[Gaunt's Ghosts] - Sabbat Worlds by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-22T05:09:07.344878+00:00

Logier had seen all of the cell members entering the silo, only four, and had stayed for a moment or two in case there were others, but could see no likely candidates in the environs. He began to walk away when the shot was fired, and was not tempted to stay to witness whatever madness was going on within. The hive-cell had a reputation, born of a catalogue of misadventure, madness and catastrophe, often with a glamorous, devil-may-care attitude thrown in for good measure. That was why Ozias had chosen them, and that was why Logier could never see them as a threat.

Shuey was torn between laughing at Ailly trying to regain his feet, and retching at the stink that was coming off the floor shards. Then he caught sight of the stand-off between Mallet and Bedlo. He thought for a moment, and then winked and let out a resounding guffaw, copying the low belly-rumble that Ayatani Revere seemed able to muster up from nowhere at a moment’s notice. The boy stopped struggling, Bedlo turned to look in Shuey’s direction and Mallet went back to checking weapons. The spell was broken.

“Let’s load the barrow,” said Bedlo. “I want us out of here.” 127

Logier watched as the barrow wove through the narrow alleys of the under-slum. The hive had always had rents and wastes at the lower reaches, but, since the war and during the occupation, this place had become darker, sadder and more sinister. The people were incomplete specimens, veterans of the agri-galleries or the occupation, men without limbs or senses: the crippled, blind, deaf and damaged, who would never experience the augmetics that were available throughout the rest of the Imperium. They lived out their pitiful existences in this backwater, trading between themselves and collaborating with whomever, whenever the need arose. There was no honour among thieves or vagabonds, only survival, which, three years deep into the occupation, meant that everyone was life-limited, and everyone knew it.

The under-slum was also the favourite haunt and hunting ground of the basic-grade enemy troops, the mindless animals that did the bidding of the Archenemy.

They were tough, cruel beings, without hearts or minds, any moral compasses they might once have had stripped out and trampled long ago. They were, by turns, brutal and lazy, and they took pleasure in the most vicious side of life. The deaf, blind and legless were easier to kill than the hivers or agri-workers, and no one counted the bodies.

The under-slum was where the bestial element of the enemy forces took their R&R and exercised their pleasures: hunting, torturing, brutalising, raping and taking revenge for the horrors meted out to them by their superiors. The locals didn’t fight back, but only begged for a faster death; no one was naive enough to beg to live.

Fresh enemy troops had been brought into Reredos in the usual rotation, and the outgoing guards were filling their boots in the under-slum before being shipped out.

The place was teeming with hundreds of bodies,

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