The reserve unit was edgy, mainly because they were the only part of the regiment not directly deployed. Obel was sour – he’d drawn the duty by lot, and he wasn’t happy about it because he’d been hoping to lead J Company in with the Alpha run.
No one, especially Blenner, was surprised that the band had been grouped into the reserve section. If anything, Wilder was more pissed off than Obel. J Company had pulled an unlucky duty. Wilder’s mob hadn’t even been entered into the lottery. They’d been put in reserve, the assumption being they were only worth deploying in the fight if it was really necessary.
Blenner didn’t care. Waiting to fight was his kind of war, and he had no wish to see the band company trying to prove itself, even though it really wanted to. The results were likely to be messy and ultimately disappointing.
Blenner also wasn’t surprised to see that Gaunt’s boy, Chass, had been placed in reserve. That must have been a damn hard call for Gaunt. He wouldn’t have wanted to be seen to be showing any kind of favour, but how could he throw his son into the line when he was seriously undertrained? That was the card that Gaunt had played in the end, to justify his decision. Felyx was not yet certified at basic. His place had to be in reserve.
Sitting alone at the far end of the hall on the tow-bar of a Tauros, Felyx Chass looked even more unhappy about the arrangements than Wilder. Maddalena lurked nearby.
Perday returned.
‘Something explode?’ asked Blenner brightly.
‘It was the main airgates opening on the excursion deck,’ Perday said. ‘The first of the lighters are returning for restock. They want us to start shipping munitions down for loading.’
Blenner got up.
‘We’ve got a job to do at last,’ he called out. ‘Let’s look lively!’
Larkin’s shot was perfect. The frangible saline round punched clean through the firing mechanism, shattering as it did so and drenching the trigger circuit with a desensitising flood of salt water. It was anticlimactic: a little puff and a spatter of water.
Mkoll and Domor edged forwards across the decking. The rigged plates shifted and there was a click, but the pressure trigger was no longer connected. They approached the stacked drums, Domor sweeping for secondary triggers.
Once he reached the drums, Domor put down his broom, pulled on a pair of leather gloves, and dismantled the shattered trigger mechanism, gingerly sliding the core up out of the socket in the drum top. He tied off all the bare wires, taped them to prevent conduction, sprayed the interior of the socket with inert gel and insulated the internal plugs with petroleum jelly.
‘Safe as it’s going to be,’ he said.
Gaunt nodded. Mkoll marked the drums and the surrounding floor plates with red chalk to indicate a bomb made safe but still dangerous. They moved forwards. All of them had stripped off their clumsy rebreathers, preferring the mineral stink of the Reach’s dry atmosphere.
The service-way broadened. Domor’s scans detected a cavity ahead of them. Gaunt could feel cold air moving against his face.
The service-way ended in a hatch, followed by a brief section of some other corridor that had been brutally severed in some ancient time. Beyond that, the ground dropped away in a deep ravine, a metal chasm lined with compressed junk. A ragged metal bridge with partial handrails crossed the gap.
On the far side, there was a landing space, and then several spurs of corridors or tunnels.
‘Wait,’ said Domor. His auspex clucked every time he swept the bridge.
Mkoll got down and peered.
‘Big charge,’ he reported. ‘Halfway across the span, wired underneath.’
‘You see the trigger?’ asked Larkin.
Mkoll had his scope out. ‘Yes, but it’s a really bad angle. It’s facing away from us. I think it’s hooked to the bridge walkway. Motion detector.’
‘Let me look,’ said Larkin. He’d already reloaded. He got down on his belly at the lip of the chasm, and rolled on his side to squint along the underside of the bridge. He had to take his longlas off and hand the cased weapon to Zered because it was getting in the way.
‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Lucky I’m so good.’
He started to ready his rifle. He was sprawled in a position that looked both uncomfortable and less than ideal for marksmanship.
‘Let me tag it for you,’ said Mkoll.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Larkin. ‘Just hold onto my legs and stop me rolling, or I’ll fall right off this fething ledge.’
Mkoll knelt down and physically braced Larkin’s body. The marksman had to lie almost flat with his rifle under his chin and a foreshortened grip supporting the barrel. It was the posture of a stage contortionist. Gaunt felt his pulse rate rise again.
