Culcis tried to mask his sudden fluster but failed. “Very good then.”
As the Kauth relaxed, Hauke looked to a pair of nearby hills, overlooking the billet. He made a noise like a shrieking prey-bird and two sentries emerged from their hiding place, each shouldering a long-las.
Culcis hadn’t noticed, but Speers had taken up a position by one of the tents, his lasgun aimed at the very selfsame spot in the hills.
“I had ’em, sir,” he said, lowering his gunsights now the Longstriders had revealed themselves.
Culcis wasn’t sure about that. He was only glad Hauke had been so gracious about being taken into Volpone custody. The spilling of more blood was the last thing Sagorrah needed. But he suspected it wasn’t done with it, not yet. They made for the Volpone billet and only disarmed their prisoners once they’d arrived.
Major Regara was poised at the threshold of the makeshift holding room where they’d put Hauke and his three officers. He looked nonplussed at Culcis. “They submitted without a fight?”
“Yes, sir. The Kauth captain stated he would be pleased to converse with you.”
Regara made the equivalent facial expression of a shrug and moved into the holding room where Speers and Drado were already waiting. Culcis followed the major, leaving Sergeant Pillier at the door on guard.
Drado was looking nervous as he cradled his lasgun. Seemed as if the near miss in camp had spooked him. The entire room felt tense, in fact.
No stranger to conducting interrogations, Speers had already removed his carapace breastplate and was rolling up his sleeves when the two officers entered. Culcis leaned in to have a word in the corporal’s ear.
“Let’s just ask some questions first, eh?”
Speers sought Regara’s nod of approval before he backed off.
The lieutenant took his place and addressed Hauke.
“What we all saw out in the slums with the Harpine is starting to happen here, in the Sagorrah camp.”
The Longstrider captain said nothing but stared intently, his eyes like burning sapphires.
“It’s been slow at first but now the effects are starting to tell. The discord, the lack of discipline, the murders, executions and brawling are all a product of whatever is afflicting the camp. Likely some outside force, in league with the Ruinous Powers.”
Culcis caught Drado out of the corner of his eye making the sign of the aquila.
Hauke smiled without mirth, without warmth. “And you think we Kauth responsible, eh, Volpone?”
“You are the only regiment unaffected by the taint.”
Now the warmth returned. “We are blessed!” Hauke slapped his hand on the shoulder of the warrior next to him, his banner bearer. The pole with the ragged strip of cloth was held firmly but reverently by the Longstrider. It was the only item they’d refused to be parted from and Culcis had seen no harm in that.
“Touched by Saint Sabbat,” Hauke added, touching the fabric, “for our fight on Vigo’s Hill.”
“Explain.”
“After Herodor, we fought many battles. The world I don’t remember,” Hauke confessed, “there were many. Vigo’s Hill stays in mind. We fought last stand. It was to be end of Longstriders. Until She came.”
Regara made a grunting sound and came forwards. “You cannot expect us to believe this. The Saint rescued your sorry hides and touched your banner, thereby blessing you and your savage brethren? Likely you were cowering in the dirt or hacking trophies from your enemies, tantamount to beasts. Saint Sabbat would not bless beasts!”
“It is so,” said Hauke, without anger, without aggression. It was an irrefutable truth to him, as pointless to argue against as it was to protest for.
Leaning in to Hauke, the major scowled. “Where are the others, the rest of the insurgents? Are there more glyphs around the camp? Is that how you’re affecting the men?”
Hauke frowned as if hearing the answer to a puzzle he didn’t quite understand. “But you are not affected, Volpone—”
“Address me as major, you dog!” Regara looked to Speers, giving the corporal’s brutalisation tactics sanction.
Speers grinned. Culcis was about to intervene, still unconvinced by the major’s argument, when a new voice filled the holding room.
“I shall take it from here, major.”
It was Commissar Arbettan with Ossika loitering in the background.
