Read Online Necropolis by Dan Abnett - Free Book Online

he suggested.
    “The same is said for so many of us,” Colonel Corbec said, holding on to the truck’s iron tilt-hoops as he edged down to Milo and Larkin. “Velvethive is in a pretty fix, so they say.”
    “That’s Vervunhive, chief,” Trooper Burun said from nearby.
    “Feth you, clever-ass!” Corbec tossed back at the grinning soldier. “Feth knows I can barely remember me own name most days, let alone where I’m supposed to be!”
    First platoon laughed.
    Milo held the scope up to Corbec, who waved it off with disinterest.
    “I’ll meet the place that’ll kill me when I meet it. Don’t need to look for it in advance.”
    Milo gave the precious scope back to Larkin, who took a final look and then slid the instrument back into its drawstring bag.
    “Seen enough, Larks?” Corbec asked, his vast arms gripping the overhead frame, his beard split by a toothy grin.
    “Seen enough to know where to aim,” Larkin replied.
     
    In the juddering load-bay of the truck three vehicles back, Third Platoon were all wagering on cards. Trooper Feygor, a dangerous, lean man with hooded eyes, had bartered a full tarot pack from some Administratum fellow on the troopship and he was running a game of Hearts and Titans.
    Trooper Brostin, big, heavyset and saturnine, had lost so much already he was ready to wager his flamer, with the fuel tanks, as his next lay-down.
    Feygor, a thick cigar clenched between his sharp teeth, laughed at Brostin’s discomfiture and shuffled the pack again.
    As he flicked the big pasteboard cards out into hands around the grilled deck, the men of the platoon produced coins, crumpled notes, rings and tobacco rations to add to the pot.
    Trooper Caffran watched him deal. Short, young and determined, just a year older than Milo, Caffran had gained the respect of them all during the beach assault at Oskray about a year before. Caffran disliked cards, but in Rawne’s platoon it paid to mix in.
    Major Rawne sat at the end of the truck-bay, his back to the rear wall of the cab. The Tanith second officer, he was infamous for his anger, guile and pessimism. Corbec had likened him to a snake more than once, both physically and in character.
    “Will you play, major?” Feygor asked, his hands hesitating on the deal. Rawne shook his head. He’d lost plenty to his adjutant in the last forty days of transit in the troopship.
    Now he could smell war and idle gaming had lost its interest.
    Feygor shrugged and finished the deal. Caffran picked up his hand and sighed. Brostin picked up his hand and sighed more deeply. He wondered if wool socks would count as a wager.
     
    The outriders raced around the speeding trucks, gunning for the destination. Sergeant Mkoll, head of the scout platoon, crossed his bike in between two of the troop vehicles and rode down the edge-gully so he could take a look at the hive emerging out of the smoke before them. It was big, bigger than any city he’d ever seen, bigger than the bastion towns of Tanith certainly.
    He roared ahead, passing the staff cars of the local commissariat, until he was leading the column down the broken highway towards the docks.
     
    A volley of shells fell into the outhabs to the east. Dorden, the grizzled, elderly chief medic of the Tanith Regiment, heaved himself up to see. Conflagrations, bright and bitter-lemon in colour, sizzled out from the distant detonations. The truck sashayed into a pothole and Dorden was dropped on his arse.
    “Why bother?” Bragg asked.
    “Say again?” asked the doctor.
    Bragg shifted his position in the flat-bed uncomfortably. He was huge, bigger than any other two Ghosts put together. “We’ll get there sooner or later; die there sooner or later. Why bother craning for a view of our doom?”
    Dorden looked across at the giant. “Is the cup half-full or half-empty, Bragg?” he asked.
    “What cup?”
    “It’s hypothetical. Half-full or half-empty?”
    “Yeah, but what cup are we talking about?”
    “An imaginary cup.”
    “What’s in it?”
    “That doesn’t