The Armor of Contempt by Dan Abnett

Eight years ago, the Infantry Company called "Tanith First and Only", also known as "Gaunt's Ghosts" after their commander, Ibram Gaunt, were assigned to assault a Chaos-held planet by the name of Gereon. When they were forced to pull out, they left several of their own behind. Gaunt has been petitioning the Imperium to let him return to Gereon so that he can finish his job and liberate the colonists left behind. But for many years, the Imperium have put him off.

Now, it seems, eight years later, the Imperium have revisited the idea and are willing to try and liberate Gereon. But its a happy time for the unit, as Tona Criid's adopted son is going in for RIP training, or Retraining, Indoctrination and Punishment. Dalan Criid isn't related to her by blood, he's merely a child she protected and kept safe on the planet of Vervunhive. She is a former gang member who joined the Ghosts, and brought Dalan and his sister along with her. She found a man to love in Caffran, a man of Tanith, and with him and the other Ghosts, raised Dalan. It turned out that Dalan's blood father, a man named Kolea, was also still alive and had also joined the Ghosts, but he stepped aside to let Tona and Caffran raise Dalan, feeling he hadn't been much of a father beforehand.

Dalan, trained by Caffran and the rest of the Ghosts, is one of the best men in indoctrination, and that confuses and irks the Sergeant in charge, Kexie, who takes it out on Caffran by beating him and making sure the nail that sticks up is getting a stiff pounding down. Tona can't help but see the abuse Dalan is taking and offers to speak to Kexie, but Dalan knows that the universe is unfair, and tells her to say nothing. He would only get it worse for her having spoken, anyway. Partway through his time in RIP, another of the Ghosts, a man named Merrt, joins the RIP brigade and speaks up when Kexie starts abusing Dalan. Kexie is about to beat on Merrt, too, when Merrt offers to let Kexie beat him instead of Dalan, but instead, Kexie ignores him, knowing to do so would lead to him losing face with the other men.

Just as Dalan's time in RIP is over, the orders to assault Gereon is announced. However, instead of returning the men in RIP to their units, they are turned into a unit all of their own, Activated Tactical 137, or AT 137 for short. They will be taking part of an assault on Gereon, but miles away from the Ghosts. And he'll be doing it with the others in the RIP unit, all of whom are unfit for combat, on punishment detail or are completely green in combat. Not the best conditions for success, or even for staying alive.

Gaunt's Ghosts are assigned to assault a town named Cantabile, a town formerly of 30,000 that is a mere ghost of itself. The Chaos forces have planted twisted crops of their own, sucked up much of the water on the planet, and worked the people to collapse, then used their bodies to feed the soldiers of Chaos. Gaunt's men have their work cut out for them rooting out enemy soldiers, finding survivors of the enemy occupation, and trying to find their own lost soldiers from eight years before, including a female medic named Anna Curth, and a sniper and soldier named Mkvenner. They also have some help, a priest who helps keep up morale and who is assigned to the unit by one of the female higher-ups.

Backed up by a battalion of tanks, they take the town, but the tank commander is green, unused to real combat, and quite useless after the town is taken. Meanwhile, Dalin Criid is attempting to survive combat on one of the main battle lines. Men die around him, and he is injured several times as he struggles to survive. His first experience on the front lines of combat is hellish for him, and he feels he has been on the surface far longer than he actually has. Merrt helps him as best he can, even though before he had been standoffish at best. As they fight to survive, together and apart, Merrt reveals he was once a sharpshooter, and perhaps the best in the Ghosts, until he took a shot to the head in one of the worlds they fought on. It made his face an ugly mask, gave him a hand that shook badly and made him unable to press the gun close enough to his jaw to give him a straight shot. He attempted to make enough money to go to a hive world and get fixed, but his luck at games of chance (he was too honest to steal or defraud people) made that supremely unlikely. It was his inveterate gambling, as well as his continued losses, that put him on the RIP detail in the first place. He wants to die, but continues to battle because he wants to go down fighting.

Meanwhile, Gaunt contacts the freedom fighters that have been resisting the forces of Chaos on the planet since Gaunt's Ghosts left, but he has been betrayed from within his own ranks, and Cantabile is turned into an Internment camp by the forces of the Inquisition, who were angered that Gaunt and his men managed to fight for twelve times the length of a usual engagement on a Chaos-corrupted world and come out untainted themselves. They were convinced that something on Gereor was responsible, and one of Gaunt's people told them what they wanted to hear so that Tanith First and Only would be sent back to Gereor. But this was not they way they wanted it to end. But then, battle is never like you want it to be, is it?

This is a very exciting book. Dan Abnett writes battle scenes that bring home what a bloody, confusing and dirty a business war is. In this book, he also makes it clear that Gaunt is unusual in how he treats his men. Other Comissars, for example, carry whips with them to "encourage" their men in battle. Dalan Criid's temporary commander certainly does so, and Kexzie has his "Saroo", a club he uses to enforce his will on the men he is training. But Gaunt thinks such "encouragements" are brutal and out of date with the times, and his superiors think Gaunt's sense of honor and rectitude make him a throwback, and dangerous as well, as he will probably get his men killed over issues of honor. But as his men make clear, they prefer Gaunt's way to the way of the rest of the army.

Dan Abnett writes battle and combat so convincingly that you would swear the fights and battles were actually happening around you, as well as the "hurry up and wait" nature of a great deal of fighting out of the front lines. The only way he could be said to err is that too many of Gaunt's people survive in ways that seem extremely unlikely. But then, a lot of them die in stupid ways, too, which is much more usual in war. (I am thinking of the "clicker" scene in "The Longest Day", in which a soldier dies when he mistakes the sound of bolt-action gun being loaded and cocked for the sound of the clicker the allied troops were given to identify themselves with.)

This is definitely a series I enjoy, and as long as Dan Abnett keeps writing them, I will keep reading and enjoying them!