Karhunan brought the second element into the main building through a large, side entrance that Imperial staff called the catering door. It had once given vittallers and suppliers access to the kitchens, in the days when Section had been a private residence. The old kitchens and larders had become a despatch office, a vox station, and a workroom for intelligencers, with access to the principal briefing chambers and the map room. Karhunan’s force met fierce resistance from a group of company officers and commissars who had been meeting in the workroom. Shouting for support, the Imperial men held the main hallway, armed only with the pistols and dress weapons they had been carrying that day. Behind them, groups of unarmed or non-combatant staff fled deeper into the building, away from the assault.
Malstrom took a light wound, the first injury suffered by the philia, but righted himself quickly. He ducked into the hastily abandoned despatch room to evade the determined small arms fire. Las-shots and hard rounds from the Imperial officers pinged and cracked off the inside of the catering door archway. Karhunan heard Malstrom laugh. “What?” he shouted. “What’s so amusing?”
Malstrom reappeared in the doorway of the despatch room. As one of the building’s watch points, the room had been supplied with an emergency weapons locker. Malstrom had smashed the lock with the butt of his carbine.
“It’s as if the enemy is on our side,” he told his sirdar. “They leave toys for us to play with.”
Malstrom had swung his carbine over his shoulder so that he could slap a shell into the clean, polished grenade launcher that he’d taken from the box.
“Brace!” Karhunan bellowed to the other men.
Malstrom leaned out of the doorway and fired the launcher. The fat grenade spat up the hallway, arcing high, smashed off a ceiling light, and began to tumble on its downward path before detonating. The blast sent a scratchy, concussive clap of smoke and hard air up the hall.
“Again?” Malstrom growled. He had a satchel full of shells.
“Do it again,” Karhunan agreed.
Malstrom broke the fuming launcher on its hinge, and slapped a second grenade home. He clacked the stocky weapon shut with a snap of his wrist, and fired again.
Again, hard, hot air rasped back down the space. There was grit in it, pieces of glass and chips of stone, and it rattled down like hail.
The Imperials were broken. As the element advanced through the smoke, they found most of them dead, blackened and raw from the blasts. A few, deaf and blind, were convulsing or struggling feebly on their hands and knees. Karhunan and his men put a shot through the head of anyone still moving.
One of the commissars had got clear, dragging an injured colleague with him. When he saw Karhunan emerging through the smoke, he started to spit curses at him. He was yelling like an animal, fuelled by fear and hate. He let the colleague he was dragging flop to the floor, and brought up his pistol.
The gun barked twice. Karhunen felt the double impact, one hit right after the other, striking his right shoulder and the right-hand side of his mask. The collision turned him, twisting his body. Pain seared through his shoulder. His head was wrenched violently to the right. One round had gone through the meat of his shoulder, the other had glanced off the brow-ridge of his iron grotesk. The mask had smashed back into his face, breaking his cheek bone and tearing his lip across his upper teeth. Hot blood filled his mouth.
Karhunan smiled. He lifted his carbine and fired a burst on auto. The commissar jerked backwards, as if he’d been snatched off his feet by a sharp yank on a rope. He bounced off the wall behind him, and landed on his face.
The sirdar moved forward to finish the man’s injured colleague, but the limp body was already dead. Karhunan raised his hand and made some quick pact signs to direct his men.
The element rushed on. Several of the men were wielding clean, new Imperial Guard weapons they had taken from the dead.
Alarms were ringing furiously, and the air was filling with sounds of gunfire and shouting, and the increasingly acrid smell of smoke.
“What in the name of the Throne is this about?” Mercure roared as he burst out of the conference room with his agitated aides in tow. There was panic outside. Staff members were fleeing down the corridor without any discipline or composure. Troopers were clattering in the opposite direction, trying to marshal the fleeing personnel, and trying to fathom, like Isiah Mercure, what the hell was happening in the middle of an afternoon at the heart of an Imperial stronghold.
