10. The Armour of Contempt, Gaunt's Ghosts
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A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL
THE ARMOUR
OF CONTEMPT
Gaunt’s Ghosts - 10
(The Lost - 03)
Dan Abnett
(An Undead Scan v1.1)
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.
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Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete.
A true man may flinch away its embrace,
if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul
with the armour of contempt.
—Gideon Ravenor,
The Spheres of Longing
3
“The twenty-second year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade saw a period of renewed fortune for
Warmaster Macaroth’s main battle groups. Flush from swift and decisive victories at Cabal Alpha,
Gerlinde and Zadok, the Warmaster’s forces made a vigorous advance into the disputed
Carcaradon Cluster, and threw the principal hosts of the archenemy overlord (‘Archon’), Urlock
Gaur, into hasty retreat. Macaroth’s intention was to scatter and destroy the Archon’s musters
before they could form a cohesive line of resistance in the Erinyes Group.
“To Macaroth’s coreward flank, and increasingly left behind, the Crusade’s secondary battle-
groups — the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Crusade Armies — maintained their efforts to drive the forces
of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant, from the margins of the Khan Group.
“Weakened by problems of morale and logistics, and the fact that the bulk of its manpower came
from new and recently founded regiments (the majority of experienced and veteran Guard units had
been routed to the main line), the second front had begun to stagnate by the start of 777.M41.
“To compound the problems, the armies of the second front often found themselves outclassed
by the highly proficient ground forces fielded by Sek. It is likely many of the second front
commanders would have incurred Macaroth’s severe displeasure, had the Warmaster not been so
singularly occupied with his own objectives. However, General Van Voytz of the Fifth made
strenuous efforts to rally the second front, in particular by promoting a series of uncompromising
actions to liberate certain worlds previously regarded as ‘lost causes’.
“Van Voytz dubbed his strategy ‘Crush and Burn’, and its purpose was to restore pride to the
second front through the systematic purging of worlds that had, until then, seemed incontrovertibly
the possessions of the archenemy.
“‘Crush and Burn’ had the desired effect, though the vast expenditure of resources necessitated
by the policy was later questioned by the Munitorum. Confidential position papers also reveal that,
in one particular case, there was an altogether different motive behind these costly liberation
efforts.”
—from
A History of the Later Imperial Crusades
4
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