First and Only by Dan Abnett Page B

of thumping, clattering drum-mills. He took the headphones and listened. A tinny voice was repeating a call sign, chopped and fuzzed by the atrocious radio conditions. There was no mistaking it – it was the Tanith regimental command call sign.
    At his urgings, Lukas cranked the brass dial for boost and Corbec yelled his call sign hoarsely into the set.
    ‘Corbec!… olonel!… peat is that you?… mining… peat s… ive away p…’
    ‘Say again! Commissar, I’m losing your signal! Say again!’
    Z OREN ’ S COMMUNICATIONS officer looked up from the set and shook his head. ‘Nothing, commissar. Just white noise.’
    Gaunt told him to try again. Here was a chance, so close, to increase the size of their expeditionary force and move forward in strength – if Corbec could be dissuaded from his suicidal actions in the face of the guns.
    ‘Corbec! This is Gaunt! Desist your demolition and move sharp east at double time! Corbec, acknowledge!’
    * * *
    ‘R EADY TO BLOW ,’ Curral called, but stopped short as Corbec held up his hand for quiet. By the set, Lukas craned to hear past the roar of the shelling and the thunder of the drumming.
    ‘W-we’re to stop… he’s ordering us to stop and move east double time… w-we’re…’
    Lukas looked up at the colonel with suddenly anxious eyes.
    ‘He says we’re going to draw the enemy guns down on us.’
    Corbec turned slowly and looked up into the night, where the shells streaking from the distant heavy emplacements tore whistling furrows of light out of the ruddy blackness.
    ‘Sacred Feth!’ he breathed as he realised the foolhardy course his anger had made them follow.
    ‘Move! Move!’ he yelled, and the men scrambled up in confusion. At a run, he led them around, sending a signal ahead to pull his vanguard back around in their wake. He knew he had scarce seconds to get his men clear of the target zone they had lit with their mines, an arrow of green fire virtually pointing to their advance.
    He had to pull them east. East was what Gaunt had said. How close was the commissar’s company? A kilometre? Two? How close was the enemy shelling? Were they already swinging three tonne deuterium macroshells filled with oxy-phosphor gel into the gaping breeches of the vast Shriven guns, as range finders calibrated brass sights and the sweating thews of gunners cranked round the vast greasy gears that lowered the huge barrels a fractional amount?
    Corbec led his men hard. There was barely time for running cover. He put his faith in the fact that the Shriven had pulled back and left the area.
    T HE V ITRIAN COMMUNICATIONS officer played back the last signal they had received, and made adjustments to his set to try to wash the static out. Gaunt and Zoren watched intently.
    ‘A response signal, I think,’ the officer said. ‘An acknowledgement.’
    Gaunt nodded. ‘Take up position here. We’ll hold this area until we can form up with Corbec.’
    At that moment, the area to their west where Corbec’s mines had lit up the night, and the area around it, began to erupt. Lazily blossoming fountains of fire, ripple after ripple, annihilated the zone. Explosion overlaid explosion as the shells fell together. The Shriven had pulled a section of their overall barrage back by about three kilometres to target the signs of life they had seen.
    Gaunt could do nothing but watch.
    C OLONEL F LENSE WAS a man who’d modelled his career on the principle of opportunity. That was what he seized now, and he could taste victory.
    Since the abortive Jantine advance in the late afternoon, he had withdrawn to the Imperium command post to consider an alternative. Nothing was possible while the enemy barrage was curtaining off the entire front. But Flense wanted to be ready to move the moment it stopped or the moment it faltered. The land out there after such a bombardment would be ash-waste and mud, as hard for the Shriven to hold as it was for the Imperials. The perfect opportunity for a surgical