‘Why didn’t she just–?’ began Shuey.
‘Just what?’ asked Bedlo. ‘What would you do stuck with a psychopath and a couple of boys?’
‘And you... Boss,’ said Shuey defiant behind his blushes.
They all heard heavy footfalls approaching, maybe a couple of hundred metres away. Bedlo gestured behind him and they retreated back into the practice room. Bedlo turned and scooped up a tarpaulin that was bunched up against the foot of the wall behind them. He took his boot to the plasboard and, once Shuey realised what he was doing, he joined in. Two hefty kicks each, and the false wall collapsed, allowing the resisters access through the derelict building and into the sinks. Wherever they trained, they always established a way out. It was one thing planning a skirmish or an attack, having a goal in mind, but no one wanted to get caught on manoeuvres with their trousers down and no back door.
‘Haul arse, you stupid pute!’ yelled Bedlo, not bothering with hand signals.
Mallet, guarding the entrance, fired a series of shots into the dark corridor, and then turned swiftly and followed Shuey and Bedlo out through the hole in the wall.
Two occupation guards in mismatched, incomplete fatigues and body-armour elbowed each other and tripped over the excubitors’ bodies as they struggled to get to the resisters, but they were too late. They looked down at Tilson’s body propped against the wall, dead, but upright, and then turned and walked away, apparently satisfied, the expressions on their masks unchanging.
Bedlo, Mallet and Shuey split up to regroup another day, two men down, and two weapons up, and the odds still stacked against them.
‘Logier,’ said the old man, acknowledging the stilt-man as he sat facing the other way and began to dismantle one of his prosthetics, obsessive about maintaining them in pristine condition.
‘Ozias,’ said Logier.
The two men had known each other for Logier’s entire life and for half of Ozias’s. Logier was the son of a friend and colleague, long dead. They understood one another beyond being comrades, friends or allies, and they trusted one another, at least enough to use their names. Ozias had been running the agri-cell since the first threat of attack by the Archenemy eight years before; he had field-control of the low drinking hole, and had recruited the woman who ran the place to keep tabs on the traffic of information for him. The agri-workers would not fight the war; that job was left to the PDF and to a couple of regiments of Imperial Guard caught in the crossfire when they should have been on R&R. Ozias knew that reinforcements would come; that when the Warmaster became aware of the connection, of the precious resources, when he knew why Reredos must be defended, he would send more troops.
‘The chips?’ asked Logier.
‘The priest has them,’ said Ozias. ‘He didn’t pass them.’
Logier turned, and the two men looked at each other for a moment before Logier turned away again.
‘We don’t know why,’ said Ozias. ‘He was slow to evacuate after Calvit gave up the chips, probably trying to resuscitate him.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ said Logier, returning to the task of maintaining the hydraulics in his shins. ‘I’ll go to him,’ he offered, after a moment. ‘I’ll make sure the chips get to the hive-cell.’
Ozias slumped a little lower in his seat.
‘I wouldn’t ask,’ he said.
‘I’ll go,’ said Logier.
‘Yes,’ said Ozias.
Ozias caught the eye of the woman at the counter, drained his beaker slowly, picked it up, and returned it, without looking at her again, or turning to check on Logier.
It was done.
Ayatani Perdu was not comfortable in the no-man’s-land between the hive and the agri-galleries, but he always found himself there when they were most at risk. He’d been assigned this room two years ago, and used it whenever things got tough in the hive. It was bigger than the other rooms he used, and was part of an old warehouse complex. He knew how the rooms and corridors of the building connected, and how they’d been modified as the building had fallen into disrepair. It had only one storey, and no windows, but the ceiling was high and his voice echoed slightly in the space. The room was closer to the galleries than the hive, but patrols and glyfs were fewer and further between, here, and the boys that transported information were safer, for the most part. It didn’t matter; he used the safest rooms available, and preached his sermons just the same.
There were half a dozen of them in his congregation, again, no more, no less. The vacancy had been filled, and the most active resisters, or those most in need of his ministrations, had taken their places. They had collected in a small group at the far end of the room, not attempting to fill the space.
Perdu felt the chips in the palm of his left hand inside his glove. The right glove was a ragged mess with two fingers missing and was good for very little; it didn’t keep him warm or dry and it wasn’t safe for concealment. The skin that had been so quickly eroded from his fingers by the purple mucus was growing back warm and too pink, and he covered it as best he could with old bandages – washed and reused a hundred times, yellow and fraying, but better than the alternative – and with the half-eaten glove.
‘The Emperor protects,’ he said, low and breathless. He did not want the prayer to end, not knowing what would come after it.
A man at the back of the group coughed, a new man. No one looked at him, but the congregation melted away without a word to their priest, without a murmur or a question, without a suggestion that they were aware of the recent death or of the replacement congregant. They had done what they needed to do, had set up contacts and passed on information, all without fanfare and with absolute discretion. Perdu bowed his head, unwilling to meet the gazes that did not rest on him. He looked down at the stilt-man’s shins, at the gleaming hydraulics, obsessively cleaned, pristine, as if new. No new augmetics had been issued since the invasion, but these didn’t look eight years old.
‘You still have the chips?’ asked Logier.
‘I...’ began Perdu. ‘A man died,’ he said.
‘You know the drill,’ said Logier. ‘We pass information to you, and you pass it to the boy–’
‘So that he can get killed, too,’ said Perdu. ‘That isn’t good enough, any more.’
Logier turned from the priest, and crouched, drawing a stiletto from a sheath concealed in his shin. He made a casual hand signal, hoping the priest would understand. The stilt-man had heard something. The enemy was close.
Perdu dropped to Logier’s left and behind him, and felt his way along the wall into the darkest crevice of the long room, careful not to turn his back. He was crouching in the corner, low on his haunches, but strong in his stance, when he felt something touching his arm. He put out his hand and took hold of the small, cold grip of a weapon that Logier handed to him. His eyes had adjusted to the low light levels and he could see Logier, who appeared to have a lasrifle raised at his shoulder, the stiletto, a bayonet, affixed.
He looked down at the firearm in his hand. It was small and neat, and well cleaned, a defensive weapon, useful at close quarters.
There was a thud, and the thwoom of burning fuel as the room lit up orange and red from the light of a flamer. Still, Perdu couldn’t see the enemy. He watched Logier as the stilt-man darted towards the entrance and fired into the narrow gap between battered wall panels where no door had ever stood. The cacophony from beyond suddenly separated into various sounds in Perdu’s mind, each one crisp and complete, and readable: the weight of a boot hitting an earth floor, the click of a thumb against a trigger, the slow exhale of a sniper taking his shot, the feed mechanism of a misshaped autogun as it struck home, the odd grunt of the enemy.