They weren’t alone. Arbettan had brought five of his goons with him. The meatheaded cadets bristled with violent intent behind the commissar. All wore the familiar pistol bulges just under their frock coats. The commissar had his side holster exposed. The pearl grip of an ornate bolt pistol was in full view. Ossika looked indignant but also slightly terrified.
“I told you back in the mess, commissar,” said Regara, straightening his back and thrusting out his chin, “this is Volpone business. I shall deal with it.”
The tension had just racked up a few notches. Drado was sweating, fingers itching on the stock and trigger of his lasgun. Culcis flashed him a stern but reassuring glance to steady him. Speers was already sneaking his hand to the laspistol attached to his belt. As for Pillier, he’d been muscled out of the way by a sixth cadet and waited calmly outside. His eyes were on the major, as he waited to back up any decision Regara was about to make.
“Hand over the prisoners, Regara,” ordered Arbettan. “Do so immediately and you’ll be free of further repercussion, including the theft of Commissariat property and the assault of one of my men.”
“Thought you said he wouldn’t find him,” hissed Culcis into Speers’ ear.
The corporal gave a near imperceptible shrug.
Speers received a bladed look from behind Arbettan’s glare-goggles. His jaw hardened in response and his hand crept a little closer to his pistol.
“Get ready…” said Culcis. Only one way this was going to go now.
“Yes, sir.”
Arbettan looked at Regara and smiled.
“In the Emperor’s name, I condemn thee to death!” he cried. Ripping out his bolt pistol, he fired.
The heavy boom of the bolt pistol filled the chamber, reverberating around its rockcrete bulkheads and columns like thunder.
Regara flinched, already tearing his hellpistol free, when one of the Kauth officers behind him bucked and exploded as the mass-reactive rounds destroyed him.
For Culcis, everything went into slow motion. He felt the warmth of sudden blood spatter against his neck and face, the percussive force of the expelled bolter round upon his back. He was moving. Head low, he made for the nearest column. Six in total, supported the makeshift holding room’s puckered ceiling. Three stone bulkheads jutted from one flanking wall, dividing it into three discrete sections. It was huge, but was wide and long enough for a medium fire exchange. After the first shot fired that’s exactly what happened.
Slipping out his pistol, Culcis snapped off a few shots and caught a cadet in the leg. A hot blue beam from Drado’s direction pierced the same cadet’s sternum and he fell.
Arbettan was moving too and returning fire.
In the space of a few brutal, muzzle-flaring seconds, every man in the tight chamber had gone for cover, hunkering behind the bulkheads and columns. Both forces retreated to opposite ends of the room and the space inbetween was littered with shells and las-tracer.
The air became charged with heat. The sound of discharged weapons fire was deafening.
Speers was hugging the wall. He leaned out to take a cadet through the throat with a finely aimed shot but spun as return fire glanced his shoulder. He went down, blood streaming along his arm before Culcis lost him from sight.
“Where are the Kauth?” he asked Sergeant Pillier, who’d just scurried alongside him.
Pillier shook his head, stooping low and tagging a cadet in the knee with his hellpistol. A muffled cry of pain rewarded his efforts before one of the cadet’s allies dragged him clear. The chairs where they’d had the Kauth were tipped over and empty. Only the dead officer r
emained, face down in a pool of oozing blood.
“They have us pinned, sir,” said the sergeant, taking cover from the inevitable return fire.
Culcis leaned out of hiding to get a better idea of the situation. Exploding shrapnel forced him back quickly.
“They’ve spread out across the back end of the room, four cadets plus Arbettan.”
For their part, the Volpone had Culcis and Pillier crouched behind one bulkhead with Regara and Drado a metre away opposite them taking advantage of one of the columns.
Pillier was right—they were pinned. Arbettan had more men and probably the means to contact them. The nearest vox-bead for the Volpone and possible reinforcements wasn’t near enough.
Regara knew it, too. Culcis could see the realisation of it manifest on his face as livid anger. His hellpistol blazed in the half-dark, lighting up his visage. His shots were largely ineffectual—the commissar and his men were well hunkered down by now. Arbettan saw that as well.
