Free Necropolis by Dan Abnett Page A

said.
    “This is not a war of conquest. This is not a hive-war, a commercial spat, a new ‘Trade War’, as you refer to it. Zoica is not massing, arming and rising to conquer and control the hive production of this planet or to subjugate its old rival Vervunhive. They are rising to exterminate it.”
    “A taint,” murmured General Nash, slowly understanding.
    “Quite so,” Gaunt said. “To turn not just your potential fighting men into an army but your workers and hab families too, that takes a zealot mindset: an infection of insanity, a corruption, a taint. The vile forces of Chaos control Zoica, there can be no doubt. The poison of the warp has overrun your noble neighbour and set every man, woman and child in it on a frenzied path to obliterate the rest of this world and everything on it.”

FIVE
CLOSE QUARTERS
     
    “In war, best know what enemies are around you in your own camp, before you step out to face the foe and wonder why you do so alone.”
    —Warmaster Slaydo, from A Treatise
    on the Nature of Warfare
     
    A party of local troops in blue greatcoats waited for them at the entrance to a dingy shed complex, under the stark-white light of sodium lamps. Their weapons were slung over their shoulders and they wore woollen caps, their spiked helmets dangling from their webbing. They flashed the convoy in through the chain-link gate with dagger-lamps.
    Sergeant Mkoll was first into the compound, slewing up his motorbike on the greasy rockcrete skirt and heeling down the kickstand. The heavy machine leaned to the left and rested, its throaty purr cutting off. Mkoll dismounted as the Tanith troop trucks thundered into the yard after him.
    Mkoll looked at the manufactory sheds around them. This was a dismal place, but the Tanith had billeted in worse. Despite the thunder of engines and shouts, he sensed a presence behind him and spun before the other could utter a word.
    “Steady!” said the figure approaching behind him. He was a tall, well-made man in his twenties, dressed in the local uniform. A captain, his collar pins said. His right arm was bound up tight to his chest in a padded sling, so he wore his greatcoat on one side only, draping it like a cape over the other. Mkoll thought he was lucky that empty sleeve was not a permanent feature.
    Mkoll made a brief salute. “Sorry, you caught me by surprise. Sergeant Mkoll, 5th Platoon, Tanith First-and-Only.”
    The captain saluted back stiffly with his left hand. Mkoll noticed he was also limping and there were sallow bruises along his forehead, cheek and around his eyes. “Captain Ban Daur, Vervun Primary. Welcome to Vervun-hive.”
    Mkoll grunted a curt laugh. He’d never been personally welcomed to a warzone before.
    “Can you introduce me to your commanding officer?” Daur asked. “I’ve been given the job of supervising your billet. Not much good for anything else.” He said this with a rueful chuckle and a glance down at his slinged arm.
    Mkoll fell in step beside him and they moved through a commotion of men, trucks, diesel fumes and unloading work. They made small, intense, flickering shadows under the harsh lighting gantries overhead.
    “You’ve seen action already?” asked Mkoll.
    “Nothing to get me a medal,” Daur said. “I was on the ramparts on the first day when the shelling began. Didn’t so much as even see what to shoot at before they took my position down and buried me in rubble. Be a few weeks yet till I’m fit, but I wanted to be useful, so I volunteered for liaison work.”
    “So you’ve not even seen the enemy yet?”
    Daur shook his head. “Except for People’s Hero Kowle and a few others who made it back from the grasslands, no one has.”
     
    Corbec was standing by his truck, smoking a cigar, gazing placidly around the place, oblivious to the frenzy of activity all about him. He turned slowly, taking in the sheer scale of the hive around him, beyond the glare of the sodium lamp rigs: the towering manufactories and smelteries, the steeples of the work