Free First and Only by Dan Abnett Page B

decided.
    The Vitrians attached spike-bladed bayonets to their las-guns, ran a synchronised weapons check with almost choreographed grace, and adjusted the charge settings of their weapons to maximum. Then, again in unison, they altered a small control on the waistband of their armour. With a slight shimmer in the darkness, the finely meshed glass of their body suits flipped and closed, so that the interlocking teeth were no longer the shiny ablative surface, but showed instead the dark, matt reverse side. Gaunt was impressed. Their functional armour had an efficient stealth mode for movement after dark.
    The bombardment still shuddered and roared behind them, and it had become such a permanent feature they were almost oblivious to it. Gaunt conferred with Zoren as they both adjusted their microbead intercoms.
    ‘Use channel Kappa,’ said Gaunt, ‘with channel Sigma in reserve. I’ll take point with the Ghosts. Don’t lag too far behind.’
    Zoren nodded that he understood.
    ‘I see you have instructed your men to set charge at maximum,’ Gaunt said as an afterthought.
    ‘It is written in the Vitrian Art of War: “Make your first blow sure enough to kill and there will be no need for a second.”’
    Gaunt thought about this for a moment. Then he turned to lead the convoy off.
    * * *
    Four
    T HERE WERE JUST two realities: the blackness of the foxhole below and the brilliant inferno of the bombardment above.
    Trooper Caffran and the Vitrian cowered in the darkness and the mud at the bottom of the shell-hole as the fury raged overhead, like a firestorm on the face of the sun.
    ‘Sacred Feth! I don’t think we’ll be getting out of here alive…’ Caffran said darkly.
    The Vitrian didn’t cast him a glance. ‘Life is a means towards death, and our own death may be welcomed as much as that of our foe.’
    Caffran thought about this for a moment and shook his head sadly. ‘What are you, a philosopher?’
    The Vitrian trooper, Zogat, turned and looked at Caffran disdainfully. He had the visor of his helmet pulled up and Caffran could see little warmth in his eyes.
    ‘The Byhata, the Vitrian art of war. It is our codex, the guiding philosophy of our warrior caste. I do not expect you to understand.’
    Caffran shrugged, ‘I’m not stupid. Go on… how is war an art?’
    The Vitrian seemed unsure if he was being mocked, but the language they had in common, Low Gothic, was not the native tongue of either of them, and Caffran’s grasp of it was better than Zogat’s. Culturally, their worlds could not have been more different.
    ‘The Byhata contains the practice and philosophy of war-riorhood. All Vitrians study it and learn its principles, which then direct us in the arena of war. Its wisdom informs our tactics, its strength reinforces our arms, its clarity focuses our minds and its honour determines our victory.’
    ‘It must be quite a book,’ Caffran said, sardonically.
    ‘It is,’ Zogat replied with a dismissive shrug.
    ‘So do you commit it to memory or carry it with you?’
    The Vitrian unbuttoned his flak-armour tunic and showed Caffran the top of a thin, grey pouch that was laced into its lining. ‘It is carried over the heart, a work of eight million characters transcribed and encoded onto mono-filament paper.’
    Caffran was almost impressed. ‘Can I see it?’ he asked.
    Zogat shook his head and buttoned up his tunic again. ‘The filament paper is gene-coded to the touch of the trooper it is issued to so that no one else may open it. It is also written in Vitrian, which I am certain you cannot read. And even if you could, it is a capital offence for a non-Vitrian to gain access to the great text.’
    Caffran sat back. He was silent for a moment. ‘We Tanith… we’ve got nothing like that. No grand art of war.’
    The Vitrian looked round at him. ‘Do you have no code? No philosophy of combat?’
    ‘We do what we do…’ Caffran began. ‘We live by the principle, “Fight hard if you have