“Give it up, Regara,” he shouted over the din. “You are all dead men, anyway. The punishment for treason against the Emperor is death. Death! Death!”
“He’s lost his mind,” Culcis muttered, unable to get a bead on any of them.
Something was moving out of the corner of his eye, ahead by the next most advanced bulkhead. It was Hauke and his banner bearer. They were crouched, like predators stalking prey. Each carried a small hatchet blade in his right hand.
Culcis bristled with self-directed anger. He’d thought the Longstriders were completely disarmed.
As if reading the lieutenant’s thoughts, Hauke turned and smiled. He pointed two fingers at the loitering silhouettes that were Arbettan and his men.
“Pillier,” said Culcis, “on my mark, direct suppressing fire against the right column.” Without waiting for a response, the lieutenant caught Drado’s attention. Regara was too busy emptying his power pack in a frustrated rage.
“Corporal…” Culcis had to shout.
Drado noticed the lieutenant and nodded to his gesture as he caught on to the plan.
Culcis slashed his hand down at the same time shouting, “Mark!”
The Volpone fired as one, lacing the columns at the far end of the room with las-fire and pressing the cadets back.
The Longstriders advanced, skirting around the bulkhead at speed and slipping up to a pair of cadets. When the first stuck his head out, Hauke slammed a hatchet into it. The cadet’s nose and face caved. The second took a blade to the stomach—the grim handiwork of the Kauth banner bearer.
Arbettan saw what was happening too late and screamed in incoherent rage. He overextended himself, ducking a flung hatchet that pitched the man behind him off his feet, and Regara shot him in the chest. The commissar’s pistol burst went wild, raining rockcrete on the Longstriders but otherwise doing no damage.
The Volpone were already moving, screaming at the last cadet to surrender.
“It’s over!” yelled Culcis. “Put up your arms.”
Momentarily shocked by the felling of his commissar, the remaining cadet found his wits but not his common sense—Speers, groggy but braced against a column, shot him through the heart before he could fire.
Dust motes and the strong scent of cordite laced the air with an unhealthy pall.
Regara strode though it like a smoke-wreathed avenger. Arbettan was stirring as the major reached him, still scrabbling for his fallen pistol.
Regara shot him through the head without ceremony, shattering his glare-goggles and displacing his cap.
In the far corner of the room, bunched in a foetal position, was Ossika.
“I di-di-didn’t know,” he stammered, looking up through tear-rimmed eyes at Culcis. The lieutenant seized the Munitorum officer’s chin and stared.
“He’s clean,” he said to the major. “Must be all the time he’s spent in the bastion. The recyced air would’ve been purified of the blood taint.”
Regara was glaring down at the purple cataract webbing Arbettan’s left eye. How long had it been there behind his goggles? How long had he been enslaved to the so-called “Tongues of Tcharesh”?
“The cadets are the same,” he snarled, as Drado turned one of the dead over. “All traitors.”
“We know where they are,” said Hauke, simply.
The major gave the Longstrider a disdainful look.
“We found caves, out in hills. We found source.”
Culcis remembered. They’d apprehended the Kauth returning from some scouting mission. Evidently they’d been busy after ignoring direct orders to return to camp.
“Sir?” he ventured, standing next to Regara.
“Sagorrah is going to explode when this gets out,” said the major, referring to the dead commissar. His eyes never left Hauke. “You’ll lead us there, to these caves,” he said. “All of your men.”
Hauke nodded, leaving to gather his men. Sergeant Pillier went with him at Regara’s order to release the Longstriders’ weapons from the armoury.
“And us, sir?” asked Culcis.
The grim mask of Regara’s face broke into a dagger smile. “You, I and thirty men are heading into the hills, lieutenant.”
Regara had left Captain Stathan in charge. His instructions: protect the sovereign territory of the Royal Volpone 50th. Pillier stayed behind to deal with Ossika. The sergeant was to return him to the bastion with a full-squad bodyguard and await the major’s return. Regara had wanted to decamp the entire billet to the Departmento fortress but that desire was outweighed by the practicality of moving almost nine hundred troopers over potentially hostile ground. For now, they needed to keep things as quiet as they could.
