fight. A habwife or aged clerk who couldn't find the will to pull a trigger just took a useful weapon away from someone who could. Children were an even bigger liability, even setting aside the abhorrent morality of it. But there were thousands of loom girls, clerks, sanitation workers, habrats and even a few mostly-decent gangers whose lives continued even after the shelling destroyed their livelihoods.
That small number of Captain Fencer's soldiers who survived the initial shelling had ballooned to a force of almost two thousand men and women. The main hive spire's void shields stopped the refugees in their tracks, leaving them stranded in the no-man's land of the outer habs. Taylor's group gathered who they could, and through their effots encountered first Kol's group, and then the small surviving group of Vervunhive primary soldiers who remained to fight.
As she moved through the trenches, she stopped at every nest and tapped the teams on the shoulders to make sure they were awake. Most were, and wide-eyed at that. They knew what the silence meant–even those who had lost their hearing.
Captain Fencer was also already awake and at the nest closest to his dugout when she found him. He was speaking with Corporal Gannon and Holla, one of Taylor's girls who proved to be a better shot than Gannon.
Most of her girls were good shots. Firing the loom shuttles required a level of hand-and-eye coordination that made for a natural transition to weapons. Not all had the will for it, but those loom girls who found the will made excellent shooters.
She could see Fencer's exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders and the bags under his eyes. He managed to summon a weak smile for her. "Brevet-Lieutenant Washton. What brings you to this side of paradise?"
He didn't realize it, yet. "The shelling's stopped," she said.
She let the words work their way through the fog of his exhaustion until they struck true with bulging eyes. "Emperor save us!" He leaned down and looked through the firehole near Holla. "Has anyone seen anything yet?"
"Not yet," Taylor said. "It's still dark out. But they're coming. Gol and I are mustering the lines."
"Good. Good! Fall backs ready?"
Before Taylor could answer, hell opened up on the defenders of Vervunhive's broken outhabs. Holla ducked her head and further down the trench someone screamed as a near wall of lasfire slammed into every exposed portion of the trench. Taylor ducked down, as did Fencer.
"Hold your fire until you see a target!" Fencer screamed over the noise. "Jada, go! Go!"
Taylor ran, ducking low under the constant barrage of lasrifle bolts. As she ran, dark memories of other lives began to well up in her mind, threatening to overwhelm her and steal her strength. She pushed the memories back with a scream that was lost in a fusillade of artillery that ripped firing nest four into shreds behind her.
She ducked back and saw the heavy gunner's head torn open. His handler, a ganger teen named Banin, looked up wild-eyed at her. She signed to him; he'd lost his hearing like so many. "Man the gun! I'll send a handler. Don't fire until you see the enemy!"
The boy's eyes watered–he was Taylor's biological age, but without the dark, heavy burden of the memories she carried. Even so, he nodded and picked up the heavy lasgun and moved it back to the shredded firing screen. He kept low.
Taylor sent a reserve handler back to help him with the ammo. Gol was right where she left him, hunkered down with his lasrifle at the firing screen. They'd dug their trenches deep, and tried to keep them as hidden as possible, but in some areas they were visible as an obvious defensive line.
No surprise those lines were the ones being hit the hardest.
Taylor turned a sharp corner and ran north to the second defensive line. She had no need to shout warnings; her people were already scrambling into position. None had uniforms; any body armor they had was scrounged from dead soldiers or the VPHC bunker, like Taylor's. None had ever fought against real soldiers, and she could see the terror in their faces.
She went down the line, signing and shouting. "First line is taking fire. Do not fire without a target. Single shot only, no auto! Conserve your ammo. Remember your fall-back routes and position!"
The plan Fencer put together with Taylor and Gol was a good one–it was the only one that made sense. No matter how determined the resistance, armed civilians were not going to stop the Zoican advance. The heavy memories Taylor carried in her mind confirmed it. No, they're goal wasn't to stop the Zoican advance; it was to bleed it in the hope that the main hive defenses would have fewer enemies to fight.
Line by line they would fight, falling back, until there was no one left to fight. The only other option was simply to die, and Taylor had no intention of letting her people die without a fight.