It wasn’t a drill. Mercure knew that immediately. You could ring the alarm bells and raise a hue and cry, and even stand out in the yard and fire a gun into the air to generate an atmosphere of urgency for a shakedown drill, but no one would ever go to the bother of putting that subtle flavour of burning into the wind, and the best drill coordinator couldn’t manufacture the tight look of real fear and bewilderment that Mercure could see on the faces around him.
Besides, a shake-down this big couldn’t be staged without his approval and knowledge, and nobody on the staff was gun-eatingly mad enough to have set something up on an afternoon when Mercure was head-to-head in the main meeting room with grox-loving sons of bitches from the ordos.
Everyone was shouting and gabbling. A squad of soldiers almost knocked Mercure down in their urgency to reach the front of the building.
“Shut up. Shut up!” Mercure yelled. “I asked a question. Shut up, listen to me, and answer it! What’s going on?”
“Section is under attack, sir!” a junior commissar replied in a voice squeaky with anxiety. Mercure punched him in the mouth hard enough to knock him off his feet.
“I didn’t ask for the bloody obvious!” Mercure shouted. “Give me plain facts. Give me something I can use!”
“Protocol 258,” said Commissar Edur, suddenly appearing at Mercure’s side. Edur had a squad of S Company storm-troopers with him, and a look of true and solemn concern in his dark, handsome eyes.
Mercure looked at Edur in disbelief. “No. That bad? Edur, tell me!”
“Protocol 258 is in effect, sir,” replied Edur. “Sergeant Daimer and his men will escort you to the safe area, and evac you if necessary.”
The storm-troopers closed in, shoving the aides aside to get at Mercure. They were big men, armoured in black and green, their shoulder guards bearing the silver flash insignia of S Company, the Commissariat’s close protection detail assigned to guard the most senior personnel. When Protocol 258 was put into effect, you didn’t argue with S Company, not even if you were Isiah Mercure.
“How bad?” Mercure demanded as Daimer and his men moved in around him.
“A significant assault,” Edur called back. “Many casualties. As far as we know, a squad of some size, perhaps as many as twenty or thirty men, hit the main gate four minutes ago. Some are already in the building.”
“Who the hell are they?” one of the senior aides demanded. “I mean, who the hell attacks Section HQ on Balhaut?”
Hemmed in by the S Company men, Mercure looked at Edur. Their eyes met. Neither of them knew the precise answer to the aide’s frantic question, but they knew enough to realise that the answer wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“Oh God-Emperor,” Mercure murmured. “Someone’s come for him.”
“I think so, sir,” Edur replied.
“We’ve got to move you now, sir, I’m sorry,” Sergeant Daimer insisted, and the protection detail started to manhandle Mercure away.
“They can’t have him, Edur!” Mercure yelled. “You hear me? They can’t have him. You know what to do. No mistakes.”
“Yes, sir!” Edur shouted back over the general pandemonium. He was about to add something else when he heard the weird, keening noise. It was coming from somewhere behind him. It sounded like a night wind shrieking down the stack of an old chimney.
The blood wolf burst into the long hallway. Edur turned, and saw it, yet did not see it. He knew something was coming, something that wailed like an old flue, something that bubbled reality around itself, like a cl
oak of un-being. Edur gagged. He felt bile rise in his throat. He pulled out his bolt pistol. His hand was shaking.
The blood wolf entered the hallway at the far end, and though it was essentially invisible, its passage down the hall towards them was vividly narrated by the carnage it wrought. The wooden doors splintered in an explosive blizzard of pulp and fragments. The carpet scorched and shrivelled. Section personnel, ranged along the hallway, began to die, as if some murderous wave was sweeping through them. Bodies were suddenly severed and collapsed in fountains of blood, as if snipped in two or three or even four by giant, invisible shears. Others burst like blood blisters, or were smashed aside into the walls and ceiling by unseen, demented hands.
The tide of destruction bore down on them. Edur raised his weapon. The S Company storm-troopers opened fire with their heliguns. Droplets of blood from the wolfs killing spree had filled the air like raindrops, and now hesitated in their descent like the snowflakes outside.
