THE ARMOUR of CONTEMPT a Gaunt’S Ghosts Novel by Dan Abnett

The Black Library Page 1 THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT A Gaunt’s Ghosts novel By Dan Abnett Still haunted by his lengthy mission behind enemy lines on Gereon, Commissar Ibram Gaunt heads back with the Imperial crusade army to liberate the Chaos-held planet. Having made contact with the local elite guerilla forces, Gaunt and the Tanith First-and-Only find that the brutality of the ‘liberation’ pitches them into opposition with their commanders, who believe victory must be achieved at any price, no matter how cruel. All bets are off as Gaunt and his men are pitched into direct opposition to his commanders! About the Author Dan Abnett is a novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written twenty-five novels for the Black Library, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, and, with Mike Lee, the Darkblade cycle. His Black Library novel Horus Rising and his Torchwood novel Border Princes (for the BBC) were both bestsellers. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan’s website can be found at www.DanAbnett.com The Black Library Page 2 • GAUNT’S GHOSTS • Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and his regiment, the Tanith First-and-Only, struggle for survival on the battlefields of the far future. The Founding (Omnibus containing books 1-3 in the series: FIRST AND ONLY, GHOSTMAKER and NECROPOLIS) DAN ABNETT The Saint (Omnibus containing books 4-7 in the series: HONOUR GUARD, THE GUNS OF TANITH, STRAIGHT SILVER and SABBAT MARTYR) DAN ABNETT The Lost Book 8 – TRAITOR GENERAL • Book 9 – HIS LAST COMMAND Book 10 – THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT Book 11 – ONLY IN DEATH DAN ABNETT Also DOUBLE EAGLE DAN ABNETT • IMPERIAL GUARD • IMPERIAL GUARD OMNIBUS: VOLUME ONE (Featuring the novels FIFTEEN HOURS, DEATH WORLD and REBEL WINTER) The Black Library Page 3 ICE GUARD Steve Lyons GUNHEADS Steve Parker The Black Library Page 4 The following is an excerpt from The Armour of Contempt by Dan Abnett. Published by the Black Library. Games Workshop, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK. Copyright © Games Workshop Ltd, 2007. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited, in any form, including on the internet. For more details email [email protected] or visit the Black Library website www.blacklibrary.com I RIP was an acronym, and it happened in the Basement. There were two hundred and forty-three scalps in the detail, the majority of them there for the ‘P’ part of the name. On the first day, Criid didn’t know anybody, and stood alone, hands in pockets. That earned a few words of elucidation from the instructor, Driller Kexie. ‘No bloody Guardsman, not even a wet-fart scalp like you, parks their hands in their pockets!’ Kexie opined. Kexie was two-twenty tall, and looked as if he had been woven out of meat jerky. He spoke in a slow measure, as if he had all the time in the world to wither and abuse, and the words came out of his dry, lipless mouth like tracer-shot: hot, bright and burning. If he shouted at night, you’d see his words stitch up the dark like phosphor tears. Driller Kexie had a stick. For reasons no one in the detail ever fathomed, he called it ‘Saroo’. It was a thick spar of The Black Library Page 5 turned hardwood, forty centimetres long, and resembled both an officer’s baton and the leg of a chair. Kexie liked to reinforce certain words and phrases with Saroo. At ‘wet-fart scalp’, Kexie stroked Saroo against Criid’s left hand, which was still in its pocket. A flash flood of acute pain flared across the knuckles of Criid’s fist. On ‘like you’, Saroo visited Criid’s right hand. The words ‘parks hands’ brought Saroo right up between Criid’s legs. Criid dropped onto the metal decking, sucking air. ‘Upright, hands at your sides. No other posture is acceptable to the God-Emperor, to me, or to Saroo. Are we clear?’ ‘Yes, driller.’ ‘Ech,’ Kexie said, tilting his head on one side. He had, they would discover, a habit of punctuating his speech with that particular sound. ‘Ech, call that a clean loader?’ ‘Ech, what a shit-soft attempt!’ ‘That the best you offer, ech?’ ‘Ech,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe that Saroo can hear you, scalp?’ ‘Yes, driller!’ Criid shouted. ‘We are clear, driller!’ ‘Get up,’ Kexie sniffed, and turned back to the others. The Black Library Page 6 Some of the others were greatly amused. The first day was scarcely ten minutes old, and already one of their number was prone on the deck with pain-wet eyes. They were an ugly lot, most of them the flotsam of various regiments. Criid had already put a name to three or four of the most prominent. A nickname, at least. There was Fourbox, who was a tall, heavy-set joker from the 33rd Kolstec. He was on RIP, he had proudly declared to them as they gathered, for being ‘rubbish at everything’. Lovely was a female tanker from the Hauberkan. She was on her third repeat of RIP, though this was her first taste of Driller Kexie. ‘I don’t like orders,’ she had replied when Fourbox asked her what her reason for being there was, and left it at that. Lovely had a real edge to her. Dark haired and tanned, she seemed as risky as an unsheathed knife in a kitbag. Boulder, as was often the case with Guard nicknames, belonged to a youth who didn’t deserve it. Boulder was small and scrawny, a stick-thin go-nowhere, another Kolstec like Fourbox. Criid supposed the sledgehammer irony of the Imperial Guard had stuck Boulder with his handle. Though he was small, and looked picked-on, it was hard to empathise with him. He had a shrill cackle, The Black Library Page 7 and used it to signal his delight at the pain of others. Boulder had been sent on RIP by his commanding officer ‘for fixing a bayonet to a rocket launcher, haw- haw-haw.’ In Criid’s opinion, less than ten minutes old, Wash was the real poison in the detail. Wash reminded Criid of Major Rawne: tall, dark, handsome and venomous. He knew he looked good, even in the faded RIP issue fatigues, and he regarded all of them with a dismissive silence. When, as they first assembled, Fourbox had asked him ‘what he was in for’, Wash simply hooded his eyes and turned his back. ‘Oooh, hard man, haw-haw-haw!’ Boulder had sniggered, and Fourbox and some of the others had laughed along. Wash had turned, extended the index finger of his left hand, and inserted it into Boulder’s mouth, pushing the fingertip up over the front teeth until it wedged, painfully, in the roof of the gum, tenting the lip and philtrum against Boulder’s nostrils. Boulder had snorted in distress but, like a fish on a hook, had been unable to pull free. The Black Library Page 8 ‘I am not “hard man”,’ Wash had said. ‘I am not your bloody friend. You want me, you ask for Wash. And you never, ever want me.’ With that, he let Boulder’s lip go. Everyone was suitably respectful of Wash from that point. ‘Tanith takes a dive!’ Fourbox chortled when Driller Kexie put Criid on the deck. ‘First and only, they say. First and only to get a smack!’ ‘Tanith’s tearing up,’ Boulder joined. ‘Look, look! Like a little girl! Boo hoo! Haw-haw-haw!’ ‘Go home to mama, little Tanith!’ Fourbox sang out. ‘She’ll wipe your eyes and make it all nice again,’ Lovely sniggered. ‘Mwah! Mwah!’ she added, pantomiming kisses. ‘All better now!’ ‘My mother…’ Criid began, getting up. ‘My mother would gut you fethers…’ ‘Oh, I’m so bloody scared!’ announced Boulder. ‘So scared, I wet myself haw-haw-haw!’ ‘I know your mama,’ Fourbox called. ‘She wriggled a bit, but she was all right. She still writes to me. “Oh, Boxy, when can we be together again? I long for your hot–”’ The Black Library Page 9 ‘Enough!’ Driller Kexie tracered. ‘Staple your lips, you wet-farts. Ech, I’ve seen some details in my time, but you take the brass arse. Muscle up, in a line! Come on, come on! Get up and get in it, Criid. Drill order. Is that a drill order, shit-wit? Get to it! Six lines, now! Come on!’ Kexie walked the lines, twirling Saroo in his calloused hands. It was cold in the echoing vault of the Basement. Their breath made smoke in the air. Like all bilge spaces, the Basement was unheated and raw. Its walls were a ferruginous stain of rust and metallic gangrene, and the air smelled of the stale urine and solvents that had leaked down-hull. ‘All right, ladies and ladies,’ said Kexie. ‘I’m assuming that’s the best you can do. Frig, I’ve seen foundees dress a better rank. You are shit, you hear me? The lowest of the low. You are RIP, and making your life a misery is my purpose, given to me expressly by the God-Emperor of Mankind himself. Ech, I have to turn you into proper bloody Guardsmen. You come to me as wet-farts, and I send you back as real soldiers. Or… you die.’ He paused and ran his gaze along their silent rank. The Black Library Page 10 ‘Anyone got anything funny to say about that? Come on, now. Speak openly.’ ‘Well, you can try,’ Lovely suggested.

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