She fell in beside Sehri Muril and Lefter. Lefter was a back-office clerk–a frail, pallid man old enough to be their father. A life at a cramped bureau left his spirit willing to fight, but his body weak. Of the two, Sehri was definitely the better shot.
"First line's already buckling," Taylor said. "Get ready."
The first outlying soldiers of Ferrezoica Hive appeared just minutes later–they emerged like shadows from the clouds of dust the attack caused. They came in scattered clumps; their formation broken by the first line of defenders. In their midst came an armored vehicle with a large lascannon manned by a single Zoican soldier.
The enemy wore a dull red great coats with black leather straps holding up uniforms underneath. Their faces were completely covered by enclosed helmets painted with angry faces or skulls with the crest of Ferrozoica on the brow, above the eye-plates. Each one carried a shiny-new lasrifle and they fired with the abandon of a well-supplied army.
The second defensive line was much better hidden than the first. Taylor signed to her runners at each nest, who silently spread the word. She would shoot first, and that would be the signal.
She waited until the first phalanx was beside her before she shot the gunner right off the armored vehicle. A split second later the others of her line opened fire.
It seemed like a pittance against the Zoica attack. For every enemy soldier that fell, ten more turned to attack each point of fire. A new figure appeared on the top of the armored vehicle, just in time for Taylor's only flamer to open up from the rear quarter of the kill zone Taylor had made with a loop of the line.
The burning prometheum shot out across the open space, lightning soldiers and the armored vehicle alike. A dozen men scrambled out of the burning vehicle and were quickly gunned down as Taylor's second line of fighters joined the first for a heavy barrage of firepower.
The press of the enemy was too dense, though. Counterfire poured in at five times the rate of Taylor's own people, with the inevitable consequences. She winced, fighting back angry tears when she saw young, desperate fighters gunned down or blown apart, often a dozen at a time under the impossible fire of the Zoicans.
The burning armored vehicle suddenly exploded and shot into the air as if swatted away; behind it came a Zoican tank, mottled green and red. Its turret swung around to the center point of their kill zone.
Taylor's ears rang as the trench disappeared in a shower of dust and viscera. There was no point in speaking. She tapped Sehra's shoulder and grabbed at Lefter. His arm flopped lifelessly back to the ground; only then did she see the gouge of shrapnel buried in his bald skull.
She grabbed his weapon and power packs, and turned to run as fast as she could down the narrow trench. They reached the fallback point and were surprised to find Fencer and Gol there with only a handful of first line defenders.
"Soldiers in the trenches," Fencer said. Blood trickled from a dozen small cuts across his face and neck. His helmet was long gone.
"Ninety seconds?"
Taylor wanted to give her people as much time as she could. They counted tensely as their people trickled back. Jessi brought up the rear with Corporan Gannon and a wide-eyed Calie.
"They're right behind us!" Jessi had to scream to make herself heard over the roar of battle.
Gol Kolea, the lumbering miner who lost his family in the first shelling of the habs, pulled the switch.
Through the narrow kill screen, the haze of weapons fire gave way to a long, concentrated explosion as the mined trenches blew. Those Zoican's who breached the trench and made it far enough away from the mines stumbled from the explosion.
Gol laid into them with an axe-rake, an autopistol, and a towering rage few could match. Taylor charged after. She could never match Gol for strength, but she could cover him in the cramped, close quarters. Sehri and Jessi joined, as did a dozen others to take the isolated Zoican forces.
Gannon made an odd grunting sound as one of the Zoican's used a bayonet to spear through his chest. Taylor shot the figure in the face with her own laspistol. It was dark, poorly lit, crowded and loud. The smells of voided bladders and exposed bowels mixed with blood and the astringent snap of fycelene and expended lasbolts.
Twice she or Sehri spotted an enemy about to throw a grenade and gunned them down in time for the explosive to go off in the enemy's midst. And then, in seconds, it was over.
Speaking aloud and by sign, Taylor said, "Grab everything off them you can!" She then did just that, searching the nearest bodies for weapons, ammunition or rations. She paused only long enough to close Gannon's staring eyes.
