Zhukova knelt down, and pulled the dirty musette bag out of his dead hands.
She opened it, and gently lifted out one of the four eagle stones.
‘I take it back,’ Criid said. ‘You were right. Fether came this way.’
They ran through the rain into the drab rockrete compounds of the vapour mill beside Camp Xenos. Snapshots of las whined after them.
‘Keep moving,’ Rawne said.
‘There’s no fething cover, sir,’ said Laydly, glancing around. The trooper was right, and Rawne knew it. The Plade Parish vapour mill was a large site generating power for an entire district of the city. Open-air yards and serviceways ran between the rows of blank work-sheds and machine-shops. The main stacks and primary hall of the mill were ahead.
It was an automated facility. There was no one around, and every door or hatch they tried was sealed. Wartime. Blackout protocols. The mill had been locked down.
Overhead, masses of white steam oozed from the huge stacks and flowed like a glacier into the night’s black sky. Full dark. Rain was blowing in off the wastelands beyond the mill perimeter. It smelled of the fycelene lifted by the munition store explosion.
‘Just go,’ Mabbon said. ‘Leave me. I will face them. It will all end then.’
Rawne wanted to slap him, but the pain in his gut was getting worse. He gritted his teeth to stop himself from making a sound.
‘Shut the feth up,’ Varl said to Mabbon. ‘Just shut up. We lost good people getting you out–’
‘I never asked for that–’ Mabbon replied.
‘I won’t let them be dead for no reason,’ said Varl. He sniffed, breathing fast. ‘I just won’t. I just fething won’t. So shut up about leaving you. Shut up.’
Mabbon looked away.
‘How many left?’ asked Oysten.
‘Three,’ said Laydly. ‘Three, I think.’
‘What have we got that will put them down?’ asked Rawne, finally managing to speak without screaming.
‘Launcher, grenades,’ said Varl, brandishing Bellevyl’s weapon.
‘Maybe this?’ said Brostin, indicating the big autogun he’d taken off Oken. ‘AP rounds. Not much ammo though.’
‘Hard rounds are better than energy weapons,’ said Mabbon.
‘I’ll take anything at this point,’ said Rawne.
Two las bolts shrieked around a blockhouse nearby.
Rawne bundled them forward. Varl ran with Mabbon, driving him on, the others following, covering the group’s six with weapons levelled.
‘What can we do that they won’t expect?’ Varl asked.
‘Turn,’ said Brostin. ‘Turn on them. Meet them.’
‘Feth off,’ said Oysten.
‘No, he’s right,’ said Laydly. They got in against the wall of a work-barn and he pointed at the sheds and service buildings around them. ‘Someone in there, by the steps. Another there. You see, by those tanks? You could get in under the pipework right there. They come through there, the yard, you’d have a killing ground. Rake ’em.’
‘No,’ said Rawne. ‘Suicide.’
‘Suicide Kings, sir,’ said Laydly.
Rawne glowered at him.
Oysten grabbed Rawne’s arm. ‘Sir!’
The pull on his arm made Rawne grunt with pain.
She looked at him.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes, Oysten.’
‘Sir, are you hit?’
‘No. What did you want?’
She studied his face for a second, questioning, then turned and pointed. About half a kilometre away, on the other side of the mill compound, there was a small light. Oysten handed Rawne the scope, and he took a look.
‘Night watchman’s station,’ he said. It made sense. The mill would leave a supervisor on site overnight, even in raid conditions.
‘In case something goes wrong?’ Oysten said. ‘A fault in the mill? Then what would he do?’
Rawne glanced at her.
‘Call it in,’ he said. ‘Call in for service support.’
She nodded. ‘He’ll have a vox, that one,’ she said.
‘We’d… we’d need the Militarum code channels,’ said Rawne.
‘I know them by heart, sir,’ said Oysten. ‘Learn them off pat every morning.’
Rawne took her by the face with both hands and smacked a kiss on her brow.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Go fast as feth. Think you can make it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Call in the fething cavalry, Oysten,’ he said. ‘We’ll dig in and slow these bastards down.’
She nodded, then surprised him by throwing a formal salute.
‘It’s been an honour, sir,’ she said.
‘It will be again, you silly bastard. Run!’
She took off into the darkness.
‘Right,’ said Rawne. ‘Let’s slow these fethers down.’ He looked back at the yard.
‘All right,’ he said. He was having trouble breathing.
‘You all right? Eli?’ Varl asked.
‘Fething fantastic,’ Rawne replied. ‘Varl? Keep going. Keep moving Mabbon that way. Just stay with him. Keep him alive.’
He looked at Laydly and Brostin.
‘Let’s fething do this,’ he said. ‘Just like Laydly set it out.’
‘Only two decent firing positions,’ said Brostin.
‘I can get in there,’ said Rawne, pointing. ‘Down by that vent.’
‘That’s shit-all cover, sir,’ said Brostin. ‘Go with Varl. Two of you are better than one. Keep that fether safe, all right?’
‘I think I’m in charge here,’ said Rawne.
‘I think we play to our strengths,’ said Laydly. ‘Suicide Kings. Picture cards are high, and you keep your kings back in case you need them late in the game.’
‘I should never have taught you to play,’ said Rawne.
‘I should never have joined the Imperial Guard,’ replied Laydly.
‘We had a choice?’ asked Brostin.
Rawne looked at them both.
‘Live forever,’ he said.
They nodded. Brostin lumbered away to the steps of the service shed. Laydly sprinted low across to the heavy feeder tanks. They vanished into the deep shadows, just ghosts, then gone.
Rawne stood for a moment, then turned and hurried after Varl and Mabbon. He was limping. Every step was a jolt of pain.
Hadrel sniffed the rain. He looked at the others. Sekran. Jaghar. Just the three of them. More than enough.
‘They’re close,’ he said. They’d stripped the resin from their snouts so their acute senses were as sharp as possible.
Jaghar nodded. ‘I smell blood, sirdar.’
‘At least one is wounded,’ Sekran agreed.
Hadrel eyed them. The fight had been fierce. He and Sekran were intact apart from some las burns. Jaghar had been hurt in the blast. Swollen crusts of mucus covered part of his face, throat and shoulder.
‘We’re low on munitions,’ Hadrel said. ‘They have run us quite a game. So conserve. The pheguth is the one that counts. Bite out his throat if you have to.’
‘Kha, magir,’ they responded.
‘He dies,’ said Hadrel.
‘He dies,’ they echoed.
Hadrel gestured, and they moved forwards.
‘He will regret the day he left us,’ he said.
Nade Oysten ran through the darkness, following shadows, darting between blank anonymous sheds and silent service huts.
The mill compound was larger than it had seemed. The night watch post still looked a million kilometres away, and every shadow made her jump. She kept expecting one of those things, those Qimurah, to loom up, to spring out of the darkness.
She had her weapon ready, her cut-down riot gun and its bag of breaching shells. Let’s see how they like that, she thought. Let’s see how they like a face-full of wound titanium shot-wire.
Oysten touched her face where Rawne had seized her with both hands to kiss her. There was blood on her fingers.