‘Meryn’s not the neatest soldier,’ said Kolea.
Kolea looked at the chart.
‘If we force open these hatches, his mob can get out and clear without having to come through the breach.’
‘Makes sense. Let’s go.’
‘Keep the pull-out moving, Bask,’ said Kolea. ‘I’ll do it.’
Kolea took a squad with him back to the edge of the engineering depot where the Caestus had finally come to rest. Last groups of F and H companies were making a solid and dignified withdrawal through the huge ram-wound in the depot doors.
Kolea’s squad could hear the gunfire beyond the doors. The whine of las-shot and the thump of flechette blasters. Meryn’s company had got themselves into trouble all right.
‘Come on!’ Kolea yelled. ‘This way!’
He led his unit down to the passenger hatches set in the far corner of the depot’s vast vehicular shutter. It took a few moments to locate the lock mechanism and cut through it with a plasma torch.
Kolea opened the hatch.
‘Meryn. Meryn! Fix on my signal and move this way!’ he voxed. ‘We’ve got an exit for you. Come on!’
‘Read that, Kolea. Nice work.’
Meryn’s troops quickly appeared, running across the littered floor of the depot towards the hatch. Some were turning and firing from the hip as they ran. Enemy fire chased them.
Kolea’s squad laid down a little covering fire and then pulled back as Meryn’s men started to reach the doorway.
‘Get through. Go on!’ Meryn yelled. His men dashed through the hatch in twos and threes. Weapon fire spattered off the shutter. Meryn stayed outside to see his men through. He yelled through the hatch to Kolea.
‘Get them up to the landing zone. I’ll get the last ones out!’
Kolea nodded and headed off.
‘Come on!’ Meryn bellowed at the stragglers. ‘This is not a good place to be!’
He fired off a few shots. Some Sons of Sek had appeared in the distance, and he could smell mint and milk again.
Gendler reached him, unfit, red-faced and out of breath.
‘Here come the last of us,’ he panted.
Meryn took a look. The last four or five. Eklan. Mkgain. Fozol. Rozzi. Costin.
Meryn wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
‘No, Didi,’ he said. ‘You know what. I think we’re all here.’
They stepped through the hatch.
‘Captain!’ Eklan yelled, the closest of them, running as fast as he could to reach the door.
‘What are you doing?’ Costin yelled. ‘Where the feth are you going?’
‘You’re right,’ said Gendler to Meryn. ‘I don’t see anyone left unaccounted for.’
Meryn and Gendler shut the hatch and slid the manual bolt across.
The last few members of E Company reached the hatch and began to hammer their fists against it.
‘What are you doing?’ Costin wailed. ‘What the feth are you doing? Open the hatch. Open it! Open the hatch, you bastards!’
On Meryn’s side of the door, the banging fists made the faintest of sounds.
Costin staggered back from the unyielding hatch. He was so scared he threw up. Eklan and the others were caught in a blind and disbelieving panic.
‘You bastards. You bastards!’ Costin screamed at the door, his fists balled at his sides.
He turned slowly. The loxatl had reached them. He heard their alien chir and chatter. He smelled their milk and mint, and threw up again. Rozzi howled in terror. Eklan fired at the xenos monsters.
The reptiles were closing in from all sides, chattering, slipping across the deck. Their dewclaws were extended.
They had no need to waste blaster shot on these kills.
Costin began a scream that he never finished.
The Sons of Sek were getting closer. Merrt could hear them approaching along the tunnel.
‘Gn… gn… gn… get behind me, doc,’ he murmured.
Dorden took a long time to reply.
‘Don’t be daft, Rhen,’ he said, his voice as thin as upper atmosphere. ‘Get up. You can walk. Get after Haller. Leave me.’
‘I can tell when you’re lying, doc,’ said Merrt. ‘Be truthful now. This gn… gn… gn… wound I’ve got here. It’s not one you come through, is it?’
Dorden looked at him. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Then I’m gn… gn… gn… gonna stay here with you, aren’t I?’ Merrt said. He reached out with a bloody hand and turned Dorden’s head to look into the old doctor’s eyes.
‘It’s all right. I know you can’t tell, but I’m smiling,’ Merrt said.
The first of the Sons had appeared. Their lamps bobbed as they came closer. There were dozens of them.
Merrt took the saline round out of the old rifle, and chambered a hard round instead. He pushed Dorden back against the wall behind him and sat up, aiming his rifle at the approaching enemy soldiers.
‘You’ve only got one shot, Rhen,’ murmured Dorden.
‘I gn… gn… gn… know,’ said Merrt. Blood dripped over his metal lip. ‘And I’ve used up the last of those gn… gn… gn… muscle injectors too. Can’t shoot for shit now.’
‘Just make sure it counts,’ said Dorden. He was clutching a loop of votive beads Zweil had given him.
Merrt took aim. The Sons brought their weapons up.
‘Hey!’ Merrt yelled, snuggling the rifle in. ‘Hey, you bastards! You know what? I used to be a gn… gn… gn… great marksman. I had a fething lanyard. Not any more, though. These days, I aim at something, I miss it every time! You understand? I’m not a very gn… gn… gn… good shot!’
Merrt fired. The round passed through the Sons of Sek fireteam without hitting a single one of them. Nor did it strike the firing pin of the massive barrel charge twenty metres behind them. It missed the pin socket by the distance of a middle finger, and punched into the side of the barrel just above the red chalk marks Haller had made when they disarmed it earlier.
The hard round punctured the metal shell of the container.
There was a spark.
TWENTY-THREE
Out of Reach
Shipmaster Spika nodded the instruction to execute to his steersmen. With a grinding shudder, the Highness Ser Armaduke pulled away from the mangled skin of Salvation’s Reach. All the lighters and landing ships were aboard, and the hatches of the lateral holds had been shut. The ship’s departure broke the atmospheric seals around the boreholes cut by the Hades drills. Explosive decompression ripped up through the lower and uncharted cavities of the Reach, voiding vacuums and collapsing compartments like eggshells.
Parts of the vast structure were already on fire where massive explosions had torn through them, the blasts of carefully laid satchel charges, or of ditched munition loads ignited by departing landing ships.
Some of the damage was the result of booby-trap devices in the lower depths spontaneously detonating.
Tiny cavities in the Reach glowed from within like the heat inside a coal. Explosions and firestorms continued to rumble through the habitat for several days.
Shields up, the Armaduke powered away from the target zone, plotting a hard acceleration line through the dense junk fields towards the nearest viable Mandeville Point. It continued to broadcast the streams of chatter, accusation and insult in Blood Pact battle code until the moment it translated.
Two hundred thousand kilometres behind it, cloaked and hidden in the debris field of the Reach, the monstrous and night-black daemon ship watched the Armaduke depart. It listened to the vox-chatter the Imperial ship had scattered in its wake.