The rifle cracked, the sound of the shot echoing oddly down the gulf below them, a small sound in a vast space. Gaunt saw the impact, the spray of glass-like shards from the round casing, the mist of saline droplets.
‘Blew it clean out,’ said Larkin, getting up and ejecting the brass. He was collecting his cases, putting them in his pocket.
Sweeping as he went, Domor edged out across the bridge, checking for secondaries. From the look on his face, the metal structure felt none too secure. Cold air kept breathing up from below in gusts, as if the vast and crushed structure of the Reach were respiring. Each gust of cold air turned their breath to steam.
Domor lay down on his front, reached under the bridge, and disengaged the dangling firing pin. It was wet from the shot. As he brought it up, it slid from his fingers and fell away into the depths.
Everyone realised they were holding their breath.
‘It’s fine,’ said Domor sheepishly. ‘We didn’t need it.’
Reaching down again, he squirted gel into the pin holder and the wiring junctions. Mkoll marked the bridge with red chalk.
They crossed the bridge. It looked precarious, though Gaunt guessed it would probably take a light vehicle. Ahead of them, past some clutter and scrap metal, lay the three spurs. One was another service-way, the second led through into a dank vault that seismic action had split into three different levels. The third turned right and joined a rusted gantry that crossed a sunken chamber full of rotting and long-dead machines.
‘Charges in the roof here,’ said Mkoll, indicating the second service-way.
‘Clear them,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’ll drop back to move the rest in. If we’re getting alternative routes, we need guidance.’
He started to walk back towards the borehole. Larkin began lining up on the third device.
Gaunt used his link to signal to Strike Beta. The first few units met him in the service-way.
The first clearance team to follow them in was led by Criid, with Leyr as scout and shot-caller, Banda as marksman and Mklaek as sweeper. Their flamer was being lugged by Domor’s adjutant Chiria. The second was led by Mktass, with Preed as scout, Raess as shooter and Brennan as sweeper. Sairus came in support with a flamer. Gaunt gave them instructions to proceed, and to link with Mkoll’s squad before dividing to open up the alternate access points. He underlined the need for caution, discipline and constant vigilance.
They listened carefully, and then moved up.
Sergeant Ewler appeared next, leading in the first of the combat troops from A and K Companies. Ezra was with them, and so was Kolding, carrying a medicae pack. Curth, as acting chief medicae, had insisted on riding with the Strike Alpha deployment, where the highest casualty rate was anticipated.
Behind them came the Suicide Kings.
Rawne had allowed Mabbon to lose everything but the manacles. The foot shackles had gone. Around the pheguth, Varl, Bonin, Brostin and the others stood ready.
‘How far have you got?’ asked Rawne.
‘Not far, and three devices disarmed already,’ replied Gaunt.
‘That’s good,’ said Mabbon.
They looked at him.
‘It’s what I would have expected,’ he explained, ‘so it suggests things haven’t changed much since I was l
ast here. Also, it suggests that they’re relying on unmanned defences for these layers of the Reach.’
Gaunt nodded. This had been Mabbon’s assertion all along. The main Archenemy strengths guarding Salvation’s Reach were positioned around the primary docking areas and facilities. Subsidiary levels of the colossal structure, most of them unused, and many of them uncharted, had been mined and booby-trapped then left as unpatrolled deadzones. The Archenemy expected any significant attack to come from the front, which was why Gaunt had sent Strike Alpha in to knock on the main door and attract as much attention as possible.
The Archenemy did not particularly anticipate anyone having the patience, discipline, skill or technique to cut through the hull of the Reach and attempt an insertion through the mined levels. Even with the requisite levels of skill and discipline, such an undertaking would still be doomed to failure.
Unless you also had inside information. Unless you had reasonably accurate experiential data that told you where to cut, where to insert, and what to expect when you did.
Unless you had an etogaur of the Sons of Sek.
‘Let’s move forwards,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show me the way you’d take.’
