[Gaunt's Ghosts 03] Necropolis by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: hu
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction. warhammer 40000
Published: 2011-09-28T19:22:59+00:00

* * *

Ana Curth moved her orderlies through the confusion of Veyveyr Gate. There were more dead to recover than living.

She checked each corpse in turn, pulled off the tags and then left them for the recovery units.

She hesitated slightly when she found the corpses of Tanith. These were all Dorden’s friends.

She took off their tags carefully and entered all the names in her dataslate.

In the gateway of Veyveyr, she paused. She checked the latest set of tags three times to be sure.

Tears welled in her eyes and she pushed the bloody tags into her apron-front.

The thirty-second day drew to a close. It was a day the citizens of Vervun-hive would remember perhaps more keenly than anything that had taken place so far. Despite the success of driving back the First Storm three days before, this seemed much more of a victory. Scant hours after the battle, the defence of Veyveyr began to take on a mythical flavour. In the Spine, the habs and the refuges alike, Vervunhivers spoke of it as a turning point, as the start of deliverance.

Public-address plates across the hive broadcast triumphant slogans, sanitised accounts of the battle and pictures from the glorious front, mainly those showing the People’s Hero raising the flag in the shattered gate-mouth, surrounded by jubilant Vervun Primary troopers. In the Basilica of the Ecclesiarchy, a victory mass was organised, featuring a choir of over ten thousand and long liturgical readings from the Codex Imperialis. Loudspeakers broadcast the worship across all the hive levels.

Spontaneous celebrations began in different areas and some revels — amongst Vervun Primary troops heady with relief — were broken up by the VPHC.

But the mood was impossible to suppress in the highest and lowest quarters of the hive. Oilcan fires were lit along the wharves and in the refuges, and drums, many homemade or improvised, thundered into the night. There were many reports of decadent banqueting in the High Spine, as merchants and house ordinary families abandoned the rationing restrictions and indulged in sumptuous private dinners of unstinting debauchery.

When Gaunt heard about them, he sighed. These were either gestures of ignorance or acts of denial against what must surely still await.

But let them have their delights, he decided. They may be their last.

In a grim mood, he’d stayed on at Veyveyr as the light failed, touring his men, noting those lost, restructuring squads around those losses. He gave Trooper Baffels a field promotion to sergeant and placed him in charge of Fols’ unit. The stocky, bearded trooper was almost overcome with emotion 95

as Neskon, Domor, Milo and the others cheered him. He shook Gaunt’s hand and wiped away a tear that trickled down over his blue claw tattoo. There had been a brief rumour that Gaunt would award the sergeant pin to Milo, but that was absurd. He was barely a trooper and it wouldn’t look right, though Milo’s actions and improvised leadership at Veyveyr had won him a considerable respect that sat well with his reputation as the avatar of Gaunt.

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