With their arms full of looted supplies, the surviving members of the band fled while directly overhead, the Ferrozoican advance continued.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Days blended together. They caught a brief glimpse of drop ships hopefully bringing the Imperial Guard on planet, but that was far away behind the curtain wall of the Hive. The massive war machine of the Emperor on Holy Terra would not come out into the outer habs, not while the main Hive remained in danger.
Exhaustion sapped at muscles. Like the rest of her band, Taylor caught snatches of sleep when she could. Not every waking moment was spent fighting or running, but it felt like it. They were finding fewer civilians to replace those they lost fighting, but still they fought.
Fencer was gone three days back, blasted apart by a vehicle-mounted autogun. That was a bad hit, taking out almost a third of Taylor's band and half of Golea's. After that, they had no choice but to combine their forces for any hope of having any combat effectiveness.
The miners seemed upset when Gol deferred to Taylor. Gol had no ego. He did what was necessary, and when his people complained he shut them up with one sentence: "The girl looks like a kid, but Jada knows her stuff better than Fencer did."
She knew her stuff. The memories of wars unending haunted her fitful sleep. What those memories told her was that they could not survive pitched battles. So they made a point of not fighting any.
"Two squads, one flamer." Nessa, a nurse trainee turned volunteer infantry, signed from her shelter just inside the partially collapsed machine shop. Like so many, Nessa had been deafened by artillery.
Taylor signaled confirmation. "Paint your targets on my mark. Flamer is Gol's."
The first of the ochre-clad troops poked their helmeted head in cautiously. Away from the seemingly endless legions of Ferrizoican legions, the kill squad looked slight, their flak-jackets too large for them. Even so, the battle dress looked new, with black leather webbing to hold their gear, and lasguns so new Taylor could make out the production stamps. Their faces were hidden behind fearsome facemasks painted with skulls or the Ferrozoican crest.
The lead sent a vox signal. They likely spoke Low Gothic just like Taylor, but the helmets muffled and encrypted the words. All they heard was a short, near-quiet burst of static-like nonsense. The answer came seconds later as seven more soldiers followed after the first, while outside Taylor could hear a tank ground debris into dust. The soldiers they could take, at least in small numbers.
It was the armor that hurt them every time.
She looked over Sehri's head at Sergeant Haller. He was closest to the outer wall, with a mirror array that let him see the street. He held up the two loose wires in his hands. She signaled to Gol across the floor of the machine shop, with five fingers held up. Gol echoed the gesture to Haller.
Five…four…three…two…
Haller joined the live wires. Outside, the concussion mine ripped through the rear track of the invader's tank. The same signal also ignited a few firecrackers in the shelled-out food seller's mart opposite where the defenders waited. As the halted tank turned its turret after the decoy, Taylor and her people traced the startled Zoica squad and fired off in a staccato burst of ten shots.
Seven soldiers dropped instantly with headshots; the flamer spun around their fearsome weapon, ready to fire, when a false wall behind the enemy collapsed and the powerful form of Gol Kolea jumped out with his axe-rake held in both hands.
The blow split the Zoican's helmet, and the head within, all the way to the base of the neck. The enemy soldier dropped without firing their flamer once. Gol quickly began pulling the weapon off the body.
The entire ambush was masked by the sound of the tank blasting the empty foodseller's court apart while other Zoican ground troops converged on the decoy site to support their armor.
There were only eight other soldiers escorting the tank. Eight easy targets.
Taylor ignored them as she ordered her people to begin raiding the bodies. This raiding squad only had twelve fighters. She and Gol agreed any more was itself a risk. Taylor joined Sergeant Haller and Gol himself on overwatch as behind them each Zoican soldier was stripped of all munitions, weapons, food and water.
Nessa tapped on Taylor's shoulder. "Come look."
Gol nodded to her, and Taylor followed the former nurse trainee back to the first soldier to enter the room. With the face mask off, Taylor sucked in a breath as she saw a pale, smooth-cheeked face of a prepubescent girl. She pried an eyelid to reveal oily black pooling in the sclera of her eye, and pulled back with a hiss.
Vidor, one of Gol's, finished with the last body. No signal had to be given; Gol and Haller fell back with them, and soon enough they slipped into one of the few remaining trenches.