They headed back in, overtaking the waiting troop advance and crossing the bridge. Mkoll’s squad had begun to clear a significant distance along the second service-way, neutralising three more devices in the time it had taken Gaunt to backtrack and lead the rest in. Criid’s team had begun to disarm bombs in the split vault. Mktass’s team was crossing the corroded gantry into the chamber full of dead machinery.
‘I think your man Mkoll has the best idea,’ said Mabbon.
‘He usually does,’ Gaunt replied. ‘It’s a gift.’
He turned to Rawne.
‘We’ll follow Mkoll’s team, but the other two routes may be viable. Let’s divide the troop force here and spread out.’
‘Maximising our chances?’ Rawne asked.
‘Minimising our losses,’ Gaunt replied.
‘Strike Beta is deployed,’ said Beltayn over the vox. ‘Full strength inside the Reach structure, though moving slowly.’
‘Understood,’ said Daur. He was pacing in frustration. The drill was taking forever to make the second cut.
‘Can’t they increase the rate?’ he asked Major Pasha.
She shook her head.
‘They say it would burn out the cutters,’ she replied.
‘It’s burning out my patience.’
She laughed, but there was a serious look on her face.
‘Please try to stabilise your mood, captain,’ she said. ‘Once we’re inside, we’re going to be moving through an environment loaded with improvised explosive devices, most on trembler or pressure switches. Patience is going to be our greatest virtue.’
‘I know, I understand,’ Daur replied. ‘But if we don’t cut in soon, we will be badly behind schedule. If Strike Beta reaches an impasse or hits opposition, and we’re not advancing as an alternative, then this mission is going to be a failure.’
‘Sometimes missions are failures,’ said Pasha. ‘That’s the nature of war.’
‘Forgive me, no,’ said Daur. ‘I mean no disrespect, and I understand a decent officer needs to keep a philosophical perspective on such matters. But you haven’t served with Gaunt before. You need to appreciate what he expects.’
Major Pasha frowned and nodded.
‘I also believe,’ said Daur, ‘that when a mission is this critical, it can’t be a failure.’
Nearby, behind the baffles and bombarded by the hideous screech and rattle of the working drill, Merrt rubbed at his neck.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Maggs.
‘It’s… gn… gn… gn… wearing off,’ said Merrt.
He’d shot the numbing agent into his jawline when the drill started up, so he’d be ready to take a shot the moment they were through. But the drill had been cutting for almost forty minutes, and the numbness was ebbing away.
‘You got another?’ asked Raglon.
‘A couple. Three I gn… gn… gn… think.’
‘Don’t waste them,’ said Maggs.
There was a sudden bang from behind them.
‘What the–?’ asked Merrt.
‘I think we’re through,’ Nessa mouthed.
‘You sure?’ asked Questa.
‘We’re through. We’re through!’ Hark called, ushering the strikeforce back to position. ‘Ready, now. First team up and ready!’
Major Petrushkevskaya was to lead the first clearance team. Her days in the scratch company had taught her plenty about booby traps and bomb disposal. Nessa, Zel, Marakof and Raglon moved up with her. Raglon had the sweeper broom ticking ready. Nessa checked her antique rifle. Marakof, one of the new Verghastite scouts, took a deep breath and winked at Major Pasha. They’d served together on the Zoican War and knew how one another worked. Zel was another influx Verghastite, hand-picked by Pasha. He jogged over to join them, his flamer lit.
‘Steady and wait,’ Pasha told her clearance squad. The artificer crews were removing the baffles and protective screens while the drill team prepared to disengage the drill.
‘Hurry it up,’ cried Daur. ‘Places, please! Major Pasha, you’re up first. Pollo, you’ll follow them in when I give the word. Then Haller, your team. I repeat, clearance teams first! Commissar Hark, if you please. I know we’re all eager, but get the troop elements back out of the way. We need room to move!’
Hark barked some orders and herded the waiting troop sections back. Haller traded knuckle slaps with the members of his squad.
Daur turned to look at the drill.
‘What’s taking them so long?’ he asked Pasha.
‘The artificer there says the cutting teeth have bitten in, caught on something,’ she said. ‘They’re just freeing it.’
