If the enemy got hold of the cache they couldn’t use the weapons against the local workforce immediately and, by the time they’d organised themselves, and assembled and loaded the weapons, their tiny minds would, very probably, be on something else, something more immediate.
However, the weapons were not ready for use by the cells, either, so, if they were caught by the enemy guards, they’d better be armed.
Mallet was sitting on his haunches, shoes and socks removed and placed neatly next to him; he always recce’d his surroundings, and he’d taken one look at the shiny black floor and decided bare feet were his best chance of staying upright on it. His back was against the curved far wall of the silo, and he was half-hidden by the pile of pallets that held the flamer tanks. He was assembling, checking and stripping weapons, one by one, working his way, methodically, from the lasguns to the autopistols and then on to the flamers, before checking out the camouflage and the skins full of stink-mash that only the enemy would see fit to drink.
As Bedlo entered by the single door in the silo, Mallet instinctively lifted the autopistol he had just finished checking, and aimed it squarely at his boss. Bedlo didn’t see Mallet for several seconds, and Mallet didn’t make himself known, enjoying the feeling of power and control. Bedlo only knew he was there when Shuey and Ailly poured through the entrance, tripping over each other and skidding on the surface that offered no grip for their boots. The boys couldn’t help laughing as they travelled several metres on their arses, totally out of control. Mallet took aim and shot a round into the glassy floor between them. It was like hitting crystal taffy with a sugar-hammer. Shards of the petrified plant-life spun through the air, collecting light, like black diamonds, on their way to falling with a tinkle back to the glass surface and into the boys’ hair and clothes.
Shuey gagged and doubled over, falling to the hard surface as the shot released the stench of the pods in their live state. Ailly, trying to evade the shot, slid across the floor, landing in a heap against the pallets, knocking several of the empty flamer-tanks onto the smooth, black floor, and beginning the process all over again.
Mallet looked up at Bedlo, the only man still standing, glaring down on him, and said, ‘What?’
Logier had seen all of the cell members entering the silo, only four, and had stayed for a moment or two in case there were others, but could see no likely candidates in the environs. He began to walk away when the shot was fired, and was not tempted to stay to witness whatever madness was going on within. The hive-cell had a reputation, born of a catalogue of misadventure, madness and catastrophe, often with a glamorous,
devil-may-care attitude thrown in for good measure. That was why Ozias had chosen them, and that was why Logier could never see them as a threat.
Shuey was torn between laughing at Ailly trying to regain his feet, and retching at the stink that was coming off the floor shards. Then he caught sight of the stand-off between Mallet and Bedlo. He thought for a moment, and then winked and let out a resounding guffaw, copying the low belly-rumble that Ayatani Revere seemed able to muster up from nowhere at a moment’s notice. The boy stopped struggling, Bedlo turned to look in Shuey’s direction and Mallet went back to checking weapons. The spell was broken.
‘Let’s load the barrow,’ said Bedlo. ‘I want us out of here.’
Logier watched as the barrow wove through the narrow alleys of the under-slum. The hive had always had rents and wastes at the lower reaches, but, since the war and during the occupation, this place had become darker, sadder and more sinister. The people were incomplete specimens, veterans of the agri-galleries or the occupation, men without limbs or senses: the crippled, blind, deaf and damaged, who would never experience the augmetics that were available throughout the rest of the Imperium. They lived out their pitiful existences in this backwater, trading between themselves and collaborating with whomever, whenever the need arose. There was no honour among thieves or vagabonds, only survival, which, three years deep into the occupation, meant that everyone was life-limited, and everyone knew it.
The under-slum was also the favourite haunt and hunting ground of the basic-grade enemy troops, the mindless animals that did the bidding of the Archenemy. They were tough, cruel beings, without hearts or minds, any moral compasses they might once have had stripped out and trampled long ago. They were, by turns, brutal and lazy, and they took pleasure in the most vicious side of life. The deaf, blind and legless were easier to kill than the hivers or agri-workers, and no one counted the bodies.
The under-slum was where the bestial element of the enemy forces took their R&R and exercised their pleasures: hunting, torturing, brutalising, raping and taking revenge for the horrors meted out to them by their superiors. The locals didn’t fight back, but only begged for a faster death; no one was naive enough to beg to live.
Fresh enemy troops had been brought into Reredos in the usual rotation, and the outgoing guards were filling their boots in the under-slum before being shipped out. The place was teeming with hundreds of bodies, hungry and thirsty for food, drink and violent sport of all kinds, and the hive-cell was moving in to supply a share of that.
Bedlo had instructed the boys in loading the hand-barrow while Mallet checked weapons. They all discarded the arms they were carrying, except for Mallet, who trusted nothing more than the autopistol that had served him so well for so long; it didn’t stop him bagging a Guard-issue long-las, though, just for good measure. Shuey gave up his uncle’s rifle without a second glance when he saw what was on offer from the cache, and soon both of the boys were carrying their weight in arms. Mallet didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. He wanted to carry the arms they could use and stash ammunition.
He wasn’t the boss, but when he looked hard at the boys, they both cowered a little. He gestured at the weapons.
‘Put them back,’ he said.
The boys turned from Mallet and looked to Bedlo for a decision.
‘Take one good weapon each,’ he said. ‘The rest aren’t going anywhere.’ Shuey took a lascarbine and Ailly a rifle, and they all began to fill their pockets and webbing with ammo. Mallet didn’t want to bother with flamers, either, given that it was virtually impossible to get decent fuel for them, but Bedlo had become obsessed with the weapon since he’d destroyed his brakking las, and Mallet didn’t want to go up against the boss.
Bedlo and Mallet lay flat on their bellies on the hand-barrow. It was too risky for anyone to be seen carrying a weapon, so they were all stowed on the barrow with the two men, and the whole lot was covered in skins containing the stink-mash brewed by the agri-cell for enemy consumption. The unarmed boys yoked themselves to the handles and rolled the barrow out of the silo and into no-man’s-land. The occupation forces didn’t waste glyfs on the under-slum, and, if anybody asked, they were doing the work of the Archenemy, delivering contraband mash to the troops. No one would prevent them; these things were understood and tolerated. The enemy troops were expected to blow off steam in the under-slums, making them more reliable in their dull duties, and downing huge quantities of stink-mash was one of the ways they accomplished that. They would drive straight into the midst of drunken enemy troops at their most vulnerable and take them out, wholesale.