‘He’s lost it, sir. Jedion. He’s raving at the sergeant. He’s–’
The sound of a gunshot interrupted him.
To his horror, Culcis watched the Harpine sergeant slump to the ground. It took the Volpone lieutenant a few seconds to realise that Jedion had taken his pistol from him and shot his sergeant dead.
The vox was still going in his ear.
‘...Throne above! He’s killed him. Scav me, he’s only scavving shot the sarge...’ The Harpine comms-officer wasn’t talking to Culcis any more. The return was muffled and distant. He’d dropped the receiver cup and was pulling out his lasgun.
Through the magnoculars, a ball of something cold and unpleasant growing in his gut, Culcis watched Jedion waste the comms-officer too. The man bucked, a ragged hole opened up in his chest and the lasgun went off. A stray shot capped one of the missile tube team across the plaza. In an audacious display of bad luck, the gunner fell and triggered the weapon.
Culcis’s eyes widened as he followed the erratic trajectory of the missile, spilling contrails of smoke in a spiralling arc as it left the tube’s housing. It was headed straight for them.
‘Down!’
Fire and thunder engulfed them as the missile struck rockcrete and pulverised it.
For a moment, all Culcis could hear was a whining refrain in his ears like tinnitus. His vision blurred, his eyes watering with the smoke. Coughing up wads of black phlegm, he fought for his bearings.
Korde was dead, half of his torso a blackened ruin from where the blast had taken him. Varper’s eye was streaming blood and he’d lost his helmet somewhere in the explosion. Other than that, just cuts and bruises. When Culcis emerged from the clearing fog, he was still a little dazed. Drado’s voice came through loud and clear, his strong grip supporting his commanding officer and helping him back to his feet.
‘Those bastards! How dare they open fire on the Royal 50th!’
He had murder in his eyes. Drado wanted to retaliate, but a choked command from Culcis stayed his hand. Something was wrong. The Harpine were struggling. More fights had broken out in the aftermath of the sergeant’s slaying. Jedion was down, but others were turning their guns on one another too.
It was anarchy.
Regara turned away to shield himself as Culcis was engulfed by the explosion.
‘Corporal, report! What by the Eye just happened?’ he bellowed against the roar of the missile’s detonation.
Speers was nonplussed. ‘Don’t know, sir. The Harpine...’ his gaze tracked across the plaza to their allies, ‘...they just started shooting one another.’
Captain Trador was moving out of cover to try and restore order. His bolt pistol was in hand and his command squad were in tow. The Harpines with the missile tube waited uneasily, unsure what they should do. Meanwhile, Jedion’s former regiment were tearing themselves apart.
‘This is unconscionable!’ spat Regara, reaching for the vox cup offered by Crimmens. He was about to try and raise Trador when he noticed the glint of metal in one of the towers. There was no time to shout a warning before the Harpine captain and his men were chewed up by heavy bolter fire.
In a few seconds the Harpine command was reduced to a visceral mist by the chugging cannon. Regara ordered retaliatory fire into the tower but it was too late and largely ineffective. The cultists were too heavily defended.
From the left flank, just north-west of the beleaguered squad of Harpine, twenty cultists armed with autoguns and mesh-carapace filtered from their hiding places. These men were not the rabble the Volpone had encountered earlier, they were military-trained and well-equipped. They advanced in a staggered formation, the front ranks firing snapshot while the rear ranks stopped to kneel and aim. Three of the Harpine went down before they could even muster a counter.
Bellowing orders to hose the tower with las-fire, while repelling the fresh wave of attackers, Regara got a closer look at the enemy.
As well as the military-grade kit and training, the cultist-elite wore half masks that divided their faces down the bridge of the nose. The left side was open, showing off the purple cataract and their scar-ravaged flesh; the right was covered by a dirty powder-blue mask split by a savage klown-like grin.
Despite the efforts of the Volpone, the Harpine were swept away under a furious assault of blades and close-range automatic fire. As the cultists continued their assault, some laying back to occupy the dead Guardsmen’s defensive position, several were cut down by salvoes from Pillier’s squad.
‘All Volpone, pull back to my position,’ Regara shouted into the vox as the heavy bolter in the tower started up, chugging overhead.
More cultists were spilling from the opposite side of the plaza, another twenty advancing in five-man kill-teams, heads low and hugging cover.
‘We were drawn in,’ said Culcis. Whickering las-fire from the cultists split the air around him, making him duck behind the chunk of broken column.
Varper took a bolt to the throat, slumped back and never moved again.
Regara wasn’t listening. He was bawling at Siegfrien down the vox, demanding he bring in his troops as a matter of urgency. As the major slammed down the receiver cup, drawing a wince from Crimmens, he sighed. ‘They’ll never make it in time. We’re too far advanced.’
The las-fire was intensifying. The cultists had got into an enfilading position and seemed content to hold it. Meanwhile the heavy bolter continued to disintegrate the scant cover the twenty-something Volpone had left to hide behind.
‘This was an ambush, sir,’ Culcis persisted. ‘And what about the Harpine? There is something seriously wrong here.’
Regara didn’t answer, he was thinking. Hard. Trying to find a way out of the crap-storm the Volpone were embroiled in. Their return fire was admirable. Every man jack of the 50th shot in disciplined bursts, never giving in to panic, conserving ammunition. In a few minutes, it would matter for nothing.
‘Sir!’
‘I know, lieutenant,’ snapped the major, ‘but what use is it to us, now?’
‘We need to warn Captain Siegfrien, tell him to turn back.’
‘We are unaffected,’ Regara countered, but his gaze straying to the vox showed he was listening.
‘For now.’
Regara gritted his teeth, eyed the tower where the muzzle flash of the cannon flared like an angry star. ‘If we could just take out that gun...’
As if the Emperor was listening and had answered his prayer, another flash lit up the tower, silencing the heavy bolter. A few seconds later, a cultist slumped forwards against the firing lip. Even from distance, Culcis could tell half the man’s head was missing.
More shots streaked from the shadows, their firers unseen and unknown. Six more cultists fell dead with burn holes through their heads and necks. Not to turn up his nose at an opportunity, Regara ordered his squads to redouble their fire, picking off the cultists as they were thrown into sudden confusion. Without the heavy bolter pinning them down, the Volpone could move.
They advanced in small teams, four and five men strong, flanking left and right across the plaza. As one team came forwards, another held back providing covering fire until they were in position. Then the forward team took over fire support and so they crept outwards until they were pincering the cultists.
‘Where’s that fire coming from? Did Siegfrien have advanced units already in position?’ asked Regara, snapping off tight, accurate bursts with his hellpistol. He spun a cultist on his ankle, burning a shot through his abdomen and shoulder.