Dan Abnett - Necropolis

NECROPOLIS

Gaunt's Ghosts 03

Dan Abnett

ZOICA RISING

AN OCHRE WAVE

A MIDNIGHT SUN

HIVE DEATH

CLOSE QUARTERS

CHAINS OF COMMAND

DEATH MACHINES

HARM'S WAY

VEYVEYR GATE

CASUALTIES

THE HERITOR

DARKNESS FALLS

THE HARROWING

THE IMPERIAL WAY OF DEATH

DAY THIRTY-FIVE

THE LEGACY

OPERATION HIERONYMO

THE LAIR OF ASPHODEL

MOURNING GLORY

NECROPOLIS

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

NECROPOLIS

The Founding 03

Gaunt's Ghosts 03

Dan Abnett

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries

the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth.

He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master

of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He

is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark

Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for

whom a thousand souls arc sacrificed every day, so that he may

never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his

eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested

miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their

way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the

Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted

worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers arc the Adeptus Astartes,

the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades

in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary

defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of

the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their

multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present

threat from aliens, heretics, mutants and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold

billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody

regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has

been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of

progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future

there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,

only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the

laughter of thirsting gods.

After the victories at Monthax and Lamacia, Warmaster Macaroth drove his forces swiftly along the trailing edge of the Sabbat Worlds cluster and turned inwards to assault the notorious enemy fortress-worlds in the Cabal system. Successful conquest of the Cabal system was a vital objective in the Imperial crusade to liberate the entire Sabbat Worlds group. To achieve this massive undertaking, the warmaster sent the line ships of his Segmentum Pacificus fleet forward in a pincer formation to begin the onslaught, while assembling and reforming his enormous Imperial Guard reserves ready for ground assault.

It took close to eight months for the troop components to convene at Solypsis, thousands of mass-conveyance transports carrying many million Imperial Guardsmen. There were many delays, and many minor skirmishes to settle en route. The Pragar regiments were held up for six weeks engaging the remnants of a Chaos legion on Nonimax, and a warp-storm forced the Samothrace and Sarpoy troop ships to remain at Antioch 148 for three whole months. However, it is the events that took place on the industrial hive-world of Verghast that are of particular interest to any student of Imperium military history

From A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE

ZOICA RISING

The distinction between Trade and Warfare is seen only by those who have no experience of either.

Heironymo Sondar, House Sondar,

from his inaugural address

The klaxons began to wail, though it was still an hour or more to shift-rotation.

The people of the hive-city paused as one. Millions of eyes checked timepieces, faltered in their work, looked up at the noise. Conversations trailed off. Feeble jokes were cracked to hide unease. Young children began to cry. House soldiery on the Curtain Wall voxed in confirmation and clarification requests to the Main Spine command station. Line supervisors and labour-stewards in the plants and manufactories chivvied their personnel back into production, but they were uneasy too. It was a test, surely? Or a mistake. A few moments more and the alarms would shut down again.

But the klaxons did not desist.

After a minute or so, raid-sirens in the central district also began keening. The pattern was picked up by manufactory hooters and mill-whistles all through the lower hive, and in the docks and outer habs across the river too. Even the great ceremonial horns on the top of the Ecclesiarchy Basilica started to sound.

Vervunhive was screaming with every one of its voices.

Everywhere, hazard lamps began to spin and flash, and secondary storm shutters cycled down on automatic to block windows. All the public-address plates in the city went black, erasing the glowing lines of weather, temperature, exchange-rate data, the local news and the ongoing output figures. They fuzzed darkly for a few seconds and then the words Please stand by scrolled across all of them in steady repeats.

In the firelit halls of Vervun Smeltery One part of the primary ore processing district just west of the Spoil rattling conveyers laden with unprocessed rock shuddered to a halt as automatic safeties locked down. Above the main smelter silo, Plant Supervisor Agun Soric got up from behind a file-covered desk and crossed to the stained-glass window of his bureau. He looked down at the vast, halted plant in disbelief, then pulled on his work-jacket and went out onto the catwalk, staring at the thousands of milling workers below. Vor, his junior, hurried along the walk, his heavily booted feet ringing on the metal grill, the sound lost in the cacophony of hooters and sirens.

What is this, chief? he gasped, coming close to Soric and pulling the tubes of his dust-filter from his mouth-damp.

Soric shook his head. It's fifteen thousand cubits of lost production, that's what the gak it is! And counting!

What d'you reckon? A malfunction?

In every alert system in the hive at once? Use your brain! A malfunction?

Then what?

Soric paused, trying to think. The ideas that were forming in his mind were things he didn't really want to entertain. I pray to the Emperor himself that this isn't

What, chief?

Zoica Zoica rising again.

What?

Soric looked round at his junior with contempt. He wiped his fat, balding brow on the back of his gold-braided cuff. Don't you read the news-picts?

Vor shrugged. Just the weather and the stadium results.

You're an idiot, Soric told him. And too young to remember, he thought. Gak, he was too young himself, but his father's father had told him about the Trade War. What was it, ninety years back, standard? Surely not again? But the picts had been full of it these last few months: Zoica silent, Zoica ceasing to trade, Zoica raising its bulwarks and setting armaments up along its northern walls.

Those raid-sirens hadn't sounded since the Trade War. Soric knew that as a bare fact.