WH40K - Gaunt's Ghosts 11 - Dan Abnett - Only in Death.pdf - Gaunt's Ghost - siemszak

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

ONLY IN DEATH

Gaunt’s Ghosts - 11

(The Lost - 04)

Dan Abnett

(An Undead Scan v1.1)

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on

the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a

million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly

with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom

a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets

cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit

by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in

his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space

Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard

and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the

Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to

hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and

most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of

technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the

promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no

peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting

gods.

Only in death does duty end.

—old Imperial proverb

“In 778.M41, the twenty-third year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, Warmaster Macaroth’s main

battle groups advanced swiftly and thoroughly into the frontiers of the Carcaradon Cluster, driving

the hosts of the Archenemy overlord (‘Archon’) Urlock Gaur, before them. Archon Gaur’s forces

seemed to fracture under the successive Imperial assaults, though it now seems likely they were in

fact withdrawing to establish a defensive cordon in the Erinyes Group.

“To coreward, the Crusade’s secondary battle-groups — the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Armies —

continued to combat the legions of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant. The

Second Front’s avowed intent was to hound Sek’s rabble from the fringes of the Khan Group, and

oust them from the many fortress worlds of the Cabal System.

“During this murderous phase of the Crusade, an especially bloody banishment campaign took

place on the ruinous fortress world of Jago…”

—from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

WH40K - Gaunt's Ghosts 11 - Dan Abnett - Only in Death.pdf