Kolea killed eight of the enemy troops before he ran out of strength and dropped to one knee, panting, astonished by the sudden realisation of his own madness and, more, at the fact that he was still alive in spite of it. The charging Ghosts swarmed in around him, fracturing the enemy masses and driving them back along the defence barricade in both directions. Kolea had renegotiated the map of the battlefield and broken the impasse.
‘Are you alive?’ asked Dalin, helping him up.
Kolea nodded.
‘I mean, sir,’ Dalin added.
Kolea laughed.
‘That was madness,’ Dalin said.
‘Yes, well, it runs in the family, so be warned,’ Kolea replied.
Ghosts jostled past, forcing deeper, securing the position and firing on the retreating Sons. Ludd and Kolosim supervised the new deployment, yelling orders.
‘You’re quite insane,’ said Baskevyl, slapping Kolea’s arm. ‘Probably get a bloody medal, though.’
Kolea stared at him.
‘You–’ he began.
‘What?’
‘You were hit. I saw you.’
‘Not me,’ said Baskevyl.
‘The rockets! They came down right in amongst D. I saw you. You–’
Baskevyl grimaced.
‘I lost eight men. Gudler was right beside me. Got his head blown off.’
‘I thought it was you.’
Baskevyl laughed.
‘Damn it, Gol. You charged the Sons of Sek because you thought I was dead?’
‘I was angry.’
‘He probably wants to marry you,’ said Kolosim, running past them.
‘Major Kolea!’ Ludd shouted. ‘We need some orders here.’
Kolea ran over to Ludd, assessing how best to disperse the Ghosts from the new positions that had just taken. Though in hard retreat, the enemy was still laying down heavy fire.
‘We need to find exit points,’ Kolea told Ludd. ‘Drive on through. The Space Marines expect us to support them and we’re lagging badly.’
Ludd nodded.
‘Maybe we can bring up some tread-feathers,’ he suggested, pointing. ‘Punch a hole there and there, by that silo. Then we could advance under shields–’
He broke off. Just ahead of them, Sons of Sek were moving. Their unit discipline had vanished.
‘Feth me!’ Ludd exclaimed. ‘Are they counter-charging us?’
‘No,’ said Kolea. ‘They’re running.’
A whole section of the retreating Archenemy line had broken and scattered towards Kolea’s force. The advancing Ghosts began picking them off, amazed by the sudden opportunity. Explosions drove the Sons forwards into the Tanith field of fire. It was a brief but sustained slaughter.
‘Look!’ Ludd cried.
The White Scar, Sar Af, appeared out of the smoke, driving the breaking Archenemy troopers in front of him. He was blasting with his boltgun, disrupting their unit cohesion and driving their line around so that it buckled and withered under the Ghosts’ fire.
He spotted Kolea.
‘What is keeping you?’ Sar Af bellowed.
‘We were occupied,’ Kolea yelled back.
‘With what?’
‘The usual,’ shouted Kolea.
Sar Af shrugged his huge shoulderplates. He turned and blasted bolt rounds into the weakened enemy positions to his right.
‘Come on if you are coming!’ he yelled. ‘We will not wait any longer. I told Eadwine I would come back to find out if you had a good excuse for not keeping up.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like being dead! Now come on, Emperor curse you!’
The White Scar began to move towards the depot’s main rear hatches. The deck was covered in enemy dead. The hatchway was broken and buckled. Smoke threaded the air in dense, noxious walls.
Kolea turned to the advancing strike force.
‘Double time,’ he yelled. ‘Put your backs into it. We’ve got a battle to win, and I don’t intend to fight it on my own!’
‘Despite evidence to the contrary,’ said Baskevyl.
The deep interior of the Reach was dark and cold. Daur’s team moved through dank chambers and rusting tunnels, edging a few metres at a time, picking a path. Merrt’s rebreather had become a hindrance, and he’d taken it off. Soon afterwards, the others had ditched theirs too. The chilly, metallic air was infinitely preferable to the sweaty, claustrophobic limits of the masks.
Haller was edgy. He was painfully conscious of how much depended on him reading the sweeper’s scope right. He played the broom back and forth with infinite care.
‘Just do it right,’ said Daur. ‘Don’t overdo it.’
Haller nodded to his friend, loosened his collar, and moved on.
Eerie breezes murmured along the ancient, twisting tunnels. The burner of Belloc’s flamer jumped and fluttered. In some places it was so dark that even the twitching light of the flamer cast their shadows up the rotting walls.
‘Wait!’ said Haller suddenly. His scope had started clucking. They held position while he moved the broom. Merrt quietly loaded a saline charge into his old rifle. He’d injected the muscle relaxant into his jaw again, and it was numb, but the second dose made the muscles in his neck and lower back ache.
‘There,’ said Haller, studying the scope while he pointed. ‘Left side, wired along.’
‘Left side, wired along,’ Vahgner repeated, looking through his hand scope and running the passive tagger.
‘Whoa, you’ve overshot,’ warned Haller. ‘There. Behind that bulkhead.’
They got the lamps on it. Twenty metres away, four squat munition boxes were stacked up behind a bulkhead support. Cables ran back under the seam of the deck to pressure plates directly in front of them.
‘One more step would have been bad,’ said Haller.
Daur nodded.
Vahgner was moving the tagger beam around.
‘Look, there,’ he said. Closer to the device, a hair-thin trip line was threaded across the deck at ankle height. If somehow you stepped over the pressure trap, a second surprise awaited you. Vahgner put the tagger back on the firing pin screwed into the top of the boxes.
‘Twenty point one eight metres,’ he said.
Merrt lined up and locked his scope to the tagger Vahgner was supplying. Twenty point one eight metres. A breeze came up in their faces with a slight lift to it. He wanted to swallow, but his jaw and throat were too numb.
He snuggled in, the rifle held firmly but not too tightly. Everything in his life since that moment in the jungle on Monthax, everything had been about this moment, this shot. He felt sick.
‘Good,’ said Daur. ‘Good shot, Rhen.’
Merrt blinked. A wisp of smoke was trailing from his rifle. He’d taken the shot. He’d been in the zone so completely he hadn’t even noticed it.
‘Perfect,’ said Vahgner, checking through his scope. ‘You sheared the firing cap right off.’
Haller moved forwards. The deck plate trigger was dead. He disengaged the tripwire, removed the trigger and sprayed inert gel into the device. Then he marked out warnings in red chalk.
‘Think you can do that again?’ Daur asked Merrt.
Merrt signed an affirmative. He wanted to whoop with satisfied delight, but his jaw was too numb.
‘Let’s make up some time,’ said Daur.
‘Got another one here,’ Haller called out, sweeping the junction ahead of them.
Merrt chambered a fresh round.
‘This should help with the pain a little while we get you to the infirmary,’ Dorden told Nessa. She nodded and tried to smile at him as he gave her the shot. Her multiple cuts were field-dressed. Patches of blood were already showing through the bandages.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Hark said.
Dorden got up from his patient, unsteady for a moment. He looked up at the commissar and gestured to the scene that lay around them in lateral hold thirty-nine.