Necropolis by Dan Abnett Page A

continued, Fencer found men and women — and some children too — flocking to him from the ruins. He got the non-coms into any bunkers he had available and he set careful rationing. All able-bodied workers, of either sex, he recruited into his vanguard battalion.
    They’d raised precious medical supplies from the infirmary unit of a bombed-out mine and they’d set up a field hospital in the ruins of a bakery, under the supervision of a teenage girl called Nessa who was a trainee nurse. They’d pilfered food supplies in the canteens of three ruined manufactories in the region. A VPHC Guard House on West Transit 567/kl had provided them with a stock of lasguns and small arms for the new recruits, as well as explosives and one of the flamers.
    Fencer’s recruits had come from everywhere. He had under his command clerks who’d never held a weapon, loom workers with poor eyesight and shell-shocked habbers who were deaf and could only take orders visually.
    The core of his recruits, the best of them, were twenty-one miners from Number Seventeen Deep Working, who had literally dug their way out of the ground after the main lift shaft of their facility had fallen.
    Fencer bent low and hurried down the trench line, passing through blown-out house structures, under fallen derricks, along short communication tunnels the miners had dug to link his defences. Their expertise had been a godsend.
    He reached the second stub emplacement at 567/kk and nodded to the crew. Corporal Gannen was making soup in his mess tin over a burner stove, while his crewmate, a loom-girl called Calie, scanned the horizon. They were a perfect example of the way necessity had made heroes of them all. Gannen was a trained stub-gunner, but better at ammo feeding than firing. The girl had proven to be a natural at handling the gun itself. So they swapped, the corporal conceding no pride that he now fed ammo to a loom-girl half his age.
    Fencer moved on, passing two more guard points and found Gol Kolea in the corner nest, overlooking the highway. Kolea, the natural leader of the miners, was a big man, with great power in his upper body. He was sipping hot water from a battered tin cup, his lasgun at his side. Fencer intended to give him a brevet rank soon. The man had earned it. He had led his miners out of the dark, formed them into a cohesive work duty and done everything Fencer could have asked of them. And more besides. Kolea was driven by grim, intense fury against the Zoican foe. He had family in the hive, though he didn’t speak of them. Fencer was sure it was the thought of them that had galvanised Kolea to such efforts.
    “Captain,” Kolea nodded as Fencer ducked in.
    “Something’s wrong, Gol,” Fencer said. “Something’s different.”
    The powerfully built miner grinned at him. “You haven’t noticed?” he asked.
    “Noticed?”
    “The shelling has stopped.”
    Fencer was stunned. It had been so much a part of their daily life for the last fortnight or more, he hadn’t realised it had gone. Indeed, his ears were still ringing with remembered Shockwaves.
    “Emperor save us!” he gasped. “I’m so stupid.”
    He’d been awake for upwards of twenty minutes and it took a miner to tell him that they were no longer under fire.
    “See anything?” Fencer asked, crawling up to the vigil slot in the sandbags next to Kolea for a look.
    “No. Dust, smoke, haze… nothing much.”
    Fencer was about to reach for his scope when Zoica began its land offensive.
    A wave of las-fire peppered the entire defence line of the outhabs, like the flashes of a billion firecrackers. The sheer scale of the salvos was bewildering. Nine of Fencer’s troops died instantly. Three more, all workers, fled, utterly unprepared for the fury of a land assault.
    Grenades and rockets dropped in around them, blowing out two communication dug-outs. Another hit the mess hall and torched their precious food supplies.
    Fencer’s people began their resistance.
    He’d ordered them all to set weapons for