They only made if a few hundred yards, with Vidor himself in the lead, when they turned a blind corner of the trenches right into the skull-painted face-mask of another Zoican soldier. The enemy's startled cry emerged as a garbled burst of static. Vidor's came out as a "Gak me!"
The two scrambled to bring their weapons to bear. Behind Vidor, Taylor pulled both of her precious laspistols–the Inquisitor one and an HPVC weapon. "Vidor, down!"
The man dropped as she brought the barrels of her pistols to bear. In the tight confines of the trench, which were just wide enough for Gol to pass through, her smaller weapons were much easier to move and position than the larger lasrifles. She had her first shot through the enemy's forehead before Vidor found his knee.
The first soldier fell back against his fellows, momentarily shielding the front two but exposing the back five. Taylor fired constantly, syncopating her trigger pulls to almost auto-pistol speed. One of the two soldiers covered by the first managed to get their lasrifle up and fired blindly.
Vidor screamed as he flipped onto his back. Behind Taylor, Nessa took position with her las rifle and opened with a small burst of full-auto, burning through both the dead and living, while Taylor's pistols finished the last.
"Strip 'em," Taylor snarled, as angry at herself as the enemy. She turned and saw Nessa kneeling by Vidor. The teenaged former loomgirl blinked back tears as she stared, helpless, at the mass of bloody hamburger that used to be Vidor's right arm and shoulder. She tried her best not to listen to Vidor's agonized panting.
Gol stepped forward, hunched over because of the low roof. He tapped Nessa's shoulder and motioned for her to go. She glared up at him a moment before blinking back her tears and nodding. She joined the others as they stripped the enemy of useful items.
The big miner leaned down to Vidor. "Tell me what you want, my friend," he said.
"I want a frag grenade," Vidor said between gasps. "For…Vervunhive. For my girls. Take the rest."
"May the Emperor's light guide you," Gol said.
"The Emperor protects," the rest said by rote. Taylor just mouthed the words.
Gol personally took the doomed man's las rifle and his packs, then took his scavenged supplies. He paused only long enough to gently give Vidor a sip of water, and then a frag grenade.
"Other way," Taylor decided once everything was saddled. They headed out. Each one of their band knelt and touched Vidor's boot in farewell, until finally Taylor herself.
The former mine machinist managed a smile. "I was a gakking awful shot anyway," he muttered to her. "This way I might actually get some of them."
The distant noise echoing off the walls of the trench hinted that he might at that. She leaned over and gently kissed his forehead. There was nothing else to say or do; she turned and rushed down the trench after the rest of her people. She just cleared the blind corner when she heard the grenade go off and more enemies scream.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Taylor lost count of the days, not that they mattered. The only day that counted was the next one. She slept deeply, curled up next to Jesse on one side and Nessa on the other. Calie found another group up bunk with when they had to relocate.
"Jada, wake up."
Gum cemented her eyelids together. Taylor reached up to break the seal enough to open her eyes. Her stomach swirled and her mind reeled from exhaustion. She blinked and saw an equally tired Gol Kolea kneeling down at the mouth of the cubby she and a few of her girls formed for sleep.
"Got company," he said. "Need you out here."
He wouldn't have asked during her sleep shift if it weren't important. Rather than whine, she just nodded. "Give me a sec."
Jesse and Nessa were so exhausted they didn't wake at all as Taylor made use of the sanitary pot they scavenged, doing her best to wash with scavenged hand-wipes before pulling on her amalgamation of Zoican armor dyed with Vervunhive colors gifted by former gangers. Armed and dressed and as clean as the field could permit, she pulled her filthy black hair into a bun and stepped out into the narrow tunnel that connected their cubby with the mine intersection that ol led them to a few days back.
The rest of their joint forces were gathered in the former food distribution center, several hundred here and even more hundreds out doing their part to defend the Hive. Loomgirls, clerks, miners and machinists, the Scratchers as they called themselves, all carried Zoican lasguns and ate Zoican rations.
In their midsts, right next to Gol, stood an anomaly.