A red dawn was bathing the desert as Lieutenant Culcis arrived at the reconnoitre point with his squad. Major Regara was already there, panning a pair of magnoculars across the hills where the morning heat was shimmering the air.
The only other officer, Sergeant Brutt, nodded as Culcis hunkered down beside them.
“Thought we’d lost you again, lieutenant,” remarked Regara without looking up from his magnoculars.
Following on the heels of the Longstriders, the three squads had taken different routes through Sagorrah Depot. The infighting was getting worse. Culcis recalled a large, but thankfully distant, explosion lighting up one quarter. Gunshots and belligerent shouting were ever-present on the copper-tanged breeze. Deciding stealth was preferable over strength, the Volpone had crossed the camps in small groups, keeping clear of the worst of it and avoiding undue attention.
“My apologies, major,” Culcis replied. “We had to detour several times.”
Regara grunted in what might have been acknowledgement, and gave the scopes back to Speers. The corporal’s shoulder had been hastily bandaged. It was just a flesh wound and, as his aide, he had no intention of leaving the major in the lurch.
After a few moments, Hauke appeared in the distance.
“Here they are, the savage bastards,” Regara muttered.
Despite everything, he still didn’t trust them. He was just pragmatic enough to realise he had to work with them.
Hauke waved them on. His men were nowhere in sight. Privately, Culcis marvelled at their stealth. Brushing the ruddy sand off his knees and elbows, the lieutenant followed the rest of the Volpone out.
Despite the fact they were in shade, the caves offered no respite from the heat. If anything, it was even hotter in their dusky confines.
“Hear that, sir?” asked Drado, leaning with his ear towards the darkness. With the Longstriders moving cautiously a few metres in front, they’d breached the threshold of the caves and were advancing slowly.
“Machinery of some kind?” It was a low thrumming sound, like the action of an engine constantly turning over.
“That’s what I thought,” Drado replied. “Could be the reason it’s so hot. A generator perhaps?”
Culcis nodded. The air was growing thicker by the minute. Heat and the scent of metal cloyed it.
They moved on. br />
A palpable sense of menace hung in the air like a bad tranq of combat drugs. Culcis felt his senses go instantly on edge. The Longstriders had felt it too. Hauke brought them all to a stop.
They were deep now, far into the subterranean. It was stifling, the Volpone’s uniforms dark with sweat. Even Hauke was dappled with beads of perspiration like tiny, transparent pearls on his tanned skin.
The Longstrider captain held up four fingers, utilising Guard battle-sign so the Volpone could understand.
Four hostiles.
Most likely sentries.
Four of the Longstriders hurried off into the darkness at Hauke’s command. After a few minutes they returned with hatchets bloodied. “Scratch four bad guys,” grinned Speers.
Something about his bloodlust unnerved Culcis. Worse still, he’d felt it too. They were closing on the source. The lieutenant only hoped they’d find it soon; otherwise the Volpone’s guns might do the traitors’ work for them.
The first thing they knew of the ambush was a grunt from Sergeant Brutt. The man crumpled, clutching ineffectually at the arterial bleed in his neck.
Caught in a narrow defile, concealed ridges above the Longstriders and the Volpone offered murderously advantageous firing positions to the enemy. Another Volpone and one of the Kauth were killed before both groups pressed to the walls, cutting down the angle of exposure, and returned fire.
Ahead of them, the machine thrum had built to a cacophony. The air was so redolent of metal it was like Culcis’ mouth was filled with blood. He spat out a gobbet of saliva but it didn’t help.
The source, the thing the Kauth had found and knew was in these caves, was just beyond, through a natural archway in the rock.
First, though, they had to break the ambush.
“I think this is the bulk of them, sir,” said the lieutenant, hunkering down alongside Regara.
“I agree,” the major replied between shots. “We need only get a kill-team beyond that archway and take out whatever is causing this madness.”
Hauke was close by and had overheard them.