The drill was attempting to retract from the deep socket it had bored. Something had snagged the cutting head. The engine was revving hard, coughing up puffs of sooty smoke. The operator was engaging the cutting head for quick screaming bursts, forward and reverse, trying to tear free so that the insertion could begin.
‘Oh, come on!’ Daur cried in exasperation.
Whatever flaw or imperfection, whatever ultra-hard seam of adamantium or ceramite in the hullskin had been snagging the drill-head, it finally and abruptly gave way. The Hades lurched backwards violently, its cutting head squealing across the inner surface of the borehole. The operator had just shifted the rotation into reverse again.
The brutal release threw the drill operator off his station onto the deck. Racing, the power-cutters scythed sideways into the rim of the borehole and sheared away a large chunk of hyperdense metal, which it shredded into razor-fine fibres and slivers and ejected backwards into lateral hold thirty-nine.
The flying metal shards blew back with the penetrative force of a dozen loxatl flechette blasters. There were no longer any protective baffles around the cutting site.
One flying shard decapitated an artificer. Another two tore clean through the torso of a servitor. Other whizzing scraps struck the deck and the roof.
The rest ripped into the clearance teams waiting to go in.
NINETEEN
Bleed
‘Oh, Holy Throne,’ Daur gasped. ‘Medic!’
Bodies littered the deck of lateral thirty-nine. Torn and bloody, they were strewn about like discarded dolls. The deck was spattered with blood as though canisters of scarlet paint had been indiscriminately spilled.
Mohr ran forwards.
‘You’re cut,’ he said.
‘What?’ Daur reached up and felt blood on his face. A shard had sliced his temple above the eye. Another had gone through Mohr’s sleeve. His left hand was soaked in blood that was running out from under his cuff.
‘Oh, gak, what a fething mess,’ Daur stammered.
Lesp was the medic assigned to Gamma. He was already struggling to cope with the volume of simultaneous injuries, yelling for help from troopers in Gamma who had
corpsman training or any first aid skills. Soldiers were setting down their weapons to run forwards and assist. Others looked on at the devastation, aghast. Blood spray from the injuries had dappled the faces of many of them. One unlucky lasman in the front row, a new influx man called Gorgi, had been killed outright by a fragment between the eyes.
All three clearance teams were decimated. Some were alive and struggling to get up, dazed. Others lay still, apparently dead. All of them were soaked in blood.
‘Strike Gamma, Strike Gamma!’ Daur yelled, grabbing the vox from Mohr. ‘We have multiple injuries in lateral thirty-nine. Multiple injuries!’
‘Say again, captain,’ Beltayn responded. ‘Are you under fire? Are you reporting hostile contact?’
‘Negative! Drill accident. Multiple laceration casualties. We need medics from the ship’s infirmaries here now!’
‘Captain, can you proceed?’
‘Assessing now. Stand by.’
Daur gazed around in horror. Major Pasha’s team, the primary, had been slashed to pieces. Lesp was trying to staunch injuries to Pasha’s throat and face while the corpsman Fayner applied compression to wounds in Nessa’s upper arms and legs. Both women were bleeding profusely. Raglon was curled in a ball, gasping and choking, yet barely had a scratch on him. A razor-sharp filament had gone through his torso, puncturing a lung. Zel and Marakof were dead. Marakof’s head had been sliced in half diagonally, from the left corner of his jaw to his right temple, like some immaculate biological sample. The missing piece of his head lay a few metres behind him, internal side down on the deck, so it looked like a small part of someone surfacing out of a pool. Zel’s torso was shredded and his left arm detached. Daur stepped forwards, numb, and killed the feed of Zel’s fallen flamer.
The second team, Pollo’s, was as bad. Pollo had suffered a huge scalp wound that was bleeding copiously, as well as significant wounds to his arms. Bright red blood beaded his dark skin. Questa, the marksman, had taken lacerations to his hands and thighs. A needle sliver of metal the length of a man’s forearm impaled his hip. Maggs was whining in rage and frustration, clutching a bloody stomach wound. Pollo’s sweeper man, Burone, had been cut in two through the waist. Nitorri, his flame trooper, was also dead, so covered in blood it was impossible to tell which of his wounds had proved lethal.