The man was a soldier, she could see, but not one native to any hive on Verghast.
His uniform consisted of well-fitted black trousers made of tear-proof synthfab, and a tight, lightly armored combat vest that left his muscular arms bare. His boots glistened black under the dim chem lights, and around his shoulders he wore a glistening cloak. A large, modified sniper las hung from one shoulder, while at his belt she saw a silver-plated knife that in some eras of human history would have been considered a short sword. The man himself had long, thick black hair and an equally thick beard growing from pasty, almost unnaturally pale skin. When he turned dark eyes in her direction, she saw a blue, half-moon tattoo under his right eye.
"The fething angel of the outhabs is a little girl?"
What?
Rather than take offense on her behalf at the man's exclamation, Gol laughed. "She'll bust your balls, man. Jada, this gakking idiot says he's an Imperial Guardsman. Come to liberate us or something."
To his credit, the guardsman rolled his eyes a little, but didn't move as she stepped closer. Doing so, she saw scars on his arms, and the still hardness to his eyes that some of her own people were just now developing.
"Brevet-Lieutenant Jada Washton," she said. "Vervun Primary. Name, rank and unit?"
"Scout-Trooper MkVenner, Tanith First and Only, Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt commanding."
"And do they teach you how to salute, Scout-Trooper MkVenner?"
The man stared at her for a long moment. "I'm sure there was a course about it. Been a while, though."
It was a direct challenge to her authority, or so he might have thought. Her authority with her teams was not built on rank, but trust. "It's the uniform, isn't it?" Taylor asked. "I look like a kid. I told you I needed a big, shiny star or something, Gol."
"So the damned Zoican's know who to shoot?" Kolea said with an amused smile.
She flashed the trooper a tired grin. "Fine, I'm too tired to care. What do you have for us, MkVenner?"
Slowly, aware of many eyes on him, MkVenner reached behind him and removed a water-proofed leather bag that he held out to her. "Vox beads," he said. "We only have fifty, but it'll help your communications."
"A little," Taylor admitted. "Half of our people were deafened by shelling. What news from Vervunhive?"
"Holding for now, but it's closer than it should be," the trooper admitted. "No one's sure how the Ferrozoicans got so many people."
"They're Chaos-tainted," Taylor said without hesitation. "And it's not just professional soldiers. They've thrown women and children in uniform too. It's not just their army, it's their whole population."
The soldier rocked on his feet a little, but didn't question her. "Makes sense." He looked around him at the many Scratch fighters. "You've made a difference, Brevet-Lieutenant Washton, Brevet-Lieutenant Kolea. We've heard about you both even up on the wall. We've seen your work. Your scratchers are credited with almost four thousand enemy dead. The Colonel wonders if you'd be willing to work with us to do more."
"This is our home," Gol said. "We'd kill every gakking one of them if we had the guns for it."
"And that's the key," Taylor added. "We have nothing but small arms. Get us anti-tank weapons, more munitions and rations, we could do more. We can move in between the enemy units. It's the armor that kills us."
"Yeah, that's usually the way it works," MkVenner said. He glanced from her to Gol, then back again. "Munitorium has supplies. Colonel told me to offer whatever we can get you, but we need to coordinate better. He wants to embed scouts like myself into your teams."
Gol tensed. Taylor, though, leaned over and looked at the cloak. "Is that camouflage?"
"Yeah. They call us Gaunt's Ghosts."
"Think you could get us some?"
"Maybe."
"And this Gaunt of yours. Does he throw lives away?"
The question hit a nerve. "None of the Tanith would be here if he did."
Taylor looked at Gol. "We joined up with Captain Fencer. This any different?"
The big man shook his head. "Killing the enemy's all that matters. MkVenner, you tell your colonel that we'll work with Guardsmen or Vervun Primary or anyone else, so long as we beat the enemy back. But just understand. These are our people. If you send us soldiers, they're going to answer to us."
"Chain of command," Taylor added. "If you get us clear communications, we'll answer to this Gaunt."
"You understand, sounds like," MkVenner said.
"Yes, I do. Warriors might win battles, but soldiers win wars. Whether we like it or not, we're soldiers. And we aim to win this war."