There was a loud bang that jarred Edur’s teeth and hurt his eyes. A beam of force had hit the bubble of tortured light that hid the blood wolf from the side.
The blood wolf was blasted sideways into the hallway wall, leaving a ghastly skidmark of blood smeared across the wallpaper. It fell, scrabbling, wounded, winded, and Edur realised that he could see something properly, for the first time. A human shape was making frenzied animal motions inside the blue of warp-wash, something flayed and bloody that screamed and thrashed its limbs with inhuman violence. Edur saw the white enamel of bared teeth against the bloody mass of the whole. He saw reality blotching and distorting around its clotted, skinned form, and it made him vomit.
A second beam of force hit it, and made it writhe backwards. The keening increased in pitch.
Handro Rime, the inquisitor, had emerged from the meeting room. His mane of hair was lifting in a wind that seemed to be affecting only him. He was brandishing a sceptre, an ornate metal rod the length of a walking cane that looked as though it had been fashioned from chromium steel. It fizzled with power, as if a charge was running through it. The top end was shaped like a winged human skull.
There was a third, painful bang. Another beam of force, like a needle of light, spat from the skull-top of the sceptre that Rime was holding and struck the baying blood wolf. This time, the beam was continuous, pinning the thing to the ground. Rime’s henchmen spread out around him and drew their weapons. Edur could see the strain on Rime’s face. Several ripples of warp-vapour crackled out of the gibbering thing, and then all the blood droplets hanging in the air fell at once, in real time, and covered the floor with a million tiny splashes like the first few seconds of a monsoon.
“I believe I have it contained,” Rime yelled through gritted teeth. “Get Senior Commissar Mercure to a place of safety!”
Edur shook himself and turned to obey. He fell in with the storm-troopers, and they began to hurry Mercure away. Mercure was staring in ashen disgust at the thing the inquisitor was attempting to ensnare, and at the bloody horror that it had left in its wake.
“Get downstairs!” Mercure stammered at Edur. “Get downstairs and see to it!”
Edur shoved Mercure and his escort onwards with one hand, and turned to make for the nearest staircase. He saw a drop of blood, a single drop of blood, hovering and wobbling in the air, its gleaming surface tension undulating. He realised it was hanging there, in virtual freeze frame, and that his own limbs and movements had run slow, and that time was disjointed again.
The blood wolf ripped free from the spear of energy with which Inquisitor Rime had staked it to the floor. The sceptre was wrenched from his grip and whirled away across the blood-soaked floor. Rime was slammed back into the wall and pinned there, his legs kicking. His mantle of white fur caught fire, and then his hair did too. In a second, his entire head was engulfed in raging flames. He was screaming. The blood wolf let him go. He slid down the wall, found his feet somehow, and then staggered forwards, ablaze from the shoulders up.
His henchmen tried to close with the beast. Edur saw one disembowelled and another flung away like a broken doll. Rime fell to his knees, and then collapsed on his face, his head and shoulders still engulfed. The keening grew loud again.
Edur ran.
Gaunt stared at the ceiling, listening. He could hear gunfire. It was distant, but there was a lot of it. He’d heard at least two significant explosions, and a great deal of commotion. A lot of voices were echoing down to him, muffled through the floors.
He glanced at the prisoner, who was as still and silent as before, and then headed to the door. There was no one in the corridor outside. He could still hear the shouting and the shooting from above.
A detention officer suddenly ran into view, red-faced and out of breath.
“What’s going on?” Gaunt asked.
The man didn’t stop.
“Get this area secure!” he yelled as he ran past.
“Don’t give me orders!” Gaunt shouted after him. “What’s going on? Hey!”
The officer ran out of sight.
“Hey!”
Gaunt wondered why he was asking the question. He knew what was happening. He knew in his bones and in his heart. He’d seen it. He’d seen what was coming.
He knew how fast and how bad things were going to get, and it scared him to think how he might know that.
He knew what he had to do.
He drew his bolt pistol and walked to the door of the holding cell.
The carbine in Kaylb Sirdar’s hands retched twice and spat ugly blades of red light. They punched into the Imperial trooper coming up the staircase towards him, hurling him backwards with a strangled cry. The trooper crunched and cartwheeled down the stairs, and ended up face down on the landing below.
Kaylb barked commands to his element, and they clattered on down the stairwell. Emergency lights had come on, and the smell of smoke was getting stronger. Behind the plaintive wail of the sirens, they could all hear the keening.
There were two exits on the landing.
“Which way?” asked Bare. Weapons ready, the men waited for instructions, covering the staircase access, up and down.
There were signs. Kaylb traced his finger across the letters and tried to make the unfamiliar words in his mouth. It was hard to know. He dragged up his left sleeve and consulted the blood map that the witch had put in his forearm. She’d given one to both sirdars and to Eyl too, a little schematic plan of the target building mapped from her divination, and formed by raised veins and swollen capillaries under the skin. As the element advanced through the area, the blood map on the patch of skin moved with them. Kaylb ran his filthy fingertips over the bumps and ridges.
“That way,” he pointed. “The left-hand hatch.”
“Holy Throne,” Meryn whispered. “Holy fething Throne!”
He was right up against the bars of his cell in Detention Four, his hands clamped around them.
“Rawne?” he hissed.
“What?”
Rawne cast a look at Meryn with hooded eyes. The fear they were all feeling was most obviously etched on Captain Meryn’s face. It wasn’t a fear of fighting, because they’d all done more than their share of that in their lives, nor was it a fear of death.
It was a fear of being trapped. It was a fear of helplessness.
“This is definitely not good,” said Leyr.
“The building’s under attack,” stammered Meryn. “I mean, it’s under assault. You can hear it. You can smell it.”
“You can shut up,” said Rawne.
Meryn was right. For several minutes, they’d been able to hear the muffled scream of alarms from somewhere above them. The alarms had begun just after it had got really cold. Then, straining, they’d begun to hear the other sounds, coming very faintly through the reinforced walls and floors of the detention level: cries, shots, detonations.
“We’ve got to get out of these cages,” said Meryn.
Rawne looked at him, looked at the ceramite bars, and then loo
ked back again.
“I mean it,” Meryn barked.
“He means it,” said Varl.
“Yeah, well unless you’ve got a key made out of solid wishes,” said Rawne.
Meryn got on his knees and started to examine the lock mechanism of his cage door again.
Ban Daur was still sitting back on his cot, his arms folded, a sour look on his face.
“That’s a good idea, Meryn,” he said. “Brilliant. The locks in the detention blocks of Commissariat sections are famously easy to pick, especially if you’re only using fingernails and nostril hair.”
“Shut the feth up, you superior son of a bitch!” Meryn yelled, turning on Daur. “You do something. You think of something! We’re stuck in here, and something bad’s coming. We’re stuck in here and, when it comes, we will be helpless, and we’ll die like fething rats!”
Daur swung to his feet and faced Meryn through the bars. He was taller than Meryn. He looked down on him in almost every way.
“We’re stuck in here because we were stupid,” Daur said. A twitch of his head showed that he meant that to include everyone.
“We were stupid, and this is what happens to stupid people.”
“Oh, you feth-head,” said Meryn. “This is your philosophy, is it, Mr. Goody-fething-two-shoes? Be a man and face your punishment?”
“Pretty much,” replied Daur.
“You’re fething unbelievable!” retorted Meryn.
“And you’re an idiot,” said Daur. “You’re crapping yourself over nothing. This is a drill.”
“A drill?” asked Meryn in disbelief.
“Yes, of course it is!” said Daur. “Come on, they’re blasting the sirens and shooting off some dummy ammo. It’s a shake-down. It’ll be over in another five minutes.”
He looked around at the other Ghosts. Everyone was looking at him.
“What? Come on, it’s got to be, right?”